风投大佬本•霍洛维茨畅谈五大管理经验

    3. 福利固然好，但并不等同于文化

    人们在描述科技公司的企业文化时，往往会关注一些外在迹象：谷歌（Google）或社交网站Facebook提供的来自当地的免费有机食物，游戏公司Zynga可以带宠物狗上班的政策，以及几乎每个稍有野心的硅谷创业公司都会提供的瑜伽班、冥想室或全方位服务健身房等。霍洛维茨说，这些福利固然令人羡慕，却不属于企业文化。企业文化的特征是，它能够帮助公司达成目标，在公司发展中帮助保持自身的价值观，同时让员工喜欢上这份工作。例如，亚马逊（Amazon）公司将废弃的门板做成了办公桌，这种做法强化了公司的一种观念，那就是：如果亚马逊想尽可能为顾客提供更多的价值，就必须注重节约。而风投公司安德森•霍洛维茨严格执行着一项罚款政策：员工在会见企业家时，每迟到十分钟就罚款10美元。这种政策明确了公司最看重的是什么。（“如果你觉得企业家没有风险投资家重要，那你根本就没资格在安德森•霍洛维茨工作，” 霍洛维茨在书中写道。）而在Facebook公司，马克•扎克伯格的格言是“快速行动，打破常规”。它帮助员工认识到：创新至高无上，但常常伴随着风险。“理想的情况是，某种文化看似微不足道，却对人们的行为影响深远。”

    4. 直面困难，绝不逃避

    大多数公司在发展过程的某个阶段都会遭遇对手步步紧逼、前途堪忧的可怕局面。“公司面临的境遇十分可怕，很多人都想尽办法逃避困难，”霍洛维茨写道。“他们会去寻找其它途径、寻找所有出路或理由，避免这场死战。”霍洛维茨自己的公司Opsware也曾面临过这样的挑战。当时，竞争对手的产品比他们的要更出色。这时霍洛维茨告诉自己的团队，现在不是转型的时候，也不是逃避的时候。也就是说，没有别的高招，只有改进产品这一条路。他写道：“经过九个月艰苦卓绝的努力，熬过一个极为艰难的产品周期之后，我们赢回了市场领导地位，最终还打造了一家价值16亿美元的公司。”霍洛维茨以一种热爱困难的态度结束了这个话题：“任何公司在发展过程中都会面临需要为生存而战斗的时刻。如果在应该挺身而出的时候你却想要逃避，你就该问问自己：‘我们公司真的完全没有成功的可能吗？要不要干脆关门大吉？’”

    5. 甄别候选人的动机

    在某种程度上，员工们都是从自身的角度来看待问题。但霍洛维茨还是建议经理们在挑选下层管理者的时候，注意甄别候选人是将个人利益置于公司之前，还是关注个人与公司的共同成长。涉及在前一家公司的工作经历，前一种人只会将它拿来为自己的简历增光添彩，而后一种人则会承担自己在这段失败的求职经历中应该承担的责任，同时详细说明自己在哪方面出现了误判。前一种人往往会吹嘘以前取得的成绩，但在细节上却语焉不详；后一种人则会把成就归功于团队。挑选管理者，特别是重大岗位管理者的时候，甄别候选人的动机至关重要。霍洛维茨说：“总有个别员工会优先考虑个人的事业发展，这无可厚非。但如果高层管理者也怀着这个目的，你想指望他们做出正确的决定就是非常危险的想法。”（财富中文网）

    译者：朱毓芬/汪皓

    3.) Company perks are good, but they are not culture.

    People describing the culture of tech companies often focus on outward signs: the free, organic, and locally sourced meals at Google (GOOG) or Facebook (FB); the dog-friendly policies at Zynga; the yoga classes, meditation rooms, or full-service gym at, well, just about every ambitious Silicon Valley startup. Horowitz says those are all nice to have. But culture is defined by traits that help a company achieve its goals, preserve its values as it grows, and make employees feel like they want to work there. Examples? The desks made out of doors at Amazon (AMZN) helped to cement the notion that frugality was essential if Amazon was to deliver every penny of value it could to its customers. The strictly enforced $10-per-minute fine for being late to a meeting with an entrepreneur at Andreessen Horowitz laid out the firm's priorities. ("If you don't think entrepreneurs are more important than venture capitalists, we can't use you at Andreessen Horowitz," Horowitz writes.) And Mark Zuckerberg's "move fast and break things" maxim helped to establish that, at Facebook, innovation is paramount and goes hand in hand with risk. "Ideally, a cultural design point will be trivial to implement but have far-reaching behavioral consequences," Horowitz writes.

    4.) There are only lead bullets.

    Most companies at some point in their lives face a rival who is beating them in the market and putting their future at risk, and it's bound to be scary. "So scary that many in the organization will do anything to avoid facing it," Horowitz writes. "They will look for any alternative, any way out, any excuse not to live or die in a single battle." When his own company, Opsware, faced such a challenge from a rival with a better product, Horowitz told his troops it was not the time to pivot or look for an escape hatch. In other words, there were no silver bullets. They had to fix their product. "After nine months of hard work on an extremely rugged product cycle, we regained our leadership and eventually built a company that was worth $1.6 billion," he writes. Horowitz ends this lesson with the following tough-love message: "There comes a time in every company's life where it must fight for its life. If you find yourself running when you should be fighting, you need to ask yourself, 'If our company isn't good enough to win, then do we need to exist at all?'"

    5.) You must screen for the right kind of ambition.

    At some level, every employee views the world through his or her own eyes. Still, Horowitz advises managers to look for signs that indicate whether a candidate will put personal goals ahead of the company's or focus on collective success. The former may excuse a stint at a prior company that failed as a step to build his resume, while the latter will take responsibility for the failure and describe his own misjudgments in detail. The former may brag about prior successes but be vague on the details, while the latter will credit his team. Screening for the right kind of ambition, especially for positions of great responsibility, is essential, Horowitz says: "While it may work to have individual employees who optimize for their own careers, counting on senior managers to do all the right things for all the wrong reasons is a dangerous idea."