社交网络教父：你最好的员工总有跳槽离开的一天

    你谈到了约翰•多纳霍和他的购物网站eBay，它就是个很好的例子。他们是怎么做的呢？取得了什么样的成果？

    eBay会为前成员群体提供一整套服务，其中最突出的是社交活动——公司会邀请前成员回来参加活动，以保持与他们的关系。用“索取”的方式是无法建立良好关系的。你应该先建立好关系，之后再自然而然地受益。我想，他们可能还让前员工给他们推荐了新员工。他们获得了许多情报，了解了技术的最新发展，知道公司该如何作出反应。他们还与在线支付网站贝宝（PayPal）的一些员工举行晚餐会，讨论各种问题，比如：你认为贝宝应该怎样发展？付款方式会如何变化？

    你说到，你正试图就公司员工与外部人员的关系撰写一本新书，也给出了一些这方面的例子。那么，Greylock是怎么实践这一点的呢？

    我们会在周一早上举行集体会议，问大家这周都跟哪些人见过面。然后（如果有值得提出的相关事实或关系），他们就会提出来：“这件事可能会对你有用”。

    员工们往往面临着一种持续性的压力，需要在不放弃现有工作的同时为未来工作做准备。同时，由于他们从事某一份工作的时间变短了，想取得专业进步的机会也就更少。他们应该如何做好准备？

    在专业技能方面，工业模式已经不管用了。以前的情况是，通过反复培训，帮助员工做好准备。而现在则更像敏捷编程，是一种不断的适应过程。不断适应的形式有两种，一种是不断获取有关未来工作的情报（在这一点上也有许多不同的方法）。例如，可以请别人共进午餐，同时把情报带回公司。第二种技能培训的方式则是更小块的学习，更具有适应性和持续性。与进入商学院学习不同，（员工们可以）在各种大型会议和简短会议中学习……还可以参加为期两周的辅导班。大家会看到，通过网络远程学习，很多人都能获得专业证书。

    你们为什么要写这本书？

    在雇主与员工的关系上，某种根本性的概念已经破碎了。这种破碎体现在两个方面。虽然人们嘴上说，“我们还会为所有的好员工提供终身雇佣制”，同时又互相使眼色，生怕说漏了嘴。在这类谈话中，公司和员工都在撒谎，其实双方都知道时代已经不一样了。一日制雇佣合同里，双方会随时准备好，并且愿意在合适的时机终止雇佣关系。而现在，我们走向了这种关系的另一个极端。信任的缺失阻碍了创新和长期的合作。

    你们希望人们从这本书里学到什么？

    生活在互联网时代，你会发现，你不认识的聪明人总比你认识的多得多。问题是，作为一名管理者，你该如何管理团队，以便好好利用这一点？放手让一部分人也有一个补偿，因为你可以引进新鲜血液。它能带来大量最新信息、新的人脉资源和外界的最新动态。让与你有着良好关系的前员工进入其它公司也有好处：如果这种良好关系能够持续，它就会反过来给你提供情报。

    因此，职业道路是一种产品的组合，而不是一系列的头衔。拥有后一种思维模式的人将职业发展看成头衔的阶梯。这个阶梯的意义现在已经大大降低了——真正有意义的是一系列的项目。《同盟》这本书给出了一种新方法，让你能够以系列项目的形式管理团队和人员，并因此获得巨大成功。而作为一名管理者，你能为员工做到什么呢？你无法给他们终身雇佣的保证，但可以帮助他们发展终身就业的技能。做到这一点才是真正对员工好。（财富中文网）

    译者：朱毓芬/汪皓

    You talked about John Donahoe and eBay as a good example. How did that work and what have the results been like?

    The eBay alumni network runs a set of services—the most prominent is events—where they invite alumni back to the events to keep a relationship going with the company. You never build a relationship with a “give me something.” You just build the relationship and good things come out of them. I think they have alumni referring new employees. They’ve gotten intelligence about how technology is evolving and how eBay should react. They’ve hosted a dinner with some of the Paypal folks, for example, to say, how do you think Paypal should evolve? Where are payments going?

    You talk about attempting to codify the relationships that people in your organization have with outsiders. You give some examples of that. How does this work at Greylock?

    We publicize in a huddle on Monday morning, who are all the different people that folks are meeting with this week? Then [if there's a relevant fact or relationship to bring up] people say, “This would be something useful for you to know.”

    There’s a constant pressure on workers to prepare themselves for the jobs of the future without abandoning the jobs they have; at the same time, because they stay in jobs for shorter periods, they often have less opportunity for professional development. How do people prepare?

    In terms of professional skills it’s no longer useful to think about the industrial model. I train and train andthen I am ready. Rather, it’s like agile programming—continual adaptation. There are two forms of continual adaptation. The first is picking up intelligence on the job. [And that can happen in lots of ways.] For example, you can expense a lunch meeting and bring intelligence back to the organization. The second way skills retraining happens is in more bite-size chunks that occur in a much more adaptive and ongoing way. Instead of, say, going to business school and returning, [employees can learn] in conferences and briefings…. Two-week classes, for example. You can easily see professional certifications happening via remote learning over the Internet.

    Why did you write this book?

    There’s an underlying broken notion in thinking about how an employer and an employee relate to each other. The breakage goes to two factors. One is, “well we’re still doing the lifetime employment of all the people we like”—wink, wink, nudge, nudge. In that conversation, the company and employee are lying to each other. Both know that’s not the modern world. We’ve swung to the opposite extreme of one-day employment contracts, where either side is ready and willing to cut off the relationship whenever convenient. The lack of trust hinders innovation and long-term collaboration.

    What do you want people to take away from it?

    Part of living in the networked age is there are always a bunch more smart people that you don’t know than you do know. The question is, as a manager, how do you navigate your group to take advantage of that fact. One trade-off of having some people move on is good: bringing in new blood. That brings in a whole raft of new information, network access, changes in what’s going on. It’s also good to have people you have good relationships with go to other places because when the relationship continues, that becomes an intelligence stream back.

    The career, then, is a combination or products, not a series of titles. People have this model of thinking about the progression of careers as a ladder of titles. That ladder of titles now means a lot less. What actually matters is a sequence of projects. The Alliancesays, here is a way you can manage groups and people on sequences or projects where you can accomplish great things.So what as a manager can you do for your employees? You can’t guarantee them lifetime employment, but you can give them lifetime employability. That’s when you have been awesome to your people.