Jim Collins: You know, the very best people we studied are always students. And I think they always view themselves as a beginner, in their field. And they're constantly asking questions, it doesn't really matter where that learning comes from. Whether it's from business schools, whether it's from executive education, but ultimately the real key thing is the ability to learn from empirical experience.
You might have learned from the empirical experience of others, which is why the case study method, I still believe, is a very powerful method. Taught in business schools, but works very well because what you're doing, is you are, basically saying, I want to accelerate my own learning by all of these other cases. That's an enormously powerful methodology, but also looking at internal companies the beauty there is that you can get an intersection between your own empirical experience as an individual business, married to some more significant principals. And you get generic principals in your particular situation that can be particularly powerful.
I think the critical thing is to basically come at it and say, however you do it, that you are learning as much, as my dear mentor, John Gardner put it, to learn as much between 70 and 85 years old is you did between 0 and 15 years old. And that if you have that philosophy that when you're 70 and you're going to grow and learn as much in the next 15 years as you did in your first 15 years of life. Then, at every single 15-year slice, it's like that, then education, learning, it doesn't matter where it comes from, but it's not like you get your degree and you're done.
Thomas D. Gorman: Where does that come from? Where does that wisdom emanate from? How do you learn that?
Jim Collins: Learn the learning?
Thomas D. Gorman: Yeah.
Is that taught in school, does a great teacher teach that way?
Jim Collins: I think great mentors teach that.
I just might digress here for a moment, about. That's interesting because that really became clear to me from my mentors.
I was really blessed by great, great mentors. And part of it was seeking them out; I didn't have the type of parenting that taught me the things I wanted to learn, so I sought mentors. I sought out to learn from Peter Drucker and what I was struck by when I, Peter Drucker was 86 years old when I first met Peter Drucker and he starts off the day asking me questions. I'm 37 at the time, and it took a long time for me to finally ask him questions, because he was so interested in learning from me. This was a person who would call up former students, get a random list of them that had been out ten years. And just say, "This is Peter, what is up in your world?"
Or, John Gardner who has been former Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare in the Johnson administration. Who, just really kindly said to me one day that I spend too much time trying to be interesting, and I should spend more time being interested. That was taught to me by a mentor.
Someone like Michele Myers whose masterful skill was question. She was like a cross between Yoda and Socrates.
Or, Jim Stockdale, the former prisoner of war, who after his prisoner of war experience, comes to the Hoover Institute and studies the Stoic philosophers, in order to make sense and to learn, to continue to learn from his experiences of having been in a prison camp, and he's reading, "Seneca".
And then you run into whether it be, you meet the remarkable business people that I've met. They ask, they're just really curious, they want to understand stuff, they want to vacuum your brain, they're always trying to put things together. And they realize, however much they know, they know a lot less than they could know.
And so where does that come from?
Maybe that is where part of the level 5 humility is, that if you really think you know a lot, that's real different from realizing you know a little bit.
And to realize you're ignorant, is a form of humility. |
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吉姆·柯林斯：你知道，我们研究的那些最杰出的人永远都在学习。而且，他们都把自己看作各自领域里的初学者。他们不断提出问题。至于他们拜谁为师，这并不重要。无论是从商学院毕业，还是接受了企业内部的管理培训，最终获得在实践中学习的能力才是最重要的。
当然，你可能已经从别人的实践中学到了不少，这就是为什么案例教学法在商学院很受欢迎的原因。商学院教授的知识在实践中证明很有效，因为你基本上是通过研究案例来加快学习过程的。这是一个极为强大的方法。而企业内部培训的优势在于，你可以把企业的实际经验和重要的理论相结合。在实践中提炼具有普遍价值的原则，这种学习方法尤为有效。
正如我的导师约翰·加德纳（John Gardner）所说，无论采用哪种方法，关键问题是，你能在70-85岁，学到和0-15岁一样多的知识。也就是说，如果你掌握了正确的学习方法，你在70岁之后的15年里，能够和你在人生最初的15年里学到的一样多。如果在你人生的每个15年里，都能这样大量学习，那么在哪里接受教育或者在哪里学习并不重要，这并不等于说你拿到一个学位，就万事大吉了。
高德思：这个观点从哪儿来的？这种智慧又是从何而来？你是怎么体会到这一点的？
吉姆·柯林斯：你是指提升学习能力的观点吗？
高德思：对。
是在学校里老师教的吗？是否有某位伟大的老师如此教导？
吉姆·柯林斯：我想卓越的导师都会教授这一点。
这里我可能要岔开下话题，这很有意思，因为确实是我的导师让我明白了这一点。
我要感谢那些伟大的导师们。所以如何找到优秀的导师也很重要。我的家庭教育并不能教我所渴望学到的，所以我去寻找导师。我曾从师于彼得·德鲁克（Peter Drucker）。第一次见到他时，彼得已经86岁了，一见面他就向我提了很多问题。当时我37岁，过了很长时间才轮到我向他提问，因为他更愿意向我多了解一些信息。有时，他会随机挑选一些毕业10年有余的学生，把他们召集到一起。他会在电话里说：“我是彼得，你最近好吗？”
此外，在约翰逊（Johnson）政府时期，约翰·加德纳（John Gardner）曾担任美国卫生、教育和福利部长（Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare）。有一天，他语重心长地对我说，我应该把时间花在我感兴趣的事情上，而不是让别人对我感兴趣。这就是来自一位导师的教诲。
又比如米歇尔·迈尔斯（Michele Myers），她最擅长的是发问。她介于尤达大师（Yoda）和苏格拉底（Socrates）之间。
或者前战俘吉姆·斯托克代尔（Jim Stockdale），在获得释放后，为了总结他在战犯集中营的经历，以及解读塞内卡（斯多葛学派思想家），他来到胡佛研究所（Hoover Institute），研究斯多葛学派哲学家（Stoic philosophers）。
然后，你会想到那些杰出的企业家。他们总是在提问题，他们好奇心很强，他们想弄明白更多道理，他们想把你的大脑掏空，他们总是试图把事物联系起来。他们明白一个道理，人们不知道的永远比知道的多。
而这种观念是从何而来呢？
可能，这就是第五级领导人的谦逊所在，也就是说，你可能认为你懂得很多，而那些出色的人却认为他们知道的很少，这就是我们之间真正的区别。
意识到自己的无知，就是谦逊的一种表现形式。 |
