收录于话题
几天前,我的“徒弟”(她自称的,还没正式拜师)给我分享了一篇文章。说感觉这文章说的就是我,用系统去管理公司,而不是自己时时刻刻盯着。
我看了一下,内容还不错,于是让她翻译一下,和大家一起分享。
当然,我不觉得这文章说的是我,人家的确是用系统来管理公司,而我目前主要是靠运气吃老本、全在玩所以没花时间在正事上,心大所以可以不计得失的去躺平,虽然结果看上去类似,但是本质完全不同(这也是我可以一两个月都不去公司的原因)。
由于不是我的原创所以无法直接打赏,我在本文最末设置了二维码收款,如果你觉得石铭的分享和翻译有价值,欢迎不吝反馈。
刚才我把全文读了一下,不错,有些启发,感谢分享。回头有机会我也写个《我是如何做混吃又挣扎不想死的小老板的》。
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Lazy Leadership: Why I rarely go to the office, only see my team a couple times a week, and let other people make important decisions
懒领导:为什么我很少去办公室,一周只见我的团队几次,让其他人来做重要的决定?
作者:Andrew Wilkinson
译者:石铭
排版:Ch3NN
Let’s just get this out there: on paper, I’m a terrible CEO. I avoid going into the office, I only meet with my team a couple times a week, and I especially hate giving speeches, coming up with vision statements, leading meetings, and all the other CEO-y stuff you read about in HBR. To make matters worse, I rarely start work before noon.
让我们把话说清楚,理论上,我是个糟糕的CEO。我避免走进办公室,我一周只和我的团队见面几次,我特别讨厌发表演讲,提出愿景声明,主持会议,以及你们在哈佛商业评论上读到的所有关于CEO会做的事情。更糟的是,我很少在中午之前开始工作。
By conventional terms, I’m lazy. You’re thinking it, I said it. Guilty as charged. But despite all this, I’ve somehow managed to start a group of companies with over 200 employees and invested in more than 30 other companies along the way. All this from someone who rarely gets out of bed before noon.
按照传统的说法,我很懒。你是这么觉得的,我也是这么说的。这是铁板钉钉的事。尽管如此,我还是以某种方式创建了一批超过200名员工的公司,并在此过程中投资了30多家其他公司。这一切都出自一个很少在中午前起床的人。
A couple years ago, I thought my laziness was my achilles heel. I watched as my entrepreneurial friends pushed boulders up hills and worked themselves into the ground, while I just hired people to do the stuff I hated. I felt guilty about it. It felt like cheating. But over the years, I’ve realized that my so-called laziness is actually a huge advantage.
几年前,我认为我的懒是我的致命伤。我看着我的企业家朋友们推着巨石上山,把自己搞得筋疲力尽,而我,只是雇一些人去做我不喜欢的事情。我对此感到内疚。感觉像是在作弊。但是这些年来,我终于意识到,我这所谓的懒事实上是巨大的优势。
By cobbling together a bunch of ideas from people much smarter than I am, I’ve worked out a system I call Lazy Leadership that I use to run my companies. Lazy Leadership isn’t about sitting in a hammock all day or working a Four Hour Work Week from Costa Rica, it’s about taking a step back, leaning on your team, and becoming an observer instead of an active participant in your business.
通过拼凑比我聪明得多的人的想法,我想出了一个我称之为懒领导的系统,我用它来管理我的公司。懒领导并不是整天坐在吊床上或在哥斯达黎加一周工作四小时,而是退后一步,依靠你的团队,成为一个观察者,而不是一个积极参与公司业务的的参与者。
一、The Lazy Way 懒惰的方式
Entrepreneurship is really just a fancy word for delegation. It’s a continuous process of removing yourself from the equation step-by-step and empowering your team to do the things that they do best.
企业家精神其实就是能对他人授权的赞美之称。这是一个持续的过程,一步一步地将自己从公司运营中移除,并授权你的团队去做他们最擅长的事情。
First, you cut out the middle man (your boss) and start working for yourself. Then, you hire someone else to actually do the work while you handle the high level stuff. Over time, you realize that you can hire more and more people to do more and more work. Then managers to manage these people. Then executives to manage the larger groups of people. Finally, if you want, you can hire a CEO who will run the whole company for you while you sit on the board.
首先,你跳过中间人(你的老板),开始为自己工作。然后,当你开始处理高级别事务时再雇其他人来代替你之前的工作。随着时间的推移,你意识到你可以雇佣越来越多的人来做越来越多的工作。然后雇佣管理者来管理这些人。然后是高级管理者来管理更大的人群。最后,如果你愿意的话,当你在董事会的时候,你可以聘请一位CEO,他将替你管理公司。
How crazy is that? You can literally delegate running a whole company. Of course, this is all easier said than done…
听起来是不是很疯狂?你可以把管理整个公司的工作委托给别人。当然,这说起来容易做起来难。
When I first tried letting my team take the wheel, I was terrified. My company felt like an unmanned car, slowly swerving into the ditch only to be pulled back — usually by me — at the last second. It always felt like everything was going to blow up without me, and I often wished I could just clone myself and get on with it.
当我第一次让我的团队掌舵时,我被吓坏了。我的公司就像一辆无人驾驶的汽车,慢慢地转向沟里,通常在最后一秒被我拉了回来。我总是觉得,如果没有我,所有的东西都会爆炸,我经常希望我可以克隆自己去解决问题。
But, after a couple years of giving my team space and providing some simple process and guidance, my companies grew beyond anything I could have imagined. When I finally managed to take my hands off the wheel, I realized that my team could keep the trains running on time and deliver far better work than I ever could have. Best of all, I got to empower a great group of people to do the best work of their careers while I focused on building the machine (more on that later).
但是,我给我的团队空间并给它们提供一些简单的流程和指导,几年后,我的公司发展超出了我的想象。当我终于放下管理公司的工作时,我意识到我的团队可以让公司正常运转,并能够把工作做的比我还好。最重要的是,当我专注于搭建自动运转的公司体系的时候,我授权一群人做他们职业生涯中最好的工作。
二、The Delegation Barrier 授权障碍
Some entrepreneurs never break through the delegation barrier and get stuck along the way. They try hiring someone, and when that person doesn’t behave exactly like they would, they jump in and take over.
有些企业家从来没有突破过授权的障碍,一直陷入其中。他们试着雇佣一个人,当那个人工作的结果不能满足他们的预期的时候,他们就自己替那个人工作。
They build up muscle memory and eventually convince themselves that the only person who can do things properly is them alone. That without their constant micro-management, their company will descend into chaos.
他们建立起肌肉记忆,并最终说服自己,只有他们自己才能把事情做好。如果没有他们持续且细致的管理,他们的公司将陷入混乱。
I know a lot of people like this. They’re miserable.
我认识很多这样的人。他们挺惨的。
“If your business depends on you, you don’t own a business, you have a job. And it’s the worst job in the world because you’re working for a lunatic.”
— Michael Gerber, The E Myth
如果你的生意完全依靠你,那么你没有自己的生意,你有的是一份工作。这是世界上最糟糕的工作,因为你在为一个蠢人工作。
Ask yourself: what would happen to your company if you went on vacation for six months?
问问你自己:如果你去度假6个月,你的公司会发生什么?
If you think it would fall apart, you’ve made yourself more important than you need to be, and you’re working in your business instead of on it. It’s time to build a machine…
如果你认为公司会倒闭,那意味着你已经把自己的重要度提的过头了,你成为了繁琐工作的一部分,而不是公司的掌控者——是时候建立一个机器了。
三、Building Your Machine 建立你的机器
Henry Ford didn’t build cars, he built factories. To me, a great leader’s job is to build a machine that produces a product. It’s not about doing the work itself. Many CEO’s forget this and get stuck in sales, marketing, product — whatever part of the business they love — while they ignore the bigger picture. An exceptional leader builds a company that functions without them.
亨利·福特没有制造汽车,他建造工厂。对我来说,一个伟大的领导者的工作就是建造一台生产产品的机器。而不是自己去工作。许多首席执行官忘记了这一点,陷入他们喜欢的部分-- 销售、营销、产品等,而忽视了大局。一个杰出的领导者建立了一个没有他们的公司。
Ray Dalio has this on lock. While most of corporate America burned to the ground during the 2008 financial meltdown, his company Bridgewater Associates blew the doors off. He’s one of the world’s most successful investors, with a portfolio of over $150 billion and a 30-year track record of market-crushing returns.
雷·达利欧已经做到了。当大多数美国企业在2008年的金融危机中倒闭时,他的公司桥水基金却很好的活了下来。他是世界上最成功的投资者之一,拥有超过1500亿美元的投资组合和30年的市场压垮回报记录。
The secret to his success? According to him, it’s that he thinks about his business as a machine that he engineers to produce the outcomes he wants. He wrote a book about it called Principles. It’s awesome and very weird. It completely changed the way I run my companies—I highly recommend it.
他成功的秘诀是什么?根据他的说法,他把自己的企业看作是一台机器,他设计企业这台机器,让机器产生他想要的结果。他写了一本关于它的书,叫做《原则》。它很棒也很不同寻常。它完全改变了我经营公司的方式,我强烈推荐它。
Inspired by Ray, I now think of my companies as machines. I determine the result that I want, design a machine that will produce the result, then figure out what sort of people I need as part of it. If I’m part of the machine, I think about my strengths and weaknesses, and if necessary replace myself with someone better suited to the role.
受到雷的启发,我现在把我的公司看作机器。我决定我想要的结果,设计一个能产生结果的机器,然后弄清楚我需要什么样的人作为其中的一部分。如果我是机器的一部分,我会思考自己的长处和短处,如果有必要,我会找一个更适合这个角色的人代替我。
For example, I hate travelling. It wipes me out and I find it takes a huge toll on my productivity. For years, I pushed myself to go on weekly business trips. I hated it, but there was too much revenue on the line not to go. Despite the fact that each trip resulted in new business, it made me miserable, and over time I dragged my feet.
比如,我讨厌旅行。这让我筋疲力尽,我发现这对我的工作效率有很大影响。多年来,我强迫自己每周出差一次。我讨厌它,尽管如此,有太多的出差安排,我都没去。尽管每次出差都能带来新业务,但这让我很痛苦,而且随着时间的推移,我的脚步越来越慢。
I was telling myself a story: buck up. You’re being lazy. Other people travel for work and they’re fine. The story worked for a while, but eventually I got burnt out, stopped traveling as much, and our growth suffered as a result.
我给自己讲了个故事:振作起来。你在偷懒。其他人为了工作出差,他们很棒。这个故事在一段时间内奏效了,但最终我筋疲力尽,不再经常出差,结果公司的成长受到了影响。
Once I started thinking about my business like a machine, I realized that there were people out there who relished the opportunity to travel for work and thrived doing the same thing. I swapped others into the roles that required travel, and the business grew because I was no longer the limiting factor. I focused on what I loved, while they focused on what they loved. It was a win/win, and we grew as a result.
当我开始把自己的事业想成一台机器时,我意识到,有些人喜欢出差,喜欢做同样的事情。我把其他人换到了需要出差的岗位上,因为我不再是限制因素,业务也得到了发展。我专注于我所爱的事情,他们专注于他们所爱的。这是一种双赢,公司也因此成长。
四、The MetaLab Machine MetaLab机
To give you a better sense of how I think about my companies, here’s the framework I use when thinking about MetaLab:
MetaLab is a digital product agency. We make apps and services for some of the biggest companies in the world, as well as successful startups like Slack. Over the past ten years, we’ve also started and spun out companies like Flow and Pixel Union, but at our core we’re a services business. We build stuff for other people and they pay us for our work.
为了让你更好地理解我是如何看待我的公司的,以下是我在思考MetaLab时使用的框架:
MetaLab是一家数字产品代理公司。我们为世界上一些最大的公司,以及像Slack这样成功的初创公司提供制作应用程序和维护的服务。在过去的十年里,我们也创立了像 Flow 和 Pixel Union 这样的公司,但我们的核心是服务业务。我们为别人制造东西,他们为我们的工作付钱。
We require a few things in order to have a successful result:
- Happy former clients to build and maintain our reputation.
- Demand from new clients to pay us for our services.
- Talented designers and developers to build apps for our clients.
为了获得成功的结果,我们需要做到以下几点:
- 我们让老客户开心,因而可以建立并维护我们的声誉。
- 需要新客户为我们的服务付费。
- 优秀的设计师和开发人员为我们的客户构建应用程序。
To accomplish all three, we have built a machine composed of the following things:
- Human Resources to recruit talented designers and developers, keep them happy, and maintain our culture.
- Operations to run the team of designers and developers, keep projects on time and budget, and ensure the team is always improving.
- Client Relations to build relationships with our clients, understand and anticipate their needs, and make sure we exceed their expectations.
- Business Development to find great new companies for us to work with and sell them on the value of our services.
- Finance to make sure we keep our costs under control, bill our clients, and track our results.
为了实现这三个目标,我们建造了一台由以下部门组成的机器:
- 人力资源部门招聘有优秀的设计师和开发人员,让他们开心,并保持我们的文化。
- 管理部门管理设计师和开发团队,确保项目按时完成并做好预算,并确保团队不断进步。
- 客户关系部门负责建立与客户的关系,了解和预测他们的需求,并确保我们能超出他们的期望。
- 业务拓展部门负责寻找优秀的新公司与我们合作,并向他们推销我们的服务价值。
- 财务部门确保我们的成本、账单以及我们的客户可控,并跟踪我们的结果。
For the first few years after starting the company, I wore most of these hats. I was lead designer, HR, and biz dev guy—three things I’m pretty good at. But I was also CFO, project manager, and recruiter—three things I’m absolutely terrible at. The company was chaotic and inefficient and our clients were often frustrated as a result.
在公司成立后的最初几年里,上面的工作我都做过。我曾带领过设计师、人力资源和业务开发人员,这是我非常擅长的三件事。但我同时也是财务总监、项目经理和招聘人员——这三件事我绝对不擅长。公司混乱,效率低下,最终,我们的客户经常对我们感到失望。
Today, I only spend my time on things that I’m both good at and that nobody else can do. The one important operational thing that I do at the company is spend time learning about our clients and making sure that we are meeting their needs. Getting to know our clients and building trust is key in order for me to be able to build a machine that can solve for their goals and deliver great work. Since I need to build the machine with that result in mind, it’s important that I understand exactly what our clients want.
今天,我只花我的时间在我擅长的事情且没有人能做的事情。我在公司做的最重要的一件事就是花时间了解我们的客户,确保我们满足了他们的需求。了解我们的客户并建立信任是关键,这样我就能够建造一台能够解决他们的目标并提供出色工作的机器。因为我需要在构建机器的时候考虑到这个结果,所以很重要的一点是,我要确切地了解我们的客户想要什么。
Aside from that, I could get sideswiped by a semi tomorrow and the trains would keep running. I’ve hired super talented people who are better than me at each key role at the company, which frees me up to focus on the important stuff: our culture, our process, and our results.
除此之外,明天我可能会出某种意外,公司还会继续运行。我在公司的每个关键职位上都雇佣了比我更优秀的超级人才,这让我可以把精力集中在重要的东西上:我们的文化、我们的流程和我们的结果。
Sure, I’m watching over things and jumping in when the team needs help, but for the most part I’m flying at 30,000 feet and focusing on the machine itself.
当然,当团队需要帮助的时候,我也会参与进来,但大多数时候,我都是在三万英尺的高空飞行,专注于公司这台机器本身。
Here’s where I focus my time:
以下是我花时间关注的:
①Reinforcing Culture 加强文化
I spend a lot of thinking about our culture and how to maintain it as the company grows. Back when we started, we were five people in a room. We were all friends, and our culture just kind of happened naturally.
我花了很多时间思考我们的文化,以及随着公司的发展如何保持这种文化。刚开始的时候,我们只有五个人。我们都是朋友,我们的文化自然而然就形成了。
Everyone knew what we stood for, because it was the sum of the group of us. Now that there are almost 100 people at MetaLab, culture becomes a whole other beast. Suddenly it has to be written out and shared with stories and core values, something I never thought we’d do.
每个人都知道我们所代表的是什么,因为这是我们整个团队的总和。现在MetaLab有近100名员工,文化变成了另一个怪兽。突然间,它需要被写出来,并通过故事和核心价值观分享,这是我从未想过我们需要做的事情。
Despite what a lot of companies seem to think, culture isn’t beer taps at the office or everyone wearing company branded swag. It’s giving your team a framework for decision making. Should we hire this person who’s really talented but kind of seems like a jerk? Should we ship work we aren’t happy with because the client has a tight deadline? Should we let people work remotely?
不管很多公司怎么想,文化并不是办公室里的啤酒龙头,也不是每个人都穿着公司品牌的服饰。它为你的团队提供了一个决策框架。我们应该雇佣这个很有才华但看起来像个混蛋的人吗?我们应该将不满意的工作交付给客户,仅仅因为截止日期迫在眉睫吗?我们应该让员工远程工作吗?
When you build a framework of values for your company, most questions that come up are answerable without your involvement.
当你为你的公司建立一个价值观框架时,出现的大多数问题的时候,没有你的参与也是可以回答的。
Here’s a list of values that we share with everyone who joins our team:
以下是我们与所有加入我们团队的人分享的价值观清单:
- A job that doesn’t feel like a job: We want to give our team the freedom and autonomy to work when and how they please. We hire smart people, give them great work, and treat them like adults — even if they want to start work at 4PM, work from a cafe, or road trip across the United States.
感觉不像工作的工作:我们希望给予团队自由和自主权,让他们在自己喜欢的时间和方式工作。我们雇佣聪明的人,给他们出色的工作,把他们当成成年人对待——即使他们想要在下午4点开始工作,在咖啡馆工作,或在美国公路旅行。
- A focus on craftsmanship: We take a breath before we ship and ask “Is this the best we can do? Are we proud of this?” If the answer is no, we go back to the drawing board. We don’t ship work we aren’t proud of, even if it means having an uncomfortable conversation.
专注于工艺:我们在发布产品前先喘口气,然后问自己:“这是我们能做到的最好的吗?”我们为此感到自豪吗?”如果答案是否定的,我们就得从头再来。我们不会发布自己并不引以为傲的作品,即使这意味着一场不愉快的对话。
- No jargon or buzzwords: We think jargon destroys companies. It’s designed to make one person feel superior, while the other feels less than and nods along. We use simple terms that everyone understands, and we do the same with our clients. Our work speaks for itself, there’s no need to dress it up.
不要行话或流行语:我们认为行话会毁掉一个公司。它的设计目的是让一个人感到高人一等,而另一个人感到自卑并点头同意。我们使用每个人都能理解的简单术语,我们对我们的客户也是如此。我们的工作有目共睹,没有必要刻意美化。
- No assholes allowed: This one is pretty self-explanatory. No political climbers, bullies, yellers, or machiavellian BS. We operate in a climate of mutual respect, and when one bad egg crosses the line, they need to go before they sour the whole bunch, regardless of how talented they are. This goes not only for our team, but for our clients too.
混蛋不得入内:这一点不言自明。没有政治攀登者,恃强凌弱者,大吼大叫者,或者马基雅维利式的废话。我们在相互尊重的氛围中运作,当一个坏蛋越界了,不管他们有多有才华,他们必须在让整个团队变坏之前离开。这不仅适用于我们的团队,也适用于我们的客户。
- People over profits: We’d rather break even than run a company that isn’t enjoyable to work at. Profits are important — they keep the lights on and give us long term security — but we will not compromise the quality of our work or make ourselves miserable in pursuit of financial gain.
员工重于利润:我们宁愿倒闭,也不愿经营一家大家都不愿意在这家公司工作的公司。利润很重要——它们让我们保持活力,给我们长期的安全感——但我们不会为了追求经济利益而牺牲我们的工作质量或让自己痛苦不堪。
- Be honest, not perfect: We all make mistakes and have flaws, and we should be comfortable owning our mistakes and knowing it’s ok to mess up once in awhile. This isn’t about being kumbaya, but accepting the gap between where you are and where you want to be. We think the gap makes us do better work, especially when we’re honest about it.
保持诚实,不苛求完美:我们都会犯错,也会有缺点,我们应该坦然地承认自己的错误,知道偶尔搞砸也是可以的。不要歌功颂德一片祥和,而是要接受你现在所处的位置和你想要达到的位置之间的差距。我们认为差距会让我们做得更好,尤其是当我们诚实面对它的时候。
Most important questions can easily be answered by going back to these core values. Sure, stuff comes up from time to time that needs my direction, but for the most part I leave it to my team.
只要回到这些核心价值观,就可以很容易地回答最重要的问题。当然,有时候会出现一些需要我指导的内容,但大多数情况下,我会把问题留给我的团队解决。
②Building Process 建立流程
I used to hate process. To me, process meant things not being fun anymore. I thought of it as something that kills morale with endless meetings and reports. Today, I’ve learned that simple, unintrusive process is key to running a successful company.
我以前讨厌流程。对我来说,过程意味着事情不再有趣。过去我认为它是一种通过没完没了的会议和报告来扼杀士气的东西。今天,我明白了简单、无干扰的流程是经营一家成功公司的关键。
I used to think that MetaLab was too complicated for process. It’s creative work, after all, and everyone knows there’s no recipe for creativity. For years, when we started a project I would hap-hazardly throw a team of talented people together and tell them to talk to the client and start building stuff. That was it.
我曾经认为MetaLab的流程太复杂了。毕竟这是创造性的工作,每个人都知道创造力是没有秘方的。多年来,当我们开始一个项目时,我会随意地组建一个有才能的团队,让他们去和客户交流,然后开始构建项目。
We had mixed results. While we did some amazing work during this time, we also had some nightmare projects that went off the rails and risked the business and our reputation. We hadn’t taken the time to think about the recipe that made the good projects work.
结果喜忧参半。虽然我们在这段时间里做了一些出色的工作,但我们也遇到过一些糟糕的项目,它们偏离了轨道,给我们的业务和声誉带来了风险。我们没有花时间去思考能让优秀的项目发挥作用的方法。
If we were a bakery, we were hiring bakers and just saying “make pies” without giving them a recipe. Sure, the bakers were talented, but every pie was different. Our clients would come to us because we’d made a friend of theirs a great pie, but theirs came out a little burnt or in a flavor they weren’t expecting.
如果我们是面包店,我们雇佣面包师,我们只让他们“做馅饼”,却不给他们食谱。当然,面包师们很有才华,但每个派都不一样。我们的客户会来找我们,因为我们给他们的朋友做了一个很棒的派,但给他们做的派有点烧焦了,或者是他们不喜欢的味道。
Today, our process is simple: we give the team 5–10 questions that they have to answer during each phase of a project before they can move on to the next one.
现在,我们的过程很简单:我们给团队5-10个问题,他们必须在项目的每个阶段回答这些问题,然后才能进入下一个阶段。
For example, we have to answer the following questions before we kick-off a project:
例如,在我们启动一个项目之前,我们必须回答以下问题:
- What problem is the client trying to solve?客户试图解决什么问题?
- How does their product solve that problem?他们的产品是如何解决这个问题的?
- Who is the target customer?谁是目标客户?
- How is it different from other products in the same space?与同类的其他产品有何不同?
- What do they stand for? What are their core values?它们代表什么?他们的核心价值是什么?
- What kind of pain points are existing users experiencing?现有用户体验的痛点是什么?
- What are existing users loving about it?现有用户喜欢它什么?
- In one sentence, how will we know we’ve been successful?用一句话来说,我们怎么知道我们已经成功了?
Like our core values, knowing the answers to these questions gives our team a framework to use to answer most of the important questions that come up during a project. Combined with our own values it helps ensure that we’re following a rough recipe and it has helped us significantly increase our hit rate.
就像我们的核心价值观一样,知道这些问题的答案可以给我们的团队提供一个框架,用来回答项目中出现的大多数重要问题。结合我们自己的价值观,它有助于确保我们遵循大致的方法,并帮助我们显著提高了项目成功率。
③Tracking Our Results 追踪我们的结果
In the early days, I knew things were going well if we had more money at the end of the month than the beginning. Like process, financial statements and metrics weren’t something I had any interest in keeping track of.
在最初的日子里,我知道如果我们月底的钱比月初多,公司运营的就很好。我根本没兴趣追踪流程、财务报表和衡量指标等。
Unfortunately, I quickly learned that once you scale up, your bank balance doesn’t tell you much. Work quality can be in decline. Morale can be bad. Clients can be unhappy. Staff can be without work. These were all things I was on top of when we were small, but as we’ve grown there have been times when I’ve realized all sorts of shitty things had happened on my watch. People going without work for months, crazy amounts of money being spent on dumb things, and months where we barely made a profit. All because I got pulled into the weeds and wasn’t watching our results.
不幸的是,我很快发现,一旦你扩大规模,你的银行余额并不能告诉你什么。工作质量可能会下降。士气可能很差。客户可能会不高兴。员工可能没有事情做。当公司还小的时候,这些都是我要处理的事情,但是随着我们的成长,我意识到在我的任期内发生了很多糟糕的事情。员工几个月没有事情做,大量的钱被花在愚蠢的事情上,还有几个月我们几乎没有盈利。这都是因为我陷入了困境,没有盯着关键绩效指标。
Call them KPI’s, results, metrics—whatever. They are the pulse of the company. These are the 10 metrics I track on a weekly basis, that allow me to quickly figure out where we’re slipping and where I need to focus my attention:
那些被称为KPI,结果,指标等。他们是公司的脉搏。以下是我每周追踪的10个指标,这些指标让我能够快速找出我们在哪里下滑,以及我需要关注的地方:
- Team Utilization: Do people have enough work?团队利用:人们有足够的工作吗?
- 30/60/90 Day Team Utilization: Do we have enough work coming up?30/60/90天团队利用率:我们有足够的工作要做吗?
- Client Net Promoter Score: Are our clients happy?客户净推荐值:我们的客户满意吗?
- Team Net Promoter Score: Is our team happy?团队净推荐值:我们的团队快乐吗?
- New Business Pipeline: How much potential new work do we have?新的业务渠道:我们有多少潜在的新工作?
- Cash in Bank: How many months can we run without additional cash?银行现金:如果没有额外的现金,我们可以运行几个月?
- Accounts Receivable: How much do people owe us?应收账款:人们欠我们多少钱?
- Accounts Payable: How much do we owe other people?应付账款:我们欠别人多少钱?
- Collection Effectiveness: Are people paying us on time?催收效果:合作方是否按时付款?
- Profit Margin: Are we making money and running efficiently?利润率:我们是否赚钱并公司是否高效运转?
If I see one of these metrics slipping, I know I need to get to work on improving our process and work with my team to fix whatever issue is causing us to slip.
如果我看到其中一个指标出现问题,我知道我需要改进我们的流程,并与我的团队一起找到是什么事情导致我们业务出现问题。
五、Take a Step Back 退后一步
The other day I said “it’s not like I’m a workoholic” and my wife burst out laughing and kindly pointed out that I never stop thinking about work. It’s not like I’m surfing all day. I still have a lot to do, and I still get stressed out and work crazy hours. The difference is that I’m working on my business instead of in it, and focusing on the things I’m good while I let people who are good in my weak spots do on the rest.
有一天,我说 "我又不是工作狂",我的妻子突然大笑起来,并善意地指出,我从未停止思考工作。我并不是整天都在上网冲浪。我仍然有很多事情要做,我仍然会有压力,也会忙于工作。不同的是,我是在为我的事业工作,而不是在为工作而工作,并且我专注于我擅长的事情,而让那些擅长我弱点的人去做其他事情。
Instead of getting stuck making the pies, I’m writing the recipes, and that lets me focus on growing and improving my business instead of trying to maintain it. And something amazing thing happens when you realize that you don’t actually have to be the one to make all the pies…
我不再拘泥于制作馅饼,而是在写食谱,这让我专注于发展和改善我的业务,而不是努力维持它。当你意识到你实际上不需要做所有的馅饼时,一些奇妙的事情就发生了......
You realize that the difference between building a Fortune 500 and a small business isn’t all that huge (ok it’s still huge, but less huge than you thought). You can design a machine, target a result, plug in the right people, and tweak it until it spits out the result you want. Big or small, it’s a framework used by just about every successful business person, regardless of what they call it.
你意识到,建立一个财富500强企业和一个小企业之间的差别并不那么大(好吧,它仍然很大,但没有你想象的那么大)。你可以设计一台机器,设定一个目标(结果),安排合适的人,然后调整它,直到他能够产出你想要的结果。无论公司的大小,这几乎是每一个成功的商业人士所使用的框架,无论他们称之为什么。
Lazy Leadership isn’t really about being lazy. It’s about spending time on what matters and what you’re good at, then leaving everything else to your team. Giving up on the idea that you have to drive yourself into the ground in order to run a successful company, and thinking about your business as a machine that you design and optimize, instead of becoming a worn out cog within.
懒领导并不是真正的懒。它是关于把时间花在重要且你擅长的事情上,然后把其他事情留给你的团队去做。放弃那种为了经营一家成功的公司而必须把自己逼入绝境的想法,把你的企业看作是一台你设计和优化的机器,而不是成为内部的一个破旧的齿轮。
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