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小佛爷说

太多的领导者生活在对错误、失误和失望的恐惧之中。但是如果你没有准备好失败,你就没有准备好去学习。亚马逊的创始人杰夫·贝佐斯可以说是世界上最成功的企业家之一,他也表示公司的成长和创新是建立在失败之上的。当今时代,每个人、每个组织都要跟上这不断变化的世界,不断地学习,否则你将永远不能成长和发展。

为什么突然之间,很多成功的商业领袖们允许自己公司的员工和同事多犯错误并接受更多的失败呢?

可口可乐公司CEO的詹姆斯•昆西刚上任的时候,在会议上专门提及要求管理人员们忘记多年前“新可口可乐”的失败事件。那次失败事件带来的恐惧一直萦绕在可口可乐人的心头。“如果我们不犯错,”詹姆斯•昆西着重强调说,“那就表明我们工作上都不够努力。”

奈飞公司因其拥有众多的用户而享受着前所未有的成功。面对如此大的成功,首席执行官里德•哈斯廷斯(Reed Hastings)仍然担心其顾客最满意的流媒体服务拥有太多热门剧,而正打算删除少量新节目。“我们现在命中率太高了,”在一次技术会议上他说:“我们必须要冒更多的风险……去尝试更疯狂的事情……整体上,我们应该有更高的取消率。”

可以这么说,作为世界首富,亚马逊公司的创始人杰夫•贝佐斯(Jeff Bezos)是世界上最成功的企业家。他曾经很直接地说:亚马逊公司的增长和创新都是建立在失败之上的。“如果你敢大胆押注,那么这些注数将会成为你的实验品。”这话是他在收购全食超市(Whole Foods)后不久说的。“既然它们是一次实验,那么你肯定就不能提前知道它们会产生怎样的作用。毕竟实验究其本身来讲就是一件容易失败的事儿。但只要有几个巨大的成功就能弥补你所经历的无数次的失败。”

这些成功的CEO们所传达的信息对我们大多数人来说虽然容易理解,但却很难以付诸实践。我无法告诉你我曾遇到了多少商业领袖和拜访了多少个公司,他们都相信创新和创造带来的价值。然而,也有这样一些领导和组织,因为曾经的错误、失误和失望而心生恐惧,从而导致后来的他们几乎没有任何的创新能力和创造能力。当今时代,每个人、每个组织都要跟上这不断变化的世界,不断地学习,否则你将永远不能成长和发展。

那么该怎么做才好呢?

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英文原文

Why, all of a sudden, are so many successful business leaders urging their companies and colleagues to make more mistakes and embrace more failures?

right after he became CEO of Coca-Cola Co., James Quincey called upon rank-and-file managers to get beyond the fear of failure that had dogged the company since the “New Coke” fiasco of so many years ago. “If we’re not making mistakes,” he insisted, “we’re not trying hard enough.”

even as his company was enjoying unparalleled success with its subscribers, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings worried that his fabulously valuable streaming service had too many hit shows and was canceling too few new shows. “Our hit ratio is too high right now,” he told a technology conference. “We have to take more risk…to try more crazy things…we should have a higher cancel rate overall.”

Even Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, arguably the most successful entrepreneur in the world, makes the case as directly as he can that his company’s growth and innovation is built on its failures. “If you’re going to take bold bets, they’re going to be experiments,” he explained shortly after Amazon bought Whole Foods. “And if they’re experiments, you don’t know ahead of time if they’re going to work. Experiments are by their very nature prone to failure. But a few big successes compensate for dozens and dozens of things that didn’t work.”

The message from these CEOs is as easy to understand as it is hard for most of us to put into practice. I can’t tell you how many business leaders I meet, how many organizations I visit, that espouse the virtues of innovation and creativity. Yet so many of these same leaders and organizations live in fear of mistakes, missteps, and disappointments — which is why they have so little innovation and creativity. If you’re not prepared to fail, you’re not prepared to learn. And unless people and organizations manage to keep learning as fast as the world is changing, they’ll never keep growing and evolving.

So what’s the right way to be wrong?

比尔·泰勒(Bill Taylor)|文

比尔·泰勒是快公司(美国最具影响力的商业杂志之一)的联合创始人。

阿丫丫 | 译 周强 |校

职业成功的关键不仅在于拥抱机遇,还在于拒绝求助请求,这样你才能为最有价值的工作创造时间。

如果你想脱颖而出,选择一两种最适合你自己的特质,然后将其运用到实际工作中以孜孜进取。

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