Jim Collins: I mean, Darwin Smith at Kimberly Clark, was just kind of strange. He's idea of a good social event was to sit by himself on a tractor and move rocks from one end of the property to another. I mean, that was his idea of a good time. That was his idea of socializing, right? To move rocks about, and when asked about his style, he just simply said, "eccentric." He's not your sort of smooth guy and yet he was one of these great leaders.
But on the other hand, you have someone like Anne Mulcahy, of Xerox, who is somebody who I greatly admire, who was dealt a very difficult set of cards. Company in real difficult straights, may be going away, company with great historic track record. And Anne really brought Xerox back and she though, she is magnetic, she's social. I've seen her in front of hundreds and thousands of people having them like weeping and stomping and cheering and with a sense of goose bumps.
And you ask yourself, what is the awkward Darwin Smith riding around on his tractor, and Anne Mulcahy, who is this magnetic, wonderful person, who just makes you feel good when you walk into a room, what do they share in common, that makes them different?
It's not about them. And, that is really the difference.
Both of them care deeply about doing whatever it took to build or to rebuild something into a great stature that would go on beyond them. And that in the end, really stood for something.
Their extra little personality traits, really different. But, that inner drive and the steely determination -- same.
You meet Anne Mulcahy and she's a nice person, but boy, whatever difficult decisions need to be made to save Xerox, she would make them, and they were very painful. She said, "I don't ever want those decisions to become easy." It's not that they were easy, it's just they had to be done.
And when Darwin Smith sold the mills, hundreds of years of company history, it's not that is was easy, but as he said, "If you have a cancer in your arm, you have to have the guts to cut off your own arm." Right?
So the level five is someone, we don't want to sort of get caught up on the fact, that they are necessarily, self-effacing, necessarily shy, that they necessarily have a charisma by-pass. They may or may not have those external attributes, but it's the internal drive, it's not about them, they have the relentlessness to make very painful decisions.
And finally, the humility comes in the form of never feeling they've got all the answers worked out, and always feeling they're on the edge of potential catastrophe. And that helps keep their edge, that they are very aware of the brutal facts all the time. |
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吉姆·柯林斯：金佰利公司的達爾文?史密斯就是一個有些奇怪的人。在他看來，如果讓他一個人坐在拖拉機上，把石頭從一塊地的這頭運到那頭，就算是一次很好的社交活動。這就是他心目中的愜意時光，就是他的社交觀念。當人們問他是什么風格的人，他只是簡單地回答：“（我是）特立獨行的人”。顯然他不是一個善于社交的人，但是這不妨礙他成為一位卓越的領導者。
不過卓越的領導者中也有像施樂公司（Xerox）的安妮?馬爾卡希（Anne Mulcahy）這樣的人物。我對她非常欣賞。她面對的是一個棘手的爛攤子。她當年擔任CEO時，施樂這樣一家曾經十分輝煌的公司正深陷困境，而且還有破產的可能。不過安妮卻將施樂從破產的邊緣挽救了回來。她是一個富有魅力、并非常擅于社交的人。我曾經見過她面對成百上千的聽眾，令他們激動得時而流淚、時而跺腳、時而又歡呼。
我會問自己：這位不善交際、開著拖拉機瞎轉悠的達爾文?史密斯，還有這位迷人的、讓所有人如沐春風的安妮?馬爾卡希女士，他們身上究竟有什么共性使得他們如此與眾不同？
答案就是，他們的奮斗目標都不在于自身。這就是真正的區別。
他們更為關注如何建立或重建某項事務，然后將其提升到一個卓越的、超越自身的高度，為此不惜付出任何代價。這就是最終起作用的因素。
他們的性格也許各有不同。但重要的是他們都有內在的驅動力和鋼鐵般的決心。
安妮?馬爾卡希是個非常溫和的人，但如果為了挽救施樂公司，不管要做多么艱難的決策，她都不會皺一下眉頭，而這些過程往往是非常痛苦的。她說：“我從不指望這些決策會變得簡單。”這些決策從來沒有簡單過，但是再艱難也非做不可。
比如，達爾文?史密斯賣掉了公司所有的造紙廠。這不是一個容易的決定，這些造紙廠代表著金佰利公司幾百年的歷史。然而他指出：“如果你的胳膊上長了惡性腫瘤，你就必須有膽量切掉整只胳膊。”對嗎？
所以第五級領導者是這樣一種人，我們不能只專注于他們的外在層面，比如他們是否謙遜、是否害羞、或是魅力四射。他們完全可能沒有這些外在屬性，因為他們的內在驅動力與這些外在特點無關。關鍵是他們可以堅忍不拔，義無反顧地做出極為痛苦的決定。
最后，他們之所以謙遜，是因為他們從不認為已經解決了所有的問題，而是永遠如履薄冰。這種態度令他們一直處于領先優勢，因為他們對現實的殘酷程度一直保持清醒的認識。 |
