????總有一天，你最聰明、最喜愛的員工想離開公司。而對此雷德?霍夫曼說，你應(yīng)該讓他們走——或者說，至少在大部分情況下，你都應(yīng)該放他們走。雷德?霍夫曼本身是社交網(wǎng)絡(luò)之王，他創(chuàng)辦了社交網(wǎng)絡(luò)LinkedIn，同時還是社交服務(wù)網(wǎng)站Facebook的早期投資人。今年7月8日，霍夫曼將出版一本新書，為管理者提供建議。新書名為《同盟》（The Alliance），里面的觀點十分激進，值得一讀。2011年霍夫曼出版的《至關(guān)重要的關(guān)系》（The Start-Up of You）一書取得了極大成功，而《同盟》則是這本書的后續(xù)。作為一本指導(dǎo)手冊，它給了管理者充分的理由，讓他們重新思考管理者與員工關(guān)系的實質(zhì)。霍夫曼與另兩名聯(lián)合作者本 ? 卡斯諾瓦和克里斯?葉一起提出了一個事實：現(xiàn)在已經(jīng)沒有人會在一家公司一直干到底了，管理者們應(yīng)該承認(rèn)現(xiàn)實。與此相反，員工與雇主應(yīng)該達成協(xié)議，將共同努力推進工作看作是在軍隊完成一次服役。一旦服役期結(jié)束，他們就該坐下來重新討論之后的安排。2009年，霍夫曼加入了一家卓越的硅谷風(fēng)險投資公司Greylock。最近我得以與他會面，討論應(yīng)該如何將他的想法付諸實踐。下面是我們的談話內(nèi)容（為清晰起見，談話內(nèi)容經(jīng)過編輯）：

????你說到應(yīng)該把共同推進工作的過程看作一段“服役期”，這是一個部隊里的一個術(shù)語，該怎么跟員工說明這一點呢？

????實際上，你應(yīng)該在與員工交談時問他們：你夢想中的工作是什么？是在我們公司還是在別的地方？我們應(yīng)該如何平衡雙方的利益，使結(jié)果既對雙方有好處，又不耽誤你達成目標(biāo)？

????如果員工有自己的目標(biāo)，談起來就會很容易。但大部分員工都沒有自己的目標(biāo)，他們只是想找一份工作。

????他們只是想要一份工作，然后在工作中獲得成功。他們想要感到“我正在進步”。你應(yīng)該讓員工做對公司有益的工作，同時讓他們感到自己一直在進步。過去幾十年的傳統(tǒng)是：讓員工好好忠于公司。有些時候，這會帶來好的結(jié)果。但你真正該做的是告訴員工：如果你取得巨大成功，我們會更加高興。如果這樣的結(jié)果是你還繼續(xù)留在公司，那很好；如果你最終離開了公司，那也沒問題——我們想創(chuàng)建的是非常健康的關(guān)系。

????如此說來，你是在鼓勵有潛力的人才離開公司嗎？

????如果這樣對他們好的話，是的。這么做的一個結(jié)果是，相比以往，公司會擁有越來越多的、年紀(jì)較輕的前成員。之前的狀況是，公司前員工都在65歲或以上，只能打打高爾夫球。而現(xiàn)在，25到30歲的年輕人從公司離開后，還會去其它地方工作。他們都是公司的前成員，應(yīng)該怎樣跟他們保持聯(lián)絡(luò)，使這一點有助于你呢？

????There will come a time when your brightest, most beloved employee will want to leave. Reid Hoffman says you should let her go—or at least, in many instances. On July 8, the king of social networks himself, who founded LinkedIn and was an early investor in Facebook, will publish a radical book of advice for managers called The Alliance, and it’s worth a read. A follow-up to his 2011 blockbuster The Start-Up of You, this instructional manual makes a strong case that managers should rethink the very essence of the relationships they strike with employees. Along with co-writers Ben Casnocha and Chris Yeh, Hoffman argues that no one goes to work for one company forever anymore, and that managers shouldn’t pretend they do. Instead, employees and employers should agree upon short increments of work to accomplish together much like a military tour of duty. Once the work is complete, they should meet to reevaluate what happens next. I recently sat down with Hoffman, who joined the prominent Silicon Valley VC firm Greylock Partners in 2009, to discuss how his ideas translate into practice. Below, our conversation (edited for clarity):

????You discuss thinking about increments of work as tours of duty, a term you take from the military. How do you convey that to employees?

????You should actually have conversations with your employees to say, what would your dream job be, whether it’s here or somewhere else? How do we align our interests where it’s working for both of us that you are on your path?

????That’s easy when an employee arrives knowing what she wants to do, but very often people don’t. They arrive wanting a job.

????They want a job and they want success. They want some notion of, “I’m making progress.” You want to align that instinct to things that are very helpful to the company. The classic thing for decades was: Be a good company person. And sometimes it plays out that way. But what you want to do is say, we are much happier when you’ve made a huge amount of progress. If the consequence is you stay at the company, that’s okay. And if the consequence is, you move on, that’s okay too. We want to make that all very healthy.

????So you’re encouraging potentially talented people to leave?

????If that’s what’s right for them. One consequence: companies are generating a lot more young alumni than they used to have. It used to be that alumni were 65 and played golf. Now you have alumni who worked here from age 25 to 30 and are now doing other things. How do you stay engaged with those alumni and how is that helpful to you?