在1932年的世界賽期間,紐約洋基隊球員貝比·魯斯留下了一個傳奇時刻——他指著看臺,表示自己將在這個方向擊出全壘打,然后他做到了。 2006年,埃隆·穆斯克發(fā)出了他自己的“全壘打預(yù)告”,公布了一項看似不可能的10年計劃: 1. 推出一款小批量車,當(dāng)然,價格很高; 2. 用小批量車賺的錢開發(fā)一款中批量車,價格較低; 3. 用中批量車賺的錢制造一款平價量產(chǎn)車; 4. 提供太陽能。 和魯斯一樣,穆斯克證明自己也是個預(yù)言家——2016年7月20日,他宣布上述4個目標(biāo)均已實現(xiàn)。 能做到這一點就很令人驚訝,更何況它就發(fā)生在硅谷諸多現(xiàn)行教條的眼皮底下(讓保持公司“精瘦”的觀點鼓勵著超短期思維——“商業(yè)計劃?沒有。它一進(jìn)入現(xiàn)實世界就會過時!10年期計劃?你怎么會想的那么遠(yuǎn)!?”)。 10年前,我是一位25歲的創(chuàng)業(yè)者,這種只關(guān)注眼前事物的做法讓我覺得壓力山大。相反,我做了一個決定,是它使我的成功有了可能。這個決定就是:做長線,而不是實施短期行為。我選擇把目光放在10年以后,而不是3個月。當(dāng)我建立起自己的公司IWT(教你致富網(wǎng))時,我并沒有把重點放在推出產(chǎn)品從而迅速賺錢上,我關(guān)注的是構(gòu)建一個真正的終身式粉絲和學(xué)生群體。我把這種做法稱為10年原則。 聽起來很簡單,對吧?錯了。現(xiàn)實很殘酷。這個決定帶來了許多困難,如果不是它,我也不會做出其他有悖直覺的決定。這是我下的決心: ? IWT在三年時間里都沒有推出任何產(chǎn)品; ? 多年來我每天都要閱讀和回復(fù)一千多封電子郵件; ? 我們用了幾年時間和數(shù)十萬美元來開發(fā)課程; ? 我們停了一些利潤很高的課程,因為它們給客戶帶來的效果不再符合我們的思路; ? 禁止負(fù)有信用卡債務(wù)的人上我們的旗艦課程。 這些決定讓我們失去了數(shù)百萬美元的潛在收入。這就意味著,我們不能像風(fēng)投支持的初創(chuàng)公司那樣迅速招募人手,并且只能推出少量產(chǎn)品。想象一下:有人提出要給你數(shù)百萬美元現(xiàn)金,隨后又反悔了。我們做的其實就是這樣的事。 但日復(fù)一日,這樣的策略開始帶來回報。它幫我們構(gòu)建了終身式學(xué)生群體,這些顧客買下了我們制作的所有新課程。如今,我們有了幾十名員工,而且正在快速成長。 簡單來說,你所做決定的時間跨度決定了你的邏輯。而在長期看來合情合理的事物在只考慮短期前景的人看來可能是瘋狂的。 關(guān)鍵在于,雖然對目光短淺的人來說,長期思維似乎是瘋狂的,但其實,真正瘋狂的往往是短期思維本身。 讓我給大家舉幾個例子…… 短期思維的隱含成本 有一次,我把一個大西瓜放在了廚房的料理臺上。每天經(jīng)過它時,我就對自己說:“等會兒就把它吃了。”最后,我開始想:“好吧。等一會兒我就把它扔掉。” 一周又一周,我一直認(rèn)真地做著這樣的事。直到有一天,我走進(jìn)廚房時看到地上有一攤液體。顯然,靜置了五個月后,西瓜液化了,變成了一種帶著酒精味兒的析出液。 我沒有瘋,也不傻。那我為什么沒有花點兒時間把西瓜拿起來然后扔到垃圾堆里呢?原因就在于我的超短期思維。那個西瓜又大又重,而我還有更好的事情要做,所以當(dāng)時不去碰它是合理做法。我的行為完全符合邏輯。但過了一段時間,所有這些理性短期決定的結(jié)果就是一片狼藉而且令人惡心。 初創(chuàng)型企業(yè)也可能出現(xiàn)同樣的情況。如果走的太遠(yuǎn)卻沒有考慮公司的長期前景,就可能很容易給自己留下一個爛攤子。 那么,怎樣擺脫短期思維陷阱呢? 第一步是意識到:雖然做出短期犧牲時的感覺很糟糕,但這樣做可以在今后帶來更大的回報。 以著名的棉花糖實驗為例。這是20世紀(jì)60年代末到70年代初進(jìn)行的一系列實驗,內(nèi)容是讓孩子們選擇立即得到一個棉花糖,或者等15分鐘后得到兩個。在接下來的40年里,追蹤結(jié)果表明選擇等待的孩子更健康,上學(xué)后的成績也更好。 大多數(shù)創(chuàng)業(yè)者的行為都像只拿著一個棉花糖狼吞虎咽的孩子。成功的創(chuàng)業(yè)者有更高明的見識。 比如說,杰夫·貝佐斯用7年時間來判斷新的舉措是否成功,而他的大多數(shù)競爭對手都把目光集中在季度業(yè)績上; 馬克·扎克伯格最近公布了自己的10年計劃,他說:“如果我現(xiàn)在開始創(chuàng)業(yè),我就會留在波士頓。(硅谷的)著眼點稍微短了一些,這讓我心煩意亂。” 全球最大創(chuàng)業(yè)孵化器Y Combinator總裁山姆·阿爾特曼把長期思維比作“市場上剩下的為數(shù)不多的套利機(jī)會之一”。他還說:“考慮創(chuàng)業(yè)時,把它視為你愿意在很長一段時間里為之付出的東西真的很合算,因為這正是目前市場的空白點。” 我并沒有說這樣做很容易。如果容易,大家就都這樣做了。但如果說穆斯克、扎克伯格、貝佐斯和阿爾特曼的職業(yè)生涯給了我們什么啟示的話,那就是:耐心會有回報。 所以,要給自己空間和時間來思考公司的長期前景。在IWT,我把周三定為無會議策略日——不開會,不打電話,把時間都用在思考策略以及公司的發(fā)展方向上。長期思維需要眼光,而且就算每周只花一個小時也能帶來巨大的影響。 當(dāng)然,如果你還沒有花點兒時間來構(gòu)建長期思路,那就等于把錢落在了桌子上。(財富中文網(wǎng)) 作者:Ramit Sethi (Growth Lab和IWT創(chuàng)始人) |
In a legendary moment during the 1932 World Series, Babe Ruth pointed to the stands to show exactly where he was going to hit a homerun -- and then did it. In 2006, Elon Musk enacted his own version of pointing to the stands, publishing a seemingly impossible 10-year plan: 1. Create a low-volume car that, by necessity, would be expensive. 2. Use that money to develop a medium-volume car at a lower price. 3. Use that money to create an affordable, high-volume car. 4. Provide solar power. Like Ruth, Musk proved himself a prophet: On July 20, 2016, he announced all four goals had been achieved. This is amazing in its own right. But it’s also fascinating because it flies in the face of much of the current dogma in Silicon Valley. Telling founders to “fail fast” and keep their businesses “l(fā)ean” encourages ultra short-term thinking. (“Business plan? No, it will be outdated as soon as it hits the real world! 10-year plan? How can you even think that far ahead?!”) Ten years ago when I was a 25-year-old founder, I felt this intense pressure to focus on what was right in front of me. Instead, I made a decision that has made all of my subsequent success possible: I chose to play the long game, rather than the short. I chose to look 10 years ahead, rather than three months. When getting my company IWT off the ground, instead of focusing on launching products to make money fast, I focused on building a tribe of true fans and students for life. I call this approach the 10-Year Principle. Sounds simple, right? Wrong. The reality was brutal. That one resolution led to many difficult, counterintuitive decisions I would’ve never made otherwise. Because of the decision: ? IWT didn’t launch its first product for three years ? I read and responded to 1,000+ emails every day for years ? We spent years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop courses ? We discontinued highly profitable courses that weren’t delivering the results we wanted for our clients. ? Banned people with credit card debt from taking our flagship courses These decisions cost us millions of dollars in potential revenue. For example, this meant we couldn't hire as fast as a venture-backed startup. It also meant we could only launch a small number of products, increasing the pressure on us to make each one count. Imagine someone offering you millions of dollars in cash and then turning that down. That’s essentially what we did. But day by day, the strategy started to pay off. It helped us build students for life: customers who buy every new course we create. Today, we have dozens of employees and are growing rapidly. Put simply, the time frame in which you make your decisions determines your logic. Things that make sense in the long term might seem crazy to people who only think of the short term. But here’s the thing: while long-term thinking seems crazy when you don’t understand it, short-term thinking often really is crazy. Let me give you an example… The hidden costs of short-term thinking I once left a big watermelon sitting on my kitchen counter. Every day as I walked by it, I thought to myself, “I’ll eat this later.” Eventually, I started thinking, “Okay. I’ll just throw this away later.” I did this religiously for weeks until one day, I walked into my kitchen and saw a pool of liquid on the floor. Apparently, watermelons liquefy and turn into some kind of alcohol-smelling ooze after you let them sit for five months. I’m not lazy. I’m not stupid. So why couldn’t I get around to picking that watermelon up and throwing it in the garbage? I was thinking ultra short-term. The watermelon was big and heavy and I had better things to do, so it made sense not to deal with it in the moment. I was being completely logical. But over time all these rational short-term decisions led to a disgusting mess. The same thing can happen at a startup. Go too long without thinking about the company’s long-term future, and you could easily end up with a mess on your hands. So how do you escape the short-term thinking trap? The first step is realizing that while short-term sacrifices feel bad at the time, they can also lead to disproportionate rewards in the future. Take the famous Marshmallow Test, a series of experiments in the late 1960s and early 1970s in which children were offered a choice between receiving one marshmallow immediately, or two if they waited 15 minutes. Follow-ups over the next 40 years showed the kids who waited were healthier and more successful in school years later. Most entrepreneurs behave like the kids who gobbled that single marshmallow. Successful entrepreneurs know better. Along with Musk, many of the country’s top entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sam Altman are thinking more long-term than ever, not less. In fact, they look at it as their competitive advantage. Jeff Bezos, for example, measures the success of new initiatives over seven-year time frames, while most of his competitors are focused on quarterly earnings. Mark Zuckerberg – who recently released his own 10-year plan – reflected, “If I were starting now, I would have stayed in Boston. [Silicon Valley] is a little short-term focused and that bothers me.” Sam Altman, the president of Y Combinator, the largest accelerator in the world, refers to long-term thinking as “one of the few arbitrage opportunities left in the market.” He adds, “When you're thinking about a startup, it's really worthwhile to think about something you're willing to make a very long-term commitment to because that is where the current void in the market is.” I’m not saying it’s easy. If it was, everyone would do it. But if Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, and Altman’s careers are any indication, patience pays off. So give yourself the space and time to think about your company’s long-term future. At IWT, I have a no-meeting Wednesday strategy day: no meetings, no calls, just time to think about strategy and where the company is going. Long-term thinking takes perspective, and even a designated hour per week can have a huge impact. If you aren’t taking the time to get this long-term perspective, you’re leaving marshmallows (read: money) on the table. – Ramit Sethi is the founder of Growth Lab and IWT |