Jim Collins: You know, the very best people we studied are always students. And I think they always view themselves as a beginner, in their field. And they're constantly asking questions, it doesn't really matter where that learning comes from. Whether it's from business schools, whether it's from executive education, but ultimately the real key thing is the ability to learn from empirical experience.
You might have learned from the empirical experience of others, which is why the case study method, I still believe, is a very powerful method. Taught in business schools, but works very well because what you're doing, is you are, basically saying, I want to accelerate my own learning by all of these other cases. That's an enormously powerful methodology, but also looking at internal companies the beauty there is that you can get an intersection between your own empirical experience as an individual business, married to some more significant principals. And you get generic principals in your particular situation that can be particularly powerful.
I think the critical thing is to basically come at it and say, however you do it, that you are learning as much, as my dear mentor, John Gardner put it, to learn as much between 70 and 85 years old is you did between 0 and 15 years old. And that if you have that philosophy that when you're 70 and you're going to grow and learn as much in the next 15 years as you did in your first 15 years of life. Then, at every single 15-year slice, it's like that, then education, learning, it doesn't matter where it comes from, but it's not like you get your degree and you're done.
Thomas D. Gorman: Where does that come from? Where does that wisdom emanate from? How do you learn that?
Jim Collins: Learn the learning?
Thomas D. Gorman: Yeah.
Is that taught in school, does a great teacher teach that way?
Jim Collins: I think great mentors teach that.
I just might digress here for a moment, about. That's interesting because that really became clear to me from my mentors.
I was really blessed by great, great mentors. And part of it was seeking them out; I didn't have the type of parenting that taught me the things I wanted to learn, so I sought mentors. I sought out to learn from Peter Drucker and what I was struck by when I, Peter Drucker was 86 years old when I first met Peter Drucker and he starts off the day asking me questions. I'm 37 at the time, and it took a long time for me to finally ask him questions, because he was so interested in learning from me. This was a person who would call up former students, get a random list of them that had been out ten years. And just say, "This is Peter, what is up in your world?"
Or, John Gardner who has been former Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare in the Johnson administration. Who, just really kindly said to me one day that I spend too much time trying to be interesting, and I should spend more time being interested. That was taught to me by a mentor.
Someone like Michele Myers whose masterful skill was question. She was like a cross between Yoda and Socrates.
Or, Jim Stockdale, the former prisoner of war, who after his prisoner of war experience, comes to the Hoover Institute and studies the Stoic philosophers, in order to make sense and to learn, to continue to learn from his experiences of having been in a prison camp, and he's reading, "Seneca".
And then you run into whether it be, you meet the remarkable business people that I've met. They ask, they're just really curious, they want to understand stuff, they want to vacuum your brain, they're always trying to put things together. And they realize, however much they know, they know a lot less than they could know.
And so where does that come from?
Maybe that is where part of the level 5 humility is, that if you really think you know a lot, that's real different from realizing you know a little bit.
And to realize you're ignorant, is a form of humility. |
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吉姆·柯林斯：你知道，我們研究的那些最杰出的人永遠都在學習。而且，他們都把自己看作各自領域里的初學者。他們不斷提出問題。至于他們拜誰為師，這并不重要。無論是從商學院畢業，還是接受了企業內部的管理培訓，最終獲得在實踐中學習的能力才是最重要的。
當然，你可能已經從別人的實踐中學到了不少，這就是為什么案例教學法在商學院很受歡迎的原因。商學院教授的知識在實踐中證明很有效，因為你基本上是通過研究案例來加快學習過程的。這是一個極為強大的方法。而企業內部培訓的優勢在于，你可以把企業的實際經驗和重要的理論相結合。在實踐中提煉具有普遍價值的原則，這種學習方法尤為有效。
正如我的導師約翰·加德納（John Gardner）所說，無論采用哪種方法，關鍵問題是，你能在70-85歲，學到和0-15歲一樣多的知識。也就是說，如果你掌握了正確的學習方法，你在70歲之后的15年里，能夠和你在人生最初的15年里學到的一樣多。如果在你人生的每個15年里，都能這樣大量學習，那么在哪里接受教育或者在哪里學習并不重要，這并不等于說你拿到一個學位，就萬事大吉了。
高德思：這個觀點從哪兒來的？這種智慧又是從何而來？你是怎么體會到這一點的？
吉姆·柯林斯：你是指提升學習能力的觀點嗎？
高德思：對。
是在學校里老師教的嗎？是否有某位偉大的老師如此教導？
吉姆·柯林斯：我想卓越的導師都會教授這一點。
這里我可能要岔開下話題，這很有意思，因為確實是我的導師讓我明白了這一點。
我要感謝那些偉大的導師們。所以如何找到優秀的導師也很重要。我的家庭教育并不能教我所渴望學到的，所以我去尋找導師。我曾從師于彼得·德魯克（Peter Drucker）。第一次見到他時，彼得已經86歲了，一見面他就向我提了很多問題。當時我37歲，過了很長時間才輪到我向他提問，因為他更愿意向我多了解一些信息。有時，他會隨機挑選一些畢業10年有余的學生，把他們召集到一起。他會在電話里說：“我是彼得，你最近好嗎？”
此外，在約翰遜（Johnson）政府時期，約翰·加德納（John Gardner）曾擔任美國衛生、教育和福利部長（Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare）。有一天，他語重心長地對我說，我應該把時間花在我感興趣的事情上，而不是讓別人對我感興趣。這就是來自一位導師的教誨。
又比如米歇爾·邁爾斯（Michele Myers），她最擅長的是發問。她介于尤達大師（Yoda）和蘇格拉底（Socrates）之間。
或者前戰俘吉姆·斯托克代爾（Jim Stockdale），在獲得釋放后，為了總結他在戰犯集中營的經歷，以及解讀塞內卡（斯多葛學派思想家），他來到胡佛研究所（Hoover Institute），研究斯多葛學派哲學家（Stoic philosophers）。
然后，你會想到那些杰出的企業家。他們總是在提問題，他們好奇心很強，他們想弄明白更多道理，他們想把你的大腦掏空，他們總是試圖把事物聯系起來。他們明白一個道理，人們不知道的永遠比知道的多。
而這種觀念是從何而來呢？
可能，這就是第五級領導人的謙遜所在，也就是說，你可能認為你懂得很多，而那些出色的人卻認為他們知道的很少，這就是我們之間真正的區別。
意識到自己的無知，就是謙遜的一種表現形式。 |
