Jim Collins: And the idea of being, if you think about it, the kind of essential idea is, you've got this yin and yang, right? You've got something that continues and something's that's about change; something that's preserved, something that's going forward; something that's about values that hold constant and something that practices strategy and structures that change. And I think the real task, is to be very clear on the difference between practices and values.
If you take for example, the question, you would know this better than I do, but let's just say, a company like Hewlett Packard, had one of its values being a really deep abiding respect for the individual, sort of as a given. And the interesting question for me would be, what are the cultural practices of how you respect the individual in China, or Japan, or India, or Russia as distinct from Idaho?
And my suspicion is the way you show respect, which in Idaho means, I have a lot of space around me and you leave me alone, unless we need to talk, which is a very American, very individualistic, definition of respect for the individual.
Without knowing the culture, I suspect the way you show respect in China would be different. So what you have, is the same value, but you have to have a different practice, when you go to a different part of world.
And the ones that have been able to do this well, and I think this applies for China going out to the rest of world as well, we want to carry our values with us anywhere we go. But, we may have to be very nuanced and adaptive in our practices, so the value, we're not compromising our values, but we're changing our practices depending upon the local setting. And vice versa.
If I were to go to Japan and carry a certain set of values, I don't necessarily want to bring American practices. I might want to bring my company's values, but I really need to adapt to Japanese practices. That I think is the crux of how you do this and to be very clear on the difference between values and practice.
You mentioned something earlier and I think this is a key idea, not necessarily in other parts of the world. One of the ways, which civilization, a society, a company, a university, a religion gets tripped up, is that it confuses value with tradition. And if we start to think that tradition, traditions are important, but if we start to think that the traditions are the values (then we have problems).
And what you have to hold onto is, a set of traditions. The traditions cover up the values and the constant sort of self-renewal of any organization, or society, or system, human system, has to be that, you know, traditions have got to change. But, the best way to change them is we hold that there are certain things that are, our values. So that now, we can be free to change our traditions.
Look at the evolution of, (for example) in the United States we have a constantly evolving religious community, as we see particularly with Protestant Christianity. All these different strengths and you look at the rise of the mega churches and you look at rise of each generation and new wave of pastors. And what you find is that they're really following different practices than the generation before them. They would bring in all sorts of strange music and lots of lights and all sorts of things. But, what you would see, if it's holding together you'd see a continuity of values, but you would see each generation bring in new set of practices rather than being wedded to a set of traditions.
And you were describing to me the 5,000 years of Chinese civilization and this tension (between tradition and change). And what strikes me that, and (here we have) the quest for values again, is to able to say, no, what we need to do is, it's the 21st century so we have to have our values, but we have to evolve our traditions. |
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吉姆·柯林斯：談到存在，你們有陰陽之說，對嗎？你們談到變化與平衡、靜與動、永恒的價值觀與變化的戰略實踐和結構。我們要做的是，分清行為實踐和價值觀。
舉個你可能比我更了解的例子，比如惠普（Hewlett Packard）的核心價值之一是尊重個性。我感興趣的是，在中國、日本、印度、俄羅斯和美國愛達荷州，這種對個體的尊重有何文化上的差異？
我猜測在表示尊重的方式上會有不同。在愛達荷州，人們需要私人空間，只有需要交流時，人們才互相靠近，這是非常美國式的、強調個人主義的對尊重個性的定義。
我對中國文化不了解，但我覺得這里表現尊重的方式與美國不同。所以到了不同國家，即使價值觀相同，做法也不同。有些人就能做好。中國在走向國際化，因此需要融入這樣的思維方式。
我們希望走到哪兒，都能體現自己的價值觀。但是在實踐中，我們要敏銳并善于變通，這并不是說要犧牲自己的價值觀，而是要根據當地環境做一些變通。反之亦然。
如果去日本傳播某些價值觀，我未必會采用美國人實踐中的做法。我或許會帶去我們公司的價值觀，但是我同時必須融入日本人的實踐手段。這是關鍵所在，必須要分清價值觀和實踐手段的區別。
你剛才提到了一個關鍵的概念，不過在其它國家未必如此。一種文明、一個社會、一家企業、一所大學或是一種宗教遇到阻力，其中一個原因就是他們混淆了價值觀和傳統。傳統固然重要，但如果我們把傳統和價值觀等同，（就會產生問題）。
人們需要堅持的是一系列傳統。這些傳統涵蓋了價值觀和任何組織、社會、系統以及人類體系等持續的自我更替。我們都知道傳統需要被改變。而最佳的改變方式是堅持有一部分屬于我們的價值觀。這樣一來，我們完全可以改變我們的傳統。
來看看發生在美國的進化過程。在美國，宗教社區不斷變化，尤其以基督教新教為代表。我們看到了巨型教會的興起，和一代又一代傳承發展的牧師群體。你會發現，與上一代相比，他們的實踐手段都發生了變化。他們加入了各種奇怪的音樂、燈光和其他新事物。但整體來看，你會看到價值觀的延續，每一代人只是帶來了新的做法，而不是固守傳統。
你向我描述了中華五千年的文明，以及傳統和變化間的矛盾。讓我驚訝的是，我們現在又在尋求價值觀，在我們身處的21世紀，需要會說“不”。所以我們既要堅持價值觀，又要不斷更新傳統。 |
