Jim Collins: So, what did those leaders do that allowed them to confront this?
First of all, they were very clear, that there's a big difference between letting people have their say, and having the truth be heard.
And, part of it is, they had a really high question to statement relationship.
This is actually something practical, a business leader or any leader can do, is to ask themselves a simple question, which is, what are the question to statement issues? And the second is, in the questions, it needs to always be asking for, not opinions, asking for empirical facts. What are the empirical, what's the empirical evidence, what are the empirical facts here?
There's this wonderful book, two wonderful books that I recommend anyone read. One is called "Thirteen Days" which is Bobby Kennedy's account of the Cuban Missile Crises and the other is called " The Kennedy Tapes" which is actual transcripts of the days during the Cuban Missile Crises.
Now, if you watch Kennedy during this time, one of the things that he's very afraid of, is making, he's afraid very much of making the wrong decision, because the results are the end of the world as we know it, you and I don't exist.
What he does, he sets up separate teams and for a long time he doesn't really tip his hand, if you just watch him, he's asking question after question after question, and in fact, one of my researchers went back with that book and we actually counted the questions to statements during the Cuban Missile Crisis. We actually go through and one by one, what you find is they sort of go in peaks, there's little waves, like he's asking questions, then he gets clarity, then he might make a statement, then he goes back to a questioning mode again.
But, (questioning again) only once he's got the clarity.
He's still trying to sort things out, and he's asking a lot of things like, well how does these trucks actually work? How many do we see on the ground? What can we exactly see in the photographs?
I mean he's very, very granular, in very, very specific details. Constantly processing and asking rather than saying, well what do you think? What do you think? What do you think?
Because they're going to be in the presence of the powerful president, they're going to be wanting to know what the president thinks.
But if he's asking, well how many wheels do they have on that truck? You either have eight or you have ten.
Thomas D. Gorman: Yeah.
Jim Collins: So, it's fascinating because part of how we navigated through that was some really high questions to statement ratio, punctuated by times where he would have a point of clarity, he had people in different teams so that they could be, so he could have folks advance different points of view, and then he had one person near him, always, who he knew, no matter what, would make sure he heard the worst of whatever it is, that was his brother, Bobby.
His brother loved him enough to be the one, that no matter what the president needed to hear.
So if you stand back and look at that, and you think, well first of all you had people, really great people around. Focused on facts, he asked lots of questions and he has one person, it also encouraged a lot of debate between the two, and he always had at least one person who he knew, loved him enough to be the most brutally honest, his brother.
So if you think about that, if you were a powerful CEO, how could you replicate that?
Questions, data, evidence, very granular, encouraging the debate.
Maybe you'd take this side of the equations, you take that side of the equation, arguing the opposite, listening and then having the one person around you that you know, loves you enough, that you'll be brought whatever you need to truly hear. Those are pretty good tips.
Thomas D. Gorman: I know you're a big fan of Winston Churchill, wasn't he also particularly good at that? Didn't he have a minister on staff that was responsible...
Jim Collins: Yes, yes. He had, what was it called? It was...
Thomas D. Gorman: It wasn't the minister of bad news, but it was something like that.
Jim Collins: Yeah, yeah. It was something like that.
We find that interesting, one of my favorite books is Churchill's six-volumes on the Second World War, and what you do is you read them and you also take an atlas. So you'd go through the whole time when Churchill from, you can actually chart the war, it took me like the whole summer get through it.
But what I learned by history, but you watch the different things, of course it's through his point of view, of course that's nonetheless very interesting because you're getting the leader's journey through one of the great challenges of the 20th century.
And I think he might have called that the Administrator of Information, I can look it up between now and tomorrow. Or maybe it was simply called the Statistics Department, I think that might have been it, but its only purpose was to bring Churchill bad news, just the worst facts.
And that one line that Churchill had, "That facts are better than dreams."
Which at those times are true. I want to know, how many boats do we need to get them off of Dunkirk? How many do we need? Where are the Panzers? Because in any kind of vary serious situation the real facts matter more than anything.
Yeah, as a climber I've always realized that, sure, I'd like to think it's not going to lightning, but if I'm wrong I die. |
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吉姆·柯林斯：那么，那些領(lǐng)導(dǎo)人是如何解決這個問題的呢？
首先，他們非常清楚一點：要明確區(qū)分言論自由和表達真相之間的差別。
其中很重要的一點是，相對于普通的觀點陳述，他們提出了更大比例的問題。
實際上這是非常踏實的做法，一個企業(yè)領(lǐng)袖或任何領(lǐng)導(dǎo)人可以問自己一個簡單的問題，那就是，在哪些問題上需要指出問題而不是僅僅陳述事實？第二，問問題時，無需永遠詢問意見，可以要求提供事實經(jīng)驗。那么什么是經(jīng)驗、經(jīng)驗證據(jù)和經(jīng)驗事實呢？
給大家推薦兩本非常棒的書。一本叫做《驚爆十三天》（Thirteen Days），是羅伯特?肯尼迪對古巴導(dǎo)彈危機的描述。另外一本叫《肯尼迪錄音帶》（The Kennedy Tapes），是古巴導(dǎo)彈危機期間的真實文字記錄。
導(dǎo)彈危機期間，肯尼迪最害怕的事情之一就是做出錯誤的決定。因為我們都知道，其后果是世界的終結(jié)，你我都將不復(fù)存在。
他所做的是組建不同的團隊，并且一直沒有表明自己的態(tài)度，他只是在不停地提問。事實上，我的一位研究員重新研究了那本書，我們數(shù)了一下古巴導(dǎo)彈危機期間問題和陳述數(shù)量上的對比。我們一個問題一個問題地觀察，結(jié)果發(fā)現(xiàn)問題和陳述的比例呈峰值而非波浪形式出現(xiàn)。即他先問很多問題，得到清楚答案，然后做出一個陳述；接著再回到提問模式。
只有得到了清晰確切的答案，才會繼續(xù)提問。
他試圖把一些事情搞清楚，比如他會問這些卡車究竟是如何工作的？地面上有多少輛？我們在照片上究竟能看到什么？等許多類似的問題。
他非常重視具體的細節(jié)。他不斷地處理信息、不斷地提問，而不是簡單地問：你覺得呢？你覺得呢？你覺得呢？
因為手下的人面對的是一位強大的總統(tǒng)，他們希望知道總統(tǒng)是怎么想的。
但如果問，卡車上有幾個輪子？你必須回答是八個或是十個。
高德思：是的。
吉姆·柯林斯：所以，我覺得看這本書很有趣，通過觀察很高的問題與陳述比，我們就基本把握了全書的結(jié)構(gòu)和內(nèi)容。這期間還有部分辨明觀點的過程。他把手下分成不同的團隊，這樣就能聽到不同的觀點。他身邊還有一位心腹，無論情況如何，都會讓他知道最壞的消息。這個人就是他的弟弟羅伯特?肯尼迪。
他弟弟非常愛戴他，因而愿意告訴他應(yīng)該知道的所有消息。
所以這樣看來，他身邊首先要有一些了不起的人。他注重事實，問了許多問題，讓不同的觀點碰撞辯論，還有一位深愛他的弟弟，他知道無論何時，自己的弟弟都能誠實地告訴他最殘酷的事實。
想想看，如果你是一位大權(quán)在握的CEO，你該如何復(fù)制他的經(jīng)驗?zāi)兀?br/>
那就是提問、數(shù)據(jù)、證據(jù)、細節(jié)、鼓勵辯論。
或許你該全面地考慮問題，兼顧反面意見，兼聽則明，加上一個可以信任、十分愛你的心腹，確保你在需要聽到真相的時候，總能聽到。這些都是很好的建議。
高德思：我知道你非常崇拜丘吉爾（Winston Churchill），他是否也特別擅長于此？他不是有一位內(nèi)閣大臣專門負責…
吉姆·柯林斯：是的，是的。叫什么來著？叫…
高德思：也許不叫“壞消息大臣”，但差不多有這個意思。
吉姆·柯林斯：是的，是的。差不多這個意思。
我覺得這很有趣。丘吉爾六卷本的二戰(zhàn)回憶錄是我最愛讀的書之一。你閱讀此書之時，可以拿本地圖冊作為參考。這樣就像經(jīng)歷了丘吉爾的那個時代，事實上，你可以將戰(zhàn)爭繪制成圖，我為此花了整整一個夏天的時間。
我從歷史中學(xué)到了很多不同的東西，當然是通過丘吉爾的視角，這是非常有意思的，因為你跟隨著一位領(lǐng)袖經(jīng)歷了20世紀最偉大的挑戰(zhàn)之一。
我想他將那位大臣稱作信息官員（Administrator of Information），今天晚些時候我會去查一查。或者就簡單地叫做統(tǒng)計部，可能就是這個。其唯一的目的就是讓丘吉爾知道壞消息，最壞的事實。
丘吉爾曾經(jīng)說過：“事實優(yōu)于夢想。”
在當時是正確的。我想知道，敦刻爾克撤退需要多少船只？德國裝甲車在哪兒？因為在最嚴峻的情勢下，事實比什么都重要。
是的，比如我在登山的時候，希望不會遇到電閃雷鳴，但如果我一廂情愿、自欺欺人，則很可能會喪命。 |
