成功企業(yè)家日常都關(guān)注什么？

As an entrepreneur, there’s no shortage of advice on how one should lead. Some experts swear that the best leaders are those who gained respect by rising through their industry’s ranks. Others believe a leader’s job is tied to their role as a figurehead—the unifier and communicator of strategic goals.

The problem with this advice, however, is that it assumes a level of control that doesn’t often exist today. As companies become increasingly digital, product life cycles shrink, access to resources level, and global competition becomes extremely intense. In this environment, it can seem like luck and timing are the primary factors for success. After all, you have little control over the (constantly changing) needs of your customers, the pace of technological change, or what your competitors do. Even your most important resource—your people—is a fleeting advantage. Over time, many of your best employees will leave to pursue new opportunities.

In short, you can spend years fine-tuning your industry knowledge, become the most inspiring communicator, and recruit the most talented team, only to have a technological disruption render your products irrelevant. So, if product, process, and people are all only capable of producing short-term competitive advantages, what is left for an entrepreneur to focus on in order to lead his or her team to sustainable success?

Culture.

An entrepreneur who focuses on fostering a strong culture will be able to create the only form of sustainable competitive advantage. As leaders change, teams come and go, and the environment rapidly evolves, culture is often the only aspect of the company that does not have external dependencies, and can be the best way to enable long-term success.

To promote a strong culture, an entrepreneur must protect the values of his or her community. It is often in the moment when you have to make a decision between near-term success and sustaining your culture that your decisions will have the greatest influence.

Several years ago at Payoneer, the team decided to bring in a new executive to drive growth. Unfortunately, in addition to his expertise, he also brought politics and conflict. One of the VPs who reported to him was in over her head, and the new executive was very vocal about it and pushed aggressively for change. However, the VP also represented everything we valued—she was a team player, smart, hardworking, and connected to what we were building as a company. We tried multiple times to address the situation, but nothing was working.

One day, the VP told us she was quitting. We knew we would eventually need to transition her out of her role, but that if we allowed her to get forced out, it would send a message to the entire company that we were willing to sacrifice our cultural values to achieve our short-term goals. After all, how could we claim to care about our employees, only to create an environment where they are discarded when someone new decides they are no longer needed? To sustain the culture we had worked so hard to create, we needed to prioritize our long-term employees over our short-term success.

We let go of the new executive, and we worked with the VP to keep her on. This only lasted for another six months, but we had made it clear to the whole company that we would keep our commitment to our employees, our values, and our culture above all else. This is how you create a culture that is strong and sustainable in an ever-evolving world of obstacles and opportunities.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution to corporate culture. As Google’s Laszlo Bock once stated, “We want to understand what works here rather than what worked at any other organization.” For us, a culture that attracts smart, hardworking people and fosters teamwork is most important, requiring a servant-leadership style. Other businesses may need to have lots of brilliant independent innovators who are given the autonomy to drive their own success, which might be a better fit for charismatic, transformational leaders. Anyone who tells you there is one playbook is vastly oversimplifying. As a leader, your most important job just might be to recognize the moments that are culture-defining, and to make the decisions that support and sustain your culture above all else.

參考譯文：

企業(yè)家可以獲得無數(shù)關(guān)于如何領導的建議。一些專家認為，最好的領導者是那些帶領公司在業(yè)內(nèi)排名一路攀升，從而贏得尊敬的人。另一些人則認為，領導者應當扮演領袖人物的角色，負責統(tǒng)一戰(zhàn)略目標并將它清楚地傳達給員工。

然而，這一建議的問題在于，當今的領導者往往不具備它假定的控制力。隨著公司的數(shù)字化程度越來越高，產(chǎn)品周期越來越短，獲取資源越來越容易，全球競爭變得極度激烈。在這樣的環(huán)境下，運氣和時間似乎才是獲得成功的主要因素。畢竟，你幾乎控制不了客戶(不斷變化)的需求，控制不了科技的發(fā)展速度，也控制不了競爭對手做什么。即便你最重要的資源——你的員工——帶來的優(yōu)勢也只是暫時的。隨著時間的推移，你最優(yōu)秀的員工有許多都會離開去尋找新的機會。

簡而言之，你可能花了幾年時間來打磨你的行業(yè)知識，成為最鼓舞士氣的溝通者，招募了最有才華的團隊，但科技上的變革卻讓你的產(chǎn)品很快就被淘汰。所以，如果產(chǎn)品、流程和人力都只能贏得短期的競爭優(yōu)勢，還剩下什么是企業(yè)家應該去做，從而領導他/她的團隊取得長久成功的?

答案是企業(yè)文化。

專注于培養(yǎng)強大文化的企業(yè)家可以創(chuàng)造唯一可持續(xù)的競爭優(yōu)勢。領導層會變化，團隊人員會流動，行業(yè)環(huán)境在迅速變化，企業(yè)文化往往是企業(yè)唯一不受外界影響的方面，也是讓企業(yè)保持長期成功的最好方式。

想要建立強大的文化，企業(yè)家必須維護他/她的團隊的價值觀。當你需要在短期成功和維護文化之間做出抉擇時，你的決定會產(chǎn)生巨大的影響力。

幾年前在Payoneer，團隊決定引入一名新的高管來推動公司發(fā)展。不幸的是，他帶來了專業(yè)知識的同時，也帶來了政治和沖突。一位向他報告的副總裁能力有限，這位新高管直言不諱地提出了這一點，并且雷厲風行地著手換人。然而，這位副總裁有著我們看重的一切特質(zhì)——她善于團隊合作、聰明、努力，與我們建立的公司息息相關(guān)。我們試了很多辦法來解決這個情況，但都沒有用。

有一天，這位副總裁告訴我們，她選擇退出。我們知道，我們最終還是要讓她離開那個崗位，不過如果我們看著她被排擠出去，就會傳達出一個信息：我們愿意為了短期目標而犧牲企業(yè)文化和價值觀。畢竟，我們怎么表明自己關(guān)心員工?一個新來的人認為他們不再被需要，他們隨即就會被拋棄嗎?為了維護我們努力營造的文化，我們需要把長期員工的重要性放在短期成功之前。

我們讓這位新的高管離職了，努力讓副總裁留在了這個崗位上。她只多干了六個月，但我們借此向整個公司表明了立場：我們會把我們的員工、我們的價值觀和我們的文化放在其他一切之上。用這種方式，你就能在這個充滿阻礙與機遇的、不斷變化的世界里建立可持續(xù)的強大文化。

在建立企業(yè)文化上，沒有什么萬能方案。就如谷歌(Google)的拉茲洛·博克曾經(jīng)說的那樣：“我們想要知道在這里怎樣管用，而不關(guān)心在其他機構(gòu)中怎樣管用。”對我們來說，吸引聰明努力的人才和培養(yǎng)團隊精神的文化是最重要的，所以我們需要仆人式的領導風格。其他公司可能需要許多聰明獨立的創(chuàng)新人員，讓他們有足夠的自由來取得自身的成功，那些公司或許更加需要魅力十足的變革型領導。任何告訴你有萬能方案的人，都把問題看得太簡單了。作為一名領導者，你最重要的事情，可能在于發(fā)覺那些確立企業(yè)文化的關(guān)鍵時刻，然后做出決定，支持和確保你的文化在其他任何事情之上。