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The Toughest Leadership Job Of All (It's Not What You Think)

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 楼主| 发表于 2013-12-10 13:00:56 | 显示全部楼层 |阅读模式
We revere the skills of prominent CEOs, perhaps more than we should.
   我们尊崇卓越的CEO们所具备的技能,或许有过之而无不及。
We romanticize Steve Jobs types, who scream at their underlings until they squeeze sheer perfection out of them.
   我们对史蒂夫·乔布斯式的CEO进行了传奇化的描摹,这些领导向他们的手下大嚷大叫,直到他们拿出最完美的方案。
We lionize Jack Welch, who earned the nickname “Neutron Jack” for his ability to get rid of employees while leaving only the corporate offices standing.
   我们把杰克·韦尔奇(Jack Welch)奉为名人,他因为能大幅裁员直到只留下办公室而获得了“中子弹杰克(Neutron Jack)”的绰号。
But there’s an underappreciated form of leadership that requires far more skill than being a CEO does. It’s the job of a university president.
   但是,有一种没有得到重视的领导形式,它需要的技能远远超过一名CEO的能力。这就是一所大学的校长的工作。
I’ve worked for years alongside some tremendous university presidents, like C. L. Max Nikias and Steven Sample at USC; and having seen how they can “move the needle” at such vast and complex enterprises, I’m quite convinced that leaders in other sectors have much they can learn from good higher education governance.
   我曾在数位出色的大学校长手下工作多年,比如,南加州大学(USC)现任校长马克思·尼克斯(C.L. Max Nikias)及前任校长史蒂文·桑普尔(Steven Sample);亲眼见到他们是如何在既庞大又复杂的机构中推动改革,我非常确信,其他产业的领袖可以从良好的高等院校管理中学习到很多东西。
Consider that Robert Sternberg announced his resignation as president of the University of Wyoming yesterday, after four short months in office. After quickly shaking up the campus, he was quickly shaken out of the campus.
   想想罗伯特·斯坦伯格(Robert Sternberg),在怀俄明大学(University of Wyoming)担任校长短短四个月后,他于11月14日宣布辞职。在对校园的一番迅速整顿后,他自己也被踢走了。
Entrepreneurs and CEOs talk about being “disruptive innovators.” Sternberg proudly put on the mantle of disruptive innovator at Wyoming, and lost his job as a result. Frankly, he sounds like he would’ve done well at many companies. But being a university president requires vision and enviable amounts of tact, shrewdness and patience.
   企业家们和CEO常谈论如何成为“颠覆性创新者”。斯坦伯格自豪地担负起了颠覆性创新者的职责,结果却丢掉了工作。坦白说,要是放在很多公司里,他也能算是很出色的。但是一所大学的校长需具备远见、令人羡慕的机智、精明和耐心。
Herman Wells, the former president of Indiana University, once observed that the ideal university president would combine “the physical charm of a Greek athlete, the cunning of Machiavelli, the wisdom of Solomon, the courage of a lion, the skin of a rhino … and the stomach of a goat.”
   印第安纳大学前任校长赫尔曼•韦尔斯(Herman Wells)曾经说道,理想的大学校长应具备“希腊运动员的体育魅力,马基雅弗利(Machiavelli)的狡猾、所罗门(Solomon)的智慧、狮子的勇气、犀牛的皮肤……和山羊的肚子”。
Corporate CEOs lead through control
   企业CEO的领导靠控制权
Being an effective corporate CEO isn’t that hard, really: Your biggest concern is ticking off your board; otherwise, you get to order underlings around and fire the ones you don’t like. What you say goes.
   做一名优秀的企业CEO并非难事,真的:你最大的顾虑是惹恼董事会;否则,你可以命令下属做做各种事情,解雇那些你不喜欢的员工。一切照你说的办。
University presidents lead through cooperation
   大学校长的领导靠合作
Being an effective university president involves much more diplomacy and persuasion and vision-selling. Yes, you are beholden to a board. But you have to lead through collaboration and cajoling, not control.
   做一名出色的大学校长需要更多的交际手段、说服力和“愿景”推销。是的,你受制于理事会。但是你的领导必须靠协作和说服,而不是控制权。
The most powerful group within a university is its tenured faculty. If they refuse to listen to you, you can’t fire them. That’s the whole idea behind academic freedom. But it makes moving in a new direction fraught with peril.
   一所大学内最有权势的团体是终身教授们。如果他们拒绝倾听你的意见,你是不能解雇他们的。这是学术自由背后的整体思路。但它令改弦更张的努力充满危机。
As one college president told me, “You don’t say, ‘Professor Smith, I need you to make this change.’ Instead, you say, “Professor Smith, I have a great idea I’d like to run past you. I really need your input in order to make this work, and I wonder if you have any thoughts about how to improve my idea and how to implement it?”
   正如一位大学校长告诉我说,“你不能说,‘史密斯教授,我需要你做出这个改变。’你得说,‘史密斯教授,我有一个很不错的想法想征求你的意见。我需要你的意见才能完成这项工作,我想知道你对于这个提议的改善和如何实施有何想法?’”
Can you imagine Steve Jobs saying that? Brilliant as he was, he’d last eight nano-seconds as the president of Stanford, MIT, Berkeley, USC, UCLA, Caltech or the other 50 to 100 research giants that fuel America’s economic and cultural preeminence.
   你能想象史蒂夫·乔布斯会那么说吗?乔布斯虽然才华横溢,但如果他让他去斯坦福大学、麻省理工学院、加州大学伯克利分校、南加州大学、加州大学洛杉矶分校、加州理工学院,或是为美国经济与文化地位提供动力的其他50到100大科研院校当校长,他一秒钟都当不了。
Eisenhower was one of America’s greatest leaders. But he had a very unremarkable run as president of Columbia University. It’s because he didn’t know how to navigate the hyper-intricate human maze that is a major university.
   艾森豪威尔(Eisenhower)曾是美国最优秀的领袖之一。但他在担任哥伦比亚大学校长的时候却平凡无奇。这是因为他不知道如何破解一所大学中错综复杂的人类迷宫。
The university president’s job is fantastically complex. Traditional companies open and shutter, and a founding CEO who fails can shrug it off and go on to start something new. But universities are expected to maintain high quality for centuries (consider how Oxford has kept churning for 8 centuries), while they’re also supposed to adapt to new developments (like online technology, globalization and so on). Give credit where credit is due: Apple’s a nice little enterprise, but Stanford will be thriving in 200 years, while Apple will be a historical footnote.
   大学校长的工作极其复杂。传统的企业开张又倒闭,失败的创始CEO可以不以为意,继续开创新的企业。但大学要在数百年里保持高品质(想想牛津大学是如何800年屹立不倒的),同时他们也要适应新的发展(比如网络技术和全球化等等)。无可否认,苹果公司(Apple)是一家不错的小企业,但斯坦福大学200年后仍将蒸蒸日盛,而苹果将只是一个历史注脚。
Not only does the university president need to cajole a bunch of people he can’t fire, he needs to convince others on the outside to contribute billions of dollars to fund his or her vision. That takes some special skill.
   大学校长不仅要把他不能解雇的一群人哄开心了,还要去说服外面的投资者贡献数十亿美元来资助他的愿景。这就需要一些特殊技能。
Warren Bennis, the great leadership guru (and a longtime mentor to me) who served for several years as university provost and a university president, wrote this a few years ago:
   伟大的领导力大师、曾担任大学教务长和校长多年的沃伦·本尼斯(Warren G.Bennis)在几年前写道:
No manner of leader, save possibly a mayor of a large city, deals with as vast and complicated a cartography of stakeholders as does the head of a major American research university. Speaking from personal experience, I can say that a university president is called on to be an entertainer, a visionary, a priest, a psychologist, and a CEO of 10 or 20 vastly different enterprises gathered under the seal of one university.
   一所美国大型研究型大学的校长所需对付的利益相关群体,其牵涉范围之广和个中关系之复杂,除了大城市市长外几乎没有哪种领导者可以相提并论。从个人经验来看,我能说一所大学的校长需要同时充当艺人、先知、牧师、心理学家和同一个大学名下十几二十家截然不同的“分公司”的总部CEO。
Warren was being modest. A university president often oversees 10 to 20 independent academic units, along with a dozen or more major research centers—in addition to 10 to 20 athletic franchises, massive hotel and restaurant chains catering to their students, and a myriad of enterprises in the background.
   沃伦说得有些谦虚。一所大学的校长通常负责10到20个独立的学术单位,以及好十几个大型研究中心——加之10到20个运动队,为学生服务大型酒店和餐饮连锁以及幕后的无数企业。
Indeed, it’s quite probably the most demanding leadership job possible. Robert Sternberg found that out the hard way.
   事实上,这或许是要求最苛刻的领导职位。罗伯特·斯坦伯格就通过亲身经历学到了这个教训。
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