经济学人商业 || 网飞:黑斯廷斯教义

原文:http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzU1MDQwNTgzMg==&mid=2247491692&idx=1&sn=61541903114dd2a553bcd174f5f6a539&chksm=fba3b3cbccd43add1044f2ae4a09cd7a3fd68395f8bfd15ab397e2c71e2d59aa3d4bb62203a4#rd

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导读

感谢思维导图作者

 Rena,坐标墨尔本的留学生,爱笑爱摄影爱看书


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听力|精读|翻译|词组

The Hastings doctrine

黑斯廷斯教义

英文部分选自经济学人20200911期Business版块

Netflix

网飞


The Hastings doctrine

黑斯廷斯教义


Can the streaming giant’s boss preserve its culture of innovation as it grows bigger and more global?

做大做强且日益全球化的流媒体巨头能继续保持文化创新吗?


The best way to stay innovative, many bosses will tell you, is to hire the best people and let them get on with it. Few take this as literally as Reed Hastings of Netflix. The video-streamer’s employees can take as much holiday as they fancy and put anything on the company’s tab so long as, to cite the entirety of its corporate expense policy, they “act in Netflix’s best interest”. Anyone may access sensitive information like a running tally of subscribers, which Wall Street would kill for. Executives seal multimillion-dollar deals without sign-off from top brass. High-achievers are rewarded with the plushest salaries in the business—whether their business is writing computer code or film scripts. Underperformers are unceremoniously cut loose.


许多老板都认为保持创新的最佳方法是雇用最优秀的人才,让他们借由创新不断取得进步。但几乎只有网飞(Netflix)的里德黑斯廷斯(Reed Hastings)奉之为圭臬不折不扣的施行。网飞员工可以休任意天数的假期,可以像公司的支出政策所说的那样,只要是为了网飞利益,任何支出都可以记在网飞名下。任何人都可以访问敏感信息,例如订阅者实时记录——这可是华尔街求之不得的机密。主管无需报批高层即可签署数百万美元的交易。业绩好的员工薪水令人咂舌,无论他们的业务是编写计算机代码还是电影剧本。业绩不佳者则会被毫不客气地裁掉。


注:

A running total is a total which changes because numbers keep being added to it as something progresses.


It sounds like a recipe for expensive anarchy. But managing “on the edge of chaos”, as Mr Hastings mischievously puts it, has served Netflix well. Most of its 7,900 full-time workers seem happy being treated like professional athletes, paid handsomely as long as no one can do their job better. Each generates $2.6m in annual revenue on average, nine times more than Disney employees, and $26.5m in shareholder value, three times more than a Googler does.


这听起来像是开了一个代价不菲的无政府状态的处方。但是,这种被黑斯廷斯揶揄为处于混乱边缘的管理方式对网飞却正合适。其7,900名全职员工中的大多数看上去乐于被当作职业运动员来对待——只要表现最佳,就拿钱拿到手软。每位员工平均创造了260万美元的效益是迪士尼员工的9以及2650万美元的股东价值是谷歌员工的3)。


Investors lap it up as hungrily as Netflix binge-watchers, who now number 193m worldwide. Since going public in 2002 the firm’s share price has risen 500-fold (see chart 1), in the top ten 18-year runs in America Inc’s history, as Mr Hastings points out with a hint of pride in his voice. This year it briefly overtook Disney to become the world’s most valuable entertainment company.


投资者对其股票的追捧像疯狂刷剧的网飞用户一般毫无节制,现在投资人数已达1.93亿。自从2002年上市以来,该公司的股价已经上涨了500倍(见图1),是美国公司史上十八年来股价增长最快的十家公司之一,黑斯廷斯先生指出这一点时自豪之情溢于言表。今年,网飞一度超过迪士尼成为世界上最有价值的娱乐公司。


125 reasons why

125个理由


This track-record has earned Mr Hastings kudos. A PowerPoint “culture deck” outlining his management philosophy has been viewed 20m times since he posted it online 11 years ago. Sheryl Sandberg, Mark Zuckerberg’s right-hand woman at Facebook, has called it the most important document ever to emerge from Silicon Valley. A new book in which Mr Hastings fleshes out those 125 slides is destined for the bestseller list. But it raises a question: are the “No Rules Rules” of the title the right set as Netflix metamorphoses from California startup into global show-business colossus?


如此亮眼的业绩记录为黑斯廷斯先生赢得了荣誉。11年前,他把概述自己管理理念的幻灯片《文化》上传到网络上,其浏览次数现在已有2000万次之多。马克·扎克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)在脸书(Facebook)的得力助手谢里尔·桑德伯格(Sheryl Sandberg)称,这组幻灯片为硅谷有史以来出现的最重要的文件。黑斯廷斯的新书No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention”)对125张幻灯片内容进行了扩充,该书势必会成为畅销书。但这也产生了一个问题:该书书名《无规则管理(No Rules Rules)》真的概括了网飞从加利福尼亚的初创公司转变为全球娱乐界巨头的蜕变之路吗?


注:

1. Netflix culture

https://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664

2. 衍生阅读 No Rules Rules:       

https://www.norulesrules.com/


It is easy to put too much stock in corporate culture, which can be a story triumphant companies tell themselves after the fact. GE’s rise in the 1990s had more to do with financial engineering than with the much-aped habit introduced by Jack Welch, the conglomerate’s CEO at the time, of ranking employees and “yanking” the bottom 10%. Netflix would not be where it is without its boss’s uncanny foresight to bet on streaming in the late 2000s, or the uncannily flat-footed response from Hollywood incumbents, which took a decade to grasp the threat. Investors have displayed deep reserves of cheap capital, and deeper ones of patience. Over the past year the firm’s prodigious revenue-generators each burned through $123,000 of cash (see chart 2); this year quarterly cashflow turned positive for only the first time since 2014. Luck played a role, as when cut-price DVD players debuted just in time for Christmas in 2001, months after the dotcom crash forced Mr Hastings to lay off a third of his 120-odd workers, from what was then a DVD-by-mail rental service.


人们容易把太多精力放在企业文化,而企业文化可能是公司成功后王婆卖瓜的故事。美国通用电气公司GE在上世纪90年代的崛起更多的是与金融工程有关,与被广泛模仿的员工激励没有太多关联。当时集团的首席执行官杰克·韦尔奇Jack Welch)推出了对员工进行排名和“砍掉最底层10%的员工的政策。如果没有总裁在2000年代末押注流媒体的超凡远见,如果不是好莱坞在位者十年后才意识到网飞这个威胁,反应迟缓的不可思议,网飞就不会有今天的成就。投资者有着深厚的廉价资本储备,以及更多的耐心。在过去的一年里,该公司员工支出数额也令人嗔目,平均每人烧掉了12.3万美元的现金(见图2);今年的季度现金流是自2014年以来的首次转正。这其中也有运气因素,当时从事DVD邮寄租赁服务的黑斯廷斯先生为了应对互联网泡沫,在几个月前刚裁掉了120多名员工中的三分之一,而削价后DVD播放器又恰逢其时在2001圣诞节前亮相。


注:

Revenue generationone of the most important activities any business can engage in. It is defined as a process by which a company plans how to market and sell its products or services, in order to generate income.


Still, as Michael Nathanson of MoffattNathanson, a consultancy, observes, “Every time that Netflix faced a roadblock it found a clever way to work around it and emerge stronger.” Most notably, when TV networks and studios at last woke up to the reality of streaming and began to hog content licences, Netflix started producing its own shows, and later feature films. The swivel might have taken longer with employees bogged down in chains of approvals. “Radical candour”, whereby everyone’s ideas, from Mr Hastings down, can be challenged by all-comers, helps weed out bad ones. “Sunshining”, the stomach-churning spectacle of publicly explaining choices, helps not to repeat mistakes. Senior Netflixers’ “ability to swallow their pride is truly exceptional”, says Willy Shih of Harvard Business School, who has written two case studies on the firm.


不过,正如咨询公司MoffattNathanson迈克尔·内桑森(Michael Nathanson所观察到,"每当网飞遇到拦路虎,都能设法变通,让自己变得更加强大。" 最值得注意的是,当电视网络和制作公司最终幡然醒悟、开始霸凌流媒体、独占内容许可时,网飞已经开始制作自己的节目,以及后来的故事片。如果员工陷入长时审批流程,这个转变可能需要更长的时间。"极端坦率",即人人都可以挑战上至黑斯廷斯先生下至所有员工的想法,这有助于去芜存菁"阳光普照",即公开解释自己的判断抉择的场面虽令人反胃,却有助于避免重蹈覆辙。曾写过两篇网飞案例研究的哈佛商学院施威利(Willy Shih )称,网飞诸位高管 "接纳谏言确实非同一般"


Now this innovation-friendly culture is under fire on three fronts. The first two—the firm’s growing size and scope—are internal to Netflix. The third source of pressure comes from the outside.


现在,这种有利于创新的文化受到三方面的威胁,前两个都是网飞的内部问题,即公司不断增长的规模和范围。而第三个威胁则来自外部。


Start with size. The flat hierarchy and frankness that works in Silicon Valley, with its narrow range of temperaments and socioeconomic backgrounds, is harder to sustain in a global workforce that has swelled nearly fourfold in five years (more if you include temporary contractors, who now number over 2,200, up from fewer than 400 in 2015). Asians, Europeans and Latin Americans can find visitors from headquarters “exotic”, in Mr Hastings’s words. Negotiating “context”, as Netflix managers and their subordinates do constantly in the absence of explicit rules, offers useful flexibility. But it takes time that could be spent perfecting a product—ever more of it as tacit cultural understanding is diluted by international expansion. Revenue per worker is down by 7% from 2015.


首先从规模来看,在硅谷行之有效的扁平化等级制度和透明制度,其氛围和社会经济背景的适用范围很窄,全球化劳动力五年内增加了近四倍,这导致这种制度更难维持(如果算上临时合同工,人数就更多了,临时合同工现在有2200多人,而2015年只有不到400人)。用黑斯廷斯先生的话说,亚洲人,欧洲人和拉丁美洲人发现来自总部的访客有异国情调网飞的经理和他们的下属经常要在没有明确规则的情况下磋商来龙去脉。这种常规操作更加灵活实用,但耗费时间。这些时间本可以用来完善产品。随着默契的文化理解被国际扩张冲淡,耗费的时间越来越多。自2015以来,每名员工的收入下降了7%


Many countries grant workers more protections than America does. This is a problem for the “keeper test”, which requires managers constantly to question if they would fight to stop their underlings from leaving—and, if the answer is “no”, immediately send the individual on their way with generous severance. These golden handshakes, which range from four months’ salary in America to more than six months in the Netherlands, are “too generous” to reject, says Mr Hastings. Netflix has not been sued even in Brazil, where employee lawsuits are a national sport to rival football. The bonhomie may not last.


与美国相比,许多国家往往给予工人更多的保护。这是守门员测试中的问题,该测试要求经理们不断质疑自己是不是会尽全力阻止下属离职如果答案是,就会立即慷慨地让其离开。黑斯廷斯先生称,一大笔的退职金,在美国是四个月工资,在荷兰是六个月以上工资,多到让人无法拒绝。网飞甚至在巴西也没有被起诉过,那里的劳资诉讼是一项与足球不相上下的全国性运动。这种敦厚可能不会持续太久。


注:

1. Golden handshake: A golden handshake is a large sum of money that a company gives to an employee when he or she leaves, as a reward for long service or good work. 大笔退职金;高额退休

(选自Collins)

2.keepertest:https://www.highlights.lornerubis.com/2015/08/the-netflix-keeper-test-and-the-courage-to-take-it/


A larger workforce poses a separate risk to internal transparency. Even while the attrition rate hovers at around 10%, the number of ex-Netflixers with knowledge of the firm’s finances and strategic bets is now growing by hundreds each year. Unwanted disclosures have been rare and, says Mr Hastings, immaterial. But, he concedes, serious leaks may be “a matter of time”.


日益庞大的雇员队伍给内部透明度带来了额外的风险。尽管员工流失率徘徊在10%,但了解公司财务状况和战略赌注方向的前网飞雇员数量正以每年数百人的速度增长。黑斯廷斯先生表示,不希望披露的信息很少,而且并不重要。但他也承认严重的泄密只时间问题


The second challenge has to do with Netflix’s sectoral girth. In its first decade it was primarily a firm of technologists like Mr Hastings, whom his co-founder, Marc Randolph (who left the firm in 2003), likened to the hyper-rational, emotionless Mr Spock in “Star Trek”. That was never entirely fair—Netflix products are data-driven but Mr Hastings attaches as much weight to judgment in managing people as Captain Kirk ever did. Still, by the standards of Tinseltown, where he now spends a couple of days most weeks amid studio intrigues and moody showrunners, he and his firm can come across as robotic.


第二个挑战与网飞所在的行业范围有密切联系。在最初的十年里,它主要是一家像黑斯廷斯这样的技术专家组成的公司,联合创始人马克·伦道夫(Marc Randolph2003年离开网飞)黑斯廷斯比作《星际迷航》中超级理性、没有感情的斯波克先生。这种说法一点也不公平——网飞产品是数据驱动,但黑斯廷斯先生在管理人员时,与柯克船长一样重视判断力。不过,按照浮华城(指好莱坞)的标准,他大部分时候,每周都要花几天时间,置身于制片公司的尔虞我诈和喜怒无常的制作人之中,他和他的公司就会给人一种机械呆板的感觉。


注:

Tinseltown,  People sometimes refer to Hollywood as Tinseltown, especially when they want to show that they disapprove of it or when they are making fun of it. 浮华城(好莱坞的贬称、谐称)


One producer who has worked with Netflix detects hints of its horizontal hierarchy permeating Hollywood “by osmosis”. This can speed things along. But, she grouses, “sometimes you need a production assistant to assist, not commission scripts.” At the same time, Netflix missed a chance to revolutionise other old studio ways. The $150m five-year deal it signed in 2018 with Shonda Rhimes, a star TV producer, may be more generous than most networks could afford. But it is Hollywoodian in its structure, says a former executive—and antithetical to the keeper test.


一位曾与网飞合作过的制片人发现,该公司的扁平化管理秘诀通过潜移默化”的方式渗入了好莱坞。这可以加快协同速度。但是,她抱怨道,有时候你需要的是一个制片助理来协助,而不是委托编写的剧本与此同时,网飞错过了一次彻底革新其他老制片公司的机会。2018年,它与明星电视制作人珊达·瑞姆斯(Shonda Rhimes签订了一份1.5亿美元的五年期合同,这可比大多数能负担得起的广播电视公司慷慨多了。但一位前高管说,这种方式在结构上是好莱坞式的,而且与守门员测试背道而驰。


Moreover, Netflix may have no choice but to expand into new industries. This would be a departure from its laser focus on its core product: quality streamed entertainment. But show business is increasingly the preserve of conglomerates. Disney has theme parks, merchandising and TV networks. Comcast (the cable giant that owns NBC Universal) and AT&T (the telecoms group which controls HBO and WarnerMedia) possess the pipes along which content flows. Apple’s and Amazon’s Hollywood ambitions are tethered to their powerful technology platforms.


此外,网飞也许别无选择,只能向新产业进军。这意味着网飞将偏离其核心产品——优质的流媒体娱乐服务。但娱乐业愈加成为企业集团的保留活动。迪士尼拥有主题公园、广告推销、电视网络的业务。康卡斯特(Comcast,拥有NBC环球集团的有线电视巨头)和美国电话电报公司(AT&T, 控制HBO和华纳传媒的电信集团)拥有可以输送内容的缆线设施。苹果和亚马逊进军好莱坞的野心与其强大的技术平台密不可分。


Disrupting sluggish behemoths is one thing. Competing with them head-on may require a different trade-off between flexibility and efficiency. It may also mean takeovers. Mr Hastings has no shopping plans. But a strong culture, he admits, “is a material weakness if you are going to make big acquisitions”. Cultural sparks could fly when you integrate more than a few dozen people, as they flew when his first firm, Pure Software, bought rivals in the 1990s.


扰动行动迟缓的巨头是一回事,与这些巨头正面竞争则是另一回事,这可能需要在灵活和效率中找到另一种的平衡,这也许意味着要进行一些收购。黑斯廷斯先生并没有收购计划。但他承认:如果你要进行一场大收购,强大的企业文化是个客观存在的弱点。当你将几十甚至更多人并入公司时,文化碰撞的火花就会消失,就像在20世纪90年代,他的第一家公司Pure Software收购对手公司时一样。


The third set of challenges is external. Covid-19 has muted the exchange of ideas. It is also harder to evaluate—and dismiss—people by Zoom; Netflix’s 12-month rolling attrition rate has declined by a third, to 7%. This week Mr Hastings said he does not see “any positives” to home-working.


第三组挑战来自于外部。新冠病毒已经阻碍了思想交流。要想通过Zoom来评估和解雇员工变得尤为困难。网飞连续12个月不断攀升的员工流失率已经下降了三分之一,达到7%。本周,黑斯廷斯先生表示在家远程工作没有“任何可取之处”。


注: 

Attrition rate: the rate of shrinkage in size or number


Dear White People

亲爱的白人


Then there is public pressure for corporate America to care more about diversity. Mr Hastings added inclusion to Netflix values in 2016 but it barely features in his investor letters or annual reports. He acknowledges a tension between the desire for diversity and Netflix’s arch-meritocratic ideals (the firm eschews quotas, as it does all management metrics, in favour of that Kirkian judgment). Its corporate temperament screams “hypermasculine”, as Erin Meyer, Mr Hastings’s co-author and professor at INSEAD business school in France, has herself noted. And one person’s radical candour is another’s microaggression.


另外,来自公众的压力也会迫使美国公司更多地关注(员工族群的)多样性。2016年,黑斯廷斯先生在网飞的企业价值观中加入了包容的理念,但这在他致股东的信件或年报中却鲜有体现。他承认对多样性的渴求和网飞精英至上的管理理念有矛盾(该公司逃避少数裔配额,正如它对柯式(Kirkian)评估推崇备至而放弃所有的管理指标一样)。高调宣称自己的企业精神是超级男子气概,正如艾琳·梅耶自己说的那样。艾琳是黑斯廷斯先生新书的合著者及法国的欧洲工商管理学院的教授。一个人极端坦率就意味着对他人怀有了些许敌意。


Netflix shareholders and their representatives on the board have confidence that Mr Hastings can reconcile these strains. He has given them plenty of reasons to trust his own judgment. But he is fully aware that his position is safe only as long as he can keep the magic going. The keeper test applies to him, as well.


网飞的股东及董事会代表相信,黑斯廷斯先生可以协调好这些矛盾。黑斯廷斯先生已给予他们足够的理由去信任他的判断。但是他完全清楚,只要奇迹能够继续,他的位置就会安稳。守门员测试同样也适用于他。


For an interview with Reed Hastings, see online at economist.com/reedhastings

瑞德·黑斯廷斯的采访详见economist.com/reedhastings


翻译组:

Yao,男,不想做翻译的翻译学硕士

Hannah,女,教书匠,经济学人粉丝

Megan,女,外企民工,好想一身都是月

Sophie,女,HR让我做自己,券商带我看世界


校对组:

Forest,女,自由职业,爱树的人

Lixia,我视英语为初恋,英语瞧我像备胎

Very,男,电气民工,经济学人资浅爱好者

3


观点|评论|思考


本次感想

Hikali,女,准爱岛异术家,用力生活

 文章前半部分看下来,感到别扭却不知从何讲起,直到看到“人们容易把太多精力放在企业文化,而企业文化可能是公司后王婆卖瓜的故事”这句话,豁然开朗,一时间通体舒畅。

虽然网飞因这种“无政府”的“企业文化”大获成功,赚得盆满钵满,但这种方式对大部分公司而言都是缺乏借鉴意义的。

 首先,我们要看到,网飞这一企业文化是建立在“雇佣最优秀的人才”的前提下的,而且公司有足够优秀的社会声誉、光明的发展前景和强大的经济实力去留住人才、激励人才奋发向上。讲到这里,不由得回想起我的初中母校,当年在全市算是数一数二的学校。我的母校建在一条小巷里,教学楼或和教学设备都相当陈旧且普通,师资也没有特别突出,管理松散,学生自在飞翔。尽管如此,还是耐不住每年招收的是全市各小学成绩最优秀的那批人,不错的学习基础和你追我赶的学习氛围,还是让这所学校年年在中考中战绩辉煌。然而,几年后,当招生方式由择优录取变为摇号之后,风云巨变,学校从此“泯为众人也”。相比起来,当年最强劲的竞争对手,另一所以强大师资、严格管理闻名的初中,“翻身做地主”,哪怕同样是摇号招生,依然能保持不错的成绩。这一对比确实太过“人间真实”,要想让本性懒惰的人类创造出辉煌,除非这群人都是天赋异禀或是高度自律的(但这类人在人群中算是少数),否则就只能用条条框框来规范,或是用有强大诱惑力的激励机制来鞭策。这才是更具普适性的方法。

其次,哪怕是好的文化,在代代相传或是规模扩张的过程中被稀释、变味,也是相当常见的情况。这又勾起我高中时代的回忆,作为一个对社团文化高度认同、有强烈归属感的人,卸任后看到学校以“学习为重”为理由限制社团的发展,或是看到师弟师妹们更倾向于参加对加分、升学有实用帮助的活动时,都会唏嘘不已(这也只是一个老师姐无谓的感叹,毕竟还是现实一点活得更舒心)。当年那些我视若珍宝的社团文化,因为“条条框框”和“后继无人”等原因,都渐渐消逝了,但积极一点想,又会觉得,涅槃才能重生,或许在这舍离之间,又孕育出新的文化,而这些新的文化,又可能会被谁视为珍宝呢。

     最后,任何一家企业的成功都有其时代背景。“时势造英雄”,虽然不可否认,网飞有识别风口、乘势起飞的“慧眼”,但这样的成功依然难以复制。毕竟,哪一项成功不是“天时地利人和”的杰作呢?


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