每日原则：“谁”比“什么”更重要

记得有一次，我们一位才华横溢、前途光明的高管整合了一项交接计划，以使他自己能换到另一个岗位。在他与管理委员会的一次会议上，他带着大量流程图与责任分工图，详细阐述他负责的每个领域，解释他如何尽可能使其自动化和系统化，以做到万无一失。这是一次令人印象深刻的展示，但是很快就清楚的是，他没有回答这些问题：谁将取代他，以及如果他们想法不同，将会发生什么，从而做出别的计划。谁来监督他建立的机器，深入探究其问题所在，并持续改进或决定取消机器？别人要创造与他同样卓越的成果，应该具备哪些素质，也就是说，代替他的人需要符合哪些重要的岗位要求？到哪里去招募这样的人？

回想起来，这类问题看似显而易见，但一次又一次地，我发现人们都忽略了它们。不清楚要把事情干好需要哪些条件，不清楚你的员工是什么样的人，就好比你想操作一部机器，却不明白其部件是怎么一起运行的。

“要用比你强的人”，我年轻时并不真正理解这句话的含义。如今，经过数十年的招人、管人和裁人之后，我才明白，要真正取得成功，我需要做大家的指挥，他们当中的许多人（如果不是全部的话）演奏各自的乐器都比我强，如果我真是个伟大的指挥，我还能找到比我更强的指挥，并招募过来。我的最终目标是创建一部运转得极好的机器，这样我就只需放轻松，看美妙的事情自行发生。

关于挑选、培训、测试、评估和解雇员工的重要性，怎么强调都不为过。

到最后，要做的事很简单：

1. 记住目标是什么。

2. 把目标布置给能胜任它的人（这是最佳情况），或者告诉他们怎样做能够达成目标（这属于微观管理，故略逊一筹）。

3. 让他们尽职尽责。

4. 如果在你培训他们并给其时间学习之后，他们还无法胜任工作，就辞掉他们。
   

People often make the mistake of focusing on what should be done while neglecting the more important question of who should be given the responsibility for determining what should be done. That’s backward. When you know what you need in a person to do the job well and you know what the person you’re putting into it is like, you can pretty well visualize how things will go. 

I remember one case where one of our most talented rising executives was putting together a transition plan so that he could move on to another role. He arrived at a meeting with the Management Committee with binders full of process flows and responsibility maps, detailing every aspect of the area he’d been responsible for, and explained how he’d automated and systemized as much of it as possible to make it foolproof. It was an impressive presentation, but it quickly became clear that he didn’t have an answer for who was going to take his place and what would happen if they saw things differently and put together a different plan. Who would oversee the machine he’d built, probe it for problems, and constantly improve it or decide to get rid of it? What qualities would such a person need to produce the same excellent results that he had—i.e., what were the important job specifications we should match the person against? Where would we go to recruit such a person?

While these kinds of questions seem obvious in retrospect, time and again I see people overlooking them. Not knowing what is required to do the job well and not knowing what your people are like is like trying to run a machine without knowing how its parts work together.

When I was younger I didn’t really understand the saying, “Hire someone better than you.” Now, after decades of hiring, managing, and firing people, I understand that to be truly successful I need to be like a conductor of people, many of whom (if not all) can play their instruments better than I can—and that if I was a really great conductor, I would also be able to find a better conductor than me and hire him or her. My ultimate goal is to create a machine that works so well that I can just sit back and watch beauty happen.

I cannot emphasize enough how important the selection, training, testing, evaluation, and sorting out of people is.

In the end, what you need to do is simple:

1. Remember the goal.

2. Give the goal to people who can achieve it (which is best) or tell them what to do to achieve it (which is micromanaging and therefore less good).

3. Hold them accountable.

4. If they still can’t do the job after you’ve trained them and given them time to learn, get rid of them.

《每日原则》为瑞·达利欧(Ray Dalio) 原创，

《原则》团队翻译，欢迎分享，转载请注明出处。