DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg recalls the summer of 1994 like it was yesterday.
夢工廠動畫公司（DreamWorks Animation）CEO杰弗里o卡森伯格回憶起1994年夏天的事，他感慨那一切仿佛就發(fā)生在昨天。
Katzenberg was chairman of The Walt Disney Studios , a role that included reviving its animated film business. And revive it he did. Come 1994, Walt Disney Studios was back on top: “The Lion King” was the No. 1 movie, the top-selling soundtrack with 25 million albums sold, and a blockbuster video game developed by Sega. Oh, and the No. 1 TV show — a half-hour family sitcom called “Home Improvement,” with Tim Allen — belonged to Disney, too. But all that success did little to stop ex-CEO Michael Eisner from firing him over irreconcilable differences.
卡森伯格時任華特o迪士尼制片廠（The Walt Disney Studios）總裁，肩負著復興迪士尼動畫電影業(yè)務的重任。他也幸不辱命。1994年，迪士尼重回頂峰：《獅子王》（The Lion King）成為票房排行第一的電影，電影原聲帶也極為暢銷，共售出2,500萬張專輯，世嘉公司（Sega）根據(jù)電影開發(fā)的視頻游戲也風靡一時。此外，當年收視率最高的電視劇——由蒂姆o艾倫主演的時長半小時的家庭情景喜劇《家居裝飾》（Home Improvement）——也屬于迪士尼。然而，這些成功依舊無法阻止前任CEO邁克爾o艾斯納因為兩人之間無法調和的矛盾而將其解雇。
The lesson learned? “Do good — just don’t do too good,” quipped the 63-year-old Hollywood exec onstage at a conference hosted by online file-sharing startup Box on Wednesday. Katzenberg is now CEO of DreamWorks Animation , the Glendale, Calif.- animation studio he co-founded with media moguls Steven Spielberg and David Geffen in 2004. Not every film has performed well at the box office — this March’s flop, “Mr. Peabody & Sherman,” cost the studio $57 million in the first quarter — but the studio has also produced blockbusters like “Shrek 2″ and “Shrek the Third.” And its most recent film, “How to Train Your Dragon 2,” crossed the $600 million mark in ticket sales this weekend.
這一事件帶來的教訓就是，“要把事情做好——但不要做得太好，”63歲的卡森伯格自嘲道。最近，這位好萊塢高管出席了由在線文件分享初創(chuàng)公司Box主辦的會議，并登臺接受了采訪。卡森伯格現(xiàn)任夢工場動畫公司CEO，2004年，他與媒體巨頭史蒂夫o斯皮爾伯格、大衛(wèi)o格芬在加州格蘭代爾合作創(chuàng)建了這家公司。雖然夢工廠的電影并非部部賣座，比如今年3月的《天才眼鏡狗》（Mr. Peabody & Sherman）便遭遇了票房滑鐵盧，令夢工廠在第一季度損失了5,700萬美元，但其制作的熱賣大片也不在少數(shù)，比如《怪物史萊克2》（Shrek 2）和《怪物史萊克3》（Shrek 3）。最新電影《馴龍記2》（How to Train Your Dragon 2）的票房更是在最近突破了6億美元。
The process by which Katzenberg and his studio go about making movies follows a general philosophy he’s followed for decades. “The one thing I always tried to do a little bit better than what I was expected to do,” he said. “When I go into a situation, whether it was an assignment I had, whether it was as a gopher [years ago], retrieving a danish for someone, or when I come into a staff meeting, I think about how I can exceed expectations and have people walk out of those engagements thinking, ‘well, that was a little bit better. I didn’t expect that.’ When people walk into any product or movie of ours, we want it to be a little bit more than what they were expecting. We don’t always succeed, but we really try hard.”
在制作電影的過程中，卡森伯格和夢工廠始終貫徹一條卡森伯格自己數(shù)十年來一直在踐行的原則。他說道：“我做每一件事情，都會努力使其超出預期。不論遇到什么情況，比如接受一個任務，做一名推銷員（數(shù)年前的事情），甚至是幫某人檢索一個丹麥語單詞，或者參加員工大會的時候，我都會考慮如何超出預期，讓人們最終覺得：‘這樣好多了。這出乎我的意料。’我希望人們來購買我們的產品或觀看我們的電影時，會發(fā)現(xiàn)結果都超出了他們的預期。我們不可能事事成功，但是我們一直在努力。”
Case in point: Katzenberg’s 40th wedding anniversary with wife Marilyn isn’t until early next year, but the exec is already plotting a surprise for her. “I’m already working on how in the hell am I going to exceed her expectations,” he mused. “So, if you can you exceed the expectations of those people you’re in business with, almost every single time you will win.”
一個很好的例子：明年年初，卡森伯格與妻子瑪麗琳將迎來40周年結婚紀念日，但他已經(jīng)開始計劃，到時候給妻子一個驚喜。他若有所思地說道：“我正在考慮如何給她一個出人意料的驚喜。如果你能事事超出生意伙伴的預期，勝利肯定是屬于你的。”
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