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1. It’s not easy
1. 管理難度
Running a global, complex company in 2014is one of the most difficult management and leadership challenges imaginable.After all, Coke is sold in almost every country in the world; Wal-Mart employs2.2m people. For companies such as these, not only do you need to run yourbusiness, but you also need to think about how to completely change it attimes. Few large companies are adept at pulling off both these tricks. Maybethat’s why IBM has fallen behind in cloud services and mobile, two of the mostimportant changes in the IT world. They require different organisationalstructures and even different talent for success than IBM’s corebusinesses.
年管理一家龐雜的全球企業是管理層所能想象到的最困難的挑戰。畢竟，可口可樂在全世界幾乎所有國家都有業務；沃爾瑪有220萬雇員。對這樣的企業來說，不僅需要考慮業務的開展，還要思考如何在一些時候徹底革新。幾乎沒有哪家大企業能夠同時嫻熟掌握這兩種技巧。或許這就是IBM沒趕上信息行業兩大變化——云服務和移動——的原因。這需要不同于IBM核心業務的組織結構，甚至需要不同的人才。
Successful companies build strong culturesthat reinforce that success. Adapting to change often requires leaders to breakthat culture. That’s not easy.
成功的公司構建強大的企業文化，而這又幫助企業獲得成功。而順應變化常常需要領導者打破原來的企業文化。這并不容易。
2. The formula for growth is not infinite
2. 增長沒有固定的公式
There are clear pathways to growing abusiness. Once you have your core product or service, your opportunities comefrom selling it to more customers. Eventually the quest for customers leads tonew markets. Simultaneously, companies seek to expand. Perhaps they look fornew ways to leverage their main products, or they seek to offer new services.
企業增長有清晰的路徑。一旦你有了核心產品或服務，把它出售給更多的消費者，你就會獲得增長機會。最終，為了贏得更多的消費者，企業會進軍新的市場。同時，企業還試圖擴張。企業可能會尋找新的方式來利用它們的主打產品，或者它們會試圖提供新的服務。
And that’s it. Growth comes from sellingthe same thing to new customers or selling new things to existing customers, orboth. What happens when a company and its leaders have pretty much played allthese cards? Where else can Coca-Cola sell their products? Are there some productcategories that Wal-Mart and Tesco have yet to uncover?
這就是全部了。增長來自于把同樣的東西出售給新的顧客，或向現有的顧客出售新的東西，或者雙管齊下。但是，當一家企業基本上打完了所有這些牌以后，會發生什么？可口可樂還可以賣到哪里去？還有什么產品類別是沃爾瑪和樂購沒有覆蓋到的嗎？
3. New growth opportunities usually involvemore risk
3. 新的增長機會常常伴隨著更大的風險
Once a company begins to exhaust its coregrowth formula, it has got to look further afield. And that means expandinginto tangentially related businesses where they may no longer have the inherentadvantage.
一旦一家企業開始逐漸耗盡其核心增長模式，它就必須把目光放到其他領域。這就意味著向相關的臨近業務擴展，而企業在這些領域可能并沒有內在優勢。
Amazon is a particularly intriguingexample, because its managers are taking all sorts of new risks via expansion,even while its core business — ecommerce — is growing by leaps and bounds. It’snot impossible to make this work, but the degree of difficulty goes upexponentially when you enter a market or product category where you don’t have theupper hand. Amazon’s failure in a variety of new ventures, from smartphones, totablets, to search is a case in point.
亞馬遜是一個特別有趣的例子，因為亞馬遜的管理者在其核心業務——電子商務——蒸蒸至上的同時，還在通過擴張冒各種風險。這種方式并不是不可能成功，但是當你進入了你完全無法掌控的領域或產品類別時，成功的難度就會以指數級增長。亞馬遜在各種新項目上遭遇的失敗——從智能手機、平板電腦，到搜索——都是很好的例子。
4. It’s much less fun tocompete when growth slows
4. 增速放緩時競爭就不那么有趣了
Growth is great, but when the naturaltrajectory of growth slows, you’ve got to compete on price and other features. That’s much lessfun, because you’re now fighting a zero-sum game for market share points, and it’s much lesslucrative.
增長是件好事，但是當自然增長開始放緩時，你就不得不在價格和其他方面開展競爭。這就不那么有趣了，因為你的競爭目標是市場份額，零和游戲的利潤并不好。
Not only is your business strategy tougherto pull off when growth slows, but a company’s addiction to meeting and beatingmarket expectations (remember the score sheet, aka, the stock market?) createsall sorts of negative side effects. Cost cutting starts to dominate, forinstance. That’s not necessarily a bad thing … until it becomes the go-tostrategy to push earnings per share growth. There are natural limits to costcutting, because at some point you start to lose great talent, cut back on newinitiatives and push out other priorities. For example, the disastrous Gulf oilspill in 2010 was triggered, at least in part, by BP’s maniacalattention to cost cutting.
當增長放緩時，不僅你的商業戰略會難以奏效，而且當企業對達到并超過市場預期上癮時（還記得打分表，即股票市場嗎？），這會帶來各種各樣的副作用。比如，削減成本開始主導。這未必是件壞事……除非企業依賴這一戰略以促進每股盈利的增長。從根本上講，削減成本是有上限的，因為到了一定程度，你就會開始損失人才，減少新項目并放棄其他優先事項。比如，2010年墨西哥灣漏油事故的部分起因就是英國石油瘋狂削減成本。
IBM has spent more money on stock buybacksand dividends than research and development for some time, a strategy thatcertainly pushes earnings per share up, but only makes it tougher to compete,and even tougher to find a new path to renewed growth.
近期，IBM用于股票回購和發放紅利的資金已經超過研發資金。這一戰略當然會促進每股盈利的增長，但是它也會削弱IBM的競爭力，阻礙它尋找新的增長途徑。
5. No company lives forever
5. 沒有長盛不衰的公司
This is the one nobody in the executivesuite really wants to hear about, but it’s simply a core lesson of businesshistory. Of the top 100 companies by revenues in 1955, for example, only abouta dozen still enjoy that same ranking almost 70 years later. Everything leadersdo to grow a business is designed to forestall the day when that growth stops.And of course new waves of entrepreneurial ventures rise to take up the topspots over time. After all, back in 1955 Wal-Mart and Amazon were nowhere to befound, and McDonald’s was a tiny regional player. Today they’re allgiants. What will we see in another few decades?
這一條沒有任何管理人員希望聽到，但它正是商業歷史中的核心一課。以1955年收入前100的公司為例，70年以后，只有12家左右仍然保持相同的排名。企業的領導者做的每一件事都是試圖阻止增長停止那一天的到來。不過，新一波創業公司在崛起的同時自然也會進入收入排行榜。畢竟，1955年時，沃爾瑪和亞馬遜還不存在，麥當勞只是一個微不足道的地方企業。而如今，它們都成長為商業巨頭。再過幾十年，我們又會見證什么變化呢？
Companies that become giants in theirindustries are not immune from these five fundamental forces. At some pointthey become so big that the classic pathways to growth become constricted, andthe inevitable rise of new companies start to take their toll. At some point,all successful companies become too big to succeed.
即使成為行業巨頭，這些企業也無法擺脫這五種基本力量。在某個時候，它們的規模如此之大，以至于傳統的增長模式受到限制，而另一方面，新興企業的增長又必然會重創大企業。到某個時候，所有成就顯赫的企業都會遇到增長的瓶頸—大到不能再繼續成功。
