儘量犯錯

"錯誤的政策比貪污還可怕" -- 政府犯錯, 全民買單.

但是商學院的老師卻教學生: 一個好的失敗是值得獎勵的, 而即使是平凡的成功也不值一顧.
“Reward excellent failures. Punish mediocre successes.” by Phil Daniels, Sydney exec
但是在公司裡面, 每年每季每月都訂有目標. 沒有達成目標就換人做, 這是很現實的問題.
怎麼可能允許員工犯錯? 公司又有多少資源可供員工如此的犯錯來揮霍.
問題是由誰來判斷 excellent failure or mediocre success?
舉兩個例子, Apple 當年把 Steve Jobs 趕走, 股價長期在10元以下, 面臨了微軟的強勢銷售, 即使大家對 Apple 的產品愛不釋手, 卻仍不見銷售有任何起色. 直到把前任 CEO fire 再度把 Steve Jobs 請來掌舵. --- 董事會犯的錯, 員工及投資人買單.
另一個例子是 HP, 今年初把 Fiorina 花了 2110 萬美金資遣之後, 股價才再度爬上近30元. 雖然目前仍無法看出是好或壞, 但短期內似乎結果不如預期. ( HP 希望能趕上 IBM, 怪不得 Tom Peters 說: "Acquisitions are about buying market share. Our challenge is to create marketz. There is a big different." )
這些公司花的代價是獎勵還是懲罰? 又獎勵了誰, 懲罰了誰呢?

鄧小平同志說, 不管黑貓白貓，會抓老鼠就是好貓. -- 這句話簡潔易懂.
看來商學院的話, 也只是些名詞句子而已.

Ref:
Tom Peters quotation, http://ryskamp.org/brain/business/tom-peters-master-of-quotation
Steve Jobs, http://www.fastcompany.com/articles/1999/11/steve_jobs.html
Carly Fiorina, http://www.networkworld.com/news/2005/0211fioritoge.html

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English version: Encourage to failure!!

In Chinese proverb, "The fallacious policy is much dreadful than corruption"; the government made mistake and the consequence is the people suffered.

“Reward excellent failures. Punish mediocre successes.” -- Phil Daniels

In a company, you are easily degraded or laid-off if you didn’t achieve the goals which set by monthly, quarterly, and yearly. This is a realistic problem. It is dangerous for a company to invest its precious resources on a person who fail in the end. I doubt how many times the company can afford expensive resources to such failure investment unless the scope of failure is under management.

My questions are who make the judgment to decide excellent failure or mediocre success? And who would be awarded or punished? What is the extent of failure and success? How long is to measure the result?

Two examples, Apple Computer stock price had been struggle since Steve Jobs resigned from his co-fund company in 1985. Apple didn’t perform well until the board fired ex-CEO and Steve rejoined the company as Apple’s CEO. The board and company made a great mistake to let Steve leave and the consequence was whole company and investors punished.

Another is Hewlett-Packard. HP’s stock price soars near $30 recently which is close to the peak of price during five years period. One of reasons was that the board finally made the decision to pay the severance package $21.38 million to ex-CEO Fiorina. We can’t conclude good or bad about merging between HP and Compaq, but the short-term result shows obviously in stock market. (This example matches the quotation “Acquisition are about buying market share. Our challenge is to create markets. There is a big different”)

These companies had paid huge price on their failure of decision. Who get the award and who get punished?

Deng Xiaoping, Chinese ex-leader, said that no matter the cat is white or black, the one who can catch the mouse is the best! I thought the quotation is easy and clear to understand which no matter the success is good or bad is worth to admire.