Timothy Chen

對員工而言，艾倫公司是個福利國家，對公司經營者而言，則是殘酷的資本主義制度。

- 賀伯特.艾倫

不過 Allen & Company 只有一兩百名員工，再加上又是IB，難怪有辦法像福利國家經營。

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每年到了端午節，大家期待吃粽子，我則是期待 AllThingsD Conference。今年Steve Ballmer 接受訪談影片精華片段如下 (而且還已經加了字幕):

大聲喊出BING！BING！這段有經典到。

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如果你沒有問對問題，那麼世界上所有的研究都毫無意義。

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If Google’s power over the web wanes, and I think it will in time, it will not likely be the result of Microsoft or someone else replacing it as the default search service. It will be because new default functions emerge that lessen the number of times we want to use the search function. (source)

想想我們還真的有不少 ”default” 的網路使用行為。看新聞都固定去哪個網站? 買東西都固定去哪個網站? 找朋友都固定去哪個網站? 收信都固定去哪個網站? 寫部落格都固定去哪個網站? 聽音樂看影片都固定去哪個網站?

成為 default bahavior 的終點，你就贏了。創造大眾新的 default behavior ，你就打敗G.Y.M. 之流了。

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…as the quality of search engines has approached parity. Sure, there are no switching costs, and it’s easy to simply type in a new web address should a better engine come along, but the psychological pull of the leading brand in the space overrides those factors for many consumers. (source)

 

突然想起我們常說搜尋引擎使用上的「轉換成本」 (user從搜尋引擎A. 換到搜尋引擎B. ) 很低，只要網址輸入一下，或滑鼠點幾下即可。但這似乎只是表象。我們都忽略了一個另一個看不見的隱性成本 — 習慣。習慣所帶來的束縛力量恐怕不是學理上 ”perceived value” 可以衡量的。

難怪小時候都走同一條路上學…

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感謝 Donald Trump 熱情分享:

• Focus is extremely important and should be emphasized as crucial for success. Here’s a very good acronym:
  F=Follow
  O=One
  C=Course
  U=Until
  S=Successful

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老實說一年多來很少見到 Ballmer 談企管心法的文章，總算昨天 (2009/5/16) 紐約時報 Corner Office 專欄請來 Ballmer 暢談想法，這不完整收錄一下是不行的啊！

開始之前，先節錄本日佳句：

Q: How do you assess job candidates?

A: … I try to figure out sort of a combination of I.Q. and passion. I just ask somebody to tell me what they’ve done that they are really proud of and tell me about it. And if it’s something you are proud of, you should be able to answer any question I can come up with, at least at a level that would satisfy my interest. I ought to be able to see your passion. It might be quiet passion; it might be bubbly passion. But I should be able to sense that you are one of those people who just sort of throws themselves into things.

好，訪談全文開始：

This interview of Steven A. Ballmer, the chief executive of Microsoft, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant.

 

Q. Are there areas you want to improve as a leader?

A. I race too much. My brain races too much, so even if I’ve listened to everything somebody said, unless you show that you’ve digested it, people don’t think they are being well heard. Sometimes you really don’t hear because you’re racing. It’s just the way my brain works. My brain is just chop, chop, chop, chop, chop. And so, if you really want to get the best out of people, you have to really hear them and they have to feel like they’ve been really heard. So I’ve got to learn to slow down and improve in that dimension, both to make me better and to make the people around me better.

 

Q. What’s it like to be in a meeting run by Steve Ballmer?

A. I’ve changed that, really in the last couple years. The mode of Microsoft meetings used to be: You come with something we haven’t seen in a slide deck or presentation. You deliver the presentation. You probably take what I will call “the long and winding road.” You take the listener through your path of discovery and exploration, and you arrive at a conclusion.

That’s kind of the way I used to like to do it, and the way Bill [Gates] used to kind of like to do it. And it seemed like the best way to do it, because if you went to the conclusion first, you’d get: “What about this? Have you thought about this?” So people naturally tried to tell you all the things that supported the decision, and then tell you the decision.

I decided that’s not what I want to do anymore. I don’t think it’s productive. I don’t think it’s efficient. I get impatient. So most meetings nowadays, you send me the materials and I read them in advance. And I can come in and say: “I’ve got the following four questions. Please don’t present the deck.” That lets us go, whether they’ve organized it that way or not, to the recommendation. And if I have questions about the long and winding road and the data and the supporting evidence, I can ask them. But it gives us greater focus.

 

Q. How do you assess job candidates?

A. If they come from inside the business, the best predictor of future success is past success. It’s not 100 percent, but it’s a reasonable predictor. For an external candidate, what I’ve found is that reference checks are super-important. I didn’t used to believe so much in reference checks. You can always get somebody to say something nice about you. But the truth is, if you ask enough questions and you ask around, you can really get a profile of who’s accomplished various things and who hasn’t.

And I try to figure out sort of a combination of I.Q. and passion. I just ask somebody to tell me what they’ve done that they are really proud of and tell me about it. And if it’s something you are proud of, you should be able to answer any question I can come up with, at least at a level that would satisfy my interest. I ought to be able to see your passion. It might be quiet passion; it might be bubbly passion. But I should be able to sense that you are one of those people who just sort of throws themselves into things.

 

Q. Is there a skill or qualification or trait that you’re looking for in prospective hires that didn’t matter as much 10 years ago?

A. Mostly, I’m still looking for what I’ve always looked for: extremely smart and talented people who love to work hard, who are passionate about technology and who have a great foundation in math and science. But compared to 10 years ago, technology is more complex, products and services span people’s lives in new ways, and our business is much more global. So it’s more important that people can think outside the confines of their individual expertise and their product group and connect the dots between technologies, customer needs and markets in new ways.

 

Q. What’s the most challenging part of your job?

A. Finding the right balance between optimism and realism. I’m an optimist by nature, and I start from the belief that you can always succeed if you have the right amount of focus combined with the right amount of hard work. So I can get frustrated when progress runs up against issues that should have been anticipated or that simply couldn’t have been foreseen. A realist knows that a certain amount of that is inevitable, but the optimist in me always struggles when progress doesn’t match my expectations.

 

Q. Fill in the blank. You want the culture of your company to be more _____ ?

A. Efficient. The right word is efficient. That’s the direction that every business leader is steering their company culture toward right now. Given the current economic climate and the uncertainty about how long the recession will last, this is a time when organizations need to do more with less, and Microsoft is no exception. We’ve made good progress, but for a company that has grown every year for more than 30 years, learning how to operate under more constrained circumstances is not always that easy.

At the same time, the need to be more efficient drives us all toward sharper focus on what is important and what can truly move the needle in terms of meeting customer needs and taking market share. Of course, we need to be innovative, but we also need to be efficient.

 

Q. Any books on management and leadership that you’ve found particularly useful?

A. Jim Collins’s book “Built to Last.”

 

Q. In all the speeches you’ve given, is there a favorite line or story or passage or quotation?

A. In February I was invited to share my business perspective on the economic downturn with House Democrats at their annual retreat. In that speech, I got to share something that my dad always told me growing up, which is a simple piece of advice that really shaped my approach to life and to business.

My dad worked for Ford for 30 years. When I was a kid, he’d say: “If you’re going to do a job, do a job. If you’re not going to do a job, don’t do a job.” What he meant was, if you really want to accomplish anything, you have to be committed, motivated, tenacious and smart about what you do. That’s really just the essence of the American work ethic, but it’s one of the most important things I ever learned.

 

Q. If you had to choose another profession, what would it be?

A. Education, probably. I like working with young people, and I think it’s really important to encourage talent. I love basketball, so I could see myself as a high school basketball coach. I think a basketball team that I coached would have a really good chance of being a winner.

 

Q. What would you like business schools to focus on more, or less?

A. I’d like to see more emphasis on the importance of taking the long view. Companies focus too much on short-term results in business. It takes patience to build a great business, and sometimes you have to be willing to make the long-term investment and then keep at it if you want to succeed.

 

Q. If you could teach any b-school course, including one that you create, what would it be?

A. Leadership. Microsoft has grown from 30 people to more than 90,000 since I started, so I’ve had the chance to play a leadership role at practically every stage imaginable in a company’s growth and development. I’ve learned a lot about leadership along the way from some great people that I’ve worked with and through experience.

I’ve come to believe that to be a great leader, you have to combine thought leadership, business leadership and great people management. I think most people tend to focus more on one of those three. I used to think it was all about thought leadership. Some people think it’s all about your ability to manage people. But the truth is, great leaders have to have a mix of those things.

 

(source, NY Times)

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Google has a number of explanations for why it plays fair, which it’s been sharing in a presentation called "Google, Competition and Openness." For one, the company likes to say its competition is "just one click away." In other words, there’s nothing really preventing users from switching to another search engine - aside from sheer habit - if they want to find better results. As proof, Google points to an incident from January 31 when a Google coding error affected all of its search results and users shifted search engines immediately… (source)

這真的是一個有趣的論點，如果使用者從市占率過高的產品專移到競爭品幾乎無障礙，這樣還算是壟斷嗎?

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5. One Question

今天這個主題不是談台灣的金融市場，而是指台灣的社群網路環境。如果仔細看一下台灣流量前幾的噗浪、推特、部落格、論壇，其中的主文、留言真正具有深度的不多 (不要再發表懶人包了! 不要再謝謝大大無私的分享了!) 。大家有興趣的議題幾乎等同於「夠格」登上蘋果日報或壹週刊的議題。可想而知，這些譁眾取寵的內容，是不可能引起太多正經的討論。

我自己常混的幾個美國社群就較沒有這些現象，除了寫嚴肅主題的部落格能擁有大流量外，有時還會看到寫得比本文更長、更精彩的回應。有時一個議題會引起不同部落客交相引用，並於自己的部落格加入想法；網網互聯之下，彷彿形成一個超大型分散式論壇，雖然大家不在同一個介面之下，但無形中都在關心並深入探討 ”that really matters” 的主題。像滾雪球般，過程往往是某知名部落客率先發難，接著讀者蜂擁而上回應，回不夠的再拉回自己的部落格發表 (reblog)，這些 reblog 文章被 content aggeregator service 蒐集，再引起更多人注意討論 (re-reblog)。就我關注的矽谷科技部落圈來說，就常出現 ”This weekend, hearing every blogger buzz around oooo topic…” 這類的評論。雖然我有時也會受不老美的 imho 文化，一個「現象」竟然人人都想參一腳發表自己的見地，例如「Facebook 片面改變使用者條款」現象所引發的 “who owns the data” 事件就延燒了一整個禮拜，最後造成站方不得不使用民主的方式投票決定新版 terms of service。

也許對多數台灣人來說，網路還是一個休閒媒介，是一個娛樂媒介，是拿來放鬆心情用的，是讓頭腦暫時休息用的。也許這也和台灣教育制度從小不鼓勵發表，不鼓勵深度思考有關。

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1. 用說的

Erick Schonfeld 認為線上廣告產業已正式進入緊縮期，主要是因為 09 年第一季的 4 大廣告平台的廣告版位營收年減 2.01%，季減 6.96%。這是線上廣告市場過去連 6 季成長以來，第一次繳出退步的成績單。

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When making a choice between two options, only consider what’s going to happen in the future, not which investments you’ve made in the past. The past investments are over, lost, gone forever. They are irrelevant to the future. – (source)

Obsession of the past makes you a lame decision-maker.

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1. What compelling reason exists for people to give you money? (or votes or donations)
2. How do you acquire what you’re selling for less than it costs to sell it?
3. What structural insulation do you have from relentless commoditization and a price war?
4. How will strangers find out about the business and decide to become customers? (source)

這句我也很喜歡：”Once you build a network, it’s extremely difficult for someone else to disrupt it.”  站在能量守恆定律的立場，這很公平。我們看到的各種 network 效應都是用數千小時心力去經營出來的，然而從旁觀者的角度來看，network effect 似乎是擺在那邊就會自己匯聚成型一般。所以通常故事結局都是這樣：眼紅的競爭者看到亮麗結果，也想跳進去模仿 (衝阿！社群無敵！衝阿！網路無敵！)，但俯衝之際就被進入門檻拌了一跤。嘿，沒想到進入門檻這般高。有多高？大概有三、四層樓那麼高。

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The iPod stemmed losses in the music industry.  The Kindle gave beleaguered book publishers a reason for optimism.  —  Now the recession-ravaged newspaper and magazine industries are hoping for their own knight in shining digital armor … (source)

NY Times 記者鋪這些梗 (& beautifully written) 就只為帶出明天可能會公佈的新版 Amazon Kindle - 大螢幕版。大螢幕代表什麼呢？代表可以把閱讀雜誌、閱讀報紙的經驗複製到電子裝置中。上週末巴菲特才公開表示他獨愛的報業已經走到 change or  goodbye 的境界了。全球書迷們都在猜 Kindle 最後會成為出版業的銀鎧王子，或是屠城木馬 :D。

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首先是客場球隊 - Google:

G公司日前宣佈一項新技術：Google Apps Directoty Sync，讓企業 IT 部門可以將Microsoft Active Directory 或 Lotus Domino 的帳號 (alias) 資訊同步到 Google Apps 當中。小弟私以為 AD (Active Directory) 的便利性和延展性是 MS OS/Server 在企業端能佔有一席之地的關鍵性優勢，G公司這個動作等同於攻進五角大樓。值得繫好安全帶看雙方精彩演出。

接下讓我們歡迎主場球隊 – Microsoft:

M公司則是透過 Facebook 最新開放的 API – Open Stream 中大秀兩手。Open Stream 終於讓程式開發人員光明正大摸走存取使用者的狀態即時更新 (e.g. News Feeds)，這和其他服務 mash-up 之後將有無限可能。慶祝新 API 釋出的活動中，來自M公司的兩支團隊只花 72 小時就開發出令人驚豔的兩組應用。其一是建立在 Silverlight 技術之上；另一則是建立在 .NET 技術之上。Demo 影片附於文末。

M公司不虧是 Facebook 的早期投資人 (雖然目前看來是套牢)，然而，套房裡搭起的友誼橋樑不是外人能輕易體會的！FB 與「投資人」之間的曖昧關係，是否暗示著未來將有更多合作機會？我猜 YES。小弟私以為對 Mark Zuckerberg 來說，G公司比M公司更像潛在競爭者。

看看這段 Demo 影片，如果無名小站也開放能 access 到正妹相簿的 API，那另一支基於 Silverlight 技術的 Killer Applicaiton 肯定會很快在台灣問世！

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市場是什麼？那是叢林法則，大自然法則。而文明又是什麼呢？是對抗大自然。

 

- 伊多瓦.巴拉度, 前法國保守派總理

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… (安隆、世界通訊) 事件的主角是作假帳。大家即將學到，在相當大的程度上，現代企業會計的基礎建立在一系列預測上，未必反應一家公司的過去歷史。這表示，企業的營運成果有相當顯著的一部分要靠寬大的裁量，而且，經常受到濫權之影響。

 

例如，退休金責任之計算並依此計算成為所得之費用，都需要作許多不確定的預測，以致於計算出來的潛在退休金成本，變動範圍相當大，但都可以合理解釋。每月收取貸款還本付息款項的銀行，在放款還沒完全清償或是違約之前，無法完全確定其放款是否能夠還本付息。反應固定資產經濟價值折減情形的折舊費用，我們知道，受當相當大的裁量之影響，視設備受到科技進步之影響而變成呆滯的預期速度有多快決定。

 

- 艾倫. 葛林斯潘, 我們的新世界, P. 483

直到我們發明出更適合 21 世紀的會計原則之前，目前的解法只能對企業財報更加保守看待。下回記得先用銳利的雙眼來幫財報上的數字打折。有賺錢的，就想像實際情況是這家公司其實沒賺那麼多，有賠錢的，就想像其實這家公司賠更多。比如說 Google 上季認列員工選擇權成本這件事，我一直很耿耿於懷… XD

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本來只是因為上篇文章需要，找了一下葛老的名言：非理性繁榮 (irrational exuberance )

…But how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions as they have in Japan over the past decade… (source)

一時手滑又找到耶魯大學教授席勒所著的同名書籍<非理性繁榮>簡介，在書中第六章驚見「台灣」兩字： 我們的市場竟有幸被拿來做 case study XD

台湾的股民在90年股市泡沫破灭之后，历经多次股市三温暖的洗礼，对本书的感受想必更深。席勒在书中第六章写道，台湾的几次股价大跌，都名列世界前茅，1989到90年股市跌落74.9﹪，为那年最大跌幅国家中的世界第一；五年期股市跌幅较大国家中，台湾也分列第七名与第27名。不过，台湾的投资者似乎一直没有从失败中汲取教训，政府也一直认为“股市兴亡，官员有责”，带给投资人一个“股市会涨，不会跌，如果真的下跌，政府会出面救”的错误观念，股市的机制也以助涨不助跌的原则来规划。但台湾的投资泡沫一直不断地破了又吹、吹了又破，真正的原因是政府所扮演的角色有问题，可惜的是当前的股市已经跌到似乎国安基金也无能为力的地步了，投资人必须正视市场机制的存在，这时，席勒的书就更有用了。(source)

政府該不該介入市場，何時介入，採什麼方法介入，實在不是我們凡人能夠瞭解的。遙想去年10 月崩盤，台灣政府頒布的組合套餐：上沖下洗3.5 啪，搭配禁止放空令不沾醬，結果是造成無量下跌，一堆權值股每天開盤就跌停鎖死，實在是經典啊！

不過上文段落出自大陸的互動百科，席勒實際在書中是輕描淡寫帶過台灣，還是深入剖析，就待閒暇時再去一窺究竟囉。

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