Questioning CEOs

 

 

Interviewer: OK, I want to pursue this area for just a minute, because I’m wondering whether or not, either of you or both of you have the experience in recent days where the same people who regarded you as the absolute Sun King and Queen of the world are now looking at you at all differently, because they’ve seen the value of the shares go down? I mean, do people tend to blame the ¹⁾CEO in the same way that they may credit the CEO when things go well?

John Chambers¹: I’ll give you the tough questions, Carly, first. I’ll take the second shot at it.

Carly Fiorina: Well, first of all, I remember, well, something that someone once said to me about the media. What they said was, “You’re never as good as they say you are and you’re never as bad as they say you are.” and that’s true. I think leadership takes, and now I’m quoting John, John says all the time and it’s true, “Leadership takes more than its fair share of the credit and more than its fair share of the blame,” but that is the price of leadership.

Chambers: I would agree and I often open up after somebody says some nice comments and introducing for a speech with exactly that comment “you’re never as good as things are when things go well nor as bad when you trip a little bit.” The press; it goes with the territory. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by both how our employee base and how our ²⁾shareholders, even those who have lost a lot of money, probably about 95, 98 per cent of the e-mails and voice mails have been very ³⁾supportive. Now they expect us to get it back up, but very supportive of where we are.

Interviewer: But is easier, does it help in a way your individual company’s or yourself’s that this, whatever we want to call it, down turn, Tsunami³ has hit so broadly?

Carly: Well, I think it certainly helps in the sense that what investors⁴, what employees, what customers ought to be focused on in this time is: are the basic strategies changing? They shouldn’t be just because times get tough if they were the right strategies. Are the basic ways of operating changing? They shouldn’t be just because the times are getting tough. Of course you make different ⁴⁾discretionary decisions, but the way you treat your employees, do you still treat them with respect and ⁵⁾empathy in the tough times as well as the good times? So people ought to be looking for the patterns that endure. And I think that’s true of investors, the smart ones are trying to say, okay, it’s going to be ⁶⁾crummy for a couple of quarters, but do I believe in the value this company represents? Do I believe in the employees and the management team that are trying to uncover that value?

Interviewer: Let me turn to something that Carly mentioned, then I’ll want to give you a chance. She talked about the fact that when she was named CEO at Hewlett Packard, she was very conscious of the import of her words. How conscious are you of the public ⁷⁾persona you display?

Chambers: That has changed a lot in the last couple of years. But originally, ⁸⁾CISCO was a company that sold a couple of technicians very deep in the bowels⁵ of the IT organization, and no one knew who we were, and neither myself nor my ⁹⁾predecessor⁶, now my chairman John Wooldridge cared. And so we had no personal needs to be known ¹⁰⁾whatsoever⁷. And that was fine as long as two technicians were making the decisions. But once everybody from the ¹¹⁾CIO, the Chairman of the Board of the company, the President were making the decisions on this, the image of the company and what it represented became very important to us. You can accomplish that through huge amount of advertising⁸, which I’m not sure is real effective in many ways; or you can accomplish it in terms of the image of the company in different ways with the executive, all things being ¹²⁾synonymous with what you’re trying to do with that image. So it goes with the territory and I think in today’s environment in Carly’s company or mine, you have to do that in high tech because a large part of the ¹³⁾exposure you get which is free advertising and people’s perception of your company is through the CEO’s.

Interviewer: I almost hesitate to ask this, but is there some sense in which that makes the job more enjoyable?

Carly: Well I think...

Chambers: You could say no!

Carly: ¹⁴⁾Humanizing technology and humanizing leadership, I think, are at this ¹⁵⁾juncture⁹ both important. I think that’s a little bit what John was saying. I think it’s actually healthy that people know who their leaders are, with all that that ¹⁶⁾entails. I guess there’s a difference though between knowing a leader and ¹⁷⁾caricaturing a leader.CE

 

19、提问CEO

 

John Chambers和Carly Fiorina分别是思科公司和惠普公司的总裁兼首席执行官，他们被一致公认为21世纪CEO的楷模；几乎每本商业杂志都希望将他们作为封面人物，几乎业界召开的每次会议都希望有他们作基调发言。而“当领导会受到比实际多的称赞，也会受到比实际多的责难。”然在凌厉逼人的问题前，愈显出他们的幽默、从容不迫，以及过人的智慧。

记者：好的，我想就此问题进行一分钟的追击，因为我想知道你们俩最近有否这样的经历：那些原来敬你们犹如神明的人是否由于看到股价下跌，于是现在对你们就改观了？我的意思是，在顺境中人们会称赞首席执行官，那么在逆势时他们也会责难首席执行官吗？

约翰·钱伯斯：卡莉，这么棘手的问题还是你先回答吧。我后说。

卡莉·菲奥里纳：首先，我记得很清楚，有人曾经对我谈论过关于媒体的一席话。他们是这么说的：“你没有他们说的那么好，也没有他们说的那么差。”事实也如此。我认为当领导需要——现在我要引用约翰经常说的话，他说的也是事实——“当领导会受到比实际多的称赞，也会受到比实际多的责难。”那就是当领导的代价。

钱伯斯：我同意，有时别人对我一番嘉奖后，我通常会在自我介绍中这么说：“当顺境时，你并非如料想的那么好；劣势中，你也并非如所说的那样糟糕。”媒体之言是形势所趋的。我感到意外惊喜的是：我们的雇员和股东中尽管有些人亏了很多钱，可竟然有大概百分之九十五到九十八的电子邮件和电话留言都对我们表示了大力支持。他们期望我们再振雄风，在现状里依然支持我们。

记者：简而言之，那对你个人的公司或你自己有帮助吗？因为这次打击——我们称之为不景气也罢，海啸也好——席卷的范围太大了。

卡莉：我认为那肯定是有帮助的。投资者、雇员和顾客在这样的时候应该集中关注以下几点：基本的战略改变了吗？如果战略是正确的，他们就不应该因为现在的局势低落而转向。基本运作方式改变了吗？他们不应该因为现在的局势不景气而转向。当然你可以自由作决定，但是在对待雇员的方式上，你是否在顺逆境中都同样带着敬意和爱心去关心他们？所以人们应该寻找的是长久的模式。我想真正精明的投资者会说，好吧，一段时间内情况会恶劣点，但我是否相信这家公司的价值观？我是否相信它的员工和管理层正在努力实现他们的价值观？

记者：我想就卡莉所提到的，借机向你提一个问题。她说过在她被任命为惠普公司的首席执行官时，她很注意自己的言谈。你对自己在公众面前树立形象的自觉度怎样？

钱伯斯：过去几年里我有很大改变。但是最初的思科公司是为IT行业培养核心技术人员的，没有人知道我们是谁，我自己和我的前辈都不在乎，但现公司主席约翰·伍德里奇重视这一点。所以说从前我们不存在有个人的荣耀，两名技术人员就可以做出决定。但是一旦由首席信息官，公司董事会的主席来下决定的时候，公司所代表的形象对于我们重要起来。你可以通过大量的广告来树立形象，但是我不确定是否真正有效；或者你可以和各主管一起在不同方面建立公司的形象，你的行为举止和公司的形象是保持一致的。所以那也是形势所趋，我想，现在卡莉的公司和我的公司做的是高科技，因为很多曝光的机会就是免费广告，人们对于你公司的看法也是通过首席执行官取得的。

记者：这个问题，问起来我几乎有些犹豫。CEO的工作有趣吗？

卡莉：嗯，我认为……

钱伯斯：你可以说没趣嘛！

卡莉：我认为，将科技人性化和领导人性化相结合是很重要的。就有点像约翰说的那样。我认为让人们了解他们的上司是谁以及有哪些权限，是很健康的做法。但去了解领导并非去讽刺领导两者是不一样的。CE

 

1) CEO Chief Executive Officer的缩写，首席执行官，执行总裁

2) shareholder² [5FZE 7hEudE] n.股票持有人；股东

3) supportive [sE5pC:tiv]] a.支持的；维持的；赞助的

4) discretionary [dis5kreFEnEri] a.自由决定的，便宜行事的

5) empathy [5empEWi] n. 移情作用

6) crummy[5krQmi] a. 无价值的；糟糕的；微不足道的

7) persona [pE:5sEunE] n. 表面形象

8) CISCO 美国思科公司

9) predecessor [5predisesE] n. 前任；前辈

10) whatsoever [ hwCtsEu5eve] pron.到底是什么；究竟是什么。相当于whatever，语气较whatever强

11) CIO Chief Information Officer的缩写。首席信息官，主管对内、对外信息的搜集与整理工作

12) synonymous [si5nCnimEs]a. 同义词性质的;同义的

13) exposure [ik5spEuVE] n. 曝光；曝光量；曝光时间

14) humanize [5hju:mEnaiz] v. 使变得人道，使仁慈；使文明，教化

15) juncture [5dVQNktFE]n. 时刻；光件时刻，危急关头

16) entail¹⁰ [in5teil] n. 权限

17) caricature[7kArikE5tjuE] v. 讽刺，使滑稽化

 

1 chambers   

n.房间( chamber的名词复数 )；（议会的）议院；卧室；会议厅

参考例句：

• The body will be removed into one of the cold storage chambers. 尸体将被移到一个冷冻间里。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Mr Chambers's readable book concentrates on the middle passage: the time Ransome spent in Russia. Chambers先生的这本值得一看的书重点在中间：Ransome在俄国的那几年。 来自互联网

2 shareholder   

n.股东，股票持有人

参考例句：

• The account department have prepare a financial statement for the shareholder.财务部为股东准备了一份财务报表。
• A shareholder may transfer his shares in accordance with the law.股东持有的股份可以依法转让。

3 tsunami   

n.海啸

参考例句：

• Powerful quake sparks tsunami warning in Japan.大地震触发了日本的海啸预警。
• Coastlines all around the Indian Ocean inundated by a huge tsunami.大海啸把印度洋沿岸地区都淹没了。

4 investors   

n.投资者，出资者( investor的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• a con man who bilked investors out of millions of dollars 诈取投资者几百万元的骗子
• a cash bonanza for investors 投资者的赚钱机会

5 bowels   

n.肠，内脏，内部；肠( bowel的名词复数 )；内部，最深处

参考例句：

• Salts is a medicine that causes movements of the bowels. 泻盐是一种促使肠子运动的药物。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The cabins are in the bowels of the ship. 舱房设在船腹内。 来自《简明英汉词典》

6 predecessor   

n.前辈，前任

参考例句：

• It will share the fate of its predecessor.它将遭受与前者同样的命运。
• The new ambassador is more mature than his predecessor.新大使比他的前任更成熟一些。

7 whatsoever   

adv.（用于否定句中以加强语气）任何；pron.无论什么

参考例句：

• There's no reason whatsoever to turn down this suggestion.没有任何理由拒绝这个建议。
• All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you,do ye even so to them.你想别人对你怎样，你就怎样对人。

8 advertising   

n.广告业；广告活动 a.广告的；广告业务的

参考例句：

• Can you give me any advice on getting into advertising? 你能指点我如何涉足广告业吗?
• The advertising campaign is aimed primarily at young people. 这个广告宣传运动主要是针对年轻人的。

9 juncture   

n.时刻，关键时刻，紧要关头

参考例句：

• The project is situated at the juncture of the new and old urban districts.该项目位于新老城区交界处。
• It is very difficult at this juncture to predict the company's future.此时很难预料公司的前景。

10 entail   

vt.使承担，使成为必要，需要

参考例句：

• Such a decision would entail a huge political risk.这样的决定势必带来巨大的政治风险。
• This job would entail your learning how to use a computer.这工作将需要你学会怎样用计算机。