Ladies and gentlemen,

Good afternoon. Today I'II focus on the definition and the importance of entrepreneurial culture, drawing on the lesson from the Enron case.

For most of the 1990s, CEOs of Old Economy companies struggled to turn slow-moving organizations into nimbler, more flexible outfits. The truth is, real transformations are the exception rather than the rule. Changing the core values, the attitudes, and the fundamental relationships of a vast organization is overwhelmingly difficult. That's why an army of academics and consultants descended on Enron in the late 1990s and held it up as a paragon of management virtue. Enron seemed to have transformed itself from a stodgy regulated utility to a fast-moving enterprise where its performance was paramount.

女士们、先生们:

下午好！今天我以安然公司的教训为例谈一下企业文化的内涵及其重要性。

在20世纪90年代的大部分时间里，旧经济公司的首席执行官们都在努力地将运作缓慢的公司朝着敏捷、更富有弹性的公司转型。但实际情况是，真正转型成功的公司是极个别的例子。转变一家大型公司的核心理念、态度和基本关系极其困难。这就是20世纪90年代末大批学者和顾问涌人安然公司并推崇其为管理典范的原因。当时的安然似乎已从一家平庸、节制的公用事业公司转型为一家快速运营、业绩出众的企业。

If only that were true. Enron tumbled down. Many of the same academics are now busy distilling the cultural and leadership lessons from the debacle. Their conclusion so far is like this: Enron didn't fail just because of impropег accounting or alleged corruption at the top. It also failed because of its entrepreneurial culture - the very reason Enron attracted so much attention and acclaim. Too much emphasis on earnings growth and individual initiative, coupled with a shocking absence of the usual corporate checks and balances, turned Enron's entrepreneurial culture from one that rewarded aggressive strategy to one that increasingly relied on unethical means. In the end, too much leeway was given to young, inexperienced managers without the necessary controls to minimize failures.

可惜这不是事实，安然栽了。当年那批学者中很多人现在忙于从安然的崩溃中分析企业文化和领导层方面的教训。目前他们的结论是：安然的失败并不仅仅因为公司做了假账或者所谓的高层腐败，其失败的原因还应归咎于公司的企业文化，正是这种企业文化曾经使安然引人注目、备受青睐。过分强调收益的增长和个人的主动性，加上缺乏那种常规的公司制约平衡机制，使安然的企业文化从推崇进取性的战略转变为日益依赖不道德的手段。最后，公司对没有经验的年轻管理人员过度宽容，公司又缺乏必要的控制手段尽可能降低可能出现的失败。

Jeffrey K. Skilling assumed Enron CEO in early 2001. His recipe for changing the company was right out of the New Economy playbook. Layers of management were wiped out. Hundreds of outsiders were recruited and encouraged to bring new thinking to a tradition-bound business. The company abolished seniority-based salaries in favor of more highly leveraged compensation that offered huge cash bonuses and stock option grants to top performers. Young people, many just out of undergraduate or MBA programs, were handed extraordinary authority, able to make $5 million decisions without higher approval.

2001年杰弗莱・斯基林就任安然首席执行官。他改变公司的方法完全出自新经济攻略手册。安然取消了一些管理层，从外界招募了数百名职员，鼓励他们向受传统束缚的企业注入新思想。公司废除了基于资历的薪水制度，取而代之的是更富有激励性的分配制度，表现出众的员工可以获得丰厚的现金奖励和公司股票。公司赋予年轻人非常大的权力，这些年轻人中不少是刚毕业的本科生和工商管理硕士研究生，他们无须上级领导批准便可自行决策，决策所涉金额可以高达500万美元。

In larger companies like IBM, even though there is a movement toward youth, there are still enough older people around to mentor them. At Enron, you had a bunch of kids running loose without adult supervision.

The new entrepreneurial culture encourages the "loose and tight" environment. The idea is to combine tight controls with maximum individual authority to allow entrepreneurship to flourish without the culture edging into chaos.

At Enron, however, the pressure to make the numbers was often overwhelming. The environment was ripe for abuse.

Nobody at corporate was asking the right questions. It was completely hands-off management. It was a runaway train.

像IBM这样的大公司，尽管也出现了不拘一格降人才的发展趋势，但是青年才俊身边不乏资深职员的指导。但是你在安然看到的却是一群没有大人监管的小孩子在自说自话地独断专行。

新型的企业文化鼓励“张弛有度”的企业环境。这种张弛结合的理念是指把严格控管与最大限度的个人权利相结合，从而使企业家的才能得到充分发挥，同时也避免企业文化陷人混乱。

然而在安然需做假账，这种压力往往压倒了一切。安然的企业环境最终成了可以为所欲为的温床。公司内没有人提出切中要害的问题,企业完全处于一种放任自流的管理状态，公司就像一匹脱了缰绳的野马。