SECTION 4

Good morning, everyone. In the last few lectures I've been dealing with business finance, but now I'm going to move on to business systems.

大家早上好。在过去的几次讲座中我们一起探讨了商业金融。今天开始我们来学习商业体系。

And in today's lecture I'm going to talk about what can go wrong when businesses try to copy their own best practices.

在今天的讲座中我会谈到企业在复制自己的成功案例时可能出现的错误。

Once a business has successfully introduced a new process - managing a branch bank, say, or selling a new product - the parent organisation naturally wants to repeat that success, and capture it if possible on a bigger scale.

一旦某家公司企业成功的开发了一个新的业务流程，比如成功的管理一个分支银行或销售一个新产品，它的母公司会很自然想在尽可能大的范围内推广并复制这种成功模式。

The goal, then, is to utilise existing knowledge and not to generate new knowledge.

这样做的目标，是开发利用现有知识，而不是生成创造新的知识。

It's a less glamorous activity than pure innovation, but it actually happens more often, as a matter of fact.

这样做不如完全创新那么有趣，但实际上却经常发生。

However, surprisingly, getting things right the Second time is not necessarily any simpler than it was the first time.

但让人感到意外的是，第二次成功并不总是比第一次成功更简单。

Now, there's been a lot of research into how companies can repeat their previous successes, and it certainly hasn't been confined to the United States.

现在已经有大量关于公司如何复制成功案例的研究，而且这些研究当然也不仅限于美国境内。

It seems that most large industries are trying to repeat their own successes, and manage the knowledge they've acquired - but even so it has been shown that the overwhelming majority of attempts fail.

结果表明，大部分的大型企业都在复制自己的成功经验，管理自己积累的知识。但尽管如此，数据表明其大多数的尝试都以失败告终。

A host of studies confirm this, covering a wide range of business settings: branch banks, retail stores, real estate agencies, factories, call centres ... to name but a few.

大量研究已经验证了这个事实，这些研究覆盖了很广的行业领域，如分支银行、零售商店、房地产中介、工厂、呼叫中心等等。

So why do so few managers get things right the second or third time?

那么为什么只有少数管理者才能实现第二次或第三次的成功？

Let's consider one reason for failure - placing too much trust in the people who are running the successful operation, the 'experts' shall we say.

我们先来考虑失败的原因之一：过分信任运作成功案例的人，或者说那些“专家”。

Managers who want to apply existing knowledge typically start off by going to an expert - such as the person who designed and is running a successful department store - and picking their brains.

想运用现有知识的管理者通常会先去咨询专家，比如那些设计并成功运营了一家百货商场的人，吸取他们的经验。

Now, this approach can be used if you want to gain a rough understanding of a particular system, or understand smaller, isolated problems.

如果你是想大致了解某个特定商业体系的情况，或者了解独立的小问题，这种方式是有效的。

The trouble is, even the expert doesn't fully grasp the whole thing because when it comes to complex systems, the individual components of the process are interwoven with one another.

但问题在于，就算是专家也无法对整个体系有完全的了解，因为复杂的商业体系中，个体流程之间是相互交叉的。

The expert never has complete access to the necessary information.

专家永远都不可能获得全部的信息。

And the situation's complicated even further by the fact that experts are usually not aware of their own ignorance.

而情况可能会因为专家们没有意识到自己的这种无知而变得更加复杂。

The ignorance can take various forms.

这种无知有很多不同的表现形式。

For instance, a lot of details of the system are invisible to managers.

比如，系统中很多细节是管理者们看不到的。

Some may be difficult to describe - learned on the job and well known by workers perhaps, but impossible to describe in a way that's helpful.

有些问题很难描述，可能只有工人们在工作中才能获得，但无法用有效的方式表述。

And there are some things that people know or do that they're not even aware of.

还有一些知识人们知道，并且在做着，但他们自己没有意识到。

Now, let's consider two types of mistake that can occur when a manager actually starts to set up a duplicate system to replicate a successful process.

现在让我们来分析当一名管理者开始着手复制一个成功的案例时常犯的两类错误。

Firstly, perhaps he forgets that he was just trying to copy another process, and starts trying to improve on it.

首先，他可能会忘记自己是要去复制一个案例，而开始尝试对其进行改进。

Another mistake is trying to use the best parts of various different systems, in the hope of creating the perfect combination.

第二类错误是把不同体系中的成功案例的优点拼凑在一起以期得到完美的融合。

Unfortunately, attempts like these usually turn out to be misguided and lead to problems.

不幸的是，这样的尝试通常会将项目引入歧途并导致问题。

Why? Well, for various reasons.

为什么呢？原因有很多。

Perhaps there weren't really any advantages after all, because the information wasn't accurate.

比如由于信息不准确，所以这样做其实没有任何优势。

Or perhaps the business settings weren't really comparable.

又或者说两种商业模式之间没有可比性。

More typically, the advantages are real enough, but there are also disadvantages that have been overlooked.

更常见的是，复制的案例有优点，但它的缺点却被低估了。

For example, the modifications might compromise safety in some way.

比如，优化改进可能会在某些方面牺牲安全性。

So, what's the solution?

那么，解决方法是什么？

Well, I don't intend to suggest that it's easy to get things right the second time ... it's not.

我并不想说二次成功很容易……实际上这并不容易。

But the underlying problem has more to do with attitudes than the actual difficulty of the task, and there are ways of getting it right.

但潜藏的问题更多是和态度相关，而不是任务本身有多难，所以办法总是有的。

These involve adjusting attitudes, first of all ... being more realistic and cautious really.

这些方法包括观念态度的调整。首先，要变得更实际和谨慎。

Secondly, they involve exerting strict controls on the organisational and operational systems.

其次，在结构和运营层面执行严格的控制。

And this in turn means copying the original as closely as possible.

这就意味着尽可能接近的复制原始体系。

Not merely duplicating the physical characteristics of the factory, but also duplicating the skills that the original employees had.

不仅是复制工厂的表面特征，还要复制工人的技能知识。

Reliance on a template like this offers the huge advantage of built-in consistency.

依托于这样的一个模板能够给产生内部一致的明显优势。