财富忠告：第一，生存下来；第二，找到原因；第三，吸取教训

马凯（施乐公司Xerox的掌门人）

第一，把落到井里的水牛救出来；第二，找出水牛落井的原因；第三，想尽一切办法以保证今后水牛不会再落到井里。

牢记“水牛落井”的寓言。

马凯：我4年前在一次客户早餐会上得到的一条忠告现在已经成了施乐公司的“座右铭”。这条忠告来自一位叫做Albert C.Black Jr.的年轻人，他是一家物流管理公司的董事长兼CEO。

“当什么事变得错综复杂，你不知所措时，”他告诉我：“这样调整一下你的思路：做三件事情。第一，把落到井里的水牛救出来；第二，找出水牛落井的原因；第三，想尽一切办法以保证今后水牛不会再落到井里。”

现在，每当我谈起施乐公司的转机，我都从“水牛落井”开始。第一件事：生存；第二件事：弄清楚发生了什么；第三件事：吸取教训，制定方案以保证能够发现征兆，不再重蹈覆辙。这已经在某种程度上成了公司领导层的“座右铭”。

就是这样一个简单得令人不可思议的常识性故事让人找到了脚踏实地的感觉。

Remember the parable of the cow in the ditch.

Mulcahy: One piece of advice I got has become a mantra at Xerox. It came from a very funny source. It was four years ago, and I was doing a customer breakfast in Dallas. A young man [AlbertC. Black Jr., president and CEO of On-Target Supplies & Logistics, a logistics  management firm] came up to me and gave me this advice. “When everything gets really complicated and you feel overwhelmed,” he told me, “think about it this way: You gotta do three things. First, get the cow out of the ditch. Second,find out how the cow got into the ditch. Third, make sure you do whatever it takes so the cow doesn’t go into the ditch again.”

Bow, everytime I talk about the turn around at Xerox, I start with the cow in the ditch. The first thing is survival. The second thing is, figure out what happened. Learn from those lessons and make sure you’ve put a plan in place to recognize the signs, and never get there again. This has become sort of a catch phrase for the leadership team.

It’s just one of those incredibly simple common sense stories to keep people grounded.

摘自《财富》——易激扬编译

《简单，然而有效 2017》摄于郑州。