Start-Ups That Last

许多初创公司看似拥有一切——既有客户，又不缺钱，前途一片光明，却为什么难以为继？

Why do so many start-ups that seem to have it all—customers, cash, a promising outlook—run off the rails?

风险投资家会说，是因为这些公司难以“规模化”。那么，“规模化”是什么意思？

Ask a venture capitalist, and you’ll probably hear that they have trouble “scaling.”What does that mean, though?

风投家通常会说，是“组织专业化”和“发展为成熟的公司”。这样的说明未免过于简单，未能完全概括初创公司亟需的实质性变化。

VCs typically describe it as a need to “professionalize the organization” and “bring in grown-ups.” But those are simplistic fixes—poor substitutes for the substantive changes that need to occur.

“规模化”的意思并不是说，初创公司要想实现增长就应当否定自身作为初创公司的特质，立即套用大公司的教条。而是初创公司应该意识到，没有纪律和规则，公司就会付出极高的代价：运营混乱，业绩就难以预测。

Scaling doesn’t mean that ventures should disavow their start-up identities and embrace large-company dogma once they’re poised for growth. When they eschew order and discipline, however, they pay a steep price: chaotic operations and unpredictable performance.

从长远来看，做好准备、把握增长、学习新的运营方式的公司，成功几率会更高。

But those prepared to manage that growth—and to learn new ways of operating and behaving—stand a much better chance of making it in the long term.

1.正式地界定任务

1.Defining Specialized Roles

总体来说，只要对公司起步有帮助，公司创始人就要多方兼顾。他们通过非正式渠道聘用全能型员工，这些人要扮演多种角色、承担多项责任，具体根据个人喜好和公司需求而定。在创业初期，大家热情高涨，公司规模较小，这种独特的“同舟共济”可以发挥不错的效果。但随着组织扩张，创始人面对的事务复杂程度不可同日而语，就需要更为正式地界定和分配任务了。

Founders typically do a bit of everything—basically, whatever it takes to get the business off the ground. Through informal channels they hire fellow generalists, who cobble together their roles and responsibilities partly by pursuing their own passions and partly by looking around and seeing what needs to be done. This idiosyncratic “all hands on deck” approach can work fine in the beginning, when adrenaline is high and the company is small. But as organizations expand, they face new levels of complexity that require them to define and assign tasks more formally.

当然，这种做法可能会造成全能型“元老”和专业人士之间关系紧张。创始员工在工作中学习成长所获得的能力，往往无法满足对专业技能的需求。因此，越来越多与专业技能相关的领导职位落到外来者手中，令创业元老怨愤不已。常见的情况是，这部分人受挫离开，带走了有价值的人脉关系，以及他们对公司使命及文化的隐性理解。

Of course, all this can create tension between the “old guard” generalists and the domain experts. Demands for functional expertise often outstrip early employees’ abilities to keep up through organic learning. As a consequence, functional leadership titles increasingly go to outsiders, and the legacy folks may grow resentful. Early employees may also chafe against the narrowing confines of their changing roles. Not every generalist can or even wants to become a specialist. Often people get frustrated and leave, taking their valuable relationships and their tacit understanding of the firm’s mission and culture with them.

要留住早期员工，让所有人一起建设性地工作，对这种企业“生长的烦恼”有所预见并加以管理是很重要的。而关键是，要为员工培养学习型心态，提醒他们注意前方的挑战，并让他们知道专业人才可以提供何种帮助。

To keep people working together constructively, it’s important to anticipate and manage these growing pains. Cultivating a learning mindset among employees was key, as was reminding them of the challenges ahead and the ways in which experienced talent could help. 

专业化会带来风险吗？当然会。一旦职能部门有了独立领导者，员工会因孤岛效应而产生懈怠，不再把组织视为一个整体。人的部落本能会阻碍跨职能间的创意分享，因此公司必须确保各团队、各部门间有非正式的互动。公司处在高速发展阶段时，往往由于更迫切的工作需求而放弃团建活动，这样时间一长就会导致发展停滞、缺乏独创性。

Does specialization bring risks? Absolutely. Once functions have independent leaders, employees might hunker down in their silos and stop identifying with the organization as a whole. Tribal instincts can prevent cross-functional idea sharing and innovation, so firms must ensure that informal interactions continue across teams and divisions. When companies are in a high-growth phase, they often forgo relationship-building activities in favor of more-immediate work demands. But over time that can lead to stasis and unoriginality.

如欲更好地保持长期发展，公司须在支持亟需处理的工作的同时，鼓励各团队进行有益的交流。合适的解决方案不是避免产生孤岛，而是设法打通孤岛。

Firms are better served in the long run by fostering cross-pollination while they organize to support the work that needs to be done. The answer is not to avoid building silos but to find ways of bridging them.

2.增加管理层次

Adding Management Structure

在初创阶段，许多公司创始人怀着人人平等的理想，避免分出上下级。但随着公司规模扩大，寥寥几位领导者手下有了越来越多的人。创始人依然觉得指挥权在自己手中，因为所有决定都要经过他们。然而讽刺的是，正是这样的中央集权成了瓶颈，阻碍信息流动、决策和执行，导致组织脱离控制。

When launching their start-ups, many founders eschew hierarchy because of their egalitarian ideals. But as their firms scale, a growing number of people report to a handful of leaders. Founders may think this allows them to remain in command, because all decisions pass through them. But ironically, their organizations spin out of control as centralized authority becomes a bottleneck that hinders information flow, decision making, and execution.

身居高位的几个人无法对每位员工日趋专业化的日常工作进行有效监督；在这样的体系中，组织目标无从问责。而员工发现，没有实质性的指示和流程，工作时很难保持专注。决策者要应付许多人和许多个项目，员工很难与之交流，就会灰心丧气。

A couple of people at the top can’t effectively supervise everyone’s increasingly specialized day-to-day work; in such a system, accountability for organizational goals gets lost. And employees find it hard to remain focused and engaged when they don’t have managerial guidance and processes. They may become frustrated as they struggle for access to decision makers who are juggling many other projects and people.

当然，“过犹不及”的道理也适用于组织管理架构。决策层级过多，会使信息流受到限制（自上而下或自下而上），拖延决策速度；还可能让员工觉得管理者不信任自己独立处理工作的能力，从而变得懈怠消极。但是，我们还要清晰意识到，引导不足同样会让员工缺乏工作动力。

Of course, organizations can take structure too far. Having excess layers in the decision-making chain can slow things down by restricting the flow of information (top-down or bottom-up). It can also demotivate employees by signaling that they’re not trusted to handle their own work. But as we saw at CloudFlare, people find too little guidance demotivating as well.

用非正式的指导和反馈作为正式管理架构的补充，能保持员工的工作动力。因为非正式指导和反馈为员工培养了学习型心态，帮助员工与组织共同成长。界定清晰的职务和职权范围，也使员工能在自己的职责范畴内更快地做出更明智的决定。非正式指导及反馈不会打乱流程，而是精简流程，并促进员工个人发展。员工做决定的实际权力越大，学到的东西就越多，责任感也随之增强。

Firms that complement formal structures with informal mentoring and feedback can keep motivation intact. That’s because those things foster a learning mindset, helping employees grow right along with the organization. Clearly delineated roles and areas of authority also enable people to make faster, smarter decisions locally. They streamline the process, rather than gum it up, and promote individuals’ development. The more decisions people are empowered to make on the ground, the more they learn and the more accountable they become.

3.有原则地规划预测

3.Planning and Forecasting with Discipline

对于年轻的初创公司，临阵磨枪本是探索发现不可或缺的方式。然而随着公司逐渐发展，就越来越需要计划和目标框架作为指引。这样能让公司继续尝试新事物，并对动态市场做出反应，同时不忘更大的目标，继续经营下去。若无框架，临阵磨枪本质上等同于漫无目的随意发挥。

Improvisation is integral to young ventures; it’s how they make discoveries. However, as firms grow they need a framework of plans and goals to guide them. That way they can keep trying new things and reacting to dynamic markets, but with an eye toward larger objectives and sustaining the business. Otherwise improvisation essentially amounts to aimless riffing.

即便是在快节奏、高增长的环境中，腾出时间来做计划以及辨别、分享最佳行事方案也很重要。这样的活动很容易被认为是与灵活性和管理自主权相悖。

Even in a fast-paced, high-growth environment, it’s important to set aside time to plan and to identify and share best practices. It’s easy to assume that such activities are incompatible with agility and managerial discretion.

诚然，计划过程过于严苛，可能会引发各方争夺有限的资源，继而妨碍创新。不过，在特定框架中则没有这样的问题。制定清晰的目标和指引；系统收集和分享信息，用来分析表现并做出更准确的预测；建立处理问题的流程，不要依赖某几个关键人员制定一次性的解决方案——这些都能促进高效、明智的决策，在世界不断变化时尤其如此。

To be sure, overly rigid planning processes can provoke battles over limited resources, which may hamstring innovation. But it’s possible to have freedom within a framework. Setting clear goals and guidelines, systematically gathering and sharing information to shed light on performance and enable better forecasting, and creating processes instead of relying on key individuals to craft one-off solutions—all these promote efficient, smart decisions, especially when the world around you is in flux.

4.保留企业文化

4.Sustaining the Culture​

企业文化，通常是吸引人们加入初创公司并留下来的一大因素。员工们克服重重困难，为把一桩羽翼未丰的生意发展成一家可以生存下去的公司，加班加点地工作。激励着他们的，是同路人的情谊，以及对重要事物的归属感。

Culture is typically a big part of what draws people to join start-ups—and what keeps them going. As employees battle the odds to turn a fledging business into a viable company, working late nights and weekends to make it happen, they’re motivated by camaraderie and a sense of belonging to something important.

创始人明白这种力量。他们利用组织成立第一天的情怀故事，对其进行演绎甚至神化，让每个人都认可企业文化。这种方法在公司尚小时有用，全体员工都对那些故事有共鸣，但随着更多的人加入，领导者就很难维系强大的组织文化了。

Founders recognize how powerful this is and rely on nostalgic, almost mythic, stories about the organization’s first days to get everyone to embrace the culture. That can work while a venture is small and all the employees can personally relate to those stories—but as more people come aboard, leaders may struggle to maintain a strong organizational culture.

这是一个问题，因为公司发展期最重要的也许就是企业文化。公司开始规范职能和管理线条的时候，员工若能认同更大的组织，就能更好地跨界工作，自发合作，并交流公司创新所需的创意。

That’s a problem, because culture may be most important during periods of growth. As a venture starts to formalize its functions and reporting chains, identifying with the larger organization helps employees work across boundaries and engage in the spontaneous collaboration and exchange of ideas the company needs to innovate.

所以公司创业早期，领导者主要依靠传说——连轴转加班几周、自行制定解决方案——来传达核心价值观。但公司规模增大，事务更为复杂，领导者和员工之间产生距离，创始人的个人魅力和故事无法再团结员工了。

Although founders of fast-growing firms say they worry about losing their organizational culture, few take steps to codify and reinforce it. Their attention quickly shifts to things that feel more urgent, such as operations and marketing. As a result, employees’ motivation and engagement slip and people leave, hoping to recapture the magic somewhere else.

创始人该如何做呢？首先可以在公司使命和愿景书以及职位描述中阐明公司文化价值观。这样更容易识别出文化漂移，避免走偏太远。招募认同公司文化价值观的员工，并对有利于价值观的行为予以认可和奖励，有助于组织维持其价值观的活力。

How can entrepreneurs prevent these consequences? They can start by clearly articulating their cultural values in their mission and vision statements and in job descriptions. That makes it easier to recognize cultural drift before it goes too far. It also helps the organization keep its values alive by hiring for cultural fit and rewarding desired behaviors through recognition and compensation.

规模化是个挑战，每家快速发展的初创公司都证实了这一点。市场崩溃、供应和分销合作方不可靠、竞争对手实力强劲，还有许多其他的外部因素，都是公司发展路上的障碍。但这并不意味着公司内部非得乱成一团。高效的组织内部架构，可以让公司杜绝内部混乱，继续寻求新的机遇，还可以让公司实现长期生存。

As just about any rapidly growing start-up will attest, scaling up is challenging. Market crashes, unreliable supply and distribution partners, fierce rivals, and plenty of other external forces can buffet firms. But that doesn’t mean companies need to be chaotic on the inside. Effective internal organization frees them up to keep pursuing new opportunities and brings long-term survival within reach.

创业者会担心，我们提出的改变会泯灭那些让初创公司脱颖而出的东西：自发性、适应性和速度。这些东西的确宝贵，许多大公司也明白这一点，所以经常试图表现得更像新公司。我们并不建议初创公司抛弃那些让它们有创新力的独特之处。但趁着众人还都没有忘记为创新之舟添加燃料时去探索新天地，尤为必要。

Entrepreneurs may worry that the changes we propose will be the death of spontaneity, adaptability, and speed—everything that got them up and running in the first place. Indeed, these are valuable qualities. Many large companies realize that too; that’s why they often try to behave more like new ventures. We’re not suggesting that start-ups abandon what made them special and innovative. But it’s a lot easier to launch your rocket ship in search of new horizons when you don’t have to worry that someone forgot to fill the tank.

即兴发挥和严守规定这两个极端之间，尚有一片实用的中间地带。领导者若能找到这个中间地带，就能胜过对手一筹——鉴于能够稳住脚跟的新公司寥寥无几，这一点真的至关重要。

Between the extremes of ad hoc and prescriptive organizing, there’s a useful middle ground. Leaders who can find it will have an edge on their rivals—and that really matters, given how few new ventures become established players.

兰杰·古拉蒂是哈佛商学院工商管理 Jaime and Josefina Chua Tiampo教席教授

艾丽西亚·德桑图拉是哈佛大学组织行为学博士研究生

蒋荟蓉 | 译   　刘铮筝 | 校   　钮键军 | 编辑

本文有删节，原文参见《哈佛商业评论》中文版2016年3月《让初创公司渡过“青春期”》。