TED英语演讲：66岁创业成功，如何做到

TED英语演讲：66岁创业成功，如何做到

I'd like to take you back about seven years in my life. Friday afternoon, a few days before Christmas 20xx. I was the director of operations at a consumer products company in San Francisco, and I was called into a meeting that was already in progress. That meeting turned out to be my exit interview. I was fired, along with several others.

我想带你们回到我大约7年前的生活。那是20xx年圣诞节前几天一个周五的下午，当时的我是旧金山 一家消费品公司的运营总监。我被叫进一个正在进行的会议。我发现这场会议是我的离职面谈。和其他的几个人一样，我被解雇了。

I was 64 years old at the time. It wasn't completely unexpected. I signed a stack of papers,gathered my personal effects, and left to join my wife who was waiting for me at a nearby restaurant,completely unaware. Fast-forward several hours, we both got really silly drunk.

那时我64岁。这并不完全出乎我的意料。我签了一堆的文件，收拾了一下自己的东西，就去找我的妻子了，她在附近的一个小饭店里等我，但对此毫不知情。几个小时很快过去了，我们都喝得伶仃大醉。

So, 40 plus years of continuous employment for a variety of companies, large and small, was over. I had a good a network, a good reputation -- I thought I'd be just fine. I was an engineer in manufacturing and packaging. I had a good background. Retirement was, like for so many people, simply not an option for me.So I turned to consulting for the next couple of years without any passion whatsoever.

就这样，40多年在各个公司间颠沛流离的职业生涯结束了。我拥有很好的朋友圈，人缘也不错我以为这没什么大不了的。我曾经是个工作于制造业和包装业的工程师。我有很好的.从业背景，跟很多人一样，退休对我来说，也算不上是一种选择。于是在接下来的几年中我一直做着咨询工作，却没有什么激情。

And then an idea began to take root, born from my concern for our environment. I wanted to build my own business, designing and manufacturing biodegradable packaging from waste -- paper, agricultural, even textile waste -- replacing the toxic, disposable plastic packaging to which we've all become addicted.

然而后来因为我对环境的关心，我产生了一个新的想法。我想要建立自己的公司，从废物中设计并生产 能进行生物降解的包装，用以废纸、作物，甚至是纺织废料为原料所制造的包装，取代那些人类越来越依赖的，有毒的一次性塑料包装。

This is called clean technology, and it felt really meaningful to me. A venture that could help to reduce the billions of pounds of single-use plastic packaging dumped each year and polluting our land, our rivers and our oceans, and left for future generations to resolve -- our grandchildren, my grandchildren.

这被称作清洁技术。它对我而言意义非凡。这家公司每年能帮助减少数十亿磅污染我们的土地、河流和海洋的一次性塑料包装，它们也会给我们的子孙后代造成困扰—— 我们的孙辈，我的孙辈。

And so now at the age of 66, with 40 years of experience, I became an entrepreneur for the very first time.Thank you. But there's more.

现在我66岁，有着40年的工作经验，第一次成为了一名企业家。谢谢。但不仅如此。

Lots of issues to deal with: manufacturing, outsourcing, job creation, patents, partnerships, funding -- these are all typical issues for a start-up, but hardly typical for me. And a word about funding. I live and work in San Francisco. And if you're looking for funding, you are typically going to compete with some very young peoplefrom the high-tech industry, and it can be very discouraging and intimidating. I have shoes older than most of these people.

很多事情有待解决： 生产，外包，招聘，专利，合伙人，资金—— 这些都是创业者面临的典型问题，但对我而言并非如此。顺带说下资金。我在旧金山居住和工作。如果你要寻找资金，那你一般要与一些从事着高科技工作的年轻人竞争，这很令人丧气和胆怯。我穿的鞋年头都比 这些人年纪还要大。

I do.

确实如此。

But five years later, I'm thrilled and proud to share with you that our revenues have doubled every year, we have no debt, we have several marquee clients, our patent was issued, I have a wonderful partner who's been with me right from the beginning, and we've won more than 20 awards for the work that we've done.But best of all, we've made a small dent -- a very small dent -- in the worldwide plastic pollution crisis.

但五年过去了，我可以兴奋且自豪的告诉大家，我们的收入每年倍增，没有外债，还有一些重要的客户，专利申请也通过了。我有一个很棒的合伙人，他从最初就和我一起创业，我们的工作已经获得了超过20个奖项。不过最好的是，我们缓解了—— 微不足道地缓解了—— 世界塑料污染危机。

And I am doing the most rewarding and meaningful work of my life right now. I can tell you there's lots of resources available to entrepreneurs of all ages, but what I really yearned for five years ago was to find other first-time entrepreneurs who were my age. I wanted to connect with them. I had no role models, absolutely none. That 20-something app developer from Silicon Valley was not my role model.

而我现在做着一生中 回报最为丰厚、最有意义的工作。我可以告诉大家，对各个年龄阶段的 企业家，都有很多可利用的资源。但过去五年我最渴望的事情是找到其他与我同龄的，第一次创业的 企业家，我想和他们取得联系。那时我没有可以参考的榜样，完全没有。硅谷那位20多岁的应用程序开发者可不是我的榜样。

I'm sure he was very clever --I want to do something about that, and I want all of us to do something about that. I want us to start talking more about people who don't become entrepreneurs until they are seniors. Talking about these bold men and women who are checking in when their peers, in essence, are checking out. And then connecting all these people across industries, across regions, across countries -- building a community.

我确信他很聪明。所以，我想改变一下现状，我希望所有人都可以有所行动。我希望我们可以更多的谈论 那些直到老年才成为企业家的人。多谈论这些勇敢的人，当他们的同龄人退休时，他们才开始正式入行。然后，将所有这些跨行业、跨地区、跨国家的人联合起来，组成一个社区。

You know, the Small Business Administration tells us that 64 percent of new jobs created in the private sector in the USA are thanks to small businesses like mine. And who's to say that we'll stay forever small?We have an interesting culture that really expects when you reach a certain age, you're going to be golfing, or playing checkers, or babysitting the grandkids all of the time.

小企业管理局数据显示 在美国，64%的私企提供的新岗位 是像我这样的小企业创造的。并且谁敢说，我们会一直维持这个规模?我们有个有趣的文化，当你到了一定的年龄，就得去打高尔夫、下棋、 照顾孙子，在这些方面倾注所有。

And I adore my grandchildren --and I'm also passionate about doing something meaningful in the global marketplace.

我很爱我的孙辈。可我也充满了热忱，希望为全球市场贡献自己的一份力量。

And I'm going to have lots of company. The Census Bureau says that by 20xx, there will be 84 million seniors in this country. That's an amazing number. That's almost twice as many as we have today. Can you imagine how many first-time entrepreneurs there will be among 84 million people? And they'll all have four decades of experience.

我还会开很多公司。美国人口普查局表示，到20xx年，美国会有8400万老年人。这个数字非常惊人，几乎是现在的两倍。可以想象，到时候在 这8400万人中会有多少首次创业者吗?他们都有40年的工作经验。

So when I say, "Let's start talking more about these wonderful entrepreneurs," I mean, let's talk about their ventures, just as we do the ventures of their much younger counterparts. The older entrepreneurs in this country have a 70 percent success rate starting new ventures. 70 percent success rate. We're like the Golden State Warriors of entrepreneurs --

所以，当我说“让我们更多的 谈论这些优秀的企业家，” 我的意思是，让我们谈论他们的冒险精神，就像我们谈论那些 年轻创业者的冒险精神一样。在美国，年长的创业者 有70%的成功机会去 建立新的事业。70%的成功机会。我们就像创业者中的金州勇士 (美国西部职业篮球队)一样。

And that number plummets to 28 percent for younger entrepreneurs. This is according to a UK-based group called CMI.

而在年轻人中，这个数字只有28%。这是一家英国组织CMI公布的数据。

Aren't the accomplishments of a 70-year-old entrepreneur every bit as meaningful, every bit as newsworthy,as the accomplishments of a 30-year-old entrepreneur? Of course they are. That's why I'd like to make the phrase "70 over 70" just as --just as commonplace as the phrase "30 under 30."

难道一个70岁创业者的成就 不同样有意义，同样有新闻价值吗?和一个30岁的创业者没什么不同。当然应该是这样。这也是我为何要用 这个词“70大杰出老人”——就像大家通用的“30大杰出青年”一样。

Thank you.

谢谢大家。

Ihave spent the last years, trying to resolve two enigmas: why is productivity so disappointing in all the companies where I work? I have worked with more than 500 companies. Despite all the technological advance – computers, IT, communications, telecommunications, the internet.

Enigma number two: why is there so little engagement at work? Why do people feel so miserable, even actively disengaged? Disengaged their colleagues. Acting against the interest of their company. Despite all the affiliation events, the celebration, the people initiatives, the leadership development programs to train managers on how to better motivate their teams.

At the beginning, I thought there was a chicken and egg issue: because people are less engaged, they are less productive. Or vice versa, because they are less productive, we put more pressure and they are less engaged. But as we were doing our analysis we realized that there was a common root cause to these two issues that relates, in fact, to the basic pillars of management. The way we organize is based on two pillars.

The hard—structure, processes, systems.

The soft—feeling, sentiments, interpersonal relationship, traits, personality.

And whenever a company reorganizes, restructures, reengineers, goes through a cultural transformation program, it chooses these two pillars. Now we try to refine them, we try to combine them. The real issue is – and this is the answer to the two enigmas – these pillar are obsolete.

Everything you read in business books is based either two of the other or their combine. They are obsolete. How do they work when you try to use these approaches in front of the new complexity of business? The hard approach, basically is that you start from strategy, requirement, structure, processes, systems, KPIs, scorecards, committees, headquarters, hubs, clusters, you name it. I forgot all the metrics, incentives, committees, middle offices and interfaces. What happens basically on the left, you have more complexity, the new complexity of business. We need quality, cost, reliability, speed. And every time there is a new requirement, we use the same approach. We create dedicated structure processed systems, basically to deal with the new complexity of business. The hard approach creates just complicatedness in the organization.

Let’s take an example. An automotive company, the engineering division is a five-dimensional matrix. If you open any cell of the matrix, you find another 20-dimensional matrix. You have Mr. Noise, Mr. Petrol Consumption, Mr. Anti-Collision Propertise. For any new requirement,

you have a dedicated function in charge of aligning engineers against the new requirement. What happens when the new requirement emerges?

Some years ago, a new requirement appeared on the marketplace: the length of the warranty period. So therefore the requirement is repairability, making cars easy to repair. Otherwise when you bring the car to the garage to fix the light, if you have to remove the engine to access the lights, the car will have to stay one week in the garage instead of two hours, and the warranty budget will explode. So, what was the solution using the hard approach? If repairability is the rew requirement, the solution is to create a new function, Mr. Repairability. And Mr. Repairability creates the repairability process. With a repairability scorecard, with a repairability metric and eventually repairability incentive.That came on top of 25 other KPIs. What percentage of these people is variable compensation? Twenty percent at most, divided by 26 KPIs, repairability makes a difference of 0.8 percent. What difference did it make in their action, their choices to simplify? Zero. But what occurs for zero impact? Mr. Repairability, process, scorecard, evaluation, coordination with the 25 other coordinators to have zero impact. Now, in front of the new complexity of business, the only solution is not drawing box es with reporting lines. It is basically the interplay. How the parts work together. The connection, the interaction, the synapse. It is not skeleton of boxes, it is the nervous system of adaptiveness and

intelligence. You know, you could call it cooperation, basically. Whenever people cooperate, they use less resources. In everything. You know, the repairability issue is a cooperation problem.

When you design cars, please take into account the need of those who will repair the cars in the after sales garage. When we don’t cooperate we need more time, more equipment, more system, more teams. We need – when procurement, supply chain, manufacturing don’t cooperate we need more stock, more investories, more working capital.

Who will pay for that? Shareholder? Customers? No, they will refuse. So who is left? The employees, who have tocompensate through their super individual efforts for the lack of cooperation. Stress, burnout, they are overwhelmed, accidents. No wonder they disengage.

How do the hard and the soft try to foster cooperation?

The hard: in banks, when there is problem between the back office and the front office, they don’t cooperate. What is the solution? They create a middle office.

What happens one years later? Instead of one problem between the back and front, now have to problems. Between the back and the middle and between the middle and the front. Plus I have to pay for the middle office. The hard approach is unable to foster cooperation. It can only add new boxes, new bones in the skeleton.

The soft approach: to make people cooperate, we need to make then like each other. Improve interpersonal feelings, the more people laike each other, the more they will cooperate. It is totally worng. It even counterproductive.

Look, at home I have two TVs. Why? Precisely not to have to cooperate with my wife. Not to have to impose tradeoffs to my wife. And why I try not to impose tradeoffs to my wife is precisely because I love my wife. If I didn’t love my wife, one TV would be enough: you will watch my favorite football game, if you are not happy, how is the book or the door?

The more we like each other, the more we avoid the real cooperation that would strain our relationships by imposing tough tradeoffs. And we go for a second TV or we escalate the decision above for arbitration.

Definitely, these approaches are obsolete. To deal with complexity, to enhance nervous system, we have created what we call the smart simplicity approach based on simple rules. Simple rule number one: understand what others do. What is their real work? We need go beyond the boxes, the job description, beyond the surface of the container, to understand the real content. Me, designer, if I put a wire here, I know that it will mean that we will have to remove the engine to access the lights. Second, you need to reinforce integrators.

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