The Thin Line Between Bold and Reckless
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Oct 25, 2023
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mghs1025
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来源：Collab Fund
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人生感悟
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生活虾
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The Thin Line Between Bold and Reckless 大胆与鲁莽之间的一线之隔
Cornelius Vanderbilt had just finished a series of business deals to expand his railroad empire.科尼利厄斯·范德比尔特刚刚完成了一系列商业交易，以扩大他的铁路帝国。
One of his business advisors leaned in to tell Vanderbilt that every transaction he agreed to broke the law.他的一位商业顾问靠近告诉范德比尔特，他同意的每笔交易都违反了法律。
“My God, John,” said Vanderbilt, “You don’t suppose you can run a railroad in accordance with the statutes of the State of New York, do you?”“天哪，约翰，”范德比尔特说，“你认为你不能按照纽约州的法规来经营铁路，对吗？”
My first thought when reading this was: “That attitude is why he was so successful.” Laws didn’t accommodate railroads during Vanderbilt’s day. So he said “to hell with it” and went ahead anyway. Vanderbilt was wildly successful, so it’s tempting to view his law-flouting – which was notorious and vital to his success – as sage wisdom. That scrappy visionary let nothing get in his way!读到这篇文章时，我的第一个想法是：“这种态度就是他如此成功的原因。”在范德比尔特时代，法律并不支持铁路建设。所以他说“管它呢”，然后还是继续了。范德比尔特取得了巨大的成功，因此人们很容易把他的藐视法律的行为——这臭名昭著，但却对他的成功至关重要——视为圣人的智慧。这位斗志旺盛、有远见的人不让任何事情妨碍他！
But how dangerous is that analysis? No sane person would recommend flagrant crime as an entrepreneurial trait. You can easily imagine Vanderbilt’s story turning out much different – an outlaw whose young company collapsed under court order.但这种分析有多危险？没有一个理智的人会推荐公然犯罪作为一种创业特征。你可以很容易地想象范德比尔特的故事结果会大不相同——一个不法之徒，他的年轻公司在法院命令下倒闭了。
So we have a problem here.所以我们这里有一个问题。
People could praise Vanderbilt for flouting the law with as much passion as they criticize Enron for doing the same. John D. Rockefeller is similar: His frequent circumventing of the law – a judge once called his company “no better than a common thief” – is often portrayed by historians as cunning business smarts. Maybe it was. But when does the narrative shift from, “You didn’t let outdated laws get in the way of innovation,” to “You committed a crime?”人们可以热情地赞扬范德比尔特公司藐视法律，就像批评安然公司的同样行为一样。约翰·D·洛克菲勒 (John D. Rockefeller) 也有类似之处：他经常规避法律——一位法官曾称他的公司“不比普通小偷好多少”——经常被历史学家描述为狡猾的商业智慧。也许是的。但叙述何时会从“你没有让过时的法律阻碍创新”转变为“你犯了罪”？
It’s hard to know. I think we only judge the process by its outcome. Which is dangerous.很难知道。我认为我们只能根据结果来判断过程。这很危险。
The hardest thing about studying businesses and investors is that many traits that fueled their success could have just as easily triggered failure. But we rarely think about it that way when learning from specific outcomes.研究企业和投资者最困难的事情是，许多推动他们成功的特质也可能很容易引发失败。但当我们从具体的结果中学习时，我们很少会这样思考。
Those eager to learn from others tend to look at the tails. What did the big winners do right? What did the big losers do wrong? It’s often hard to find an actionable takeaway from either because winners and losers often pursued similar risky strategies, with outcomes tilted ever so slightly by chance. My point is that big success requires bucking conventional wisdom, but conventional wisdom is usually right and worth following. We’re left with outcomes where winners are praised more than they should be, losers criticized more than they deserve.那些渴望向别人学习的人往往会看别人的尾巴。大赢家做对了什么？大输家做错了什么？通常很难从两者中找到可行的结论，因为赢家和输家经常采取类似的冒险策略，结果偶然会略有倾斜。我的观点是，巨大的成功需要挑战传统智慧，但传统智慧通常是正确的并且值得遵循。我们留下的结果是，胜利者受到的赞扬超过了应有的水平，失败者受到的批评却超出了应有的水平。
There’s more to this than breaking laws.这不仅仅是违反法律。
The majority of Benjamin Graham’s investing success is due to owning shares of Geico. Both his initial purchase, and subsequently holding the stock at high valuations, broke nearly every rule that Graham himself laid out in his famous texts. What are we supposed to learn from that?本杰明·格雷厄姆 (Benjamin Graham) 的投资成功大部分归功于持有 Geico 的股票。他最初的购买以及随后以高估值持有该股票，几乎打破了格雷厄姆本人在其著名著作中制定的所有规则。我们应该从中学到什么？
We think Mark Zuckerberg is a genius for turning down a big offer to sell his company. But people criticize Groupon and Yahoo! with as much passion for turning down their big buyout offers. What is the lesson for entrepreneurs here?我们认为马克·扎克伯格是一个天才，他拒绝了出售其公司的大要约。但人们批评 Groupon 和 Yahoo!也同样热衷于拒绝他们的大笔收购要约。这里给企业家带来什么教训？
Uber took no prisoners as it disrupted the entrenched taxi market. But the line between rooting for a scrappy startup and “#DeleteUber” turned out to be a hair thin. Which case study will be taught in business schools?优步在扰乱根深蒂固的出租车市场时毫不留情。但事实证明，支持一家斗志旺盛的初创公司和“#DeleteUber”之间的界限微乎其微。商学院将教授哪些案例研究？
Countless fortunes (and failures) owe their outcome to leverage.无数的财富（和失败）的结果都归功于杠杆。
The best (and worst) managers drive their employees as hard as they can.最好（和最差）的管理者会尽其所能地激励员工。
“The customer is always right” and “customers don’t know what they want” are both accepted business wisdom.“顾客永远是对的”和“顾客不知道自己想要什么”都是公认的商业智慧。
The line between “inspiringly bold” and “foolishly reckless” can be a millimeter thick and only visible with hindsight. But it’s easy to view the process that led to successful outcomes as something to emulate, and the process that led to failures as something to avoid.“鼓舞人心的大胆”和“愚蠢的鲁莽”之间的界限可能只有一毫米，只有事后才能看到。但人们很容易将导致成功结果的过程视为值得效仿的事情，而将导致失败的过程视为值得避免的事情。
I don’t think there’s much we can do about this. It’s one of those things that just is. Risk is unfair and unforgiving.我认为我们对此无能为力。这就是其中之一。风险是不公平且无情的。
But a few things are worth thinking about.但有几件事值得思考。
Focus less on case studies and more on broad patterns. Case studies can be dangerous because we study extreme examples, and extreme examples are often the least applicable to other situations, given their complexity. You’ll get closer to something actionable by looking for broad patterns of things like how people respond to surprises, how fragile competitive advantages can be, how quickly people/businesses/economies evolve, and what makes people happy. This is also why multidisciplinary learning is so important.少关注案例研究，多关注广泛模式。案例研究可能很危险，因为我们研究极端的例子，而考虑到极端的例子的复杂性，它们通常最不适用于其他情况。通过寻找广泛的事物模式，例如人们如何应对意外、竞争优势有多脆弱、人/企业/经济发展的速度以及什么让人们感到高兴，你将更接近于可行的事情。这也是多学科学习如此重要的原因。
Accept that strategies expire. The irony of history is that it’s mostly the study of things changing, often used as a guide for what to do next. The only thing more dangerous than underestimating how risky someone else’s strategy was is not realizing that the entire strategy only worked in a different era. When you accept that things change over time you become less interested in specific strategies used in the past and more interested in broad topics, like how people discovered the strategies to begin with.接受策略过期的事实。历史的讽刺之处在于，它主要是对事物变化的研究，通常被用作下一步行动的指南。唯一比低估别人策略的风险更危险的是没有意识到整个策略只在不同的时代有效。当你接受事情会随着时间的推移而改变时，你就会对过去使用的具体策略不再感兴趣，而对广泛的主题更感兴趣，比如人们是如何发现这些策略的。
There’s more to learn from people who endured risk than those who seemingly conquered it. If success requires taking risk that could easily turn into failure, and the line between the two is nearly invisible in real time, I want to learn from people who accidentally stepped over the line and lived to tell the tale. Companies that survived deep recessions. Investors who survived bear markets. Products that flopped, were redesigned, and then worked. In any risky endeavor, the line between success and failure is thin enough that hardly anyone can find it but never walk over it. So you’ll gain more by learning how to put up with and survive the occasional misstep than attempting to avoid them entirely. This is why room for error and humility are so important.与那些看似征服了风险的人相比，从那些承受过风险的人身上可以学到更多东西。如果成功需要承担很容易变成失败的风险，而两者之间的界限几乎是实时看不见的，那么我想向那些不小心跨过界限并活下来讲述故事的人学习。从严重衰退中幸存下来的公司。从熊市中幸存下来的投资者。失败的产品经过重新设计，然后才发挥作用。在任何冒险的努力中，成功与失败之间的界限都很窄，几乎没有人能找到它，但永远不会跨过它。因此，学习如何忍受偶尔的失误并从中幸存下来，比试图完全避免它们会收获更多。这就是为什么允许犯错和谦逊如此重要。
“What do I care about the law?” Vanderbilt once said. “Ain’t I got the power?”“我关心法律什么？”范德比尔特曾经说过。 “难道我没有力量吗？”
He did, and it worked. But it’s easy to imagine those being the last words of a story with a very different outcome.他做到了，而且成功了。但很容易想象这些是一个结局截然不同的故事的最后一句话。