Facebook's COO, Sheryl Sandberg, works closely with wunderkind CEO Mark Zuckerberg. She joined Facebook after her tenure as a VP at Google and also served at the Treasury Department under President Bill Clinton.Sandberg spoke to ForbesWoman Publisher Moira Forbes about keeping up with the tech world's furious pace of change while still making time to meet with every employee at Facebook.
曾在比尔·克林顿政府的财政部供职,继而担任Google副总裁,目前担任Facebook的首席运营官……谢丽尔·桑德伯格(Sheryl Sandberg)与CEO马克·扎克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)一直密切合作,她告诉《福布斯》自己如何跟上科技世界的紧张步伐,又能保证有时间与Facebook每位员工都有交流的机会。
Moira Forbes: When you joined Facebook, you decided to meet and speak with every single employee at the company. Why did you do this, and what did you learn?
加入Facebook时,你决定与每位员工当面交流。你为什么这么做?从中学到了什么?
Sandberg: I recognized the company had gotten to where it was based on those peoples' work. If you come into an organization and you're new, starting from a place where you really have great respect, showing that you respect the work of the people that came before you is the most important thing to do.
我意识到公司的走向取决于这些人的工作。如果你作为新人进入到一个组织,从你确实感到尊敬的地方入手,并对那些先来者的工作表示尊敬才是最重要的事情。
I felt grateful to the people who had done the work. To get the company from what it was, a college website, to what it had already become attracted me.
对那些为公司努力过的人们,我心存感激。我对他们的工作心怀感激,他们把Facebook从最初的校际网站发展到目前的状况,这一点吸引了我。
You've worked at small entrepreneurial ventures that have grown to immense global companies. What's it been like for you to scale the culture from a company with a few hundred employees to a company with thousands of employees?
你曾在小型创业企业工作,而这些企业最终都发展成为世界规模的大公司。对你来说,如何衡量几百人的公司到几千人的公司之间的不同文化呢?
I think the most important thing is to continually think ahead. Right now, for example, Facebook Connect has 80,000 websites as partners. Does what we do scale to a million? We need to build the systems now to scale to a million because our goal, certainly, would be to get there really quickly.
我觉得最重要的事情就是持续做超前思考。比如说现在,Facebook与8万个网站建立了合作关系,我们所做的能够满足一百万的规模需求吗?我们现在就需 要建立符合百万级合作对象的系统,毕竟根据我们的目标,我们很快就会到达那一步。
Going through fast growth, you're always behind. When you're going through those really fast phases of growth, you're even further behind. As soon as you catch up, you're behind again.
经历过快速增长,你通常会落后。当你经历的增长速度实在太快太快时,甚至就会落后很远很远。如果不立即赶上,那就要再次掉队了。
You work in an industry where profound change and disruption are at the center of every business model in your sector. What's the most important piece of advice you would give to other leaders who are facing, for the first time, this type of disruption, and change, and growth that can be really challenging and overwhelming?
在你工作的行业中,深刻的变革和裂变是任何业务模式的核心。对那些第一次面对这种变革和增长的企业领袖,你所能给的最重要的建议是什么?
The thing for people to remember is to really try to embrace change and not try to control it too much. It's an instinct to hunker down and control things that makes this harder for people.
需要记住的就是,一定要努力拥抱变化,且不要试图控制太多。其实着手控制是一种本能,结果却把事情变得更加困难。
You also need to remember that only thing worse than change is the lack of it. When you have that kind of stagnation, you feel it, and then, before you know it, the world's passed you by. It is uncomfortable to work, sometimes, in a place that changes so quickly, but I think it's better than the alternative.
你一直要铭记在心的是,唯一比变化更加糟糕的事情就是缺少变化。当你处于停滞时,没等你意识到,世界已经把你甩在身后。有时,在一个变化如此快速的地方工 作并不舒服,但我认为这要比没有变化来得好。
How do you avoid getting bogged down by putting out the fires of the day?
面临需要四处“救火”的一天,你要怎样避免陷入困境?
I have a list of things I am proactively trying to get done. We all get so many e-mails or messages or incoming requests in a day that you can spend your entire day, every day, every week, being completely reactive. And then you look up at the end of the day or the week, and you've taken care of nothing that really matters.
我有一张清单,上面有我最想积极解决的问题。每天我们都会收到太多的邮件或讯息,你要花掉整天、每天、每周的时间去应付,这样就陷于完全的被动中。然后你 回顾这一天或者这一周时,会发现根本没有顾及任何真正重要的事情。
So I write it down--here are the five things that matter this month--and make sure that I am spending time, each and every day, on those things, to the extent I can.
所以我把它们写下来,比如说这个月有五件重要的事情要做,我就要确保每天我都将时间花在这些事情上。
What's next for you?
你的下一个目标是什么?
Facebook is next for me. We're now at 400 million users. We think we've done a nice job starting the process of making the world open and connected and helping people share, but there is so much more to do. So working with Mark [Zuckerberg] and the team, and seeing what we can accomplish in the next couple years.
Facebook就是我的下一个目标。我们现在拥有的用户数量已经逾4亿人。我们认为,在推动世界更加开放和连通、帮助人们分享的起步阶段,我们做得很 棒。但是我们还有太多要做的事情。所以,与马克和这支团队一起工作,然后见证我们在未来几年有何成就,是我的下一个目标。