I.H.181.Warren Buffett.Wrong Incentives
思维的锚点起到非常重要的作用，方向错了会错的非常离谱。
1、《2005-04-30 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting》
23. The danger of earnings expectations
预测收益的风险
WARREN BUFFETT: Number 14.
沃伦·巴菲特：第十四号。
Do we have a second microphone in the overflow room? Oh, there’s only one in there. OK, then we’ll go back to number one.
我们在分会场里有第二个麦克风吗？哦，那里只有一个。好的，那我们回到第一个。
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Andrew Noble (PH) from England.
观众成员：来自英格兰的安德鲁·诺布尔（PH）。
Apart from the catastrophic insurance events or Armageddon scenarios that you’ve been talking about earlier, in relation to the operations of Berkshire Hathaway, what are your greatest fears?
除了您之前提到的灾难性保险事件或世界末日情景之外，关于伯克希尔·哈撒韦的运营，您最大的担忧是什么？
WARREN BUFFETT: Well, the greatest, I would say — we don’t worry about the economics of the businesses we have.
沃伦·巴菲特：嗯，我想说的是，我们不担心我们所拥有的业务的经济状况。
We’ve got a very diverse group. By and large, they’re very good businesses. By and large, they’re run by some of the best managers in the country. But we worry about something going wrong.
我们有一个非常多元化的团队。总体来说，他们是非常优秀的企业。总体来说，它们由全国一些最优秀的管理者运营。但我们担心会出问题。
I mean, you know, you heard about the Salomon [Brothers] thing in the movie. And, I mean, we’ve got 180,000 people out there, and I’ll guarantee you something is going wrong someplace, as we talk. That’s just the nature of it.
我的意思是，你知道的，你在电影里听说过所罗门[兄弟]的事情。我的意思是，我们有 18 万人在那里，我向你保证，在我们谈话的时候，总有些地方出了问题。这就是事情的本质。
But, what you hope is that it’s relatively unimportant or that we catch it. And — but that’s, you know, that is something that we know will happen.
但是，你希望它相对不重要，或者我们能发现它。而且——但你知道，那是我们知道会发生的事情。
We try to have a culture that minimizes that. And I think we do have a culture that minimizes that.
我们努力营造一种尽量减少这种情况的文化。我认为我们确实有一种尽量减少这种情况的文化。
We — it’s very important, in our view, to have the right incentives. And many places, we think, have incentives that aren’t so good.
我们认为，拥有正确的激励措施是非常重要的。而在许多地方，我们认为激励措施并不是那么好。
I mean, when I get on an airplane, and we own the company, like NetJets, the last thing in the world I want to tell the pilot is that I’m running late and I hope we can get to New York a little faster.
我的意思是，当我登上飞机，而我们拥有这家公司，比如 NetJets 时，我最不想告诉飞行员的是我迟到了，希望我们能快点到达纽约。
I mean, that is dumb, to incent a pilot, who may be worried that, you know, somehow you affect his job or something, to get in a hurry about the takeoff or the checklist or whatever it may be.
我的意思是，这很愚蠢，去激励一个可能担心你会以某种方式影响他工作的飞行员，让他匆忙进行起飞或检查清单或其他任何事情。
And companies do that time after time in their compensation plans or things that they incent people, in our view at least, some of the wrong things.
公司在他们的薪酬计划或激励措施中一次又一次地这样做，至少在我们看来，有些是错误的。
OKR整体上是错误的，BRK和AAPL都不会使用这种方法。
That doesn’t mean nothing wrong will happen under any circumstances. But you should not have a system that causes people to, for example, worry about quarterly earnings.
这并不意味着在任何情况下都不会出错。但你不应该有一个让人们担心季度收益的系统。
None of our — our managers do not submit budgets into Omaha. I have no idea what we’re going to earn next quarter.
我们的经理都不向奥马哈提交预算。我不知道我们下个季度会赚多少钱。
And I have no implicit body language out there, or anything of the sort, to our managers that I’m hoping to earn X dollars per share in the quarter.
而且我没有向我们的经理传达任何隐含的肢体语言或类似的东西，表示我希望在这个季度每股赚取 X 美元。
Because in the insurance business particularly, you can report any numbers, basically, that you want to, if you write long-tail business for a short period of time.
因为特别是在保险业务中，如果你在短期内承保长期业务，基本上可以报告任何你想要的数字。
And, you know, we’ve got 45 billion of loss reserves. Well, who knows whether the right figure is 45 billion or 46 or 44?
而且，你知道，我们有 450 亿的损失准备金。嗯，谁知道正确的数字是 450 亿还是 460 亿或 440 亿？
And if the desire is to report some given number in a given quarter, instead of saying 45 billion, you say 44-and-three-quarters billion, or something of the sort.
如果想要报告某个季度的某个数字，与其说 450 亿，不如说 4450 亿，或者类似的说法。
So we have no incentives, in terms of how people are paid, or in terms of the fact they just don’t want to let me down.
所以我们没有激励措施，无论是在薪酬方面，还是在他们不想让我失望的事实方面。
Let’s assume at the start of the year I asked everybody to submit budgets and then I went on Wall Street and preached a bunch of numbers.
假设在年初我要求每个人提交预算，然后我去了华尔街并宣讲了一堆数字。
Even if their compensation didn’t depend on it, the managers would feel, you know, we don’t want to let Warren down on this. So, you know, we’ll take an optimistic view of reserves, and that’s easy to do, at the end of the quarter and we won’t let him down and then he won’t look like a jerk in front of Wall Street.
即使他们的报酬不依赖于此，经理们也会觉得，你知道，我们不想在这方面让沃伦失望。所以，你知道，我们会对储备持乐观态度，这在季度末很容易做到，我们不会让他失望，这样他在华尔街面前就不会显得像个傻瓜。
So we try to avoid that sort of thing. But even then, that is what we worry about.
所以我们尽量避免那种事情。但即便如此，那也是我们担心的。
We don’t worry about this place making money. I mean, we’ll make money. And if we don’t, it’s my fault. That’s not that’s not the problem.
我们不担心这个地方赚钱。我的意思是，我们会赚钱。如果我们不赚钱，那是我的错。那不是问题所在。
The problem right now, in addition to the one we just talked about, the problem is deploying capital, and that’s my job, too.
现在的问题，除了我们刚刚谈到的问题之外，就是资本的部署，这也是我的工作。
And, you know, I haven’t done a very good job of that recently, but with a little luck, you know, we will — and a different kind of market situation — we will get a chance to do that.
而且，你知道，我最近在这方面做得不是很好，但如果有一点运气，你知道，在不同的市场情况下，我们将有机会做到这一点。
Charlie? 查理？
CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah. Well, if you stop to think about it, the history of much of which we don’t like in modern corporate capitalism comes from an unreasonable expectation, communicated from headquarters, that earnings have to go up with no volatility and great regularity — corporate earnings, I mean.
查理·芒格：是的。如果你仔细想想，我们不喜欢的现代企业资本主义的很多历史都源于来自总部的不合理期望，这种期望要求盈利必须稳步上涨，没有波动，且具有很强的规律性——我指的是企业收益。
That kind of an expectation from headquarters is not just the kissing cousin of evil. It’s the blood brother of evil.
总部的那种期望不仅仅是邪恶的近亲，而是邪恶的亲兄弟。
And we just don’t need that blood brother in our headquarters.
我们只是不需要那个结拜兄弟在我们的总部。
WARREN BUFFETT: Businesses do not meet expectations quarter after quarter and year after year. It just isn’t in the nature of running businesses.
沃伦·巴菲特：企业不会一季度又一季度、一年又一年地达到预期。这并不是经营企业的本质。
And, in our view, people that predict precisely what the future will be are either kidding investors, or they’re kidding themselves, or they’re kidding both.
而在我们看来，那些准确预测未来的人要么是在愚弄投资者，要么是在自欺欺人，要么是在愚弄两者。
Charlie and I have been around the culture, sometimes on the board, where the ego of the CEO became very involved in meeting predictions which were impossible, really, over time.
查理和我曾接触过这种文化，有时在董事会中，CEO 的自我意识过于强烈，导致他们试图实现实际上不可能的预测。
And everybody in the organization knew, because they were very public about it, what these predictions were and they knew that their CEO was going to look bad if they weren’t met. And that can lead to a lot of bad things.
在这个组织里，每个人都知道这些预测是什么，因为他们对此非常公开，他们知道如果这些预测没有实现，他们的 CEO 会显得很糟糕。而这可能导致很多不好的事情。
You get enough bad things, anyway, I mean. But setting up a system that either exerts financial or psychological pressure on the people around you to do things that they probably really don’t even want to do, in order to avoid disappointing you, I mean, I just think that that’s — it’s a terrible mistake. And, you know, we’ll try to avoid it.
无论如何，我是说，你已经得到了足够多的坏事。但是建立一个系统，对你周围的人施加经济或心理压力，让他们去做一些他们可能根本不想做的事情，只是为了避免让你失望，我是说，我只是觉得那是——这是一个可怕的错误。而且，你知道，我们会尽量避免这种情况。
2、《2008-05-03 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting》
36. No “extreme frugality” but don’t spend more than you make
不要“极端节俭”，但不要花超过你赚的钱。
WARREN BUFFETT: OK. We’ll do one more, and then we’ll break for lunch. Number 7.
沃伦·巴菲特：好的。我们再做一个，然后我们就去吃午饭。第 7 号。
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Good morning. My name is Tim Fam (PH). I’m from Austin, Texas.
观众成员：早上好。我的名字是蒂姆·范（音）。我来自德克萨斯州奥斯汀。
For my children, I would like to hear from both of you as far as the temptation to keeping up with the Joneses.
对于我的孩子们，我想听听你们两位关于与邻居攀比的诱惑的看法。
And can you give them advice that they can live by with respect to frugality, debt, and work ethic?
你能给他们一些关于节俭、债务和职业道德的生活建议吗？
WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah. Just tell them to keep up with the Buffetts. (Laughter)
沃伦·巴菲特：是的。就告诉他们跟上巴菲特的步伐。（笑声）
Well, Charlie and I have always been big fans of living within your income, and if you do that, you’ll have a whole lot more income later on.
嗯，查理和我一直是量入为出的忠实拥护者，如果你这样做，以后你会有更多的收入。
And, you know, it — I think they will, to a considerable extent, not a perfect extent, they will follow the example of their parents.
我认为，孩子们在很大程度上会效仿他们父母的榜样，虽然不是百分之百，但影响是显而易见的。
I mean, if their parents are coveting, you know, every possession of their neighbor, you know, or trying to figure out ways to increase their cost of living without necessarily their standard of living, the kids are likely to pick up on it.
我的意思是，如果他们的父母在觊觎邻居的每一件财物，或者试图想办法增加他们的生活成本而不一定提高生活水平，孩子们很可能会注意到这一点。
But now you can get the reverse effect. If you get too tough with them, they go crazy later on. (Laughs)
但也可能会产生相反的效果，如果您对他们太苛刻，他们后来会变得非常疯狂。（笑声）
But the — it’s — people make that election.
但是——这是——人们做出的选择。
Incidentally, there are people — there are plenty of people that I don’t advise to save.
顺便说一下，有些人——有很多人我不建议去拯救。
I mean, the real — if you’re struggling along and making a reasonable income and you have a job with a 401(k) being put aside for you, and you have Social Security, who’s to say whether it’s better to defer a dollar of expenditure on your family on a trip to Disneyland or something that they’ll get enormous enjoyment out of so that when you’re 75 you can have a, you know, 30-foot boat instead of a 20-foot boat?
我的意思是，真正的——如果你在努力工作并获得合理的收入，并且你有一份工作为你存入 401(k)，还有社会保障，谁能说推迟花费1美元在家庭旅行上，比如去迪士尼乐园，或者其他能让他们获得巨大乐趣的事情，是否更好，以便当你 75 岁时，你可以拥有一艘 30 英尺的船而不是 20 英尺的船呢？
I mean, there are choices and there are advantages to spending money in various forms for your family when it’s young, and giving them various forms of enjoyment or education or whatever it may be.
我的意思是，当你的家庭还年轻时，可以选择以各种形式花钱，并为他们提供各种形式的享受或教育或其他任何东西，这其中是有好处的。
So I don’t — I don’t advocate — I may practice — but I don’t advocate extreme frugality.
所以我不——我不提倡——我可能会实践——但我不提倡极端节俭。
The — and I don’t say that it’s always better to be saving 10 percent of your income instead of 5 percent of your income.
我并不是说总是把收入的 10%存起来比存收入的 5%更好。
I think it’s crazy to be spending 105 percent of your income, and I think that leads to all kinds of problems, and I get letters from people every day that have experienced those problems.
我认为花费超过收入的 105%是疯狂的，我认为这会导致各种问题，我每天都收到经历过这些问题的人的来信。
But, you know, in the end you want to have an internal score card. I mean, you are not a better person or a worse person because you live a different kind of life than your neighbor. Live a life that, you know, is true to yourself.
但是，你知道，最终你想要有一个内在的评分标准。我的意思是，你并不是因为过着与邻居不同的生活而成为更好或更坏的人。过一种对自己真实的生活。
Charlie? 查理？
3、《2015-05-02 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting》
WARREN BUFFETT: We had a case at National — it’s interesting.
沃伦·巴菲特：我们在National公司有一个案例——这很有趣。
You really have to understand — should understand — human behavior, if you’re going to run a business, because when National Indemnity — we’re going back to the late 1960s —
你真的必须理解——应该理解——人类行为，如果你打算经营一家公司，因为当国家赔偿公司——我们回到 20 世纪 60 年代末——
Jack Ringwalt was a marvelous man, and he ran it, and he had another marvelous man who worked for him, his tennis partner, and that fellow was in charge of claims.
杰克·林格沃特是一个了不起的人，他负责管理一切，还有另一个了不起的人为他工作，他的网球搭档，那位先生负责索赔。
And when the claims man would come in to Jack and say, “I just received a claim for $25,000” or something, for some long-haul truck or something, Jack would say — Jack — it was just his personality.
当理赔人员来找杰克说，“我刚收到一个25000美元的索赔”或其他类似的事情，杰克会说——杰克——这只是他的个性。
He would start berating the fellow and say, “How could you do this to me?” and “These claims are killing me,” and all of that, and he was joking.
他会开始责备那个家伙，说，“你怎么能这样对我？”以及“这些索赔正在毁了我，”所有这些，他是在开玩笑。
But the fellow he was joking with couldn’t take it, really, and he started hiding claims. And he just didn’t — he stuck them in a drawer.
但那个他开玩笑的家伙真的不能接受，他开始隐藏索赔。他只是——把它们放在一个抽屉里。
And that caused us to not only misreport fairly minor figures, but it also caused us to misinform our reinsurers, because they had an interest in the size of claims.
这导致我们不仅错误报告了一些相对较小的数字，还误导了我们的再保险公司，因为他们对索赔的规模有兴趣。
And the fellow that was hiding the claims had no financial interest in doing it at all, but he just didn’t like to walk into the office and have Jack kid him about the fact that he was failing him.
那个隐藏索赔的人根本没有任何经济利益，但他就是不想走进办公室，让杰克嘲笑他失败的事实。
And you really have to be very careful in the messages you send as a CEO. And if you tell your — if you tell your managers you never want to disappoint Wall Street, and you want to report X per share, you may find that they start fudging figures to protect your predictions.
作为首席执行官，您在发送的信息中必须非常小心。如果您告诉您的经理，您永远不想让华尔街失望，并且希望报告每股 X 的收益，您可能会发现他们开始篡改数据以保护您的预测。
And we try to avoid all that kind of behavior at Berkshire. We’ve just seen too much trouble with it. (Applause)
我们尽量避免在伯克希尔出现这种行为。我们已经见识到太多麻烦了。（掌声）
4、《2017-05-08 张一鸣-如何应对公司变大之后的管理挑战》
第三，弱化层级跟title。
我们鼓励年轻人多提想法。我第一次担任CEO是26岁，我相信我们公司26岁的人有很好的实践经验，受过很好的教育，只要给他们好的Context，他们也能做出好的决策。为了避免形式感给基层节点带来压制，我们弱化层级，首先是不允许这种称呼——“老大”、“某某总”、“老师”，这种称呼一旦出来之后，很多想法就不能涌现出来了。他们可能会倾向于先听听“老师”有什么意见，自己不能先说出来。我们没有title带来的日常可见的待遇区别，比如什么样的人配备什么样的电脑，什么样的人配备什么样的办公桌，这样也会带来层级感，也会影响不同的同事发表意见。
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