对话赫芬顿：从“新媒体女王”到睡眠大使

　　She’s the self-made media magnate who launched the Huffington Post website. These days, Arianna Huffington is more concerned with sleep. I met her at the Manhattan offices of Thrive Global, her latest business venture, whose mission is to end the stress and burnout epidemic.

　　她是白手起家的传媒大亨，创立了《赫芬顿邮报》网站。不过近来，阿里安娜.赫芬顿更关心的是睡眠问题。我在Thrive Global的曼哈顿办公室见到了她，这是她最新的创业项目，宗旨是帮当代人摆脱普遍困扰他们的压力与精疲力尽感。

　　Andrew: So Arianna, you founded Huffington Post and Thrive Global after a long and varied career in other areas. What difference do you think it makes having experience before founding a business? Because most of your career up to then had not been about --

　　阿里安娜，你创办了《赫芬顿邮报》和现在的Thrive Global，之前你在其他领域做过很长时间其他工作。你创业前的工作经历对你的创业有帮助吗?因为在创业之前，你的工作都不是经营公司——

　　Arianna: I was a writer. Yes. I had written a dozen books, [I was a] journalist, a speaker. I think, obviously, you bring all your earlier experiences to any new undertaking. For me, more important than my early experiences was my upbringing. You know, I was brought up in Athens, Greece by an amazing mother who had always made me feel that I could take risks because she kept saying failure is not the opposite of success, it’s a stepping stone to success. So I think being comfortable with the possibility of failure, which was incredibly high when I launched Huff Post, meant that I was willing to take the risk.

　　我之前是名作家，没错。我写了十几本书，还曾是一名记者、一名演讲者。很显然你会把以前的经验都用到任何新工作中去。对我而言，比我之前的工作经历更重要的是我的成长经历。你知道的，我从小在希腊雅典长大。我有一位了不起的母亲，她一直让我觉得我可以承担风险。因为她一直说，失败不是成功的对立面，而是成功的垫脚石。所以我面对可能的失败心态比较从容，而我创办《赫芬顿邮报》时失败风险非常高，这种心态让我愿意冒险。

　　After 12 years at the Huffington Post, Ms Huffington sold the news site to AOL for $350 million before launching Thrive Global.

　　创建和领导《赫芬顿邮报》12年后，赫芬顿女士以3.5亿美元的价格将这个新闻网站卖给了美国在线(AOL)，在此之后创立了Thrive Global。

　　Andrew: What did you learn?

　　你从中学到了什么?

　　Arianna: The first thing I learned, the most important thing is to make sure that you don’t hire people who may be great at their job, but they are toxic in terms of the culture. I call it “no brilliant jerks allowed”. And I think it’s my number one management rule. It’s very tempting when you find someone who is good at what they do, who delivers results, to overlook the toxic impact they have in the culture and on their colleagues, because of who they are and because of their character. Now, I do believe that everybody is redeemable, and people evolve and learn. But it’s at a very high cost for a company, especially a start-up.

　　我学到的第一件事，也是最重要的事，就是确保不要雇佣那些可能在工作上表现得很出色，但会毒害企业文化的人。我称这个(原则)为“不容许聪明的混蛋”。我把它当作我的口号管理原则。一个很擅长某项工作的人出现在你面前是很具有迷惑性的，你被他们的靓丽业绩迷惑，以至于忽略了他们对企业文化和同事的负面影响。这源于他们的本性和性格。现在，我相信每个人都可以弥补这些缺陷，人们不断地发展和学习。但对一家公司来说，它的成本太高，尤其是对一家初创公司。

　　Arianna: And now at Thrive Global, I am very conscious of the fact that the first 100 people you hire will determine the culture of the company.

　　在Thrive Global，我非常清楚前100个员工将决定公司文化。

　　Her aim at Thrive Global is to help people and companies improve their well-being and performance. The company offers everything from online advice to products such as smart watches and even miniature beds where you can tuck in your phone at night to charge, as part of a quest to encourage a healthier relationship with technology.

　　她创办Thrive Global的目标是帮助人们和公司提高他们的福祉和业绩。该公司提供各类产品，从在线咨询到智能手表，甚至“手机床”，可以用来夜间给手机充电。这些尝试都在鼓励人们与科技建立更健康的关系。

　　Andrew: Tell us a little about the difference between setting up Huffington Post and setting up Thrive Global.

　　可以告诉我们创办《赫芬顿邮报》和创办Thrive Global感觉上有何不同吗?

　　Arianna: Thrive Global has been a lot easier. I think, I’m sure it’s partly because it’s not my first rodeo and because we’re very lucky to be able to raise capital easily, both for the Series A and then the Series B. It was easier to recruit great people, which is so key for any start up. But I think more important than that is that I think we tapped into a moment in the zeitgeist. After sort of decades of believing the wrong thing, we are waking up and realising that this delusion, that burnout is essential in order to achieve and succeed, is something that has actually cost us a lot in terms of health, productivity, and ultimately, results.

　　创办Thrive Global要容易很多。我相信一个原因是，这不是我第一次站上这个“牛仔竞技会”了。还有一点是，我们很幸运，能够比较轻松融到资金，在A轮和B轮都是如此。我们招聘优秀人才也比上次容易，这一点对创业企业至关重要。但我认为比这更重要的是，我们触碰到了当代人的一个痛点。在我们埋头于辛勤工作几十年之后，我们清醒过来，意识到一个人必须工作到精疲力竭才能成功是一个错觉。它其实代价高昂：损害我们的健康，我们的生产力，最终影响我们的工作成绩。

　　Andrew: Would you have achieved as much, do you think, if you had understood this earlier?

　　你觉得如果你自己早一点认识到这一点，会获得一样的成功吗?

　　Arianna: Oh I have no doubt about that. In fact, I can trace all the mistakes I made to being tired. To running on empty.

　　哦，我对此毫无疑问。事实上，我人生犯过的所有错误都可追溯到身体的疲惫上。疲惫让我的大脑无法运转。

　　Andrew: Have you got an example of a mistake?

　　给我们举个这样的例子吧?

　　Arianna: Mostly hiring mistakes. When you have like, a list of people you are hiring, it’s so tempting, when you are tired and exhausted and confronting your long to-do list, you want to cross something off the to-do list. And that’s when you kind of ignore the red flags.

　　主要是在雇人上犯的错。如果你有一份招聘名单，而此刻你疲惫不堪，还面对一长串待办事项，你想尽快勾掉一些事情。那就是你忽略危险信号的时候。

　　Andrew: How much, obviously, does your personality play into it? Its been fundamental at Huffington Post, and now at Thrive, that you are involved and contributing from the top. Does that put a huge amount of pressure on you personally to understand the and lead the culture?

　　你的个性在其中发挥了多大作用呢?从《赫芬顿邮报》开始，现在是在Thrive Global，你作为高层参与其中并做出贡献。这会给你带来巨大的压力吗?因为你必须去塑造和引领一家公司的文化。

　　Arianna: I don’t see it as a pressure. I see it more as creating a family feeling. From the first days of Huff Post, when we were five people, I would go buy everybody sweaters at Christmas. And we maintained that tradition. You know, we went from sweaters for 850 people, to PJs for 850 people, when I started writing about sleep. But my point is that, it isn’t just giving people a bonus or or a card to buy something. It’s the way you would treat people in a family.

　　我没把它当做是一种压力。我更多将它看作创造一种家庭的氛围。从创办《赫芬顿邮报》之初，当我们只有五个人的时候，我会在圣诞节时去为每个人买件毛衣。我们保持了这一传统。当我开始写关于睡眠的文章时，我们从为850名员工买毛衣变成为850位员工买睡衣。但我的观点是，这不仅仅是给人一个奖励或者是一张购物卡，这是你对待家人的方式。

　　Andrew: What sort of skills, other skills and characteristics do you think you need as a company founder?

　　什么样的技能，或者特质，是你认为作为公司创始人所必需的?

　　Arianna: I think you definitely need a sense of mission. The recognition that there is a value you can add to peoples’ lives. Whether that’s in the tech world or in customer service or in product or in this case, in media, the sense that you are adding value is a big driver when things don’t go well. And there is no founding story that is all success and glory. I mean, I still remember the first review we got um...

　　我觉得你肯定需要具备使命感，认识到你可以为人们的生活增添价值，不论是在科学技术上，还是在客户服务中。在我的案例中则是媒体，你能为别人的生活增添价值这种感觉，能在事情进展不顺利时成为巨大的推动力。不是所有创业故事都充满成功的荣耀。我还记得我们得到的第一个评论……

　　Andrew: Pretty critical.

　　对你们批评很激烈。

　　Arianna: Very critical. It said, the Huffington Post is an unsurvivable failure. It is the movie equivalent of Gigli, Ishtar, and Heaven’s Gate all rolled into one. For those who are not movie buffs who are watching, these were all incredible flops.

　　对，很严重的批评。说：《赫芬顿邮报》将是一个无法挽救的失败。它就好像《鸳鸯绑匪》、《伊斯达》和《天使之门》这三部电影融为一体。对那些不喜欢看电影的人来说，这些都是电影史上的大败笔。

　　Andrew: What do you feel you’ve learned from seeing other founders and business people?

　　你觉得从其他企业创始人那里学到了什么?

　　Arianna: I think I’ve learned a lot about the importance of culture. We’re just beginning to understand how central culture is to the bottom line. Culture is the immune system of a company. You’re not going to improve human nature overnight. But a strong culture can protect the company from bad behaviour of any kind.

　　我学到了企业文化有多重要。我们刚刚开始明白，企业文化同盈利一样重要。文化就像公司的免疫系统。你无法在一夜之间改善人性，但强大的文化可以保护一家公司，使它免受任何坏行为的侵害。