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前一阵子，英国《金融时报》刊登了世界排名前50位的女首席执行官名单。我向来对此类名单兴趣浓厚，于是便在用早餐时仔细研究了一番。首先，我欣赏了雅芳首席执行官(CEO)佩戴的双排珍珠项链，莎莉公司(Sara Lee) CEO的珍珠白牙齿，以及日本临时雇员公司(Tempstaff)创始人筱原良子(Yoshiko Shinohara)完美得有些诡异的肌肤——她看上去比我年轻，但其实已经74岁了。
接着我阅读了她们的成功秘诀。排名第一的女性——百事公司(PepsiCo)的英德拉?努伊(Indra Nooyi)表示，你必须努力工作并享受乐趣。卡夫(Kraft)的艾琳?罗森菲尔德(Irene Rosenfeld)表示，你必须跟着自己的热情走。其他人则谈到了拥有一位导师、做自己、工作与生活平衡、团队协作和谦逊的重要性。
读着这一切，我感觉自己正一点点陷入一张低矮的懒人沙发，而且再也无法站起身来。这倒不是因为其中有什么特别让人反对的观点，而是因为这些女性都取得了非凡成就，却在不过大脑地重复时下每一位现代CEO——无论男女——都必须持有的关爱他人、与人分享的观点。
不和谐的音符只有一处，来自一家中国空调制造商的掌门人董明珠，她在世界女商人中影响力排名第九。“我从来没有失过手，”她表示。“我从不认错，我永远都是对的。”
On Saturday, the FT published a list of the top 50 women chief executives in the world and, loving such lists, I settled down over breakfast to study it. First, I admired the double string of pearls worn by the CEO of Avon; the pearly white teeth of the Sara Lee chief and the spookily perfect skin of Yoshiko Shinohara, founder of Tempstaff in Japan – who looks younger than I do but turns out to be 74.
Next I read the secrets of their success. The number one woman, PepsiCo's Indra Nooyi, says you must work hard and have fun. Irene Rosenfeld of Kraft says you must follow your passion. The others talk about the importance of having a mentor, of being yourself, of work-life balance, of teamwork and of being humble.
Reading this, I felt I was sinking into a low-slung foam chair from which I couldn't get out. It wasn't that there was anything in particular to disagree with. It was that these women, all of whom have achieved exceptional things, mindlessly repeat the caring, sharing views that every modern CEO – male and female – is now required to have.
There was only one discordant note. This was sounded by Dong Mingzhu, who runs a Chinese manufacturer of air conditioners and is rated the ninth most important businesswoman in the world. “I never miss,” she says. “I never admit mistakes and I am always correct.”
I read this and laughed. It was so bracing, so shocking, so out of line that I thought it a joke. This is the management equivalent of saying one is into incest or has a lot of respect for paedophiles.
Yet Sister Dong, as she is sometimes known, has achieved results. Gree Electric Appliances has achieved total shareholder returns in the past three years of 529.5 per cent. Compare this with Avon, say, where Andrea Jung boasts that her biggest inspiration is the 6m strong sales force. Alas, it seems that listening to 6m ideas may have distracted her from the bottom line. Her return over the same period is a poor -10.5 per cent.
