我在科技業的第一位老板迪克是個備受尊敬的工程經理，上大學時在校橄欖球隊打線鋒，看上去就像寶潔公司旗下清潔品牌朗白先生一樣，只不過沒戴耳環。迪克曾經費勁心思教我，可惜我當時太傲慢，沒領會他的心意。

大塊頭的迪克在辦公室里貼了一張條子寫著：“我可能不算聰明，但我肯定經驗豐富?！庇幸惶?，我像搞惡作劇似地也打印了一張紙，寫著“我可能不算經驗豐富，但我肯定聰明?！比缓筚N在工位的隔板上。

迪克看到以后，搖搖頭走開了。我記得當時以為，他肯定心情不好。后來我才意識到，他花了很多時間想讓我這顆榆木腦袋明白：聰明反被聰明誤，而且我太自以為是了根本意識不到。

我小小的惡作劇真是既可悲又諷刺，這完全是我的損失，其實影響不到迪克。

缺乏謙虛精神、或者說狂妄自大不僅會困擾頗有潛力的后輩，一些有經驗的人也會碰到類似問題，原因我們后面細說。不管什么人遇到，后果往往都是很嚴重的。

要說過分自負曾導致許多管理者和企業失敗可能還略顯保守。根據我的經驗，這是企業失敗最常見的原因?？杀氖沁@一切原本可以避免。

在《只有偏執狂才能生存》一書中，英特爾公司前首席執行官安迪·葛洛夫警告說：“成功是自己的掘墓人?！笔聦嵣?，人生最大的風險莫過于登上巔峰。因為所有的競爭對手都會奮力追趕你。你也可能因為自大而膨脹，結果爬得高跌得重。

安然、世通公司、Adelphia——一個個倒閉的巨頭無異于一座座自大撐起的紙牌屋。這三起臭名昭著的丑聞都發生在互聯網泡沫時代，當時市場泡沫由非理性繁榮催生，不過是狂妄自大換個說法罷了。

美國在線與時代華納、斯普林特和Nextel、戴姆勒與克萊斯勒等注定失敗的超級并購都是基于不切實際的設想，人們以為合并后起碼不會比獨立經營時差。盡職調查過程中雙方在戰略、企業文化和技術方面不合適等關鍵問題統統忽略。盡職調查的是為了盡量減少法律責任，殊不知只是為失敗埋下伏筆。

企業家為何會根據錯誤的前提得出過于樂觀的結論，忽視愿景或企劃不一定能成功的關鍵證據和推斷？行為狂妄只是表面，核心是過于輕視失敗、將成功視為理所當然的奇葩想法。

血液檢測初創公司Theranos就是個很好的例子。這家估值90億美元的公司核心業務是一種獨家技術，只需從患者手指取幾滴血就能實時得到結果。遺憾的是，調查發現檢測結果造假。該兩年內數以萬計的病人測試全部作廢。Theranos自吹自擂的加州實驗室失去了聯邦政府的檢測認證，監管機構還下令公司首席執行官伊麗莎白·霍姆斯行業禁入。

事后回想，其實Theranos留下了許多蛛絲馬跡。公司核心技術一直秘而不宣，投資者，合作的連鎖藥店沃爾格林都無從了解，醫學期刊上也沒見過相關分析。外人不得進入該司實驗室。該司的首位投資人、知名風投資本家蒂姆·德雷珀是霍姆斯一家的朋友，之所以投資是認為霍姆斯有類似蘋果之父喬布斯的個人魅力。

或許最明顯的跡象就是，去年霍姆斯接受時尚雜志Glamour采訪時說：“我有幸成長在充滿激勵的環境里，從小我就相信沒有什么做不到的?！蔽艺J為，年輕的霍姆斯可能把父母的鼓勵太過當真。失去理智的自信在Theranos案例中隨處存在，卻像指紋一樣肉眼難見。

就在Theranos露出真面目那會兒，我看到對查爾斯·科赫在一次采訪中回憶，身為科氏工業集團創始人的父親將首席執行官一職交給他之前說：“希望你的第一筆買賣失敗，否則你會覺得自己無比聰明，實際上并不是?！?

聽起來，老科赫和我過去的老板是同樣的用意。不過老科赫的兒子一定是聽進去了，后來公司成長為銷售額1150美元、員工達10萬名的全球巨頭。

才華橫溢的新人缺少謙虛精神其實很正常，然而在變為成功領導者的過程中，總有一天會學會滿招損謙受益的道理。要記得保持謙遜，未來的人生道路上有可能幫你大忙。（財富中文網）

譯者：Pessy

審校：夏林

My first boss in the tech industry was a highly respected engineering manager named Dick. A former college football lineman who looked just like Mr. Clean but without the earrings, Dick tried his best to teach me lessons that I was unfortunately too arrogant to appreciate.

The big guy had a sign in his office that said, “I may not be smart, but I sure am experienced.” One day as a prank I printed up a sign that said “I may not be experienced, but I sure am smart” and hung it on my cubicle wall.

When Dick saw it, he just shook his head and walked away. I remember thinking he must be in a bad mood. I later came to realize something he had been trying to get through my thick skull for the longest time: that I was too smart for my own good and too full of myself to realize it.

The sad irony of my little prank was completely lost on me, but apparently not on Dick.

Lack of humility or hubris doesn’t just plague young up-and-comers with more potential than they perhaps deserve. It’s also common among those with enough experience to know better but, for reasons we’ll get to in a minute, don’t. And the outcome is often catastrophic.

To say that exaggerated overconfidence has caused the tragic demise of many executives and their companies is a gross understatement. In my experience, it’s among the most common business failure modes. What makes it tragic is that it’s so easily preventable.

In his book, Only the Paranoid Survive (Crown Business, 1999), former Intel CEO Andy Grove cautions that “Success leads to its own demise.” Indeed, there’s no greater risk than being at the top of your game. That’s when all your competitors will be gunning for you. It’s also when your oversized ego is most likely to write checks that reality can’t cash.

Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia – some of the biggest corporate failures were nothing more than houses of cards held together by hubris. It’s no coincidence that all three of those infamous scandals took place during the dot-com era – a market bubble built entirely on irrational exuberance, which is just another way of saying hubris.

Doomed mega mergers like AOL-Time Warner, Sprint-Nextel and Daimler-Chrysler were all based on the unrealistic assumption that the companies involved would be at least as successful together as they were independently. Key issues like lack of strategic, cultural or technological fit were simply ignored in due diligence processes designed to minimize legal liability while rubberstamping a predetermined outcome.

What causes leaders to draw overly optimistic conclusions based on false assumptions, while ignoring critical evidence and reasoning that doesn’t fit their vision or plans? The behavior may be hubris, but at its core is a sort of magical thinking that takes failure far too lightly and success for granted.

Theranos is a perfect example. The company’s $9 billion valuation was based on proprietary technology that was supposed to deliver real-time diagnostics from a few drops of blood from a finger stick. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work. Two years of tests on tens of thousands of patients have been voided, its vaunted California lab has lost its federal certification andCEO Elizabeth Holmes has been banned from the business.

In hindsight, there were plenty of clues. Shrouded in secrecy, the technology was never vetted by investors, partner Walgreens or peer-reviewed medical journals. Outsiders were never allowed in the lab. And the first investor,?noted venture capitalist Tim Draper, was a family friend who was taken with Holmes’ Steve Jobs-like charisma.

Perhaps the most telling sign was something?Holmes said in aGlamour?interview last year, “I was blessed to grow up in an environment in which I was encouraged to believe that there was nothing I couldn’t do.” I think the young Holmes may have taken that parental encouragement just a little too literally. Irrational self-confidence is all over the Theranos mess like latent fingerprints.

Around the same time we learned that everything was not as it seemed at Theranos, I saw?an interview where Charles Kochrecounted what his dad, founder of Koch Industries, told him before handing over the CEO reins. “I hope your first deal is a loser,” he said, “Otherwise you’ll think you’re a lot smarter than you are.”

Sounds like the elder Koch was cut from the same cloth as my old boss. His advice must have sunk in: his son grew the company into a global behemoth with $115 billion in sales and 100,000 employees.

While it’s not unusual for talented up-and-comers to lack humility, all successful leaders pick it up somewhere along the line. Make sure you do. It may very well save your butt down the road.