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Over the course of my career I have had the privilege of advising two of the largest hedge funds on the planet, five of the largest asset managers in the United States, and three of the most prominent sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East and Asia. My clients have a total asset base of more than a trillion dollars. I have always taken a lot of pride in advising my clients to do what I believe is right for them, even if it means less money for the firm. This view is becoming increasingly unpopular at Goldman Sachs. Another sign that it was time to leave.
在我的职业生涯中，我有幸为全球两大对冲基金、美国五大资产经理以及中东和亚洲的三个最具影响力的主权财富基金担任过咨询顾问。我的客户拥有的总资产基础超过了1万亿美元。我一直以来都以为客户提供对他们有利的建议为荣，即使有时候这意味着高盛能从中得到的利润相对较少。然而我的这一观点在高盛越来越缺少拥护，这也是现在对我来讲是时候离开的另一个原因。
How did we get here? The firm changed the way it thought about leadership. Leadership used to be about ideas, setting an example and doing the right thing. Today, if you make enough money for the firm (and are not currently an ax murderer) you will be promoted into a position of influence.
高盛是如何走到今天这个地步的？高盛对领导这个概念的定义已经改变。曾几何时，领导意味着理念、树立榜样以及做正确的事，而现在，如果你能为高盛赚到足够的钱，你就能够得到升职，更具影响力。
What are three quick ways to become a leader? a) Execute on the firm’s “axes,” which is Goldman-speak for persuading your clients to invest in the stocks or other products that we are trying to get rid of because they are not seen as having a lot of potential profit. b) “Hunt Elephants.” In English: get your clients — some of whom are sophisticated, and some of whom aren’t — to trade whatever will bring the biggest profit to Goldman. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t like selling my clients a product that is wrong for them. c) Find yourself sitting in a seat where your job is to trade any illiquid, opaque product with a three-letter acronym.
哪三个方法能迅速在高盛当上领导？ 1)挥动公司的“斧子”，这是高盛内部的说法，指的是劝说自己的客户投资股票或者其他我们自己极力出手的产品，因为它们看起来不可能有很高的利润。 2)“猎象”。在英语中，这个字面意思的实际意义是：让你的客户——他们之中有些人胸有城府，有些没有——进行一切能给高盛带来最高利润的交易。 算我老派吧，我就不喜欢给自己的客户推销一款不适合他们的产品。3)为自己找到一个职位。坐在这个位子上，你的工作就是交易所有流动性差的含糊产品，这种产品有一个3个字母的首字母缩略语名称。
Today, many of these leaders display a Goldman Sachs culture quotient of exactly zero percent. I attend derivatives sales meetings where not one single minute is spent asking questions about how we can help clients. It’s purely about how we can make the most possible money off of them. If you were an alien from Mars and sat in on one of these meetings, you would believe that a client’s success or progress was not part of the thought process at all.
如今，很多高盛领导人的做法让人觉得，高盛原来的文化已经不复存在。我出席衍生品销售会议，会上没有花哪怕一分钟时间来讨论如何帮助客户，而仅仅讨论我们如何能够从客户身上赚取最多的利润。如果您是一位来自火星的外星人并且参与到其中的一个会议，你会感觉到，客户的成功和进步完全不是会议的议题。
It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off. Over the last 12 months I have seen five different managing directors refer to their own clients as “muppets,” sometimes over internal e-mail. Even after the S.E.C., Fabulous Fab, Abacus, God’s work, Carl Levin, Vampire Squids? No humility? I mean, come on. Integrity? It is eroding. I don’t know of any illegal behavior, but will people push the envelope and pitch lucrative and complicated products to clients even if they are not the simplest investments or the ones most directly aligned with the client’s goals? Absolutely. Every day, in fact.
高盛的人在讨论如何剥削客户时麻木不仁，这让我感到恶心。在过去的12个月里，我目睹了5名董事总经理将他们的客户称作“提线木偶”，有时也会在内部邮件中这么说。甚至在美国证券交易委员会揭发“神奇的法布”销售Abacus这个不良产品给客户，滚石杂志攻击高盛是吸血乌贼后，他们还这样说。不谦虚？得了吧。诚信？早就腐烂了。我不敢说那些行为是非法的，但有谁会明知投资不可靠或不符合客户需求，却依然将它推荐给客户呢？
It astounds me how little senior management gets a basic truth: If clients don’t trust you they will eventually stop doing business with you. It doesn’t matter how smart you are.
让我惊讶的是，高盛的高层领导竟忽略了最基本的一点：如果客户不信任你，他们最终不会选择跟你做生意，无论你有多么地聪明。
These days, the most common question I get from junior analysts about derivatives is, “How much money did we make off the client?” It bothers me every time I hear it, because it is a clear reflection of what they are observing from their leaders about the way they should behave. Now project 10 years into the future: You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the junior analyst sitting quietly in the corner of the room hearing about “muppets,” “ripping eyeballs out” and “getting paid” doesn’t exactly turn into a model citizen.
如今，初级分析师最经常向我提出的问题是“过去我们从这个客户身上赚了多少钱？”每次我听到这个问题就感到厌烦，因为这事实上反映了他们从领导身上学到的做事方式。让我们想象一下10年后的高盛：这些整天被教导如何把客户当作“提线木偶”、如何抓取眼球、如何赚取报酬的初级分析师，不可能成为对社会有用的公民。
When I was a first-year analyst I didn’t know where the bathroom was, or how to tie my shoelaces. I was taught to be concerned with learning the ropes, finding out what a derivative was, understanding finance, getting to know our clients and what motivated them, learning how they defined success and what we could do to help them get there.
我做分析师的第一年时，我不知道浴室在哪里也不知道怎么系鞋带。我所接受到的指导就是要努力学习，搞清楚什么是衍生品、学着理解金融、了解客户和让他们投资的动因、了解他们如何定义成功以及我们如何做能够让他们获得那种成功。
My proudest moments in life — getting a full scholarship to go from South Africa to Stanford University, being selected as a Rhodes Scholar national finalist, winning a bronze medal for table tennis at the Maccabiah Games in Israel, known as the Jewish Olympics — have all come through hard work, with no shortcuts. Goldman Sachs today has become too much about shortcuts and not enough about achievement. It just doesn’t feel right to me anymore.
我人生中最骄傲的时刻——从南非到斯坦福大学求学获得全额奖学金、被选为罗氏奖学金在美国的最终得奖者、在号称犹太人奥运会的以色列马卡比运动会上赢得一枚乒乓球比赛的铜牌——都经过了努力奋斗，没有走捷径。今天的高盛已经变得太注重捷径，不够重视成就。这让我再也没有好感。
I hope this can be a wake-up call to the board of directors. Make the client the focal point of your business again. Without clients you will not make money. In fact, you will not exist. Weed out the morally bankrupt people, no matter how much money they make for the firm. And get the culture right again, so people want to work here for the right reasons. People who care only about making money will not sustain this firm — or the trust of its clients — for very much longer.
我希望我的离开能够唤醒现在高盛的董事会领导。再把客户重新摆在你们生意的重点上吧。如果没有客户，你们一分钱也赚不到。事实上，没有客户，高盛都不能得以存在。把那些道德败坏的人清理出高盛的大门。不管他们能为这家投行赚多少钱。把高盛的企业文化重新摆正，让真正的人才有足够的理由在这里工作下去，让那些只关心赚钱的人在这个投行无法立足，让客户对这家投行的信任一直坚定下去。
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发表于 2012-3-20 11:17
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