一本教会你“做对”题的6级阅读书 day12 passage1
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    Passage 1 What Is a CEO’s Secret to Longevity?
    CEO长寿的秘诀 《今日美国》


    [00:04]What is a CEO's Secret to Longevity?
    [00:09]Marvel of Joseph Neubauer
    [00:12]Joseph Neubauer stands alone in Corporate America
    [00:16]as the only Fortune 500 non-founding CEO to make it to his silver anniversary,
    [00:23]having passed the 25-year milestone at Aramark almost two years ago.
    [00:30]He will likely be joined in August by State Farm Insurance CEO Ed Rust,
    [00:37]who at 59, is still six years away from State Farm's mandatory retirement age.
    [00:44]Neubauer, 68, says he credits success at the food service,
    [00:50]sale and supply company to putting the right people
    [00:55]in the right places for growth, and was open and candid with everyone
    [01:00]from the board of directors to employees.
    [01:03]Oh, and he says it's a good idea to like the job.
    [01:08]"Working at any company involves an incredible amount of time and effort,"
    [01:14]Neubauer says. "If you don't really enjoy what you are doing,
    [01:19]you will never have the passion necessary for long-term success."
    [01:24]Many CEOs don't last as long as a refrigerated fruitcake.
    [01:30]Although Americans have a reputation for changing jobs frequently,
    [01:35]a 2007 study by Towers Perrin found that among workers
    [01:40]who have been in the same industry for 20 years or more,
    [01:45]40% said they had been with the same company for 20 years plus.
    [01:51]Avnet, a giant electronics company with $16 billion in annual revenue,
    [01:59]says that of its 2,061 U.S. employees 45 years and older,
    [02:06]11% have been with the company for 25 years or more.
    [02:12]Fewer than half the CEOs hired to run one of the largest 2,500
    [02:18]publicly traded companies are still there eight years later,
    [02:22]says Booz & Co. Separately, outsourcing firm Challenger Gray & Christmas
    [02:30]tracks CEO departures and says 1,484 left voluntarily
    [02:38]or were forced out in 2008, six every business day and the most
    [02:44]since it began counting CEO departures in 1999.
    [02:50]Some might see the turnover as proof that capitalism
    [02:54]is working its Darwinian magic. Corporate boards
    [02:59]are an instrument whose basic role is to hire and fire CEOs,
    [03:04]says Ralph Ward, publisher of the Boardroom Insider newsletter.
    [03:10]He predicts directors will have an "itchy trigger finger" going forward.
    [03:15]But oddly, some CEOs who have lasted a long time say it's
    [03:21]because they managed to ignore the forces of shareholders
    [03:25]trying to pull them in opposite directions.
    [03:31]When executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles
    [03:35]came up with a list of the longest-lasting Fortune 500 CEOs,
    [03:42]only Neubauer, Rust and four other non-founders had started as CEO before 1990.
    [03:50]Beating the odds
    [03:53]What's the secret of those who beat impossible odds and make a career of CEO
    [04:00]By far, the No. 1 secret is to be a founder and CEO of a company
    [04:06]that eventually grows very large.
    [04:09]Ten founding CEOs still running Fortune 500 companies
    [04:14]have been there since before 1980. After that,
    [04:18]the reasons for longevity are less certain,
    [04:21]and some long-lasting CEOs say the secrets can be completely counterintuitive.
    [04:29]Steven Appleton became CEO of Micron Technology at 34. Now 49,
    [04:37]Appleton has beaten the odds to survive very stormy times
    [04:41]in the semiconductor memory business. The company's stock,
    [04:46]which sold for $145 a share in 2000, fell as low as $1.59 a year ago.
    [04:56]Still, Appleton remains, and Micron Technology stock has rebounded somewhat,
    [05:02]to $10.16.
    [05:06]The secret to survival, even while going from "hero to zero,"
    [05:10]requires an ability to ignore shareholders, Appleton says.
    [05:16]That might seem like blasphemy for a CEO, but Appleton explains
    [05:21]that shareholders have different goals.
    [05:24]Some would be happy driving the stock price up by
    [05:28]eliminating the annual $600 million spent on research and development,
    [05:34]but at the expense of the long term.
    [05:38]Richard Reese, 63, was CEO of information security firm Iron Mountain
    [05:45]for more than 27 years, growing the company from $3 million
    [05:50]in annual revenue to $3 billion before retiring in 2008,
    [05:56]although he remains chairman. When he first became CEO,
    [06:01]he got some advice from Tom Smith,
    [06:04]who was managing partner of private investment firm Prescott Investors then
    [06:09]and remains so now at age 80.
    [06:13]Reese says Smith told him: "Never listen to shareholders.
    [06:18]" The advice proved to be a career-extender, Reese says,
    [06:22]because each shareholder has an agenda
    [06:25]with different investment time horizons.
    [06:29]Some want money to be reinvested into the company;
    [06:33]others want dividends or stock buybacks.
    [06:37]Reese followed Smith's suggestions to turn a deaf ear and do what's right,
    [06:43]and it paid off.
    [06:45]CEOs who last are company builders, Reese says,
    [06:50]with the ability to change tactics as needed. For example,
    [06:54]at one point in a career, a CEO may have to raise capital fast,
    [07:00]at another point, think strategy, and at another point,
    [07:04]push tired workers to the edge without allowing them to crash and burn.
    [07:10]Leslie Gaines-Ross, a strategist at public relations firm Weber Shandwick,
    [07:16]has made a long career of studying the careers of CEOs' mostly short careers.
    [07:22]She says the longest-lasting ones seem to have an ability to be underestimated.
    [07:30]Losing sight of their weaknesses
    [07:32]and seeing themselves as all powerful are common mistakes among CEOs,
    [07:38]Gaines-Ross says.
    [07:40]"I'm a proponent of never taking yourself too seriously,
    [07:44]but taking your responsibilities with utmost seriousness," Rust says.
    [07:49]"It's easy to get a bit insulated at the top,
    [07:53]so you have to pursue honest feedback, even to the point of being uncomfortable,"
    [07:59]he says.
    [08:01]A matter of time
    [08:03]Short CEO careers aren't always due to force-out.
    [08:08]CEOs are today clinging to their jobs in a recession.
    [08:13]Their departures are down 18% in the first 11 months of 2009
    [08:19]compared with the first 11 months of the record-setting 2008,
    [08:24]says Challenger Gray & Christmas. But it's just a matter of time
    [08:29]before the door starts revolving.
    [08:33]A study released in November by ExecuNet and Finnegan Mackenzie found
    [08:38]that 90% of all executives would think about a new opportunity
    [08:43]with a different company. More than 50% are now looking for a new job,
    [08:50]and 40% say they will begin their job search when the economy improves.
    [08:57]Lehigh University management professor Andrew Ward researched
    [09:02]the last major recession in 1990-1991
    [09:06]and says that more CEOs were fired in the nine months
    [09:11]following the recession than during the nine-month recession itself.
    [09:16]Expectations are low in recessions, but performance must pick up
    [09:21]when the economy does, Ward says.
    [09:24]Some CEOs stay with the same company a long time, and that can, at times,
    [09:31]require an element of timing and luck. Dan Amos, 58 and Aflac's CEO for 19 years,
    [09:40]says that CEOs who have lasted usually were successful early on,
    [09:46]so it was easier to forgive them for inevitable mistakes made down the road.
    [09:52]Appleton was fired at Micron Technology within two years,
    [09:56]but that dismissal lasted only a week.
    [09:59]He was rehired by the board
    [10:02]when 22 of 25 Micron executives threatened to resign unless Appleton came back.
    [10:10]Amos feels that pleasing shareholders through consistent returns
    [10:15]is the fundamental secret to longevity, but the longer a CEO lasts,
    [10:20]the more likely something will interrupt that.
    [10:23]After years with an increasing stock,
    [10:26]Aflac hit the headwinds of the financial crisis,
    [10:29]and in less than a year, the stock fell from $67 to $11 a share.
    [10:36]It has bounced back to $46.79.
    [10:42]Amos says transparency and communication saw him through.
    [10:47]"When times are tough, you've got to talk more,"
    [10:51]and he ordered the company to post on its website every bond the company owned.
    [10:58]John Chambers has been CEO of Cisco Systems since 1995
    [11:04]and he recently recommitted to the Cisco board to stay on at least
    [11:09]another three to five years. Chambers' secret to longevity:
    [11:14]Listen to customers. "If you ask, they will tell you exactly what to do,"
    [11:20]he says, "I have received good ideas from customers, even suggestions."
    [11:26]Change is not easy, but necessary, Chambers says.
    [11:31]"I certainly love a command-and-control style of management.
    [11:34]When I say 'turn right,' 64,000 employees do a remarkably good job
    [11:40]of turning right, but that is not the future of leadership."
    [11:45]CEOs all agree that the job is tougher today than in the past,
    [11:51]and 25-year CEOs may grow even more rare in the future.
    [11:56]"In the old days, they may not have paid CEOs enough,
    [11:59]but they kept them too long," Amos says. "Today, they get paid a lot,
    [12:05]but there is an expectation for immediate results."

     

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