【Management 0321】要做出完美产品，请跟苹果学这三招

刘颖

Apple, the world’s most valuable publicly traded company, is also the World’s Most Admired Company for the tenth consecutive year. This is not exactly a surprise, even if it does seem unfair—like one kid being the richest, smartest, and best-looking in high school. But it raises an important, obvious question: What useful lessons can the rest of us learn from Apple? “Hire Steve Jobs as CEO” is a valid lesson but not useful. Nonetheless, much of Apple’s success derives from three highly unusual management policies that are available to any company:

Apple has only one P&L.

Think of it—$216 billion of revenue last year, No. 3 on the Fortune 500, yet just one bottom line in the whole vast enterprise. You can immediately see how this policy simplifies decision-making, focuses effort, and diminishes turf battles (though nothing can eliminate them). In any big organization the temptations to establish multiple P&Ls are powerful. Ambitious managers like it, incentivizing those managers is easier, and resource allocation can also be easier, or at least it can appear to be. But Apple decided long ago that the benefits aren’t worth the costs. The results are hard to argue with. A related, rare trait is that…

Apple still has a remarkably small product line.

It has long been observed that every model of every product Apple makes would fit on a conference room table. While the table is getting bigger, it’s still astounding that a product-based company can achieve such scale with so few items. Why aren’t most companies so tightly focused? I suspect it’s because estimating the benefits of broadening the product line is easier than estimating the benefits of concentrating enormous time and energy on a few products. Most managers are more comfortable making a decision based on numbers than making a judgment call. This can be a classic error. As Warren Buffett says, “It’s better to be approximately right than precisely wrong.” While growth requires new products, CEO Tim Cook has largely maintained the courage to be approximately right.

Apple develops products in an unusual way.

Jobs called the process “integration.” The idea is simple: Bring together the people who create the various elements of the customer experience – hardware, software, interfaces, online experience, even packaging—and assign one person, the integrator, to oversee development of them all so they combine into one knockout complete experience. Sounds obvious, but most companies don’t do it that way. They typically bring together cost managers, revenue managers, and P&L managers, not experience creators. Decisions are often made sequentially, not simultaneously. The result is always sub-optimal. As Jobs said, with characteristic immodesty, “Integration is the only way I could create perfect products.”

Emulating these practices may not be easy, especially in big, old organizations. But it’s possible. It doesn’t demand the ineffable genius of a visionary founder. Your outfit may never become the World’s Most Admired (though who knows?), but it can learn from Apple how to move in that direction.

刘颖

作为世界上最有价值的上市公司，苹果连续第十年成为全球最受赞赏的企业。这并不意外，即使看起来确实非常不公平——就像一个小孩既是中学里最有钱、最聪明的，又是长的最好看的。这就给我们带来了一个重要而又显而易见的问题：我们能从苹果身上学到哪些东西呢？“聘请史蒂夫·乔布斯当CEO”是个挺好的主意，但不实用。尽管如此，苹果的成功在很大程度上都源自三项极不寻常的管理政策，这些政策可供其它公司借鉴。

苹果只有一张损益表。

想想看，去年收入2160亿美元，在《财富》500强中排名第三的巨无霸只有一个净利润数据。大家立即就能发现这项政策怎样让决策变得简单，怎样把力量集中起来，又是怎样减少权力争夺的（尽管没什么东西能消除这种行为）。在任何大公司，编制多张损益表都很有诱惑力。有抱负的经理人喜欢这样做，激励他们变得更简单，资源配置也会更加轻松，至少表面上如此。但苹果在很久以前就断定这样做弊大于利。由此产生的结果难以辩驳，而与之相关的另一项罕见特性是……

苹果的产品线仍然出奇地短。

人们早就发现，苹果所有产品的所有模型可以摆满一张会议桌。虽然这张桌子不断变大，但一家以产品为基础的公司能通过如此之少的产品实现这样的规模依然令人惊叹。为什么大多数公司都不是如此的专注呢？我猜这是因为估算产品线扩张带来的收益要比估算将大量时间和精力投入少数几种产品带来的收益更容易。和进行主观判断相比，大多数经理人都觉得基于数字来做决定更让人放心。这可能是个典型的错误。就像沃伦·巴菲特说的那样：“近似的正确好过精确的错误。”虽然增长需要新产品，但CEO蒂姆·库克基本上保持着让自己近似正确的勇气。

苹果以不寻常的方式开发产品。

乔布斯把这个过程称为“整合”。这个想法很简单，那就是把消费者体验中各种元素的构建者召集在一起，包括硬件、软件、界面、网络甚至包装，然后指定一个人负责整合，由他来监督所有的开发工作，以便让他们组合出一份完整的体验。听起来一目了然，但大多数公司都不这样做。它们通常召集的是成本经理、收入经理和损益经理，而不是体验的创造者。决策往往按顺序做出，而不是同时进行。其结果总是不够理想。正如直言不讳的乔布斯所说：“整合是我得以创造完美产品的唯一途径。”

效仿这些做法也许并不容易，特别是在老牌大企业中。但存在这种可能。它并不需要远见卓识的创始人动用他妙不可言的天赋。你的公司也许永远也不会成为世界上最受赞赏的企业（但谁知道呢？），不过它可以从苹果那里学到怎样朝着这个方向迈进。