夢工廠CEO 用超預期的表現贏得最終勝利
DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg recalls the summer of 1994 like it was yesterday.
夢工廠動畫公司（DreamWorks Animation）CEO傑弗裏o卡森伯格回憶起1994年夏天的事，他感慨那一切彷彿就發生在昨天。Katzenberg was chairman of The Walt Disney Studios , a role that included reviving its animated film business. And revive it he did. Come 1994, Walt Disney Studios was back on top: “The Lion King” was the No. 1 movie, the top-selling soundtrack with 25 million albums sold, and a blockbuster video game developed by Sega. Oh, and the No. 1 TV show — a half-hour family sitcom called “Home Improvement,” with Tim Allen — belonged to Disney, too. But all that success did little to stop ex-CEO Michael Eisner from firing him over irreconcilable differences.
卡森伯格時任華特o迪士尼製片廠（The Walt Disney Studios）總裁，肩負着復興迪士尼動畫電影業務的重任。他也幸不辱命。1994年，迪士尼重回頂峯：《獅子王》（The Lion King）成爲票房排行第一的電影，電影原聲帶也極爲暢銷，共售出2,500萬張專輯，世嘉公司（Sega）根據電影開發的視頻遊戲也風靡一時。此外，當年收視率最高的電視劇——由蒂姆o艾倫主演的時長半小時的家庭情景喜劇《家居裝飾》（Home Improvement）——也屬於迪士尼。然而，這些成功依舊無法阻止前任CEO邁克爾o艾斯納因爲兩人之間無法調和的矛盾而將其解僱。
The lesson learned? “Do good — just don’t do too good,” quipped the 63-year-old Hollywood exec onstage at a conference hosted by online file-sharing startup Box on Wednesday. Katzenberg is now CEO of DreamWorks Animation , the Glendale, Calif.- animation studio he co-founded with media moguls Steven Spielberg and David Geffen in 2004. Not every film has performed well at the box office — this March’s flop, “Mr. Peabody & Sherman,” cost the studio $57 million in the first quarter — but the studio has also produced blockbusters like “Shrek 2″ and “Shrek the Third.” And its most recent film, “How to Train Your Dragon 2,” crossed the $600 million mark in ticket sales this weekend.
這一事件帶來的教訓就是，“要把事情做好——但不要做得太好，”63歲的卡森伯格自嘲道。最近，這位好萊塢高管出席了由在線文件分享初創公司Box主辦的會議，並登臺接受了採訪。卡森伯格現任夢工場動畫公司CEO，2004年，他與媒體巨頭史蒂夫o斯皮爾伯格、大衛o格芬在加州格蘭代爾合作創建了這家公司。雖然夢工廠的電影並非部部賣座，比如今年3月的《天才眼鏡狗》（Mr. Peabody & Sherman）便遭遇了票房滑鐵盧，令夢工廠在第一季度損失了5,700萬美元，但其製作的熱賣大片也不在少數，比如《怪物史萊克2》（Shrek 2）和《怪物史萊克3》（Shrek 3）。最新電影《馴龍記2》（How to Train Your Dragon 2）的票房更是在最近突破了6億美元。
The process by which Katzenberg and his studio go about making movies follows a general philosophy he’s followed for decades. “The one thing I always tried to do a little bit better than what I was expected to do,” he said. “When I go into a situation, whether it was an assignment I had, whether it was as a gopher [years ago], retrieving a danish for someone, or when I come into a staff meeting, I think about how I can exceed expectations and have people walk out of those engagements thinking, ‘well, that was a little bit better. I didn’t expect that.’ When people walk into any product or movie of ours, we want it to be a little bit more than what they were expecting. We don’t always succeed, but we really try hard.”
在製作電影的過程中，卡森伯格和夢工廠始終貫徹一條卡森伯格自己數十年來一直在踐行的原則。他說道：“我做每一件事情，都會努力使其超出預期。不論遇到什麼情況，比如接受一個任務，做一名推銷員（數年前的事情），甚至是幫某人檢索一個丹麥語單詞，或者參加員工大會的時候，我都會考慮如何超出預期，讓人們最終覺得：‘這樣好多了。這出乎我的意料。’我希望人們來購買我們的產品或觀看我們的電影時，會發現結果都超出了他們的預期。我們不可能事事成功，但是我們一直在努力。”Case in point: Katzenberg’s 40th wedding anniversary with wife Marilyn isn’t until early next year, but the exec is already plotting a surprise for her. “I’m already working on how in the hell am I going to exceed her expectations,” he mused. “So, if you can you exceed the expectations of those people you’re in business with, almost every single time you will win.”
一個很好的例子：明年年初，卡森伯格與妻子瑪麗琳將迎來40週年結婚紀念日，但他已經開始計劃，到時候給妻子一個驚喜。他若有所思地說道：“我正在考慮如何給她一個出人意料的驚喜。如果你能事事超出生意夥伴的預期，勝利肯定是屬於你的。”
