CEO的職場忠告:聽媽媽的話

When Ursula Burns went to Washington and met with President Obama last Friday, at least two people in the room personified her notion of what leads to great success: "The biggest differentiator is not how you are born," says the Chairman and CEO of Xerox (XRX). "It's how you're influenced throughout your life."

8月12日，烏爾蘇拉•伯恩斯前往華盛頓接受總統奧巴馬的會見。作爲施樂（Xerox） 董事會主席兼CEO，伯恩斯在談到成功的祕訣時曾說過：“英雄不論出身。”會見時在場的人中，至少有兩個人堪稱這一觀點活生生的例證，那就是她本人和奧巴馬總統。

Barack Obama had a remarkable single Mother to influence him. As did Burns, who grew up on New York's gritty Lower East Side and was guided, she says, by her mother who advised:

奧巴馬有一位傑出的單身母親，母親對他的影響頗深。而伯恩斯從小在紐約的下東區長大，和奧巴馬一樣，她的母親也是單身，並且經常教導她：

"Where you are today is not who you are," Olga Burns told her daughter, urging young Ursula not to be defined by her surroundings.

“首先，一個人今天所處的環境並不能決定一個人的命運。”奧爾加•伯恩斯教誨小伯恩斯，不要被環境所困。

"Success is not about money. It's not about power. It's about leaving." Burns explains: "She would always say that you have to leave the place -- any place you are -- a little bit better than you came in."

“其次，成功與金錢和權利無關，成功在於奉獻。” 伯恩斯解釋說：“我母親總是告誡我，不管到什麼地方，都要把它變得比以前更好，哪怕只是好一點點。”

"And the third thing she always said is that there are a lot of things that can happen to you, but there are a whole bunch of things that you can happen to. So make sure that you happen to the right things."

“再次，世事難料，人永遠不知道會有什麼事情會降臨；但是，也有很多事，是人們可以主動把握的。因此，要確保正在做的事情是正確的選擇。”

What happened to Burns is that her mom was more than determined—"desperate," says Burns—to make sure that her three kids were well-educated. With savings from a child-care service that she ran out of their tenement apartment, she sent Ursula to Catholic school and then Polytechnic Institute of NYU and Columbia University. Ursula got her Masters in mechanical engineering. She started at Xerox as an intern in the summer of 1980, rose through product development and manufacturing, and resisted temptations to leave when the company was on the brink of bankruptcy just over a decade ago.

伯恩斯的媽媽是一位異常堅毅的母親，爲了讓三個孩子接受良好的教育，伯恩斯說“她不惜一切代價”。伯恩斯的母親在自家的廉價公寓裏替人看護小孩，靠着這點積蓄，她卻把烏爾蘇拉送進天主教學校，之後是紐約大學工學院（Polytechnic Institute of NYU），直至進入哥倫比亞大學（Columbia University）就讀，並最終獲得了機械工程碩士學位。1980年夏天，伯恩斯進入施樂實習，在產品開發和製造部工作，並一路晉升；十幾年前，施樂瀕臨破產，但伯恩斯不爲所動，而是選擇了堅守。

Burns, 51, and Anne Mulcahy, her predecessor as CEO, rescued Xerox by pairing their respective talents, engineering and sales, and their complimentary leadership styles. Burns is fiercely opinionated and impatient. And while she has acquiesced occasionally—like when she accepted a chief of staff job she thought would be too easy for her—she says she's guided by advice she got from Mulcahy. "You cannot be somebody else and lead," Mulcahy told Burns when she promoted her to chief executive in the first woman-to-woman CEO handoff in the history of the Fortune 500.

當年，51歲的伯恩斯和前任CEO 安妮•馬爾卡希並肩作戰，她們發揮各自的才華和令人稱讚的領導能力，一個主攻工程技術，一個主攻銷售，最終成功地挽救了施樂。伯恩斯個性非常固執，是個急性子。不過也懂得審時度勢，以大局爲重。比如公司派她管理行政事務，雖然對她來說過於簡單，她還是欣然接受了。用伯恩斯自己的話來說，這主要得益於馬爾卡希給她的建議和指導。當馬爾卡希把伯恩斯提升到首席執行官的位子上時，她對伯恩斯說“你生來就是做領導的料”。CEO的權杖在兩個女人之間進行交接，這在《財富》500強公司（Fortune 500）歷史上還是頭一次。

In other words, says Burns: "Be who you are."

換句話說就是“做你自己”，伯恩斯說。

Defining herself today, she says, "I'm Ursula Burns, mother of two and wife of a great guy. I happen to be the CEO of Xerox Corporation and the chairman of the board." She is also on the board and No. 9 on the Fortune Most Powerful Women list.

談到今天的自己，她說“我是烏爾蘇拉•伯恩斯，兩個孩子的母親，有一個好丈夫。我碰巧還是施樂的CEO兼董事會主席。” 另外，在“《財富》全球最有影響力女性”榜單上，烏爾蘇拉排名第九位。

And with that high-level corporate platform, Burns can work on the cause that her late mother held dear: education. President Obama chose Burns as one of the leaders of the White House national program on STEM (science, technology, engineering and math), and she is involved in various other education programs.

藉助施樂良好的平臺，伯恩斯可以繼續她已故母親畢生珍視的教育事業。奧巴馬總統也任命伯恩斯爲STEM項目（科學、技術、工程、數學教育項目）負責人之一，該項目是白宮的一個全國性項目。同時，伯恩斯還積極投身於其他形式多樣的教育項目。