Master who plays his cards right

打扫过卫生间的CEO

Master who plays his cards right

英国《金融时报》 苏珊•卡普纳

Not many corporate chiefs would admit to having cleaned bathrooms as part of their training, but Ajay Banga, chief executive of MasterCard, is not your typical business leader. “Cleaning bathrooms,” which he did in the 1990s while opening Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pizza Hut restaurants in India for PepsiCo, “made me very valuable to my wife”, he says. “I’m called the bathroom fairy at home.”	没有多少公司高管愿意坦承，曾把打扫卫生间作为历练自己的一项内容，但万事达 (MasterCard)首席执行官彭安杰(Ajay Banga)却不是人们通常印象中的公司高管。他表示，上世纪90年代在印度开设百事公司(PepsiCo)旗下的肯德基(Kentucky Fried Chicken)和必胜客(Pizza Hut)快餐店时，自己就曾干过清扫卫生间的活，“打扫卫生间让我太太觉得我很有价值，我在家里是打扫卫生间的大拿。”
That willingness to poke fun at himself extends to his appearance. As a Sikh, Mr Banga, 50, wears a turban and has a full beard, making for a striking contrast with Robert Selander, his predecessor and current vice-chairman. “Bob and I joke about it all the time,” Mr Banga says. “I know I look different from a lot of people around the world, but I don’t view that as something that defines me.”	他的勇于自嘲还表现在装束上。现年50岁的彭安杰是一位锡克教徒，戴着头巾，满脸络腮 胡子，这与他的前任、目前担任公司副董事长的罗伯特•塞兰德（Robert Selander）形成了鲜明对比。“我与鲍勃（罗伯特的昵称）总是拿这个开玩笑，”彭安杰表示，“我明白自己的装束和世界上的很多人不一样，但我认为这 并不能真正诠释我本人。”
His affability is disarming, but it also masks a competitive streak that propelled Mr Banga from fast food to one of the top jobs at Citigroup, where he ran the global consumer bank, before joining MasterCard last year with a promise of quickly being promoted to chief executive.	他的亲和力容易让人消除戒心，但同时也掩盖了他勇于竞争的性格，这种性格使彭安杰从快餐行业，成长为花旗集团(Citigroup)的高管，负责该集团的个人银行业务。去年，他转投万事达，该公司承诺他将很快升任首席执行官。
Since then, he has set about shaking up MasterCard’s sleepy culture. The company processes more than 22bn transactions a year, at the speed of 140 milliseconds each, faster than the blink of an eye. Its entire business depends on making sure each of those transactions clears without a hitch, a model that tends to reward reliability over risk-taking. “When somebody swipes a card in Guam and that card was issued in Bangalore, if it doesn’t go through, that’s the end of my so-called guarantee,” he says.	加盟之后，他开始着手“唤醒”万事达令人昏昏欲睡的公司文化。万事达每年处理逾220 亿笔交易，相当于每笔交易140毫秒，比眨眼的速度还要快。公司的整个业务都取决于每笔交易都结算得毫无差错，这种模式偏重于牢靠而非冒险。“设想有人在 关岛刷卡，而发卡地点是班加罗尔，如果没有刷成功，那就丧失了我所说的保证，”彭安杰表示。
To speed up decision-making, Mr Banga has given lower-level employees more authority to negotiate contracts and has created a new division to better compete with electronic payment systems such as PayPal. The urgency Mr Banga is trying to instil in employees also applies to him. Any request to which he does not respond within two weeks is automatically approved. “He operates on Ajay time, which is about 10 times faster than everyone else,” says Josh Peirez, the head of MasterCard’s business development unit.	为了加快决策流程，彭安杰在合同谈判方面给予了低级别员工更多权限，并创建了新的部 门，以便更好地与贝宝(PayPal)等在线电子支付系统展开竞争。彭安杰设法给员工灌输紧迫感，这同样也适用于他本人。发给他的任何请求，如果在两周内 未予回复，都将自动获准。“他按照‘彭氏时间’工作，大约是常人速度的10倍，”万事达业务开发部门负责人乔希•佩雷兹(Josh Peirez)如是说。
An extrovert, who encourages staffers to drop by his office to discuss everything from the quality of the coffee in the cafeteria to world affairs, Mr Banga can also be extremely blunt, a quality that has rubbed off on other executives. Mr Selander says that Mr Banga has taught him to be more direct in his feedback. “After two hours with Ajay, you know exactly what he thinks,” he says.	性格外向的彭安杰鼓励员工随时光顾他的办公室，谈论从餐厅咖啡质量到国际事务的任何问题，他也会特别直率，这种个性影响到了其他高管。塞兰德表示，彭安杰教会自己如何在反馈时更加直截了当。他表示：“与彭安杰呆上两个小时，你就会完全清楚他的想法。”
At a leadership meeting in December, Mr Banga grew impatient when executives spouted too many platitudes. “I told them: ‘I’m not going to let this conversation end here. You’re not being as forthright as you need to be.’ ” So he had the executives anonymously write down on index cards the five things that bothered them most. Their answers led him to slash the company’s bureaucracy by improving the expenses policy, hiring process and procedures for signing on new clients. “A lot of what we did came from these touchy, feely meetings,” he says.	在去年12月份的管理层会议上，彭安杰对高管们的陈词滥调很不耐烦。“我告诉他们： ‘我不希望这个会议就这样结束。你们不够直截了当。’”所以他让高管们在卡片上匿名写下自己最头疼的5件事。根据他们的答案，他大刀阔斧地整饬公司的官僚 作风——改善费用政策、聘用流程和新客户签约流程。“我们过去做的很多事，都源自于这些让人上火、又劳民伤财的会议，”他表示。
Playing the role of corporate psychoanalyst is a world away from where Mr Banga started. As the son of a lieutenant-general in the Indian army, who was transferred from post to post every two years, Mr Banga had a nomadic childhood. “The moving around made me who I am,” he says. “I make friends easily. I adjust easily to new situations. I was always the new kid on the block, so I had to learn to break into established groups.”	扮演企业心理学分析师的角色，与彭安杰刚刚起步时的生活有着天壤之别。他的父亲是一位 印度陆军中将，每两年就会调动一次岗位，因此彭安杰童年时经常搬家。“搬来搬去的生涯造就了现在的我，”他表示。“我很容易交到朋友，能很快适应新的环 境。我当初总是家属院中的新面孔，所以必须学会如何融入那些已经确立的圈子。”
He believes it also made him more open to divergent points of view. “When you come to the US and hear people talking about diversity, well, I grew up with it,” he says.	他认为，这也让他更能够接受各种不同的观点。“到了美国，听别人谈论多样性，嗬，我就是在这种氛围中长大的，”他表示。
In spite of his globetrotting, he has not abandoned his Indian heritage. On the 30-minute drive from his Manhattan home to MasterCard’s I.M. Pei-designed headquarters in Purchase, New York, he tunes in to Sikh radio, which airs traditional hymns. Yet he is also thoroughly Americanised. He loves baseball (the Mets), listens to Quincy Jones and Lady Gaga and “owns practically every Elvis Presley album that you could think of”.	尽管奔走于全球各地，彭安杰却没有放弃自己的印度传统。从他在曼哈顿的家，到位于纽约 帕切斯(Purchase)、由贝聿铭(I.M. Pei)设计的万事达总部，需要30分钟车程，他一路收听播放传统赞美诗的锡克教广播。不过，他也已经彻底地美国化，喜欢棒球（是纽约大都会队(the Mets)的拥趸），爱听昆西•琼斯(Quincy Jones)和Lady Gaga的音乐，且“几乎拥有猫王(Elvis Presley)的所有唱片”。
After receiving a bachelor’s degree in economics from Delhi University and an MBA from the India Institute of Management, he joined Nestlé in 1981 as a management trainee. Thirteen years later, Mr Banga signed on as director of marketing for PepsiCo Restaurants in India. He was charged with doing everything from choosing the right-sized chickens – too big, and they do not fry properly – to working the register and, yes, cleaning those bathrooms.	彭安杰在德里大学(Delhi University)拿到了经济学学士学位，在印度管理学院(India Institute of Management)获硕士学位，1981年他加入了雀巢公司(Nestlé)，成为一名管理实习生。13年后，彭安杰签约成为百事餐饮印度区营销主 管。他的工作内容包罗万象：从负责挑选大小适中的鸡（太大，就不能炸得恰到好处），到负责登记，哦，还有打扫卫生间。
When he learnt that PepsiCo was planning to spin off its restaurant division, Mr Banga decided it was time for a career change. He wanted to work for a large global enterprise and, as a standalone business, PepsiCo’s restaurants would be a far smaller and less well-capitalised company. “I realised I was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he says.	当彭安杰获悉百事打算剥离其餐饮业务时，认定改变职业生涯的时候到了。他想效力于一家大型跨国企业，而作为一项独立业务，百事的餐饮业务规模太小，资本也不够雄厚。“我当时意识到，自己在错误的时间，呆在了错误的地方，”他表示。
He accepted a job with Citigroup, where he briefly served as a debt collector before going on to become head of marketing for the consumer bank.	他接受了花旗提供的一份工作，干了很短时间的收债工作后，很快升任花旗个人银行业务营销主管。
Although banking was an entirely different industry, he saw similarities to the restaurant business. “One is share of throat, the other is share of wallet.” By the time he left in 2009, he had been promoted to chief executive of the Asia-Pacific division.	虽然对他来说，银行业是一个全新的领域，但彭安杰看到了它与经营餐饮业的相似之处。“第一是都得靠嘴巴，第二是都和钱有关。”2009年离开花旗时，他已是花旗亚太业务首席执行官。
With his 50th birthday looming, Mr Banga started to think seriously about what he wanted to do with the rest of his career. He considered teaching but couldn’t resist the urge to run a public company. So when a headhunter called him at his Hong Kong home late one night to talk about becoming the chief operating officer of MasterCard, he was intrigued. He flew to Connecticut in March 2009 and met Mr Selander at his home. The two talked for five hours. Mr Banga came away thinking that “this was a job that used all of my skills, yet wasn’t something I had done before”.	即将年满50的时候，彭安杰开始认真思考自己职业生涯的剩余时间想做些什么。他曾考虑 过教书，但又难以抑制执掌一家上市公司的冲动。因此，当一位猎头深夜把电话打到他香港的家中，询问他是否愿意出任万事达首席营运官时，彭安杰顿时来了兴 致。2009年3月，他飞往康涅狄格州，在塞兰德的家里与之会面。两人谈了5个小时。彭安杰离开塞兰德家时，认定“这是个能用上我的全部技能、而我以前又 从未涉足过的工作”。
The clincher: when the board offered Mr Banga the job, it promised to promote him to chief executive by June 30, when Mr Selander, who had run the company for 13 years, planned to retire from day-to-day management. Just to be sure, Mr Banga negotiated a $4.2m signing bonus that would have been his if MasterCard failed to make good on its promise.	关键在于：当董事会任命彭安杰为首席运营官时，承诺在6月30日之前提升他出任CEO。届时，执掌公司13年之久的塞兰德将不再承担日常管理工作。为了确保万无一失，彭安杰商定了一笔420万美元的签约费，如果万事达未能兑现承诺，这笔钱将归他所有。
Mr Banga’s accomplishments have certainly been financially rewarding. At a time when compensation has come under scrutiny, his $13.5m pay package means he is earning more than the heads of Goldman Sachs and Bank of America. And although success runs in the family – Mr Banga’s older brother Vindi was a former Unilever executive who now works for the private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice – Mr Banga does not take it lightly. “To join Citi 14 years ago as a lower-level executive in India and end up as one of the top people at the company, that’s pretty good,” he says.	彭安杰的成绩当然带来了财务上的回报。在高管薪酬面临严格审查之际，他1350万美元 的薪酬，超过了高盛(Goldman Sachs)和美国银行(Bank of America)的掌门人。虽说彭安杰的家庭中不乏成功人士——他哥哥文迪(Vindi)曾担任联合利华(Unilever)高管，如今效力于私人股本公 司Clayton, Dubilier & Rice——但他并没有妄自菲薄。“14年前，我在印度加盟花旗时是一个低级管理人士，如今成为了公司负责人之一，这种感觉很棒，”他表示。
	译者/常和