在中國讀EMBA的外國高管

David Sancho’s office at Mango sits in the sprawling Chinese headquarters building in the bustling Jing’an district of Shanghai. From here he oversees 200-plus stores that make up the Spanish clothing retailer’s East Asian and Indian operations.

戴維•桑喬(David Sancho)在芒果公司(Mango)的辦公室位于上海繁華的靜安區(qū)，一棟外形龐大、入駐有多家中國公司總部的寫字樓里。他坐鎮(zhèn)上海，掌管這家西班牙服裝零售商分布在東亞和印度地區(qū)的200多家門店。

But our interview is conducted in Hong Kong, as he walks the aisles of Mango’s flagship outlet in the city’s lively southern Kowloon neighbourhood of Tsim Sha Tsui. He walks the shop floor, observing the behaviour of those browsing the merchandise, watching what items attract the most attention and pausing to meet sales staff and check the displays.

但我們的采訪是在香港進行的，在尖沙咀熱鬧的南九龍地區(qū)有一家芒果旗艦店，當時桑喬正在這家店的貨架間走來走去。他在店里四處走動，觀察顧客的行為，看哪些東西最吸引他們，然后停下來見見銷售員，并檢查商品的陳列。

This is the first leg of a month-long trip covering most of Mango’s outlets across mainland China. “My top priority is to make sure that the customer is happy,” he says.

桑喬這次出差為期一個月，行程覆蓋芒果在中國的大部分門店，香港是第一站。“我的首要任務是確保顧客滿意，”他說。

It is a long way from Barcelona, where Mango is based and where Sancho was born into a family of lawyers. His parents co-founded a firm of solicitors specialising in property, which is now run by his two sisters. He started down the same route, taking a degree in law at Barcelona-based Esade Business and Law School. After a stint of pro bono work on criminal cases with one of his law professors, he got a job in a multinational law firm in Barcelona, practising property law, but quickly realised that this was not right for him.

桑喬來自遙遠的巴塞羅那，芒果的總部就在那里。桑喬出生于一個律師家庭，他的父母共同創(chuàng)辦了一家專注房地產(chǎn)領域的律師事務所，現(xiàn)在這家事務所由他的兩個姐妹經(jīng)營。起初，他也子從父業(yè)，從位于巴塞羅那的艾賽德商法學院(Esade Business and Law School)獲得了法學學位。桑喬曾與教過他的一位法學教授合作接手公益性的刑事案件，之后進入巴塞羅那一家跨國律所，代理物權法案件，但他很快就發(fā)現(xiàn)這行不適合自己。

Then Sancho broke up with his long-term girlfriend and decided that he should also no longer stay in a role where his heart was not in the work. “I decided to turn it into an opportunity,” he says. “I made a decision to push forward with my life to a job that I loved and being in a law firm was not that dream job.”

接著桑喬與交往多年的女友分了手，他也從此決定不再繼續(xù)從事這份自己不上心的工作。“我決定把這當成一次機會，”他說，“我決定全心投入到一份自己喜歡的工作中去，而在一家律所找不到我認為理想的工作。”

Sancho joined the legal department at Mango, primarily as a way of getting into the corporate world and retail, which he saw at the time as changing from a traditional industry to a more exciting disruptive one, and after six months switched to a role in the business development team. “At that time Mango made me an offer. I didn’t know anything about fashion and I didn’t even know that it was so related to real estate.”

桑喬加入了芒果公司的法務部，他主要將此當作進入企業(yè)界和零售業(yè)的一個途徑，當時他看到這個傳統(tǒng)行業(yè)正在經(jīng)歷一種激動人心的顛覆性轉變。6個月后，桑喬跳到了業(yè)務開發(fā)團隊。“芒果那時給我提供了一個工作機會。我當時對時尚可是一竅不通，我甚至不知道時尚跟房地產(chǎn)還密切相關。”

It was here that he got his first taste of China, when he volunteered for a month-long trip to travel between Hong Kong and Beijing in 2006 to assess the market opportunity for Mango, which only had a small presence there at the time.

正是在這里，他第一次接觸到中國。2006年他自告奮勇地到香港和北京出差一個月，評估芒果在當?shù)氐氖袌鰴C遇，當時芒果在中國的業(yè)務規(guī)模還很小。

“Everyone was talking about China but it was amazing the difference between being in my office in Barcelona and seeing it with my own eyes,” he says. “At that moment, when I arrived in Hong Kong, I knew I would end up in China. I just fell in love with the place. It was the vibe of the people. I just didn’t know how I would do it.”

“人人都在談論中國，但在巴塞羅那的辦公室里談論中國與親眼目睹中國有著驚人的不同，”他說，“剛到香港，我就知道自己以后得來中國。我就是愛上了這里，這是個有人情味的地方，我只是不知道怎么才能留下。”

His abiding memory of the time was how positive people were, from the person holding the door open for him at his hotel to people he met through business. “Everyone was looking to the future in a very positive way,” he recalls.

讓桑喬難以忘懷的是人們是那么積極，從酒店里為他開門的人，到遇見的生意伙伴。“每個人都對未來抱著非常積極的態(tài)度，”他回憶道。

Five years later, the opportunity arose to move permanently to China. Mango wanted someone from head office to relocate to run the Asian operations locally. Sancho, who was head of property at the time, took the role of vice-president for international expansion. A few months later he was offered the job of chief executive for Mango China, leading a small team with just 10 managers. “It was like a start-up,” Sancho recalls. He enjoyed building something from scratch. “It just felt like the right timing.”

5年后，長久移居中國的機會出現(xiàn)了。芒果希望從總部派人去亞洲管理當?shù)貥I(yè)務。時任地產(chǎn)部負責人的桑喬，接任了海外擴張業(yè)務副總裁一職。幾個月后，他出任芒果中國區(qū)首席執(zhí)行官，領導著一支僅有10位經(jīng)理的小團隊。“那就像一家初創(chuàng)企業(yè)，”桑喬回憶道。他很享受從零開始干的感覺。“感覺時機正好。”

Mango’s East Asia and India operations now account for about 5 per cent of Mango’s global sales, which were €2.26bn in 2016. It employs more than 1,000 people in 200 stores and an online business, with 100 people administering the division from its Shanghai base. Most of Mango’s outlets in China and Asia were in department stores when he started in the region; now the majority are in shopping malls.

如今東亞和印度區(qū)的業(yè)務已占到芒果全球銷售額的5%左右，2016年該公司的銷售額達到22.6億歐元。芒果東亞和印度區(qū)的200家門店擁有1000多名雇員，還有一家網(wǎng)店，由100名員工在上海的分公司里運營。他剛上任時，芒果在中國和亞洲的大部分門店都設在百貨公司里;現(xiàn)在大多數(shù)芒果門店都開在大型購物中心。

He started the EMBA a year later at the China Europe International Business School (Ceibs) in Shanghai after reading articles about the school by Pedro Nueno, a professor at Iese business school in Barcelona who is also president of Ceibs. The plan was to use the course to immerse himself in Chinese culture while increasing his hard skills in areas such as finance and marketing.

后來，桑喬讀了佩德羅•努埃諾(Pedro Nueno)寫的關于中歐國際工商學院(Ceibs)的文章。出任中國區(qū)CEO一年以后，他開始在這所位于上海的商學院攻讀EMBA。努埃諾是巴塞羅那IESE商學院(Iese Business School)的一位教授，同時也是中歐國際工商學院歐方院長。桑喬當時的計劃是通過這個課程深入了解中國文化，同時提升自己在金融和營銷等領域的“硬技能”。

“It helped to open my eyes,” he says of the diverse course, where half of the 56 students were Chinese nationals, 15 per cent were from outside Asia, and his fellow students were aged from 29 to over 60. “It helped me to be surrounded by so many people with so many viewpoints.”

“這讓我眼界大開，”提起這個有著多元化特征的課程，桑喬這樣說道。56名學員中有一半是中國人，15%來自亞洲以外的國家，桑喬同學的年齡從29歲到60多歲都有。“這讓我處于那么多人中間，他們有那么多種觀點。”

Sancho says he liked the flexibility of the course, studied part-time over 22 months, which he was able to complete by taking long weekends, using his holiday allowance. “I like to learn about business and there were a lot of very nice people on the course, so for me it was like going on holiday,” he says.

桑喬說他喜歡這個課程的靈活性，他在22個月的時間里，利用長周末及帶薪假期在職完成了學業(yè)。“我喜歡學習商業(yè)知識，在課上能見到很多非常棒的人，所以對我來說這就像度假一樣，”他說。

The programme taught him vital soft skills, such as working in teams and dealing with complex challenges, that Sancho was able to put into use immediately. It also introduced him to a network of people from different backgrounds and at different stages in their careers who have become close friends, something he particularly valued at the time as a new arrival in China.

EMBA教會桑喬很多重要的軟技能，如在團隊中工作，以及處理復雜的問題，這些技能桑喬能夠立即派上用場。這個課程也使他融入到一個由不同背景和處于不同職業(yè)發(fā)展階段的人組成的關系網(wǎng)，并和這些人成了親密的朋友，這是他剛來中國時尤為看重的東西。

“It is not easy for someone coming from so far away, from a completely different culture, to make friends with people from China, so I have to say that this changed my life,” he says.

“對一個出身于完全不同的文化、遠道而來的人來說，與中國人民成為朋友很不容易，所以我不得不說這改變了我的生活，”他說。

This was important to Sancho, who admits that the hardest thing about being based in China is being far away from his family. It was possible because the EMBA course was relatively small, with 56 students on his cohort, and he made good friends. “I stay in China because of those personal ties,” he says.

這對桑喬來說很重要——他承認，對自己而言，來中國工作最難的就是遠離家人。和中國人做朋友是可能的，因為EMBA課程的規(guī)模相對較小，一個班有56名學員，桑喬交到了好朋友。“我留在中國的原因就是這些人際關系，”桑喬說。

One the most important lessons from the EMBA at Ceibs was discovering the Chinese approach to learning, which, he says, benefits from being more “humble” than in Europe and not so willing to accept the received wisdom on business problems.

從中歐國際工商學院的EMBA中，他學到的最重要一課就是認識了中國人的學習方法，他說，這種學習方法得益于比歐洲人更“謙遜”、也不輕易接受那些有關商業(yè)問題的常識的態(tài)度。

Yet putting other people first is one of the cultural strengths of Mango, he says, and one of the reasons he claims he has remained with the company for 13 years.

桑喬說，以他人為先是芒果的文化優(yōu)勢之一，他聲稱這也是自己在這家公司呆了13年的一個原因。

Building the best team he can is a priority, he says, stressing the importance of “remembering that everyone is a human being first, not just a worker. One of the things I like about Mango is that they hire . . . first because of what kind of people they are. I want the best professionals on my team but they also have to be nice people.”

他說自己的一個首要任務就是竭盡所能打造最優(yōu)秀的團隊。他強調(diào)，重要的是“謹記每個人首先是一個人，而不僅僅是一個員工。我喜歡芒果的理由之一是他們招人……首先考慮的是對方是什么樣的人。我希望自己的團隊里都是最優(yōu)秀的專業(yè)人士，但他們的人品必須過關。”

His main goal at Mango, he says, is to transmit its culture to those around him.

他說自己在芒果公司的主要目標是，向周圍的人傳遞芒果的文化。

“You grow as a person when you are connected with amazing people, particularly those who are just starting out in their careers, and we have a lot of those at Mango.”

“當你交往的是一些令人驚嘆的人，特別是那些剛剛開始職業(yè)生涯的人時，你這個人才能成長，而芒果就有很多那樣的人。”