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(jìn)行的，在尖沙咀熱鬧的南九龍地區(qū)有一家芒果旗艦店，當(dāng)時(shí)桑喬正在這家店的貨架間走來走去。他在店里四處走動(dòng)，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(gè)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(wù)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(yuǎn)的巴塞羅那，芒果的總部就在那里。桑喬出生于一個(gè)律師家庭，他的父母共同創(chuàng)辦了一家專注房地產(chǎn)領(lǐng)域的律師事務(wù)所，現(xiàn)在這家事務(wù)所由他的兩個(gè)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(xué)院(Esade Business and Law School)獲得了法學(xué)學(xué)位。桑喬曾與教過他的一位法學(xué)教授合作接手公益性的刑事案件，之后進(jìn)入巴塞羅那一家跨國律所，代理物權(quán)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(dāng)成一次機(jī)會(huì)，”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(rèn)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(wù)部，他主要將此當(dāng)作進(jìn)入企業(yè)界和零售業(yè)的一個(gè)途徑，當(dāng)時(shí)他看到這個(gè)傳統(tǒng)行業(yè)正在經(jīng)歷一種激動(dòng)人心的顛覆性轉(zhuǎn)變。6個(gè)月后，桑喬跳到了業(yè)務(wù)開發(fā)團(tuán)隊(duì)。“芒果那時(shí)給我提供了一個(gè)工作機(jī)會(huì)。我當(dāng)時(shí)對時(shí)尚可是一竅不通，我甚至不知道時(shí)尚跟房地產(chǎn)還密切相關(guān)。”

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(gè)月，評估芒果在當(dāng)?shù)氐氖袌鰴C(jī)遇，當(dāng)時(shí)芒果在中國的業(yè)務(wù)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?wù)撝袊诎腿_那的辦公室里談?wù)撝袊c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(gè)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(gè)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(jī)會(huì)出現(xiàn)了。芒果希望從總部派人去亞洲管理當(dāng)?shù)貥I(yè)務(wù)。時(shí)任地產(chǎn)部負(fù)責(zé)人的桑喬，接任了海外擴(kuò)張業(yè)務(wù)副總裁一職。幾個(gè)月后，他出任芒果中國區(qū)首席執(zhí)行官，領(lǐng)導(dǎo)著一支僅有10位經(jīng)理的小團(tuán)隊(duì)。“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(shí)機(jī)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(wù)已占到芒果全球銷售額的5%左右，2016年該公司的銷售額達(dá)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(yùn)營。他剛上任時(shí)，芒果在中國和亞洲的大部分門店都設(shè)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(guān)于中歐國際工商學(xué)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(xué)院攻讀EMBA。努埃諾是巴塞羅那IESE商學(xué)院(Iese Business School)的一位教授，同時(shí)也是中歐國際工商學(xué)院歐方院長。桑喬當(dāng)時(shí)的計(jì)劃是通過這個(gè)課程深入了解中國文化，同時(shí)提升自己在金融和營銷等領(lǐng)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(gè)有著多元化特征的課程，桑喬這樣說道。56名學(xué)員中有一半是中國人，15%來自亞洲以外的國家，桑喬同學(xué)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(diǎn)。”

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(gè)課程的靈活性，他在22個(gè)月的時(shí)間里，利用長周末及帶薪假期在職完成了學(xué)業(yè)。“我喜歡學(xué)習(xí)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(huì)桑喬很多重要的軟技能，如在團(tuán)隊(duì)中工作，以及處理復(fù)雜的問題，這些技能桑喬能夠立即派上用場。這個(gè)課程也使他融入到一個(gè)由不同背景和處于不同職業(yè)發(fā)展階段的人組成的關(guān)系網(wǎng)，并和這些人成了親密的朋友，這是他剛來中國時(shí)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(gè)出身于完全不同的文化、遠(yuǎn)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(rèn)，對自己而言，來中國工作最難的就是遠(yuǎn)離家人。和中國人做朋友是可能的，因?yàn)镋MBA課程的規(guī)模相對較小，一個(gè)班有56名學(xué)員，桑喬交到了好朋友。“我留在中國的原因就是這些人際關(guān)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(xué)院的EMBA中，他學(xué)到的最重要一課就是認(rèn)識了中國人的學(xué)習(xí)方法，他說，這種學(xué)習(xí)方法得益于比歐洲人更“謙遜”、也不輕易接受那些有關(guān)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(gè)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(gè)首要任務(wù)就是竭盡所能打造最優(yōu)秀的團(tuán)隊(duì)。他強(qiáng)調(diào)，重要的是“謹(jǐn)記每個(gè)人首先是一個(gè)人，而不僅僅是一個(gè)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(tuán)隊(duì)里都是最優(yōu)秀的專業(yè)人士，但他們的人品必須過關(guān)。”

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(biāo)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(dāng)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(shí)，你這個(gè)人才能成長，而芒果就有很多那樣的人。”