【中文版03】托德·耶林：网飞是如何面对惨败的

【Background】

【背景介绍】

大家好，欢迎来到《全球精英的5分钟成长学院》。在今天的节目中，我们将与网飞公司的产品创新副总裁网飞托德·耶伦一起，去研究一下什么样的失败，算得上是“成功的失败”。

There was a moment in recent business advice history when everyone went crazy about failure. Fail bigger! Fail harder! crowed entrepreneurial evangelists. There is even a “Fail Camp” where would-be innovators can become more comfortable with failure.

失败，似乎是近年来商界备受关注的话题。很多创业界的布道者高喊着：摔得越惨越好！摔得越厉害越好！甚至还有人专门成立了一个“失败训练营”，在那里，未来的创新者可以亲自去感受失败，这样当他们日后真正面对失败时，他们就会更加轻松自如了。

In every trend, there’s a grain of truth: innovation cannot happen without an appetite for failure, and a commitment to learning from it. That’s the key takeaway from Netflix’s Todd Yellin’s lesson on “successful failure.”

不管这件事本身合理与否，其中多少会蕴藏一点真理：如果人们不愿意面对失败，没有从失败中学习的决心，那创新将会变得遥不可及。今天，托德·耶林就将和我们一起讨论，什么样的失败，才算是“成功”的失败。

【Course】

【课程】

If you’re going to innovate you have to have a tolerance, a high-risk tolerance and you also have to have a really strong appreciation that failure can be a good thing, in other words as long as you’re learning something from that failure.

如果你想要创新，那你必须得有足够的耐心，而且是能够承受高风险的耐心。与此同时，你还要具备一种强烈的觉悟，那就是失败可以是一件好事；换句话说，只要你能够在失败中有所收获，那么失败本身就不值一提了。

Assess your stumbles

评估你的马失前蹄

So good failure is something where you tried something for logical reasons, it made sense why you tried it; it was a reasonable hypothesis. And then when you put it out there, you were very clear what was the measurement for success and failure. And if it failed, you did your best to understand why it failed and then you looked back and you learned and got smarter about it. A bad example of failure can be multi-fold. It could be, you tried something but you really don’t have a compelling reason this is what we’re trying, this is why and this is what we thinks going to happen based on what we’re trying.

什么样的失败才是好的失败呢？

当你出于某种符合逻辑的原因去进行尝试，你觉得促使你去这样做的原因是合理的，你是出于一个合理的假设才去这样做的，当你这样去做的时候，你非常清楚，评判成功和失败的标准是什么。这个时候，如果你失败了，你可以尽可能地去搞明白它失败的原因，当你回顾这一切的时候，你能从中有所收获，并且加深了对整件事的理解。这就是好的失败。

而坏的失败则可能有多重的原因。它可能是，你尝试去做了某件事，可是当别人问你正在做什么，你为什么要这么做，以及你预期会产生怎样的结果时，你却无法给出令人信服的理由。

If it’s not compelling in the way that it misses some internal logic, and then it fails, you really have no excuse. Because it didn’t make sense what you wore presenting or you didn’t present it in a clear and logical way. That’s one. Another kind of failure that’s not the good kind of failure is when you failed, you learn why you failed and then you try again the same thing because maybe out of some stubbornness or I’ve got to be right, there’s got to be something wrong here. So if you keep on making the same mistake over again and you don’t learn from your past, that’s a bad kind of failure too. But, I couldn’t – I hate to say something so obvious, but if you’re not falling on your face once in a while, maybe even pretty often, then you’re not an innovative culture.

如果你做这件事本身就缺乏一个有内在逻辑的理由，然后你失败了，那你真的找不到任何借口，因为你的思路本身就说不通，或者你没法清晰而有条理地说明为什么要这样做。这就属于一种坏的失败。

还有一种坏的失败，就是当你失败以后，你明明清楚失败的原因，但是出于某种固执的想法，你还是去尝试相同的事情，又或许，你心想“我一定是对的，这里头一定有什么问题”，你还是会重蹈覆辙。所以，如果你继续犯着同样的错误，却无法从之前的经历中吸取教训，这也是一种坏的失败。

但是，你不能忍受时不时地遭遇失败，甚至是经常遭遇失败，那你就无法创造一种创新的精神和文化。虽然我不想说的这么直白，但是事实就是这样。

There are times when we have fallen as a company. There are times that we have stumbled, we have fallen down and then we’ve gotten up and we’ve made things better. You want to lean so far forward that sometimes you’re going to fall on your face. But it’s important when you do fall on your face you get up; you brush yourself off; you learn why you fell on your face; you try not to make the same mistake again and you try to improve the experience. An example is when we launched into Latin America. We didn’t really – we were new to the global scene. We didn’t really understand what it would take to be successful in countries, in non-English-speaking countries outside of the U.S. and Canada. So we launched in Latin America and we really don’t understand how to make that work at first. And at first, we planted, a firm face plant in Brazil and Mexico and so forth. We didn’t have consistent language assets. We weren’t sure of subtitling or dubbing would work. We weren’t sure exactly what kind of content would play in Latin America. So we stumbled out of the gate. But the exciting thing is, after we fell on our face we got up, we brushed our self off, we learned about how to make a better experience. We learned on the language front; put out everything with subtitles and dubbing because different people enjoy different ways to watch it across Brazil, across Mexico, across Colombia and all of Latin America. So that was super important.

就拿网飞公司来说，作为公司，我们也曾多次马失前蹄。我们也曾经历过很多跌跌撞撞，很多次栽了跟头之后，又站起来，，然后才能做得更好。这很正常，这就像你总是努力地想把身体向前倾斜一些，有的时候幅度太大了，难免就会头朝下撞到地上。重要的事情在于，当你摔倒之后，你得站起来，掸去身上的尘土，搞清摔倒的原因，尽可能不要再犯同样的错误，并且积累更多的经验。

举个例子，当我们公司开始进军拉丁美洲时，我们那会儿在国际舞台上还是个新手，根本不知道如何才能在美国和加拿大以外的非英语国家取得成功。所以一开始，我们不知道该做些什么才好。我们在巴西、墨西哥都遇到了麻烦，之后在其他拉美国家的情况也好不到哪去。当时，我们甚至没有统一的语言配置。我们既不确定使用字幕或配音是否可行，也不清楚针对拉美市场应该播什么类型的内容。可以说，这就好比我们还没进门就狠狠摔了一跤。但是令人兴奋的是，当我们摔倒之后，我们立刻站了起来，掸去身上的尘土，并学会了如何针对性地做出优化改进。我们在语言功能上学到了很多，我们为所有的内容都加上了字幕和配音。因为在巴西，墨西哥，哥伦比亚和整个拉丁美洲地区，不同地方的人会享受不同的观看方式，所以字幕和配音都非常重要。

Come up with good payment methods that work across these countries. We didn’t really get that, then we learned that over time. So it first started out being someplace where we did stumble out of the gate and we weren’t successful and then we became very successful over time.

另外，我们还想出了一些适用于这些国家的支付方式。一开始我们并没有意识到该怎么做，我们是在不断失败的过程中才逐渐学到这些的。所以，一开始我们确实在门外摔得很惨，离成功也远得很；然而，随着时间的推移，我们还是能够重新站起来，并且实现巨大的成就。

Temper failure with Minimum Viable Products (MVPs)

在失败和最小化可行产品之间进行平衡

When we guide the design and then the ultimate development of any part of the Netflix experience, there are certain questions that we have to ask ourselves. Like, because we’re very test-centric and we’re trying things, there’s a really careful line you have to draw between what’s the minimum viable product, you don’t want to over-invest in something that might not work. And we’ve done that. We’ve made that mistake many times where you’re so passionate about something and you want to make it so good because you want your test to succeed that you overly invest in it. And if it doesn’t succeed, you wasted a lot of time on an idea that really doesn’t swim. But, on the other side, if you create something that’s so much of a minimum viable product, emphasis on too minimum, then it’s not viable and you really get a false negative because maybe it was a good idea and if you just would have put a little more polish on it, and you really never know the answer to that. So you’re threading a needle, you don’t want to over-invest, you don’t want to under-invest. So very much we’re talking to the product managers, the designers, the engineers, we’re always debating about where that line is.

当我们在指导设计和开发网飞产品的每一个环节时，，我们必须要问自己一些问题，那就是什么是我们的MVP?也就是什么是我们的最小化可行产品。因为在网飞，我们始终把测试放在非常核心的地位，通过测试不断进行尝试。所以我们必须要划出一条非常谨慎的界限，来界定我们的最小化可行产品是什么。因为你肯定也不希望在那些很可能失败的产品上做过度的投资。我们曾经犯过很多次这样的错误。当你对某件事情充满热情的时候，你就会一心想要把它做好。你希望你的测试能够大获成功，所以你就会在这件事上投入过量的资源。假如最终你失败了，你就会浪费很多时间在一个不可行的想法上。

但是，从另一方面来讲，假如你做的产品几乎是就是一个最低限度可行的产品，而你过分强调了最低限度这个属性，那么，这很可能就会导致测试结果的失败。你会认为这个产品行不通。但事实上，如果你愿意再打磨一下，那么很有可能，这个产品就是一个很好的想法。所以在这种情况下，究竟是你设计的MVP的问题，还是你的想法的问题，你永远不可能知道答案了。

总而言之，在进行大胆尝试的时候，你既不能过度投资，也不能投资不足，就好像是穿一根针一样，你要划分清楚两者之间的界限。那么这条界限的位置在哪里呢？我们总是要与产品经理，设计师，工程师们不断交流、激烈争辩，才能确定它真正合理的位置。

【Summary】

【总结】

在这节课里，我们和托德·耶伦一起，进行了一次关于“成功的失败”的案例研究。

你可以把它运用到生活中大大小小的失败经验里。

Assess your stumbles

 总结来说，我们要对自己经历的的失败进行评估，分析这些尝试是否合理；

Good Failure

·     Tried for logical reasons / reasonable hypothesis

·     Clearly defined metrics for measuring success or failure

·     Resulted in new learnings

好的失败有以下几种特征：

一，你是因为符合逻辑的原因，或者基于合理的假设而进行尝试的

二，你可以通过清晰的标准来衡量成功与失败

三，你能够从中学到新的东西

Bad Failure

·     Tried for no compelling reason

·     Already deemed a failure, but tried again anyway

而坏的失败则是：

一、你之所以要去尝试的理由毫无说服力

二、已经经历过失败，但仍然用同样的方式重复尝试

Face fall frequently

·     It’s OK to lean so far forward that you fail. Learn from each failure, brush yourself off, and try something new.

如果想不断进步，你要学会经常面对失败。

Temper failure with Minimum Viable Products (MVPs)

·     Only invest enough to yield viable test results. Avoid the temptation to over-invest in passion products.

·     Under-investing in a product can yield a false-negative.

最后，在尝试的过程中，我们还要学会合理地投入。我们可以设计最小化可行产品

只要能获得可行的测试结果就可以，避免因冲动而对产品进行过度投资。

另一方面，假如对最小化可行产品的投资不足，也会导致失败的测试结果，这个结果也会影响你对这个产品的正确判断。

以上就是我们今天的节目，本节目英文版音频和视频均由美国Big Think Edge 独家授权，中文版由喜马拉雅制作播出。感谢收听，我们下集节目再见！感谢收听，我们下集节目见！