吉姆·柯林斯：我仅仅是结合我们的研究和我自己的经历来谈，但是如果要应用到一个并不熟悉的文化当中去，我还是会有所顾忌。因此我尽量不要扩展太多，只是分享一些我在这里的所见所闻。
Jim Collins: I can only speak through the lens of our research and my own experience and I'm hesitant to extend it to a culture that I know that I don't know. So, what I'll do, is try not to over extend and just share what I've seen here.

如果看看我们研究的这些杰出人士，就会发现在他们成长过程中最有趣的就是他们自己的轨迹。在成长的过程中，他们有两个标志性的行为特别突出。
If I look at the people, the exceptional people that we've studied, one of things that's really interesting if you look back as they developed, their own trajectory. They have two signature behaviors I think that jump out as they develop.

一是他们会积极融入那些他们认为是高素质人才的圈子里去。但是他们不会去想哪些工作才是最好的工作。他们会想哪些人是我想要交往的。如果某些公司或者企业拥有大量优秀人才的话，你就可以与这些优秀的人来往。这样的话你自己也会变得更加优秀，因为你处于优秀人才的包围之中。
One is, they actively try to seek being in the orbit of folks that they considered to be high quality people. So, they don't necessarily think in terms of what job would be the best job. They might think, who would I want to be associated with, so if there are certain kinds of companies, or certain types of enterprises where they just seem to have a lot of outstanding people, you begin associating with outstanding people, you're more likely to have good things happen, just because you're around outstanding people.

吉姆·柯林斯：我想要告诉那些正在决定将来做什么、干哪份工作、去哪家公司的青年人，我要告诉他们这么问是不对的，他们该问的是：我想和谁一起工作。可能这份工作看上去一般，但会有很棒的同事。可能这份工作看上去很棒，却不一定有你希望共事的人。要选择人，而不是工作，尤其当你刚起步的时候，他们将会对你产生巨大的影响。就我自己的经验来说，我是非常非常幸运的，因为首先我在大学的时候自己开了家登山学校，这样就能支付我部份的学费，再加上我的奖学金就够了。我大学毕业后第一份真正的工作是在麦肯锡（McKinsey），那时我已经知道怎么样做分析、做经济建模等等。这不是我从麦肯锡得到的收获，我在那儿的收获是看到马文·鲍尔如何将公司发展壮大。我1980年进的公司，当时公司还处于发展阶段，他引入了一套价值体系来促进公司的发展。他靠自己的能力来建设公司。所有的同事在我22岁时帮助塑造了我的职业标准。我有时想，如果我在22岁的时候，去了一个没有职业标准的地方工作，情况又会如何呢？可能我永远也不会获得我在22岁时学到的职业道德。我的确是太幸运了，因为那时我完全懵懂无知，只是谋了份生计。如果时光倒退，要复制这份好运，那就要记住，寻找最优秀的人，而不一定是最好的工作。
Jim Collins: And I like to tell young people here who are trying to decide what to do, which job, which company. And my response is, it's the wrong question, it's who. There may be this job, but it's got great "who's." And there might be this great job, but not necessarily the who's you want. Go for the who's, the people, when you’re starting out especially; they're going to have the greatest impact on you. My own experience, I was very, very, very lucky, because my first, I ran my own climbing school in college, it's how I paid for college in part, along with scholarships, whatever. But, my first kind of real job, outside of college, was McKinsey & Company and I already knew how to do analysis and I could do economic modeling and all that. That's not what I got out of McKinsey, what I got out of McKinsey was, Marvin Bower had built the firm. I went there in 1980 and it was still in its real development stages, he had built the firm on a set of values. And on the caliber of a person. And so all the people that I immediately was working with shaped my professional standards at age 22. I sometimes think, what would have happened if I would have went to work at 22 in a place that didn't have professional standards? Maybe I would have never gotten that kind of professional ethic that I got when I was 22. That was a great stroke of luck because I didn't know what I was doing, I was just taking the job. If I could go back and say, I want to replicate that luck, it would be, where are we going to find the best people, not necessarily where you're going to find the best job.

第二就是要看重结果。看看达尔文·史密斯，看看科尔曼·默克勒，再看看比尔·艾伦，这些人在刚刚起步之时都不是什么成功人士。但是他们每做一件事，即便是再琐碎的事情，不见得是与业务有关，比如送报纸什么的。只要他们要做的事，每一件他们都会争取做到尽善尽美。他们能做出成果，言必信、行必果，业绩十分突出。另一方面，之前我们也谈到的，公司在发展，他们也需要人才。同时也有年轻人询问该如何起步。那么有人会问：如何将这两者结合起来呢？这是一个很好的问题。有时可能就是与你欣赏的人一起，随便做件什么事，我也不在乎是什么，就是好好干，做出成绩，结果能说明一切。这个过程可能很漫长，但是就是起点。
The second though is, results. I mean, you look at Darwin Smith, you look at Coleman Mockler, you look at Bill Allen, you look at all these people, they weren't giant successes when they started. It's just that everything they did, everything even when they just had one little thing, maybe not necessarily even in business, they were, I don't know, delivering newspapers. Everything they did when they got their hands on it, they made it the very, very best it could be. And they delivered results, they did what they said they were going to do, and they performed exceptionally well and the amazing thing, the flip side earlier we were talking about, companies are growing, they need great people. On the other hand you have young people saying how do I get started? So, there's the great question, how do you get those (two things) together? Well, sometimes it's, just start with anything with some people who you look up to, then just, I don't care what it is, do a fantastic job early, deliver exceptional results, they will speak. And it may take awhile but that is really the starting point.