商业往事丨第88话：延长职业生涯的刺猬策略

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延长职业生涯的刺猬策略

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（英文文章在中文文章之后）

 

 

由于医学的进步，我们可以活得比我们年轻时想象的更长。我们的工作能力也延长了几年。因此，知道如何延长自己的职业生涯已经成为许多人的重要话题，因为人们需要更多的金钱来支持他们更长的寿命，有一些人会想继续体验工作带来的满足感。

 

古希腊抒情诗人阿奇洛丘斯（Archilochus）写了一只刺猬知道一件大事（如何保护自己）和一只狐狸知道很多事情（如何在野外茁壮成长）。卢西亚诺·帕瓦罗蒂和普拉西多·多明戈是歌剧界的著名人物，帕瓦罗蒂就像一只刺猬，他专注于保护自己的声音，而多明戈就像一只狐狸，因为他与时俱进，扩张自己专长以延长自己的职业生涯

 

卢西亚诺‧帕瓦罗蒂是意大利歌剧男高音，是有史以来最受赞誉和喜爱的男高音之一。为了延长他的职业生涯，帕瓦罗蒂在年老时采取了各种措施来保护他的声音。

 

首先，帕瓦罗蒂每月只演出四到五次，通常在纽约大都会歌剧院演出，这减少了旅行需求。帕瓦罗蒂也非常谨慎，他选择的歌剧。他只表演他非常熟悉的歌剧，如拉波希姆、托斯卡、图兰多和蝴蝶夫人。帕瓦罗蒂有信心，他可以很好地确实无误表演这些歌剧，而没有任何错误。

 

年纪大后，为了保护喉咙，帕瓦罗蒂从未扮演过「需要过分用力的角色」，就是那些需要费力地使用喉咙的角色，他都拒绝了。

此外，如果他患了感冒，他会立即取消了演出。他不在乎这些取消是否会违反合约，或者剧院是否已经售出了门票。他说；「如果你的身体不适合演唱，你会一直用力，这些都会伤害你的喉咙，最后就是毁了你的声音。」

他通过取消演出以延长职业生涯。但也因为经常取消演出，他得到了「取消之王」的绰号。 例如，1989年，芝加哥抒情歌剧院结束了与帕瓦罗蒂代理公司长达15年的合作，因为帕瓦罗蒂取消了41场原定在歌词演出中的26场。

在歌剧中，帕瓦罗蒂除了在表演中唱歌外，还应该表演一些动作，但他在发胖后，就经常拒绝这样做。例如，杜兰朵的一个场景要求表演者打鼓，但帕瓦罗蒂只做了一个象征击鼓手势，并没有真的打鼓。这不是他懒惰，或不尊重他的角色。相反，他需要保护自己，他知道，他的表演最重要的事情是唱歌。他知道观众更关心他的歌声，而不是他的动作。

2006年2月，帕瓦罗蒂应邀在意大利都灵冬奥委会开幕式上表演了《内森·多玛》。这是他一生中的最后一场演出。在这次演出中，他受到了国际观众最长时间、最响亮的掌声。然而，指挥家莱昂‧马吉拉在2008年的回忆录中透露了整个故事。马吉拉说，这场演出实际是几周前录制好的。但在现场表演中；「管弦乐队假装为观众演奏，我假装指挥，卢西亚诺假装唱歌。效果是美妙极了」。帕瓦罗蒂早些时候曾多次拒绝这次的邀请，因为二月份在都灵的零度以下条件下，晚上不可能唱歌。所以预录是一个妥协的作法。

关于这次预录，帕瓦罗蒂说：「我是个完美主义者，即使它已经很好了，我还是认为我可以做得比我过去做得更好」。但他不愿意这样做，如果它要危及他的生财工具。因此，帕瓦罗蒂尽了一切可能保护他的喉咙，以延长他的职业生涯。损坏的声带只会伤害他，剥夺他的歌迷听他表演。他的策略奏效了，使他得以一直坚持到去世前一年。

我们可以从帕瓦罗蒂身上学到的教训是；我们需要确定我们的核心能力，并专注于核心能力，以延长我们的职业生涯。我们应该尽一切可能保护这个核心能力免受各种威胁。这可能意味着你将不得不放弃一些你喜欢的责任，这样你才能专注于你的核心能力。

 

你之所以能走到现在这个地步，主要是因为你的核心能力，而不是因为那些其他的东西，不管它们是什么。过去，你也许能够做到这一切，但随着年龄的增长，你往往不得不将责任与那些与核心能力直接相关的责任配对。当你尽可能最大化你的核心能力时，你拥有的任何弱点都会显得微不足道，这样，你就能扩展你的事业，同时增加你的享受。

 

 

 

 

 

Focusing on One Professional Skill to Protect One’s Career

 

 

Due to medical advancements, we can live longer than we imagined that we could when we were younger. And our capacity to work has also been extended by several years. As a result, knowing how to extend one’s career has become an important topic for many individuals, because people will need more money to support their longer lifespans, and because many people will want to experience the satisfaction that work brings as long as they can.

 

Archilochus, an ancient Greek lyric poet, wrote about a hedgehog that knew one big thing (how to protect itself) and a fox that knew many things (for thriving in the wild). Luciano Pavarotti and Plácido Domingo are famous names in the opera world, wherein Pavarotti was like a hedgehog, in that he focused on protecting his voice, and Domingo is like a fox, in that he uses many ways to survive.

 

Luciano Pavarotti was an Italian operatic tenor, one of the most acclaimed and loved tenors of all time. In order to extend his career, Pavarotti took various steps to protect his voice when he was getting old. 

 

To begin with, Pavarotti only performed four or five times per month, and usually did so at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, which reduced the need for travel. Pavarotti was also very cautious about the operas that he selected. He only performed operas with which he was very familiar, such as Labohème, Tosca, Turando and Madama Butterfly. Pavarotti had confidence that he could perform those operas very well with no mistakes. 

 

In order to protect his throat when he was older, Pavarotti never performed the “heavy roles,” meaning those roles that required strenuous use of the throat.

Moreover, if he was suffering from a cold, he immediately canceled his performances. He didn’t care about whether these cancellations would violate agreements, or whether the theaters had already sold tickets. He said, “If your body is not in shape to sing [from the diaphragm] you will push and push but keep falling back on your throat to make the sound. This will ruin your voice.”

 

Such cancellations helped him to extend his career. However, due to frequently backing out of performances, he received the nickname “The King of Cancellations.”  For example, in 1989, Lyric Opera of Chicago ended its fifteen-year cooperation with Pavarotti’s agent company because Pavarotti had canceled 26 out of 41 scheduled appearances at the Lyric. 

 

Although Pavarotti was supposed to perform various actions in addition to singing during his performances, he often declined to do so after getting fat. For example, one scene in Turando calls for the performer to play the drums, but Pavarotti only made a drumming gesture. It’s not that he was lazy or didn’t respect his role. Rather, he needed to protect himself and he knew that the most important thing for his performance was to sing. He knew that the audience cared more about his singing than his movements.

 

In February of 2006, Pavarotti was invited to perform Nessun Dorma at the opening ceremony for the Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy. This turned out to be the final performance of his life. In this performance, he received the longest and loudest ovation of the night from the international crowd. However, the conductor, Leone Magiera, revealed the whole story in his 2008 memoirs. Magiera said that the performance had been recorded weeks earlier. But in the live performance, “The orchestra pretended to play for the audience, I pretended to conduct and Luciano pretended to sing. The effect was wonderful.” Pavarotti had earlier turned down the invitation several times due to the fact that it would have been impossible to sing at night under the sub-zero conditions of Turin in February. So this was a compromise.

 

Pavarotti said, “I’m a perfectionist, and I always think that I can do better than what I have done, even if it’s good.” But he wasn’t willing to do so if it was going to jeopardize his instrument (Pavarotti's vocal chords). As such, Pavarotti did everything that he could to protect his throat to extend his career. Damaged vocal cords would only hurt him and deprive his fans from hearing him perform. And his strategy worked and allowed him to keep performing up until the year before his death. 

 

The lesson that we can learn from Pavarotti is that each of us should identify our core competence and focus on that in order to extend our career. We should do everything possible to protect it from various threats. That might mean that you will have to give up some of the responsibilities that you enjoy so that you can focus on your core competence. 

 

The main reason that you are where you are is because of your core competence, not because of those other things, whatever they are. You might have been able to do it all in the past, but as you get older, you often have to pair down your responsibilities to those that are directly related to your core competence. When you maximize your core competence as much as possible, any weaknesses that you have will appear insignificant in comparison. In this way, you should be able to extend your career and also increase your enjoyment along the way. 

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原文标题：商业往事丨第88话：延长职业生涯的刺猬策略

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