Formula One (F1) is the most prestigious motor-racing competition on the planet.
一级方程式（F1）是地球上声誉最高的赛车比赛。
Every season, from March to December, 10 F1 teams participate in races across the world. The 2022 season features 22 “Grand Prix” weekends on five continents. Each involves three days of events: practice sessions on Friday and Saturday, qualifying sessions or short-sprint qualifying races to determine starting positions later on Saturday, and the actual race on Sunday. Close to half a billion unique viewers tune in to F1’s television coverage throughout the season, and the action on the ground can attract as many as 400,000 live spectators.
每个赛季从3月到12月，有10支F1车队在世界各地参加比赛。2022年赛季在五大洲有22个“大奖赛”周末，每个周末赛程为三天：周五和周六上午进行自由练习、周六下午进行排位赛（确定出发排位顺序的短程比赛），周日正式比赛。整个赛季有近五亿人收看电视转播，还有多达40万观众到现场观看比赛。
It is incredibly hard to win a Formula One race even once. The sport is often decided by margins measured in thousandths of seconds. Everything—from the engineering of the car in the factory to the multitude of decisions made on the track during a race weekend—needs to come together in order to produce a victory. Last year only four teams managed to win at least one Grand Prix. It is even harder to rack up enough points in a season to win either a Drivers’ Championship (for the driver with the highest number of points, awarded according to the order in which cars finish a race) or a Constructors’ Championship (for the best overall team performance). And because the FIA, motorsports’ governing body, regularly overhauls its regulations to increase F1’s competitiveness, putting together a string of championships is nearly impossible.
要赢下哪怕一场F1车赛都极其困难。这项运动往往由几毫秒的差距决胜负。取得一场胜利，涉及车赛相关的一切因素——从赛车在工厂里的工程学，到车手在赛场上做出的各种决定。去年只有四支车队赢得了一场或以上大奖赛。要想在一个赛季里获得足够的积分，赢得车手冠军（根据赛车跑完全程的顺序决胜，授予积分最高的车手）或车队冠军（授予整体表现最佳的车队）的头衔则更加困难。而且因为管理F1车赛的FIA会定期修改规则，提升车赛的激烈程度，连续夺冠几乎不可能。
Nonetheless, there is one team, Mercedes-AMG Petronas (or Mercedes, for short), that has managed to dominate F1 over the past decade. It has put together the longest winning streak the sport has ever seen: In the 2021 season Mercedes won its eighth consecutive Constructors’ Championship. During that eight-year period, the team won nearly seven of every 10 Grand Prix races it competed in—a staggering feat.
尽管如此，仍有一支车队在过去数十年里主宰了F1车赛——梅赛德斯AMG马石油队（Mercedes-AMG Petronas，简称梅赛德斯）。这支车队创下了F1车赛有史以来的最长连胜纪录。2021年赛季，梅赛德斯连续第八次获得车队冠军。八年间，梅赛德斯队的参赛获胜率接近7/10，这个成绩十分惊人。
Although that remarkable series of victories was a team effort, one person was at the helm of the organization throughout—Toto Wolff, the team principal. His role requires him to lead approximately 1,800 people, including an elite group of drivers, the engineers and mechanics who develop and manufacture the car and its engine, and other employees in various supporting functions. Wolff, who assumed the position in 2013, is widely regarded as one of the best team principals F1 has ever seen. And the Mercedes team under his leadership has every reason to claim the title of most successful team in the history of F1—and maybe in all of sports.
虽然这一系列引人注目的胜利归功于团队，但掌管团队的一直是同一个人——车队负责人托托·沃尔夫（Toto Wolff）。这份职责要求他领导约1800人，其中包括精英车手、开发和制造赛车及其引擎的工程师和机械师，以及其他各种支持职能的员工。沃尔夫于2013年就任这一职位，被众人广泛认为是F1有史以来最优秀的车队负责人。梅赛德斯车队在他的领导下势必成为F1史上最成功的车队——或许也是所有体育赛事中最为成功的一支队伍。
How has Wolff done it? How has he led Mercedes to one victory after another? Last year my colleague David Moreno Vicente and I had a unique opportunity to study the team’s operations up close, by joining Wolff and his colleagues on the road and going behind the scenes during race weekends, where we watched them working in the garage, practicing pit stops, and conducting race-strategy meetings. We also sat down for interviews with Wolff, his drivers, and many other team members. All of that resulted in a case study, first taught in my MBA class in March 2022, which Wolff himself attended as a guest lecturer. (He even had the Mercedes F1 car shipped to campus for the occasion.)
沃尔夫是如何做到的？他如何带领梅赛德斯取得一场又一场胜利？去年，我和同事戴维·莫雷诺·维森特（David Moreno Vicente）得到一个近距离研究这支车队运作的机会。我们在有比赛的周末与沃尔夫和他的同事们同行，了解车赛幕后，看他们在车库工作、练习进站、开会讨论比赛策略。我们还访谈了沃尔夫、赛车手和其他许多团队成员。这些材料形成一篇案例，2022年3月在我的MBA课堂上首次讲授。沃尔夫本人也作为客座讲师出席（为此他甚至把梅赛德斯F1赛车运到了学校）。
While working on this project, I learned a great deal about the winning culture that characterizes the Mercedes team. In what follows, I have distilled my observations into six lessons for leaders hoping to cultivate their own winning teams, whether in sports or other realms. During my research I also came to understand how Wolff, with his mindset, values, and actions, shapes the culture at Mercedes. In fact, it was fascinating to discover how much his leadership traits map onto the culture he has fostered. There is a powerful message here for every leader—what you say and do comes to define the organization you lead—and so I aim, too, to highlight those connections.
研究过程中，我对梅赛德斯车队独有的胜利文化有了深入了解。本文从我的观察中总结出六条经验，供希望培养胜利团队的领导者参考——体育竞赛和其他领域都适用。在研究中，我也渐渐明白沃尔夫如何以自己的思维方式、价值观和行动塑造梅赛德斯的文化。事实上，探索他的领导力特质在多大程度上与他所培养的文化相关，是一件非常有趣的事。他的故事释放出一个强大的信息给每一位领导者：你的言行会定义你领导的组织。因此我也会强调领导者言行和组织文化之间的联系。
Set the Highest Standards—for Everyone
制定最高标准——对每一个人
Wolff is a self-admitted stickler for even the smallest details. He told me that when he first visited the Mercedes team’s factory, in Brackley, England, he walked into the lobby and sat down to wait for the team principal he would come to replace. “On the table were a crumpled Daily Mail newspaper from the week before and two old paper coffee cups,” Wolff recalled. “I went up to the office to meet him, and at the end of our conversation I said, ‘I look forward to working together. But just one thing—that reception area doesn’t say “F1,” and that’s where it needs to start if we want to win.’ He said, ‘It’s the engineering that makes us win,’ and I replied, ‘No, it’s the attitude. It all starts with an attention to detail.’”
沃尔夫自认对最微小的细节都很执着。他告诉我，第一次参观梅赛德斯车队在英国布拉克里的工厂时，他走进大厅坐下，等待即将被自己取代的上一任车队负责人。“桌上放着一份上星期的《每日邮报》，皱巴巴的，还有两个旧的咖啡纸杯，”沃尔夫回忆道，“我去办公室找他，谈完之后我说，‘我很期待与你共事，但有一件事我很介意——前台那里没有F1的字样，我们想取胜，就必须从这个细节开始。’他说，‘让我们获胜的是工程。’我回答，‘不是的。是态度。一切都源于对细节的关注。’”
Wolff also told me about the first time he visited the bathroom in the team’s hospitality area at races. “It was dirty,” he said, “and I thought, ‘That cannot be. This is our home on a race weekend and where our sponsors come with their families.’” To remedy the situation, Wolff hired a full-time hygiene manager, Miguel Guerreiro, who now travels with the team. “I physically showed him how I wanted him to clean the toilet, how to put the brush back, how to wipe the floor, how to put the soap bottles with the front facing forward, how to sanitize the handles, and so on. And I walked him through what I wanted his schedule for the week to be, and how on Sundays, when it is busy, I want him to park himself right next to the bathroom and make sure it is spotless after every guest.”
沃尔夫还讲了他第一次看到车队服务区的卫生间。“很脏。我心想，‘这样不行。在有比赛的周末，这里就是我们的家，赞助商也会带家人过来。’”为了改善这种状况，沃尔夫聘用了一位全职的卫生经理——米格尔·格雷罗（Miguel Guerreiro）与车队同行。“我亲自向他示范该如何清洁卫生间，如何把刷子放回原处，如何擦地板，如何将洗手液的瓶子摆正，如何给门把手消毒等等。我还给他讲了我希望他如何安排一周的工作日程。在人来人往的周日，我希望他就呆在洗手间旁边，在每位客人用过之后都打扫得干干净净。”
Whenever I teach the case study, we end up talking a great deal about Guerreiro and about why Wolff—with everything he is responsible for—would occupy himself at such a granular level of detail with the cleanliness of the toilets. Is he micromanaging? Perhaps. But he is doing so with clear goals: to set the highest possible standards throughout the organization, to send a message that no job is too small for even the highest-ranking executive, and to highlight that every single team member plays a part in Mercedes’s performance.
每次课堂讲这个案例，我们都会花很多时间讨论这名卫生经理格雷罗，以及为什么沃尔夫明明有很多事情要管、却在卫生间清洁上花费这么多心思。是不是管太细了呢？或许是的。但他有明确的目的：在整个组织里尽可能地制定最高标准，他发出的信息是，即使是最高级别的管理者也不能忽视任何微小的工作，并且强调，每一位成员都在为团队表现做贡献。
Wolff’s approach has trickled down into every aspect of the organization. “When I walked into the garage 10 years ago, it was messy,” he told me. “Now we’re cleaning the floor every time the car has been in there. You’ll see no tire marks, no tool out of place. Everything is spotless and organized. I think that affects how we look after the cars too. We’re meticulous.”
沃尔夫的方法已经渗透进组织的方方面面。“十年前我走进车库，里面乱七八糟的，”他告诉我，“现在每次停过车之后我们都会打扫地面。你不会看到轮胎的痕迹，不会看到放错地方的工具，一切都井井有条，毫无瑕疵。我想，这也影响了我们打理赛车的方式。我们一丝不苟。”
This mindset has contributed to the emergence of an organization that is obsessed with excellence—one that constantly aims to raise its standards and set the benchmark within its sport.
这种思维方式催生了一个痴迷追求卓越的组织——不断提高标准，在其领域成为标杆。
Put People Front and Center
人是一切的中心
“I don’t run racing cars,” Wolff is fond of saying. “I run people that run racing cars.” He seeks to make his organization a people-centered one, and he genuinely cares about the individuals he works with. “Each person in the organization has hopes, dreams, fears, and anxieties, and it is important for me to understand what those are—to learn what drives a person,” said Wolff. Taking an interest in others is a key trait in any setting, but maybe especially so for an F1 team principal who has to deal with a multitude of very different stakeholders, from drivers, engineers, and other staff members to Mercedes board members, sponsors, the media, and governing-body officials.
“我管理的不是赛车，”沃尔夫喜欢这样说，“而是赛车手。”他力求建立以人为中心的组织，对与自己共事的人十分关心。他说，“组织中每一个人都怀有希望、梦想、恐惧和焦虑，了解这些对我而言很重要——了解驱动一个人的究竟是什么。”关心他人，在任何环境中都是关键，但对于必须接触从车手、工程师、其他工作人员到梅赛德斯董事、赞助商、媒体和监管机构官员等众多利益相关者的F1车队负责人而言，这一点尤为重要。
Working effectively with world-class engineers in a highly specialized profession is often a challenge for team principals who, like Wolff, do not have a technical background. One Mercedes team executive I spoke with highlighted the risk of principals being held hostage by engineers—for instance, when something is not right with the car during a race weekend but no one is sure how to solve the problem.
在高度专业化的领域，与世界一流的工程师有效合作，对于沃尔夫这样没有技术背景的团队负责人而言通常是一大挑战。梅赛德斯车队的一位高管与我交流时强调了负责人被工程师挟持的风险——比如赛车在有比赛的周末出了问题，但没有人确定该如何解决问题。
Race weekends can be roller coasters of emotions, and it is easy to feel pressure as a principal if you don’t understand the technical details as deeply as others do. Wolff, however, accepts that. “I don’t know as much about aerodynamics as the engineers on the team do,” he said, “but I want to know about them as people, and I enjoy spending time with them, which makes it easier to figure out the best course of action in tough situations.” The effort he makes to build a rapport with his team members benefits all parties, explained one Mercedes executive: “This is a business that is dominated by engineers. It is not easy as an engineer, as you gradually get promoted and find yourself in a position of, say, technical director, to realize that you suddenly, for the first time in your career, have a boss who isn’t an engineer. But with Toto that transition has been relatively smooth, because he has spent a tremendous amount of time understanding what it is that we, as the engineering community, are trying to say.”
有比赛的周末可能让人情绪大起大落，车队负责人如果不像其他人那样深入了解技术细节，就很容易感受到压力。不过沃尔夫坦然接受。“我没有团队里的工程师那么懂空气动力学，”他说，“但我希望了解他们每个人，而且很喜欢跟他们在一起，这样就能在面对难题时更容易找到最佳行动方案。”他努力与团队成员建立亲善关系，让各方都受益。梅赛德斯一位高管说：“这是一个由工程师主导的企业。作为工程师逐渐晋升，比如升到了技术总监的位置，突然第一次有了一个不是工程师的上司，这种事其实不太好接受。但上司是托托，这种过渡就相对顺利，因为他花了大量时间来理解我们工程团队想说什么。”
Wolff knows that “it is not necessarily the best individuals who win races but the team that works best together,” as Mercedes’s chief people officer put it. That’s why, at the start of his second season at Mercedes, Wolff organized an offsite with nearly two dozen members of his leadership team to talk about the human side of the organization. They discussed their vision for the team, identified the core values they wanted to emphasize, and outlined their ambitions.
沃尔夫深知，“赛车中获胜的未必是最优秀的车手，而是合作得最好的团队”，这是梅赛德斯的首席人事官说的。因此沃尔夫在担任车队负责人的第二个赛季伊始，与二十人左右的领导团队组织了一次场外会议，讨论组织人性化的一面。他们讨论了车队的愿景，确定了希望强调的核心价值观，勾画出团队的雄心壮志。
Lots of leaders engage in such exercises with their teams, of course, but what makes these effective is the follow-through. Wolff realizes that changing an organization’s culture is a slow process that requires a consistent, year-after-year effort. So in Mercedes’s annual employee evaluations, the leadership team asks people to self-assess their performance on the team’s core values. And the team leaders spend a day each year clarifying their intentions ahead of a new season and summarizing the team’s goals in a short write-up that serves to guide their work throughout the year.
当然，很多领导者都与团队做类似的活动，但能行之有效的是后续行动。沃尔夫意识到，改变组织文化是个缓慢的过程，需要年复一年的努力。因此在梅赛德斯的年度员工评估中，领导团队要求员工对自己在团队核心价值观方面的表现进行自我评估。领导者每年会在新赛季之前花一天时间表明自己的意图，把团队目标总结成一篇概要，指导全年的工作。
Analyze Mistakes—Even When Winning
深度复盘，无论胜负
Performing with excellence does not mean that mistakes are never made. When something fails, Wolff is all about what he calls tough love or brutal honesty. “He tells you the truth even if it might not be what you want to hear,” as one team engineer put it. “He’ll just say, ‘This is where we are, this is where we need to get to, and this is how we are going to figure this out,’ in the spirit of ‘You’re not an idiot, but this is why it was an idiotic decision.’”
表现优秀并不意味着从不犯错。如果出了问题，沃尔夫会表现出他自称的所谓“严厉的爱”或“冷酷的真诚”。“哪怕不是你想听的，他也会直说，”一位车队工程师说，“他会直截了当地说，‘我们现在的处境是这样，我们需要做到那样，我们要这样解决问题’，隐含的意思是‘你不蠢，但为什么这个决定很蠢’。”
Wolff’s directness has contributed to an organizational culture that places great value on analyzing its race-weekend performances thoroughly, regardless of the result. Win or lose, the team holds debrief meetings and always conducts them in exactly the same manner, with a focus on what can be improved the next time. “After a win,” Wolff noted, “most people go home and say, ‘That was a good weekend.’ They don’t go home and say, ‘Why did we win?’ It’s only when they lose that most people start to dig deep. But we have an ethos that we are upset about the small things we do wrong, and so we treat wins the same as losses.”
沃尔夫的直率，形成了一种极其重视对周末比赛（无论结果如何）进行深度复盘的组织文化。不管比赛结果如何，车队都会开讨论会，每次都一样，重点放在下次可以改进的地方。沃尔夫说：“获胜之后，大部分人回家会说‘这个周末真棒’，不会考虑‘我们获胜的原因是什么’。只有在输掉比赛的时候，大部分人才会深入思考。但我们的作风是，对自己犯的很小的错误都很懊恼。对待胜败，我们都是这种态度。”
He added, “I remember a weekend in which we surprised ourselves with our straight-line speed. I told the team that I wanted to know what the cause was. We hadn’t suddenly witnessed any miracles with our power unit or chassis. So what was it? If you don’t understand what is happening on a good day, you surely won’t understand what is happening on a bad day.”
他补充道：“我记得有一个周末，我们的直线速度让自己都吃惊。我告诉团队，我想弄清楚原因。我们没看到赛车的动力装置和底盘上出现什么奇迹，那么究竟是为什么呢？如果搞不明白这种格外优异的表现是怎么来的，到了表现糟糕的时候，肯定也不明白究竟为什么糟糕。”
Foster an Open, No-Blame Culture
彼此开放、不指责
In Wolff’s view, analyzing mistakes should not lead to assigning fault. In fact, Wolff advocates a no-blame culture and makes a point of—very publicly—backing individuals who make missteps. When he talks about the people on his team, he often refers to them as his “tribe” and defends them staunchly. He explains, “I’m there to protect my tribe, and I will fight back with all I have. I want my people to be able to say ‘I made a mistake’ and for us to move on from that.”
沃尔夫认为，分析错误不应导向追究责任人。沃尔夫提倡“不指责”的文化，公开对失误的人表示支持。谈到团队里的人们，他常说这是自己的“部落”，坚定地捍卫他们。他解释说：“我会保护我的部落，会用我拥有的一切去反击。我希望我的员工能坦然地说‘我犯了个错’，让我们吸取教训、继续前进。”
Wolff’s approach was on full display in the aftermath of a significant failure during a 2021 race in Monaco. During a pit stop for then-Mercedes driver Valtteri Bottas, one of the mechanics tasked with changing a tire found it to be stuck in its position. As the clock ticked, all attempts to remove the tire proved fruitless, forcing Bottas to pull out of the competition midrace. The tire was so jammed, in fact, that the team had to ship the entire car back to its factory in the UK, where the wheel was cut off with a special tool. “That had never happened in F1. The mechanic was heartbroken,” Wolff said. “I stood up then and said, ‘Yes, you are going into the history books with the longest pit stop ever for a tire change—36 hours.’ But I also made sure to show him and everyone else in the garage and at the factory that I had his back when, after the race, a journalist tried to blame the mechanic. I was sending a message that I am protecting the team.”
沃尔夫的这一点，在2021年摩纳哥一场比赛中车队出现重大失误后表现得淋漓尽致。当时梅赛德斯的车手瓦尔特里·博塔斯（Valtteri Bottas）进站，一名技工负责为他更换轮胎，却发现这个轮胎卡住了。时间渐渐过去，技工尝试用各种方法卸下轮胎却徒劳无功，博塔斯被迫中途退赛。团队不得不把整辆车运回英国的工厂，用特殊的工具切除卡住的轮胎。“F1车赛中从来没有过这种事，那位技工十分痛心疾首，”沃尔夫说，“当时我站出来说，‘没错，你会因为进站换轮胎耗费时间最长——36小时——而载入史册。’但我也明确向他和车库以及工厂里的所有人表示，如果赛后有记者想要归咎于他，我会支持他。我在传达一个信息：我会保护这支队伍。”
It is easy for leaders to declare that they want their organization to refrain from assigning blame. But living up to that promise when setbacks inevitably present themselves is incredibly hard. “When someone makes a mistake in your company,” Wolff explained, “especially when that happens in front of 100 million people watching, the natural thing—almost like a pressure-release valve—is to say, ‘It’s his fault.’ But as a leader you have to fight that instinct and ask yourself, ‘How could that happen? Have we not provided the right tools, or the right training, or put the right people in the right place?’ In the end, even though I wasn’t the one changing that tire, the mistake is my responsibility.”
领导者希望组织内不要互相指责，说起来容易。一旦不可避免遇到挫折，践行这点就很困难。“如果公司里有人犯了错，”沃尔夫说，“特别是在一亿人的注视下犯了错，领导者立即会想说‘这是他的错’，这几乎就像打开阀门释放压力一样自然。但作为领导者，你必须跟这种本能作战，反问自己，‘为什么会这样？是不是我们没有提供合适的工具，没有提供合适的培训，还是没有做到人岗匹配？’说到底，虽然换轮胎的不是我，那个错误也终究是我的责任。”
Wolff is also not afraid to be honest with himself and others about his own failures. He recalled one such incident: “There was a race where I had a board member standing beside me in the garage, and rather than being fully available for the strategists, I was chatting away with him. We missed the window to pit the car. In the debrief on Monday morning in which the 30 or so heads of different departments come together, I admitted that I’d had a massively bad moment. I should have been a sparring partner for [my motorsport strategy director], and I was not. I was distracted. That loss goes on my shoulders.”
沃尔夫也从不惧对自己和他人坦承失败。他回想起这样一件事：“有一次比赛，一位董事跟我一起在车库里。当时我没有给战略规划师足够的时间，而是跟那位董事聊得火热。结果我们错过了赛车进站的时机。周一上午的讨论会上，30多位不同部门的负责人聚到一起，我承认自己犯了严重的错误。我原本应该好好跟赛车战略总监辩论问题，却为别的事情分心了。那次失败的责任全都在我。”
Wolff’s reluctance to assign blame to others and his willingness to accept it personally combine to foster a culture that encourages openness. “When they make a mistake, I want our people to know they don’t need to lie in order to retain their jobs,” Wolff said. “I want the organization to be one in which people feel safe speaking up. We live by the mantra See it, say it, fix it.”
沃尔夫这种不归咎他人，愿意自行承担责任的态度，在团队中形成了一种鼓励公开的文化。“如果员工犯了错误，我希望他们知道，不必为了保住工作而撒谎，”沃尔夫说，“我希望组织成为一个能让人们放心说话的地方。我们的座右铭是‘看到问题、说出问题、解决问题’。”
That ethos is one that Lewis Hamilton, one of the team’s drivers and a seven-time winner of the Drivers’ Championship, fully endorses. “I’ve been in other environments where one person got the blame for something,” he said. “But we have to do things together. Even at the racetrack, when you know something has gone wrong and it is down to one person, we don’t single out that person and make them feel bad—we all bear the brunt of it.”
七次获得锦标赛车手冠军的梅赛德斯车队车手刘易斯·汉密尔顿（Lewis Hamilton）极度推崇这一理念。“我在那种会让个人承担罪责的环境里待过，”他说，“但我们必须一起行动。即使是在赛道上，你一旦发现出了问题，而且是因为某个人出了问题，我们也不会责备这一个人、让他难堪——我们会一起承担压力。”
Trust Superstars but Maintain Authority
信赖明星员工，同时保持权威
One of the most challenging aspects of a team principal’s job is managing the drivers. They are global celebrities, with all the demands on their time that fame entails. In addition, each team participating in a race has two drivers competing in separate cars, which offers strategic advantages but can also create tension. “The Constructors’ Championship is a reward for the entire team,” Hamilton explained. “As a driver, you’re somewhat conflicted, because you also want to beat the team’s other driver for the Drivers’ Championship.”
车队负责人的工作中最大的一项挑战就是管理车手。车手是国际名流，名气使得各方都在抢占他们的时间。另外，每一支车队都会有两名车手分别驾驶赛车同时参赛，提供了战略优势，但也可能造成关系紧张。“车队冠军是对整个团队的奖励，”汉密尔顿解释道，“作为车手会觉得有点矛盾，因为你也想击败自己团队的另一位车手、赢得车手冠军。”
Wolff is quite trusting of his drivers, observed Hamilton. “Some people in F1,” he said, “are of the mindset that a driver has to go to bed at 10 PM and shouldn’t do anything but race. I told Toto I am different. I have other creative outlets I’d like to tap into—fashion, for instance, and music—which allows me to do my job best. It helps me be in a happier place. Toto understands that—he has been super accommodating.” For Wolff it’s a matter of mutual respect: “We have a pact. The idea is, ‘You perform, and I create a framework for you that allows you to perform.’ He knows what is good for him—I trust him on that.”
根据汉密尔顿的观察，沃尔夫十分信任车手。他说：“F1领域的一些人觉得，车手必须晚上十点钟睡觉，除了比赛以外什么都不该做。我跟托托说，我不是这种人。我有其他用来表达创意的出口，比如时尚和音乐，这让我高效工作，也让我更加快乐。托托理解这一点——他一直非常包容。”对沃尔夫来说，这是个相互尊重的问题，“我们有约定，主旨是，‘你去好好表现，我创造一套能让你充分表现的框架’。他知道怎样对自己最好，在这方面我信任他。”
For 10 days during the 2018 season, for instance, to commemorate the launch of his own fashion collection, Hamilton walked the runway at a Tommy Hilfiger show in Shanghai, flew to New York and then to London for a friend’s wedding, and eventually joined the team in Singapore a day before the weekend’s first practice sessions. “Lots of people were in disbelief that I allowed him to do so,” Wolff recalled. “I told Lewis, ‘You know people think I’ve lost the plot here,’ but he said, ‘Trust me.’ His performance that weekend was from another world. He delivered one of the best qualifying laps we have ever seen and then drove away from the field at the start of the race. No one came even close.”
有次，在2018年赛季的10天里，汉密尔顿为了纪念自己的时尚系列发布，在上海参加了汤米·希尔费格（Tommy Hilfiger）时装秀，然后飞往纽约和伦敦参加朋友的婚礼，在周末第一场练习赛开始前一天才赶到新加坡与车队会合。“很多人都不相信我居然允许他这么做，”沃尔夫回忆道，“我告诉他，‘你知道，别人都觉得这次我太乱来了’，但他回答，‘相信我’。那个周末他的表现简直像是天外来客。他给出了我们见过的最优秀的排位赛成绩，之后正式比赛一开始就一马当先，根本没人能逼近他。”
Importantly, although Wolff gives his drivers considerable autonomy, he is not afraid to be a strong leader when the situation calls for it. He cited an incident at the Barcelona Grand Prix in 2016 between Hamilton and Nico Rosberg, who also drove for Mercedes at the time. They infamously clashed while leading the race, taking each other out on the first lap. “I felt that they were opportunistic,” Wolff recalled, “putting their own objectives before the team’s objectives. They did not respect that there were a thousand people who worked for them. I had to show the organization that I wouldn’t allow that behavior anymore. After the race, I demanded that both drivers come out to the space where all the engineers were. I told them, ‘Look at everybody here in this room, imagine everybody back at home and their families, and realize how you are making us look.’ I used some harsh words I cannot repeat here. I saw the engineers look at the floor, the drivers look at the floor….I said, ‘The next time you want to drive each other off the road, you think about all the faces here, and then you will think twice.’ And I told them that if it happened again, I would not hesitate to take them out of the car. I said, ‘Don’t challenge me on this—you don’t want to find out what I am capable of.’”
重要的是，尽管沃尔夫给了车手很大的自主权，但他并不惮于在必要时展示强硬。
他提起2016年巴塞罗那大奖赛时，汉密尔顿和当时梅赛德斯的另一位车手尼科·罗斯伯格（Nico Rosberg）之间的事件。他们在比赛中双双领先，却发生了冲突，开场第一圈就撞车一起退赛。“我觉得他俩对其他人不公平，把自己的目标置于车队目标之上。他们不尊重其他一千个为他们工作的人。我必须告诉团队，我不会允许这种行为再度出现。比赛结束后，我把他们两个叫到全体工程师都在的地方。我对他们说，‘看着这里的每一个人，想象一下他们回到家如何面对家人，想想看你们让我们看起来像什么。’我说了些非常尖刻的话，现在都说不出口了。我看到工程师们低着头，车手们也低着头。……我说，‘下次再想把对方挤出赛道的时候，你们最好想想这里所有人的面孔，多想想。’我还告诉他们，如果再发生这种状况，我会毫不犹豫地把他们从赛车里揪出来。我说，‘别在这方面挑战我——你们不会想知道我能干出什么事来。’”
Wolff readily praises his drivers (they “would not be F1 drivers if they weren’t intelligent,” he said), and he understands that anyone can make a mistake. “But they need to know,” he added, “that you have your limits, and that you have a side they won’t like and don’t want to see.”
沃尔夫很乐意赞美自己的车手（他说，他们“要是不聪明就当不了F1车手”），而且他明白，每个人都可能犯错。“但必须让他们知道，”他补充说，“你有你的底线，有他们不会喜欢、不想看到的一面。”
Relentlessly Battle Complacency
对抗自满
Wolff deeply dislikes losing. “I cannot stand the humiliation we would face,” he told me, “and I will do everything I can to avoid it. I just cannot take losing against someone. You must never, ever believe that the winning will continue. On the contrary, I always worry that it could end—that this is the cliff, and I am staring at the abyss.”
沃尔夫很不喜欢失败。“我无法忍受失败后的羞辱，”他告诉我，“我会尽一切努力避免失败。我只是不会因为失败冲别人撒气。但你绝对不要相信胜利一定会持续。相反，我总是担心胜利会终结——峭壁就在眼前，我凝望着深渊。”
Wolff showed his competitiveness in 2018 after Sebastian Vettel, Ferrari’s driver, won a race in the UK in front of a huge crowd of mostly British fans who were supporting their fellow countryman Hamilton. “In the final lap,” Wolff recalled, “when Vettel is celebrating, he tells his team on the radio something in Italian like ‘We won in their home!’ That’s such an insult. It was also the best thing that could have happened to us. We played that segment over and over again in our factory. And by the end of the season, we were champions again.” He added, “For me, the joy of winning is normally much less intense than the pain of losing. The fear of losing stays with me. And that’s helpful—I wouldn’t ever want to get used to it. Getting used to losing is the biggest reason for losing.”
沃尔夫在2018年展示了他的好胜心。当时法拉利车手塞巴斯蒂安·维特尔（Sebastian Vettel）在一大批支持本国车手汉密尔顿的英国车迷面前赢下了一场在英国举办的车赛。沃尔夫回忆道：“最后一圈的时候，维特尔庆祝自己的胜利，在广播里用意大利语跟自己的车队说些‘我们在他们家里赢了！’之类的话。那真是莫大的羞辱。但那也是我们能遇到的最好的事。我们在工厂里反复播放这段话。那个赛季结束时，我们又获得了冠军。”他继续说：“对我来说，胜利的喜悦远不及失败的痛苦。对失败的恐惧始终伴随着我，这很有用——我从来不会想要习惯这种感受。习惯于失败，就是失败的最大原因。”
Several executives I interviewed made it clear that this mindset has permeated the culture at Mercedes and in fact may be the key to the team’s winning streak. “We try very, very hard to keep reminding ourselves that our competitors are very good, that they will be hurting when we win, and that hurting generally leads to trying desperately hard,” one executive said. “We work more hours today than we did in 2014, the drivers spend more time in the simulator than they did in 2014, we spend more time going through data analyzing what went right and wrong—everything is levels deeper than what we did back then….It is the opposite of complacency.”
我采访过的几位梅赛德斯车队高管都明确表示，这种思维方式已经渗透进车队的文化，或许这正是他们能够连续获胜的关键所在。“我们非常、非常努力地不断提醒自己，竞争对手非常优秀，他们会因为我们的胜利而受伤，并且会因为受伤而更加努力要打败我们，”一位高管说，“我们现在工作的时间比2014年更长，车手在模拟器上花的时间更多，我们花更多时间进行数据分析，分析哪些地方做得对、哪些地方不对——在各个维度都比从前更加深入。……这是自满的反面。”
One way in which Wolff fosters ongoing competitiveness is by encouraging his team members—from the engineers to the marketing people—to find out who their counterparts are on rival teams and commit to surpassing them. This motivational strategy is evident from an email he sent to the entire organization ahead of the 2021 season. In that email, after pointing out that Mercedes was significantly underperforming in preseason testing, he added:
沃尔夫激发好胜心的另一种方式是鼓励团队成员——从工程师到营销人员——关注对手团队中同样职位的人，并且立志超越他们。这种激励策略，在他2021年赛季前发送给所有人的邮件中可见一斑。他在那封邮件里指出，梅赛德斯赛前测试的发挥欠佳，然后又说：
It’s all there; we need to channel the force into the right direction. And this direction points to Milton Keynes [the home base of rival team Red Bull]. We have spoken about this in the past: Take the time to find out who your opposite person is there and look at him or her every day. Put the picture right in front of you so you know whom to beat. Each of you in whatever department and role will make a difference for our performance for this season and the seasons to come if you do a better job than this opposite person. Never underestimate the power of our collective group that focuses on our joint mission and target.
都在那里了，我们需要将力量对准正确的方向，这次是指向米尔顿·凯恩斯（Milton Keynes，对手红牛车队的大本营）。以前我们就说过：花些时间找到对手车队里与你位置相当的人，每天盯着他或她。让这个人每天都在你眼前，你就知道该击败谁。不管在哪个部门，不管承担怎样的职责，每一个人都可以为本赛季和下一赛季的成绩做出贡献，只要你比对方做得好就可以了。绝不要低估我们的力量，当我们整个团队齐心协力专注于共同使命和目标的时候。
Such a focus is vital, Wolff understands, because F1 is a sport of margins like no other. As Ola Källenius, the chairman of Mercedes-Benz, put it, “A lap difference of a tenth of a second on average over the course of a season decides who is going to be champion—that’s a few meters on a five-kilometer track. So it is incredibly difficult to win an F1 championship, let alone eight in a row. Everyone needs to have the mindset to want to chase every thousandth of a second all these years.” He continued, “If you have won several times, like Mercedes has, you become the one being chased. You are no longer the hunter—you are the prey—but you want to keep the hunter mentality alive. Toto has been masterful at not getting complacent himself, and not letting anyone around him get complacent either.”
沃尔夫明白，这种专注至关重要，因为F1是一项独一无二的以微弱优势取胜的运动。梅赛德斯奔驰董事长康林松（Ola Källenius）说：“一个赛季里决定冠军的是平均十分之一秒的圈差，在五公里的赛道上只不过几米而已。因此要赢得F1冠军的难度非常高，更别说连续八次夺冠了。这需要所有人都在这几年里保持着追逐每一毫秒的心态。”他继续说：“像梅赛德斯车队这样赢过几次之后，就会成为被追逐的目标。不再是猎手，而是猎物，但我们还需要保持活跃的猎人状态。托托已经是这方面的大师，他不让自己洋洋自得，也不让身边任何人自满。”
Although most Formula One fans may pay keenest attention to the performances of individual drivers during race weekends, the real battle in the sport is about much more than that. For a team to win even a single Formula One championship, not to mention eight in a row, every part of the organization has to do superb work all season long and come together with an extraordinary sense of focus and purpose. Such a feat is likely possible only with the guidance of a highly effective leader—someone like Toto Wolff, who has an unwavering desire to compete and understands that establishing a winning culture is an all-encompassing, never-ending process.
在那些有赛事的周末，大多数F1车迷会热切关注车手个人的表现，但这项运动中真正的竞争远不止于此。对于一支车队而言，要在一场F1锦标赛中夺冠，就需要组织的每个部分都在整个赛季保持优异表现，并怀着超乎寻常的专注和目标感齐心协力，更何况连续八次夺冠。实现这样的杰出成就，必须有高效领导者的引领——比如托托·沃尔夫，他雷打不动地渴望胜利，而且明白，建立胜利文化是一场全方位的、永无止境的旅程。
Anita Elberse is the Lincoln Filene Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.
阿妮塔·埃尔伯斯是哈佛商学院工商管理学林肯·菲林教席教授。
蒋荟蓉 | 译 时青靖 | 校 程明霞 | 编辑
