当前最不会招人嫉妒的或许就是摩根大通CEO（J.P. Morgan）杰米•戴蒙了。

    近期，戴蒙除了被招至美国国会作证，还获知自己的公司正面临多家联邦机构的调查，从美国商品期货交易委员会（CFTC）到美国联邦调查局（FBI），再到美国证券交易委员会（SEC），都赫然在列。此外，在媒体的狂轰滥炸中，他还必须花很多的时间来认错道歉，痛骂自己及手下团队“愚蠢”、“疏忽”、“错误至极”。

    简单说，杰米•戴蒙已被拉下了大白马，那匹他曾骑着安然走过金融危机的大白马。

    但如今，正如普遍看法，摩根大通交易巨亏20多亿美元的过程中看来并无不法之处。这些交易丝毫不牵涉到纳税人的钱，相关调查似乎主要是为了顺应加强监管的政治表演，不过其中还夹杂着哗众取宠和幸灾乐祸的意味。至少迄今为止，没有发生什么会真正严重损害摩根大通长期股东价值的事情。只是——哦，摩根大通犯了个错误。仅此而已。

    从华尔街到工厂车间，犯错是再平常不过了。工作有难度，节奏快，又复杂。人非圣贤，孰能无过。如果你已工作过几年，肯定也犯过错。

    由此引出我们的主要观点，事实上它不是摩根大通的问题，或者至少不光是摩根大通的问题。它是管理上非常关键的时刻之一：严重失误后怎么办。幸好，很少有什么失误会像摩根大通这次的交易巨亏那样获得这么高的关注。但我们要谈到的原则是一样的。职业生涯中，衡量人的不光是犯了多少错（因为人都必须为自己的失误付出代价），还包括我们如何走出失败，这一点同样重要。

    如果你是一位管理者，无论级别高低，一次失误可以对你产生两种作用：它既可以界定你，也可以激发你。

    正确的选择显而易见，但不幸的是，太多时候发生的都是前面这种情况。一次犯错可能就为一位管理者贴上了标签。陷于自责内疚、自我怀疑或者两者兼而有之的情绪之中，他卷入了类似于漩涡的恶性循环，对这次重大失误耿耿于怀，无休止地寻找所有造成失误的原因，文山会海地梳理预防性流程和举措，与每个感觉可能受到冲击的人交谈，反反复复地捶胸顿足。

    当然，上述做法也不是全然不对——确实，有些绝对是有必要的，特别是“解剖”错误。肯定没人希望同样的错误犯两次！但这样怎么也走不出这个漩涡——而且，它只有一个方向，那就是向下。

    If there's one person you probably don't envy right now, it's Jamie Dimon.

    In the past week, the J.P. Morgan (JPM) CEO has been summoned to testify before Congress and learned that his company is facing investigations by an alphabet soup of federal agencies, from the CFTC to the FBI to the SEC. He's also had to spend a lot of time in the middle of a media feeding frenzy, offering mea culpas and referring to himself and members of his team as "stupid," "sloppy," and "dead wrong."

    In short, Jamie Dimon has been knocked off the large, white horse he rode through the financial crisis.

    Now, echoing the general consensus, nothing illegal appears to have occurred in the course ofJ.P. Morgan's $2 billion-plus trading loss. No taxpayer money was involved, and the investigations, it seems, are largely pro-regulation political grandstanding with a dose of schadenfreude thrown in. At least so far, nothing has happened that's actually going to seriously damage the bank's long-term value to shareholders. It's just that -- well, it's just that J.P. Morgan made a mistake.

    Guess what? It happens all the time, from Wall Street to the factory floor. Work is hard, fast, and complicated. People make mistakes. God knows we've both made them, and if you've got a few years of work under your belt, so have you.

    Which leads us to our main point, which is really not about J.P. Morgan at all, or at least not about it alone. Rather, it's about one of the most common crucible moments in leadership -- a big messy failure. Thankfully, very few screwups will garner the same level of public attention as J.P. Morgan's trading loss. But the principle we're getting at is the same. Over the course of your career, you won't be measured just by how many mistakes you make, because you'll make your fair share, but you'll be measured, as importantly, by how well you recover from them.

    Look, a mistake can do two things to you when you're a leader, no matter your level in an organization. It can define you, or it can galvanize you.

    The right choice is obvious, but unfortunately, far too often, the defining thing happens anyway. The mistake becomes a leader's identity. Stricken by guilt or self-doubt or both, he enters something of a vortex, obsessing over the blunder, searching incessantly for all the reasons it could have happened, conducting endless meetings to go over processes and procedures to prevent it from ever happening again, talking to everyone who feels affected in any possible way, and letting the breast-beating go on and on and on.

    Some of that is fine, of course -- indeed, some of it is absolutely necessary, especially the "autopsy." You definitely don't want the same mistake to happen twice! But that darn vortex of self-defeat is always around -- and it only goes in one direction, down.

    因此，犯错后如何能从自省自责中迅速走出来，让整个团队重新集中精力、充满干劲，这一点非常重要。“过去的已经过去。”你需要不厌其烦地反复告诉团队。“现在重要的是未来。未来的图景是这样的，我们要这样才能把它变成现实，而实现这个目标对你们的意义则是这样的。”描绘的画面必须精彩宽宏，同时又细致入微。必须感觉真实——甚至要有质感。没有陈词滥调，没有泛泛而谈。如果有假，人们老远就能嗅出来了。

    当然，这个过程中人性的复杂在于犯错后，你或许情感上还没有准备好、如何让你的团队振奋起来。你可能会感到上级在后头盯着你的那种灼热感，更别提脖子上的缰绳已经收紧。你可能会怀疑自己是否真的有领导能力。同样的，你的下属可能也会感到这种责怪，越来越怀疑自己。

    于是，那个漩涡开始向你招手。

    千万别走这条路。承认这是你的错，分析原因，汲取教训，当然，要收拾干净。但接下来，你得卸下包袱，着眼未来。如果你是一位管理者，这就是你和你的团队应该全身心投入的地方。

    至于杰米•戴蒙？鉴于他有多年的成功经验，我们相信他会很快飞身上马。多年后，很少还会有人记得摩根大通的这次重大交易失误。但全球为他工作的超过25万多人中每一个人都会知道，他将掸掉身上的灰尘，重新上马，继续前行——只是变得更强大，也更睿智。

    译者：老榆木

    That's why it's critical for you in the post-mistake period to move swiftly from self-examination and self-flagellation to renewal, to getting your people refocused and re-energized. "The past is over," you need to say to your troops as many times as it takes. "What matters now is the future. Here's what it looks like, here's how we're getting there and what's in it for you." The picture painted has to be exciting in its reach and vivid in its detail. And it's got to feel real -- even gritty. No platitudes or generics. People can smell, well, let's just call it "baloney," from a mile away.

    The all-too-human complication in this, of course, is that after a mistake happens, you might not be emotionally prepared to get your team all psyched up again. You may be feeling the searing discomfort of upper management's skeptical gaze on your back, not to mention a tighter leash around your neck. You may be wondering if you really have what it takes to lead your people. Your people, in turn, may be feeling beleaguered and increasingly doubtful themselves.

    And so, the vortex beckons.

    Just don't go there. Own your mistakes, analyze their causes, learn from them and clean them up -- of course. But then, let them go and get back to the future. If you're a leader, that's where your head and your heart -- and your people -- belong.

    And as for Jamie Dimon? Given his long record of success, we're confident he'll soon be back in the saddle. And years from now, we assure you, relatively few people will remember JPMorgan's trading blunder. But everyone who works for him around the globe, a quarter-million strong, will know that he dusted himself off, got back on his horse and rode on -- stronger and a whole lot wiser.