CEO的首要工作就是决定公司应该经营哪种生意，而艾默生电气公司（Emerson Electric）的大卫•法尔正在改弦更张。根据对全球趋势的看法，他决定加倍押注这样一种生意，即能够帮助全球制造商更高效、更精准生产产品的生意，同时把重点放在冷却技术之上——尤其是面向增长迅速的数据中心。法尔抛弃了前景较差的生意，甚至包括艾默生电气最初的电动机业务。

    过去59年中，今年58岁的大卫•法尔仅是艾默生电气公司（财富500强）聘请的第三位CEO，他在2000年接替了传奇的查克•奈特。法尔为人热情而健谈，最近对华尔街分析师有些出言不逊，不过在接受《财富》记者杰夫•科尔文采访时倒没有逾矩之举。他畅谈了一系列话题，包括：为什么不是每个人都应该上大学，重新调整公司方向的困难，中国碎污机等。以下是访谈摘要：

    问：美国制造业是一个热门话题，它的前景如何？

    答：美国正面临一次迎来制造业复兴的独特机遇。它并不意味着很多工作岗位会回归国内，但我们正看到大量的创新和技术，它们将重建我们的制造业基地，而这些基地此前一度已经迁往别的国家。

    这种复兴的基础是什么？

    石油和天然气的大量涌入是其中一个基础。大多数人都没有意识到，在制造业领域，能源是我们最高的成本之一。如果考察一下艾默生电气公司位于全球各地的制造工厂，我们就会发现，能源目前是最大的成本。因此，我们将从石油和天然气的复兴中看到大量投资的进场。一般来说，都是非常倚重技术的投资。

    例如，南非石油公司萨索尔（Sasol）正计划在美国投资200亿美元，原因就在于天然气。这家公司拥有独特的石油以及天然气转液体技术。所以，萨索尔公司正在路易斯安那州投入巨资兴建两处工厂设施。这就是当前可能发生在这个国家的那种可以创造许多独特价值的投资，萨索尔公司就是我所介入的客户群中的一个代表。这些投资将推动出口，提升更高水平的教育，增加就业机会。制造行业的大部分厂商已经对业务进行了全球化改造，现在留在（美国的）都是高端的技术性工作岗位。

    对于制造业岗位或工厂，如今很多人的观点似乎都过时了。

    没错，我就是在制造业工厂里长大的，我的父亲曾长期担任康宁公司（Corning，财富500强）的工厂负责人，那时候工厂会雇佣很多工人。如今我们看到的则是工程技术，工厂更加以技术为导向，自动化程度更高。从上世纪80年代中期开始，也就是日本人追上我们的时候，美国就一直在经历这场革命。作为制造厂商，我们已经学会如何在全球范围内保持竞争力。如今我们处于最佳的位置，一个由我们长久把持的位置。

    你能招到适应你们需求、而又技艺精湛的熟练工人吗？

    这是我们目前面临的头号挑战，我们已经因为这个国家“每个人都上大学”的现状而受到巨大冲击。错，并不是所有人都应该去上大学。我们的工厂需要懂得焊接和修理东西的人。技工学校江河日下，我们一直向很多技校提供资金支持，因为我们需要那样的技能组合。美国经济发展和制造业面临的头号挑战不仅在于工程技术，也在于支撑工厂运转的技术工人群体。你和我都无法让工厂运转，我们需要技术工人。

    A CEO's No. 1 job is deciding which businesses to be in, and Emerson Electric's David Farr is making changes. His view of global trends tells him to double down in businesses that help manufacturers worldwide produce their wares more efficiently and precisely, and to focus on cooling -- especially for data centers, which are multiplying fast. He has ditched less promising businesses, even the company's original one, electric motors.

    Farr, 58, is only the third CEO Emerson (EMR, Fortune 500) has had in the past 59 years, having succeeded the legendary Chuck Knight in 2000. Intense and voluble, Farr recently unloaded some adult language on a room of Wall Street analysts but behaved himself when he talked recently with Fortune's Geoff Colvin about why not everyone should go to college, the difficulty of redirecting a company, Chinese garbage disposers, and much else. Edited excerpts:

    Q: U.S. manufacturing is a hot topic. What are the prospects?

    A: The U.S. is facing a unique opportunity to have a renaissance of manufacturing. It doesn't mean you're going to see a lot of jobs flying back here, but what you're seeing is a huge level of innovation and technology that will rebuild some of the manufacturing base that has left the country.

    What's the basis of the renaissance?

    One will be the influx of oil and gas. Most people don't realize that in the manufacturing world, energy is one of our highest costs. If I look at our manufacturing facilities around the world, typically energy is the No. 1 cost by far. So from the oil and gas renaissance you're going to see a lot of investments going in -- very technology- based investments, typically.

    For example, Sasol (SSL), a South African oil company, is looking to invest $20 billion in the U.S. because of the gas -- it has unique technologies in oil and converting gas to liquids. So it's working in Louisiana to make two huge facility investments. That is the type of investment that can happen in this country right now that would create a lot of unique value, and that's the type of customer base that I'm involved in. These investments will drive exports, and they will drive higher education and jobs. Most of us in manufacturing have globalized the business, and now what we have left [in the U.S.] are the very high-end technology-based jobs.

    Many people seem to have an outmoded view of what a manufacturing job or plant is today.

    Yes. I grew up inside manufacturing facilities -- my dad was a plant manager for Corning(GLW, Fortune 500) for many years, and back then you'd see a lot more labor. What you see today is engineering. Facilities are more technically oriented; there's more automation. This country has been going through this revolution since the mid-1980s, since the Japanese came after us. We as manufacturers have learned how to be globally competitive. And we're sitting today the best we've sat in a long, long time.

    Can you find those highly skilled technology-apt workers you need?

    That is the No. 1 challenge for us right now. We've got a whole thrust in this country of "Everyone goes to college." Wrong -- not everyone should go to college. We need people in a facility who can weld, who can repair things. Technical schools have really dropped off, and we've been funding a lot of technical schools because that is a skill set we need. The No. 1 threat to growth and manufacturing in the U.S. is not only engineering but the technical base to run factories. You and I can't run a factory. You need the technical skills.

    你已经在运营艾默生电气公司的过程中采取了一些重大的战略举措，如今还在引入更多，这些变化背后的大局思维是什么？

    要想让一家企业保持活力和竞争力，就必须不断进行改造。我的前任运营这家公司长达26年时间，他进行了三轮改造，而我正处于自己的第二轮。我们现在做的生意值得继续投资，并能够推动公司向前发展。但你必须不断地考察手上拥有的东西，经常自省，“这辆车跑不动了，我们需要继续前进。”

    这不是件容易的事。上任第二年，我跑到董事会表态，说我希望卖掉艾默生电气的创始业务（电机）。董事们看着我，仿佛我长着三个脑袋似的。但我说，这项业务已经无法再带来能够确保公司保持竞争力及活力的增长、收益和现金了。因此，我们找到了合适的买家，一家日本公司，然后继续前进。

    一个对你来说很重要的大趋势涉及到巨大、安静、没有活物的房间，也就是数据中心。艾默生电气的机会在哪里？

    运营数据中心就必须对电源、冷却以及系统可靠性进行管理，而我们花了25年打造了一项业务来为这个行业提供服务。现在的趋势是建设谷歌（Google，财富500强）和Facebook那种超大规模的数据中心，而所采用的技术则讲求让数据中心变得更加节能和可靠，同时尝试在不消耗大量电力和能量的情况下，尽可能多地对数字足迹进行分析。这就是我们的工作，简单地说，我希望看到电力消耗，热量产生，因为我们将生产电力，然后对发热的系统进行冷却。

    全球冷却和制冷行业的前景一定非常好，我这样想对吗？

    的确很好，尤其是在新兴市场。在中国和印度这些地方，超过35%的食物都被浪费掉了，因为它们没有得到妥善的贮存或冷却。因此，我们开发了冷却和制冷技术来帮助那些国家。这些地方对我们来说一直是个巨大的市场。

    艾默生电气的另一项业务是生产家居用品，这让你们在美国家居市场也有一席之地。这项业务的未来方向在哪里？

    我们正在从很小的基数上恢复。我们做家居生意已经有很长时间，我们的产品是碎污机。我们位于威斯康星州拉辛市的工厂一年能够生产600万台碎污机。目前，我们正在跟各大城市进行合作，搞清如何减少食物浪费。我们的方案是对食物残渣进行研磨，处理后用于发电或生产肥料。不是把垃圾送去填埋，而是改变研磨工艺，然后再把它们送去加工厂进行处理。

    我们刚刚在中国投资建厂来做这件事，因为食物浪费是这个国家面临的五大问题之一。顺便提一句，为中国生产的碎污机跟我们使用的并不一样。

    为什么呢？

    中国的食物与众不同。中国人食用大米，富含纤维的蔬菜也更多。因此，碎污机的研磨工艺并不一样。那是一种独一无二的技术，一般人永远也想不到。

    You've made some major strategic moves in running Emerson, and you're making more. What's the big-picture thinking behind those changes?

    For a company to stay viable and relevant, you have to continuously rebuild. My predecessor ran the company for 26 years. He did it three times. I'm on my second go-round. We're going through businesses that we can continue to invest in and move the company forward, but you have to constantly look at what you have and say, "This car doesn't work anymore. We need to move on."

    It is not easy. I went to the board my second year on the job and said I wanted to sell the founding business of Emerson [electric motors]. The board looked at me like I had three heads. But I said the business no longer can generate the growth or returns or cash that we need to make sure we stay competitive and viable. So we found the right buyer, a Japanese company, and moved on.

    A large trend that's important to you involves data centers, these vast quiet rooms with no moving parts. Where's the opportunity for Emerson?

    You have to manage the power, cooling, and reliability of the data center. And we've built a business over the past 25 years to serve this industry. The trend now is hyperscale-size data centers based on the Googles (GOOG, Fortune 500) and the Facebooks (FB), and the technology there is how to make them more energy efficient and more reliable and try to get as much inside a footprint as possible without using a lot of power and heat. And that's what we do. Simplistically, I want to see energy used, and I want heat generated, because we're going to generate that electricity, and then we're going to cool it.

    I would think the outlook for cooling and refrigeration globally must be strong.

    It's very strong, especially in emerging markets. In places like China and India over 35% of the food is wasted because it's not properly stored or cooled. So we've developed cooling and refrigeration technologies to help those countries. It's been a huge marketplace for us.

    Another Emerson business is making products for homes, which gives you a great interest in the U.S. housing market. Where is it headed?

    We're recovering off a very low base. We've been in housing for a long time, making things called garbage disposers. We make 6 million a year in Racine, Wis. We're now working with cities to figure out how to reduce food waste by grinding it and then processing it for energy and fertilizer. Rather than garbage going out into landfills, we're changing the grind, and we're going to send it through a processing plant.

    We just made our first investment in China doing the same thing because one of their top five issues is food waste. And by the way, the grinder for China is different from the grinder you have in your house.

    Because?

    The food's different in China. You have rice, and you have more stringy vegetables. So the grinding mechanism is different. It's a unique technology that the average person would never think about.

   你一直对美国的商业环境颇有微词，现在你的评价如何？ 

    我最大的批评一直在于立法的角度以及牵涉投资时给我们制造麻烦的官僚体制。从商业角度来看，如果政府每个月都有新花样，我们就没办法做生意。如果政府的政策30天一变，我们就会无所适从。因此，我们正在寻找其他地方进行投资。

    我们必须搞清楚如何减少监管，让它不要变成我们的绊脚石，同时还要在税收及政府结构问题上制定出一份路线图。什么是规则？我希望规则能够保持5年、10年、15年或20年不变。我知道规则必须要进行细微调整，但我们得拥有一份路线图。

    我之所以一直持批评态度，那是因为我觉得政府并不明白成功投资的必要条件。另外，我认为，作为一个国家，我们再一次因为实力雄厚，站到了全球舞台的风口浪尖。我们可以在全球范围内打败中国。

    怎么做？

    发挥自己的优势——创业精神、教育以及我们拥有的自然资源。美国人民历来工作勤奋，我们很聪明，我们希望接受教育，我们富有创新精神，我们可以重建创业精神，继续成为全球经济的参与者之一。

    你是从查克•奈特手上接管艾默生电气的。他是美国商业领域最伟大的CEO之一，你从他身上学到的最重要的事情是什么？

    有两件事：第一，发掘身边最优秀的人才，永远不要在人才问题上妥协；第二，不要害怕接受那些自认为力不能及的挑战，勇敢承担风险，付诸实践。查克把我提拔到了很多岗位，人们觉得我没有机会，但我成功了。他推动我们完成了我们自认为永远做不到的事情，这就是为什么如今在我内心深处，我觉得自己可以做成任何事。（财富中文网）

    译者：王灿均

     You've been very critical of the U.S. business environment. How do you rate it now?

    My biggest criticism has been from the standpoint of legislation and bureaucracy that create trouble for us when it comes to investing. From a business perspective, we do not work on month-to-month changes in government. If the government does a deal for 30 days, all that does is cause problems for us in deciding what we're going to do. So we're looking for other places to invest.

    We've got to figure out how to cut back regulation so it's not in our way all the time, and also how to have a road map on taxation or any type of structure you want from a government. What are the rules? I want the rules laid out for five, 10, 15, 20 years. I know they have to be altered a little bit, but you've got to have a road map.

    I've been very critical because I think government doesn't understand what it takes to invest, and I think we as a nation are sitting at a cusp of once again being a very strong global player. We can beat China on a global basis.

    How?

    You play to your strengths -- entrepreneurship, education, the natural resources we have. Our people have historically been hard working. We're smart. We want to get an education, and we're very innovative. We can rebuild that entrepreneurship spirit and continue to be one of the global economic players.

    At Emerson you succeeded one of the great CEOs of American business, Chuck Knight. What's the most important thing you learned from him?

    Two things. One, develop the best people around you. Never compromise with people. Two, do not be afraid of taking on challenges that you would think are far beyond what you could do. Take on that risk. Do it. Chuck threw me into a lot of positions that people would have thought I should have never been in, but I succeeded. He drove us to do things that we never thought we could do, and that's why inside me today, I think I can do anything.