在中国读EMBA的外国高管

David Sancho’s office at Mango sits in the sprawling Chinese headquarters building in the bustling Jing’an district of Shanghai. From here he oversees 200-plus stores that make up the Spanish clothing retailer’s East Asian and Indian operations.

戴维•桑乔(David Sancho)在芒果公司(Mango)的办公室位于上海繁华的静安区，一栋外形庞大、入驻有多家中国公司总部的写字楼里。他坐镇上海，掌管这家西班牙服装零售商分布在东亚和印度地区的200多家门店。

But our interview is conducted in Hong Kong, as he walks the aisles of Mango’s flagship outlet in the city’s lively southern Kowloon neighbourhood of Tsim Sha Tsui. He walks the shop floor, observing the behaviour of those browsing the merchandise, watching what items attract the most attention and pausing to meet sales staff and check the displays.

但我们的采访是在香港进行的，在尖沙咀热闹的南九龙地区有一家芒果旗舰店，当时桑乔正在这家店的货架间走来走去。他在店里四处走动，观察顾客的行为，看哪些东西最吸引他们，然后停下来见见销售员，并检查商品的陈列。

This is the first leg of a month-long trip covering most of Mango’s outlets across mainland China. “My top priority is to make sure that the customer is happy,” he says.

桑乔这次出差为期一个月，行程覆盖芒果在中国的大部分门店，香港是第一站。“我的首要任务是确保顾客满意，”他说。

It is a long way from Barcelona, where Mango is based and where Sancho was born into a family of lawyers. His parents co-founded a firm of solicitors specialising in property, which is now run by his two sisters. He started down the same route, taking a degree in law at Barcelona-based Esade Business and Law School. After a stint of pro bono work on criminal cases with one of his law professors, he got a job in a multinational law firm in Barcelona, practising property law, but quickly realised that this was not right for him.

桑乔来自遥远的巴塞罗那，芒果的总部就在那里。桑乔出生于一个律师家庭，他的父母共同创办了一家专注房地产领域的律师事务所，现在这家事务所由他的两个姐妹经营。起初，他也子从父业，从位于巴塞罗那的艾赛德商法学院(Esade Business and Law School)获得了法学学位。桑乔曾与教过他的一位法学教授合作接手公益性的刑事案件，之后进入巴塞罗那一家跨国律所，代理物权法案件，但他很快就发现这行不适合自己。

Then Sancho broke up with his long-term girlfriend and decided that he should also no longer stay in a role where his heart was not in the work. “I decided to turn it into an opportunity,” he says. “I made a decision to push forward with my life to a job that I loved and being in a law firm was not that dream job.”

接着桑乔与交往多年的女友分了手，他也从此决定不再继续从事这份自己不上心的工作。“我决定把这当成一次机会，”他说，“我决定全心投入到一份自己喜欢的工作中去，而在一家律所找不到我认为理想的工作。”

Sancho joined the legal department at Mango, primarily as a way of getting into the corporate world and retail, which he saw at the time as changing from a traditional industry to a more exciting disruptive one, and after six months switched to a role in the business development team. “At that time Mango made me an offer. I didn’t know anything about fashion and I didn’t even know that it was so related to real estate.”

桑乔加入了芒果公司的法务部，他主要将此当作进入企业界和零售业的一个途径，当时他看到这个传统行业正在经历一种激动人心的颠覆性转变。6个月后，桑乔跳到了业务开发团队。“芒果那时给我提供了一个工作机会。我当时对时尚可是一窍不通，我甚至不知道时尚跟房地产还密切相关。”

It was here that he got his first taste of China, when he volunteered for a month-long trip to travel between Hong Kong and Beijing in 2006 to assess the market opportunity for Mango, which only had a small presence there at the time.

正是在这里，他第一次接触到中国。2006年他自告奋勇地到香港和北京出差一个月，评估芒果在当地的市场机遇，当时芒果在中国的业务规模还很小。

“Everyone was talking about China but it was amazing the difference between being in my office in Barcelona and seeing it with my own eyes,” he says. “At that moment, when I arrived in Hong Kong, I knew I would end up in China. I just fell in love with the place. It was the vibe of the people. I just didn’t know how I would do it.”

“人人都在谈论中国，但在巴塞罗那的办公室里谈论中国与亲眼目睹中国有着惊人的不同，”他说，“刚到香港，我就知道自己以后得来中国。我就是爱上了这里，这是个有人情味的地方，我只是不知道怎么才能留下。”

His abiding memory of the time was how positive people were, from the person holding the door open for him at his hotel to people he met through business. “Everyone was looking to the future in a very positive way,” he recalls.

让桑乔难以忘怀的是人们是那么积极，从酒店里为他开门的人，到遇见的生意伙伴。“每个人都对未来抱着非常积极的态度，”他回忆道。

Five years later, the opportunity arose to move permanently to China. Mango wanted someone from head office to relocate to run the Asian operations locally. Sancho, who was head of property at the time, took the role of vice-president for international expansion. A few months later he was offered the job of chief executive for Mango China, leading a small team with just 10 managers. “It was like a start-up,” Sancho recalls. He enjoyed building something from scratch. “It just felt like the right timing.”

5年后，长久移居中国的机会出现了。芒果希望从总部派人去亚洲管理当地业务。时任地产部负责人的桑乔，接任了海外扩张业务副总裁一职。几个月后，他出任芒果中国区首席执行官，领导着一支仅有10位经理的小团队。“那就像一家初创企业，”桑乔回忆道。他很享受从零开始干的感觉。“感觉时机正好。”

Mango’s East Asia and India operations now account for about 5 per cent of Mango’s global sales, which were €2.26bn in 2016. It employs more than 1,000 people in 200 stores and an online business, with 100 people administering the division from its Shanghai base. Most of Mango’s outlets in China and Asia were in department stores when he started in the region; now the majority are in shopping malls.

如今东亚和印度区的业务已占到芒果全球销售额的5%左右，2016年该公司的销售额达到22.6亿欧元。芒果东亚和印度区的200家门店拥有1000多名雇员，还有一家网店，由100名员工在上海的分公司里运营。他刚上任时，芒果在中国和亚洲的大部分门店都设在百货公司里;现在大多数芒果门店都开在大型购物中心。

He started the EMBA a year later at the China Europe International Business School (Ceibs) in Shanghai after reading articles about the school by Pedro Nueno, a professor at Iese business school in Barcelona who is also president of Ceibs. The plan was to use the course to immerse himself in Chinese culture while increasing his hard skills in areas such as finance and marketing.

后来，桑乔读了佩德罗•努埃诺(Pedro Nueno)写的关于中欧国际工商学院(Ceibs)的文章。出任中国区CEO一年以后，他开始在这所位于上海的商学院攻读EMBA。努埃诺是巴塞罗那IESE商学院(Iese Business School)的一位教授，同时也是中欧国际工商学院欧方院长。桑乔当时的计划是通过这个课程深入了解中国文化，同时提升自己在金融和营销等领域的“硬技能”。

“It helped to open my eyes,” he says of the diverse course, where half of the 56 students were Chinese nationals, 15 per cent were from outside Asia, and his fellow students were aged from 29 to over 60. “It helped me to be surrounded by so many people with so many viewpoints.”

“这让我眼界大开，”提起这个有着多元化特征的课程，桑乔这样说道。56名学员中有一半是中国人，15%来自亚洲以外的国家，桑乔同学的年龄从29岁到60多岁都有。“这让我处于那么多人中间，他们有那么多种观点。”

Sancho says he liked the flexibility of the course, studied part-time over 22 months, which he was able to complete by taking long weekends, using his holiday allowance. “I like to learn about business and there were a lot of very nice people on the course, so for me it was like going on holiday,” he says.

桑乔说他喜欢这个课程的灵活性，他在22个月的时间里，利用长周末及带薪假期在职完成了学业。“我喜欢学习商业知识，在课上能见到很多非常棒的人，所以对我来说这就像度假一样，”他说。

The programme taught him vital soft skills, such as working in teams and dealing with complex challenges, that Sancho was able to put into use immediately. It also introduced him to a network of people from different backgrounds and at different stages in their careers who have become close friends, something he particularly valued at the time as a new arrival in China.

EMBA教会桑乔很多重要的软技能，如在团队中工作，以及处理复杂的问题，这些技能桑乔能够立即派上用场。这个课程也使他融入到一个由不同背景和处于不同职业发展阶段的人组成的关系网，并和这些人成了亲密的朋友，这是他刚来中国时尤为看重的东西。

“It is not easy for someone coming from so far away, from a completely different culture, to make friends with people from China, so I have to say that this changed my life,” he says.

“对一个出身于完全不同的文化、远道而来的人来说，与中国人民成为朋友很不容易，所以我不得不说这改变了我的生活，”他说。

This was important to Sancho, who admits that the hardest thing about being based in China is being far away from his family. It was possible because the EMBA course was relatively small, with 56 students on his cohort, and he made good friends. “I stay in China because of those personal ties,” he says.

这对桑乔来说很重要——他承认，对自己而言，来中国工作最难的就是远离家人。和中国人做朋友是可能的，因为EMBA课程的规模相对较小，一个班有56名学员，桑乔交到了好朋友。“我留在中国的原因就是这些人际关系，”桑乔说。

One the most important lessons from the EMBA at Ceibs was discovering the Chinese approach to learning, which, he says, benefits from being more “humble” than in Europe and not so willing to accept the received wisdom on business problems.

从中欧国际工商学院的EMBA中，他学到的最重要一课就是认识了中国人的学习方法，他说，这种学习方法得益于比欧洲人更“谦逊”、也不轻易接受那些有关商业问题的常识的态度。

Yet putting other people first is one of the cultural strengths of Mango, he says, and one of the reasons he claims he has remained with the company for 13 years.

桑乔说，以他人为先是芒果的文化优势之一，他声称这也是自己在这家公司呆了13年的一个原因。

Building the best team he can is a priority, he says, stressing the importance of “remembering that everyone is a human being first, not just a worker. One of the things I like about Mango is that they hire . . . first because of what kind of people they are. I want the best professionals on my team but they also have to be nice people.”

他说自己的一个首要任务就是竭尽所能打造最优秀的团队。他强调，重要的是“谨记每个人首先是一个人，而不仅仅是一个员工。我喜欢芒果的理由之一是他们招人……首先考虑的是对方是什么样的人。我希望自己的团队里都是最优秀的专业人士，但他们的人品必须过关。”

His main goal at Mango, he says, is to transmit its culture to those around him.

他说自己在芒果公司的主要目标是，向周围的人传递芒果的文化。

“You grow as a person when you are connected with amazing people, particularly those who are just starting out in their careers, and we have a lot of those at Mango.”

“当你交往的是一些令人惊叹的人，特别是那些刚刚开始职业生涯的人时，你这个人才能成长，而芒果就有很多那样的人。”