• 亚马逊亿万富翁创始人杰夫·贝佐斯给前助手上过重要一课。那是1997年，刚出任Coursera首席执行官的格雷格·哈特当年还是亚马逊的新人。他晋升十分迅速，才过12年就成了贝佐斯得力助手。到现在哈特仍然奉行这一领导理念：“需要首席执行官亲自决策的事越少，企业运转越高效。”
大学期间哈特曾在百货商店诺德斯特龙（Nordstrom）兼职，工作是叠T恤和牛仔裤，他从未想过有朝一日能成为全世界顶级企业掌门的得力助手——甚至自己也能成为高管。
上世纪90年代末哈特加入还只是网上书店的亚马逊，由此开启了急速晋升之路。到2009年，他已是贝佐斯技术顾问，这一职位相当于高级行政助理，内部称为“影子”。
如今身为Coursera新任首席执行官，哈特正运用从全球第三富豪贝佐斯（净资产2410亿美元）学到的经验，改造在线教育领域。他表示，经验当中包括保持求知欲以及相信直觉，哪怕数据暂时不支持。
“贝佐斯经常说，如果数据跟实际情况不相符，要相信实际情况，”哈特对《财富》杂志说，“因为这可能意味着关注了错误的数据，或者数据反映了某种真相然而尚未发觉。”
这条准则在哈特受命开发亚马逊智能语音助手Alexa时得到验证，如今他希望在Coursera复制这一成功经验。
“（Coursera）无疑是教育科技领域的领军者之一，”哈特说，“但尚未达到我在亚马逊见证过的突破性成就。”
借鉴亚马逊和Alexa的经验重塑教育科技
担任技术顾问期间，哈特接到任务要将贝佐斯关于虚拟助手的两句话构想转化为产品，即后来的Alexa。
当时哈特在硬件或软件领域几乎全无背景，所以他充满疑虑，“为什么选我做这件事？”
“他（贝佐斯）非常和善。他说，‘你能行，你会想出办法的，’”哈特说。
如今内嵌Alexa的设备销量已超过6亿台，显然哈特想的办法确实不错，但贝佐斯给予下属的信任也功不可没。哈特说，正是这种成功经验推动亚马逊从书店蜕变为电商巨头。
“决策权要尽可能下放给贴近客户的人，这是我向贝佐斯学到的重要一课，”他说，“需要首席执行官亲自决策的事越少，企业运转越高效。”
在教育科技日新月异的当下，尤其是人工智能与技能培养结合，快速行动可能对Coursera更有利。
Coursera的最大竞争对手之一2U（旗下也拥有edX）去年申请破产，变成了私营公司。Coursera在公开市场表现也并不出色。当前其股价约为8.50美元，远低于2022年上市时的约45美元。
不过据彭博社（Bloomberg）预测，未来五年预计将有10亿人接入互联网，能通过Coursera获取数千门在线课程，其中包括与谷歌、微软和IBM等企业，以及与斯坦福大学、密歇根大学和宾夕法尼亚大学等高校的合作项目。
“Coursera将迎来巨大机遇，不仅能为现有网民提供改变命运的世界级教育，还能为即将进入互联网的人群提供机会，”哈特说。
哈特给Z世代的建议：以学习为目标，多问为什么
对于希望在企业里稳步上升，渴望复制从诺德斯特龙到亚马逊成功故事的年轻人，哈特的建议很简单：专心学习，不要只盯着光鲜的头衔或高薪。
“不要只追求头衔或薪资，要追求成长。只要能长期坚持，终将有收获，”他告诉《财富》。
虽然这番话出自教育公司首席执行官之口略显老套，但把职业生涯当作马拉松而非短跑，花时间发掘更广泛的兴趣，也是其他商界领袖认同的理念，包括哈特的前同事安迪・贾西。
“我儿子21岁，女儿24岁，我发现他们和同龄人总认为这个年龄就必须确定人生方向，”现任亚马逊首席执行官贾西在《大卫・诺瓦克的领导力指南》（How Leaders Lead with David Novak）播客中说，“我觉得真不是这样。”
“我尝试过很多事，我认为刚工作的时候弄清楚自己不想做什么和想做什么同样重要，因为如此才能想清楚真正想做的事，”贾西补充说。
贾西承认职业成功需要一定的运气也难免挫折，但坚持不懈最终才可能迎来机会。
“我觉得自己的职业生涯或者说冒险非常幸运，或许最正确的就是不过度纠结，”贾西向诺瓦克补充道。（财富中文网）
译者：梁宇
审校：夏林
• Amazon’s billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos, instilled one lesson in his former worker. It was 1997 when Coursera’s newest CEO, Greg Hart was a young new hire at Amazon. He climbed the ranks swiftly, becoming Bezos’ right-hand man just 12 years later. Today, Hart still points to one lesson that’s shaped his leadership philosophy: “The fewer decisions that have to go to the CEO, the faster the organization will move,” Hart tells Fortune.
During Greg Hart’s monotonous college job of folding t-shirts and jeans at Nordstrom, he never imagined that one day he’d be right-hand man to one of the most notable CEOs in the world—or even be an executive himself.
But after landing a job at Amazon in the late 1990s—when it was a bookstore-focused startup—Hart started his steep climb up the corporate ladder. In 2009, he had worked his way up to Jeff Bezos’ technical advisor, a chief-of-staff-equivalent role internally known as “the shadow.”
Now, as a new CEO of Coursera, Hart is taking the lessons he learned sitting next to the now third-richest man in the world (with a net worth of $241 billion) to transform the world of educational technology. That includes, he says, being someone who is always willing to be curious and to listen to your gut—even if the data might not back you up.
“One of the things that Jeff would regularly say is when the data and the anecdotes don’t align, trust the anecdotes,” Hart tells Fortune. “Because it probably means that you’re either measuring the wrong thing in the data, or that the data is telling you something that you’re just not seeing yet.”
This mantra would prove especially relevant in Hart’s life after he was tapped to lead Amazon’s creation of Alexa—a level of success he hopes to emulate at Coursera.
“(Coursera) is one of the leaders in the edtech space, certainly,” Hart says. “But hasn’t yet achieved what I would call the true breakout success that I was fortunate to have seen when I was at Amazon.”
Reshaping edtech with lessons learned from Amazon and Alexa
While serving as technical advisor, Hart was asked to turn Bezos’ two-sentence idea for the implementation of virtual assistant technology into a product found in consumers’ homes, later known as Alexa.
With little background in hardware or software, Hart recalls being hesitant: “Why am I the right person to tackle this challenge?”
“He (Bezos) was unbelievably gracious. He said, ‘you’ll do fine, you’ll figure it out,’” Hart says.
Now with more than 600 million Alexa devices sold, it’s clear Hart did figure it out—in part thanks to the belief Bezos instilled in his subordinates. That lesson is one Hart says was critical in making Amazon grow from a bookstore to an e-commerce conglomerate.
“Pushing decisions down as close to the customer as possible was certainly something that I learned from Jeff,” he says. “The fewer decisions that have to go to the CEO, the faster the organization will move.”
Moving quickly will likely play in Coursera’s favor considering the rapidly changing world of education, including AI’s intersection with skill development.
One of Coursera’s biggest competitors, 2U (which also owns edX), filed for bankruptcy last year and became a private company. Coursera’s public performance hasn’t been spectacular, either. Its share price currently sits at about $8.50, a far cry from its 2022 IPO at about $45.
But in the next five years, a predicted 1 billion people will gain internet access, according to Bloomberg, and thus would have access to Coursera’s thousands of online learning opportunities, that include partnerships with both industry and universities including Google, Microsoft, and IBM as well as Stanford University, University of Michigan, and University of Pennsylvania.
“There is a huge opportunity for Coursera, not just to serve all the people who are online today and give them access to world class education so they can transform their lives, but also to do that for the population that will come online,” Hart says.
Hart’s advice for Gen Z: Optimize for learning—and ask why
For young people looking to push their careers up the corporate ladder and emulate a jump from Nordstrom to Amazon,Hart’s advice is simple: Focus on learning—not on a flashy job title or cushy salary.
“Don’t optimize for titles, don’t optimize for salary, optimize for learning. And if you do that in the long run, it will benefit you,” he tells Fortune.
And while that advice may sound on-brand coming from the CEO of an education company, treating your career like a marathon, not a sprint, and spending time discovering your broader interests is a mantra echoed by other business leaders, including Hart’s former coworker, Andy Jassy.
“I have a 21-year-old son and a 24-year-old daughter, and one of the things I see with them and their peers is they all feel like they have to know what they want to do for their life at that age,” Jassy, the current Amazon CEO, said on the podcast, How Leaders Lead with David Novak. “And I really don’t believe that’s true.”
“I tried a lot of things, and I think that early on it’s just as important to learn what you don’t want to do as what you want to do, because it actually helps you figure out what you want to do,” Jassy added.
And while Jassy admits career success involves an element of luck and may include multiple setbacks, remaining persistent is what ultimately might land you a shot at the corner office.
“I feel like my journey or adventure was a lot of luck, and I think maybe one of the things I did best was not overthink it,” Jassy added to Novak.