慢享午餐,四点下班:当代好老板是什么样的?
I’m at an age when some of my peers are becoming bosses of their organisations. I’ve recently chatted to three who admit to feeling confused. When they were underlings, they knew what their tasks were. But now they wonder: what is a boss meant to do all day? 6park.com 到了我这个年纪,有些人都开始当上了组织里的一把手。我最近和三位这样的领导者聊了聊,他们都承认感到迷茫。当他们是下属时,他们很清楚自己的任务是什么。但现在他们感到疑惑:一个老板整天应该干点什么?
6park.com Being Generation X-ers, they suffer from imposter syndrome, are somewhat in awe of their staff and don’t want to run around shouting at them. One of my friends has concluded: “There isn’t much concretely that I can do in our business without causing accidents.” 6park.com作为X世代,他们为自己可能“才不配位”感到惶恐,并且多少有些敬畏下属,也不愿意整天对他们吆五喝六。我的一位朋友总结道:“我在我们公司具体能做的并且做了不会惹出岔子的事情很少。”
He now takes long lunches and sometimes goes home at 4pm. His management motto, which he keeps secret, is: “Don’t just do something — stand there!” 6park.com 他现在会花很长时间慢悠悠地吃午餐,有时下午四点就下班回家了。他向来不声张的管理格言是:“别干事——站那儿就好!”
6park.com You won’t find this motto in airport business books. However, I suspect that many heads of companies, government departments and NGOs should adopt it too. 6park.com从机场商店里摆着的那些商业书籍中,你找不到这条格言。不过,我觉得许多公司、政府部门和非盈利组织的负责人不妨采纳。
6park.com The traditional boss is a doer. He ( 94 per cent of chief executives of FTSE 100 companies are men) has typically spent his career getting up early and hitting key performance indicators (KPIs). He was selected partly for his stamina. 6park.com传统的老板是亲力亲为者。通常,在他(在富时100指数(FTSE 100)成分股公司中,94%的首席执行官是男性)的整个职业生涯中,他会每天早早起床,始终致力于达到关键绩效指标(KPI)。他之所以被选中,部分原因就是因为他有毅力。
6park.com The late chief executive of a giant multinational company was distinguished (one of his friends tells me) by his ability to get drunk until 2am, then rise at 6am and — after fortifying himself with a swift tot — deliver a fluent presentation at 7am. 6park.com一家大型跨国公司已故的首席执行官拥有一项异于常人的能力(这是他的一位朋友告诉我的),他有时喝酒喝到凌晨两点,明明喝醉了,却能在大清早六点爬起来,匆匆灌下一小杯烈酒提神,然后在七点口齿流利地开始做报告。
The doer-boss rarely lacks ego, especially after getting the top job. At 7am on day one, he charges into the office, eager to get stuck in. 6park.com 亲力亲为的老板不太可能是缺少自我的人,特别是在他们坐到最高位置之后。他们会在周一早上七点赶到办公室,迫不及待地投入工作。
6park.com The only problem is: what to do? Elsbeth Johnson, author of the new book Step Up, Step Back: How to Really Deliver Strategic Change in Your Organization, says the boss’s job is making strategy: “What is the purpose of our organisation? What does good look like? How do we behave — with each other, with our customers — in order to deliver these outcomes?” 6park.com唯一的问题是:做什么?《进退有度:如何在你的组织里来一场真正的战略性变革》(Step Up, Step Back: How to Really Deliver Strategic Change in Your Organization)这本新书的作者埃尔斯贝特?约翰逊(Elsbeth Johnson)说,老板的职责是制定战略。“我们组织的宗旨是什么?怎样才算好的结果?为了取得这些结果我们该怎样做?比如,彼此之间如何相处?如何对待我们的客户?”
She says an organisation needs a limited number of priorities and projects. The boss should set these early on, then spend years ensuring they get carried out. “You have to be prepared to be bored,” Johnson tells the bosses she mentors. “You’ll be talking about the same strategies, not making new decisions.” 6park.com 她说,一个组织需要制定数量有限的优先事项和计划。老板应该在初期就制定好这些,然后花数年时间确保它们得到执行。“你必须有心理准备——你将会感到厌烦。你将不断地谈论同样的战略,而不是做新的决策。”约翰逊这样告诉她所辅导的老板们。
6park.com But nothing in the typical boss’s ascent has been a preparation for strategic thinking. Few organisations set KPIs. Many bosses regard strategising as something to do in their downtime, after the real work of producing stuff is done. In the phrase of one banker: “Strategy is for after five.” 6park.com但在一个人成为老板的典型升迁道路上,没有什么事情是为培养战略性思维做准备。很少有组织会制定KPI。许多老板认为制定战略这种事要等到他们有空的时候,在完成了和生产相关的“真正”工作之后才能顾及。用一位银行家的话来说:“战略是五点以后的事。”
And so the boss starts “helping” his expert underlings with their daily work, even though he’s probably years out of date, especially on the tech. He ends up wasting his salary doing grunt work and stunting everyone else’s career growth. The model for the leader as micromanager is Jimmy Carter, who in his first months as US president personally reviewed staffers’ requests to use the White House tennis courts. 6park.com 因此老板会从“帮助”专业的下属完成他们的日常工作做起,即使他的知识可能过时了许多年,特别是在技术方面。结果无非是他浪费自己拿的高薪做着较为低等的工作,还阻碍了别人的职业发展。美国前总统吉米?卡特(Jimmy Carter)就是典型的“微观管理者”,他在入主白宫的头几个月里亲自审批职员使用白宫网球场的申请。
6park.com When doers take on strategy, their manic energy (“change is the only constant!”) can be disastrous. Johnson says that, especially after the Christmas holidays, bosses risk coming back with “random new ideas they have come across, or the latest management fad in their sector, whether it’s ‘agile’ or ‘digital’.” 6park.com当喜欢身体力行的老板要制定战略时,他们那股疯狂的劲头(“唯一不变的就是变化!”)简直就是灾难。约翰逊表示,当老板们休完假回到公司,特别是在圣诞节假期后,他们可能带回“他们头脑里灵光一闪偶然想到的新主意,或者行业内最新时兴的管理方法,不管是‘敏捷的’还是‘数字化的’”。
She explains: “They read something in Harvard Business Review, they’re in the airport and pick up a business book, and the shiny new idea gets put into the system when it’s the last thing the system needs.” 6park.com 她解释说:“他们在《哈佛商业评论》(Harvard Business Review)中读到了点什么,或者在机场随手拿起了一本商业图书,于是一些光鲜崭新的点子就被应用到了组织中,而这些点子可能是组织最不需要的。”
6park.com Many bosses also imagine they have to motivate staff. In fact, the risk of demotivating them is much higher. Millennials, who consistently say in surveys that they crave empowerment at work, don’t want a 55-year-old shouting slogans at them and sticking up laminated posters about their organisation’s amazing “culture”. 6park.com许多老板还臆想他们必须激励员工。事实上,他们使手下失去干劲的风险还大一点。千禧一代在调查中经常说,他们渴望在工作中得到授权。他们才不想看到一个55岁的人冲着他们喊口号,手里举着写有莫名其妙的“组织文化”的厚板子。
6park.com The underlying problem is that the boss typically thinks he’s Steve Jobs, when statistically he is much more likely to be the maddening incompetent David Brent from the TV series The Office. 6park.com根本问题就是老板通常以为自己是史蒂夫?乔布斯(Steve Jobs),而从统计数字来看,他是电视剧《办公室》(The Office)的戴维?布伦特(David Brent)这样让人抓狂的无能之辈的可能性要大得多。
A new boss should therefore take the traditional physician’s oath: first, do no harm. My “Don’t just do something” friend emails: “I’ve made sure there is a strategy (mostly written by my colleagues), I solve problems between colleagues, I represent the organisation towards our board and sometimes externally, and I keep things happy in the office (we’re getting ping-pong tables!). That’s about it.” 6park.com 因此一位新老板应该谨遵那条传统的医生誓言:首先是不伤害人。我那位建议“别干事”的朋友在电子邮件中说道:“我已经确保公司有一个战略(主要是同事们写的),我会解决同事之间的问题,我代表组织面对董事会、有时是和外界打交道,我让办公室里有欢乐的气氛(我们正在装乒乓球桌!)。就这样。”
6park.com When I ran his leadership philosophy by Johnson, she partially approved, though she thinks he should be doing more strategy. It’s true that my friend may not go down in history as a transformative leader. On the other hand, he’s unlikely to be a catastrophe either. 6park.com我把他的领导理念讲述给约翰逊听,她赞同其中一部分,但认为这位朋友应该多搞搞战略。没错,我这位朋友或许不会以变革型领导者之姿名垂青史,但他也不太可能成为一位灾难型领导者。
6park.com Think of the world’s most prominent boss job, the US presidency. George W Bush spent the first months of his administration taking repeated holidays at his Texas ranch. He was often criticised for that — until, after the attacks of September 11 2001, he rushed back to the office and threw together a strategy to remake the Middle East. Now, people criticise Donald Trump for playing too much golf. I wish he’d play more. 6park.com世界上最重要的老板职务就是美国总统。小布什(George W Bush)刚上任的头几个月,三天两头跑去他在德州的牧场度假。他常常为此招致批评——直到2001年9月11日发生了袭击事件,他火速回到办公室,仓促弄出了一份战略,要改造中东。现在,人们批评唐纳德?特朗普(Donald Trump)老打高尔夫球。我希望他能多打。
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