Montessori management

　　蒙特梭利管理

　　The backlash against running firms like progressive schools has begun

　　反對(duì)公司管理像學(xué)校改革的運(yùn)動(dòng)已經(jīng)開始

　　THE INTERNSHIP, a film about two middle-aged no-hopers who land work experience at Google, is a dire offering even by the standards of Hollywood summer comedies.

　　《挨踢實(shí)習(xí)生》是一部關(guān)于兩個(gè)有工作經(jīng)驗(yàn)沒有希望轉(zhuǎn)正的中年人在谷歌的故事，即使是按好萊塢夏天喜劇的標(biāo)準(zhǔn)，這也是一部頂 級(jí)作品。

　　But it does get one thing right: that it is rather absurd for a technology firm to provide slides for staff to play on, and to let them wear silly propeller-hats.

　　但有一件事情是對(duì)的：一家科技公司為員工提供幻燈片演講是相當(dāng)荒謬的，而且讓他們戴上傻螺旋槳一樣的帽子。

　　Google is not alone in its juvenile tastes.

　　在對(duì)青年人的口味上谷歌不是唯 一一家。

　　Box, a Silicon Valley company, has installed swings in its headquarters.

　　硅谷的Box公司在其總部安裝秋千。

　　Red Bull, an energy-drinks firm, has a reception desk in the shape of a giant skateboard in its London office.

　　能量飲料公司紅牛在其倫敦辦公室內(nèi)有一個(gè)巨大的滑板樣的接待桌。

　　Businesses of all types have moved towards sitting workers in groups in open-plan rooms, just like at nursery school.

　　各類企業(yè)都在逐漸為員工提供開放式辦公室，就像托兒所。

　　Time was when firms modelled themselves on the armed forces, with officers and chains of command.

　　企業(yè)在模仿軍隊(duì)的指揮官和指揮鏈。

　　Now many model themselves on learning-through-play Montessori schools.

　　現(xiàn)在有很多通過在實(shí)踐中學(xué)習(xí)蒙臺(tái)梭利學(xué)校的模式。

　　Montessori management has plenty of supporters in the higher reaches of business.

　　蒙臺(tái)梭利的管理擁有很多公司高層的支持。

　　The bosses of Google, Amazon and Wikipedia were all educated in Montessori schools.

　　谷歌，亞馬遜和維基百科的老板都在蒙特梭利學(xué)校接受過教育。

　　So was Will Wright, a video-game pioneer.

　　視頻游戲先鋒威爾·賴特也是這樣。

　　Messrs Page and Brin credit their Montessori education with their enthusiasm for thinking differently.

　　佩奇和布林把他們對(duì)不同思維方式的熱情歸于他們?cè)诿膳_(tái)梭利接受的教育。

　　Mr Bezos thanks it for his enthusiasm for experimentation—for planting seeds and going down blind alleys as he puts it.

　　Bezos先生感謝蒙臺(tái)梭利是因?yàn)樗麑?duì)實(shí)驗(yàn)的熱情，正如他所說的播種和減少彎路。

　　Mr Wright says SimCity comes right out of Montessori.

　　賴特先生說模擬城市正是出自蒙特梭利。

　　The nostrums of some management gurus sound remarkably like those of the progressive educationalists of the 1960s.

　　一些管理大師的秘 方聽起來非常像那些20世紀(jì)60年代的教育改革者。

　　For example Gary Hamel, of London Business School, and Jeffrey Pfeffer, of Stanford Business School, praise companies that dismantle hierarchies and encourage experimentation.

　　例如倫敦商學(xué)院的加里·哈默爾和斯坦福大學(xué)商學(xué)院的杰弗里·普費(fèi)弗，稱贊公司消除等級(jí)和鼓勵(lì)試驗(yàn)。

　　It is not just rich-world businesses that are buying into this philosophy:

　　不只是富有的世 界級(jí)企業(yè)相信這一理念：

　　HCL Technologies, an Indian software company, invites workers to write assessments of their bosses—and publishes them.

　　印度軟件公司HCL邀請(qǐng)工人對(duì)老板進(jìn)行評(píng)價(jià)并進(jìn)行公開。

　　But it would be wrong to conclude that the success of Google and Amazon vindicates Montessori management.

　　但是僅用谷歌和亞馬遜的成功就支持蒙特梭利管理的推斷或許是錯(cuò)誤的。

　　Both companies have pragmatically mixed progressive ideas with more traditional ones such as encouraging internal competition and measuring performance.

　　這兩家公司都追求實(shí)用主義，混合了務(wù)實(shí)進(jìn)取的理念，如傳統(tǒng)的鼓勵(lì)內(nèi)部競(jìng)爭(zhēng)和績(jī)效量化。

　　Mr Bezos is also an enthusiastic employer of ex-military personnel.

　　貝索斯先生也是一位喜歡雇傭前軍事人員的雇主。

　　As in education, where traditionalists have staged a counter-revolution against the progressives, some academics are now questioning Montessori management's basic assumptions—particularly its faith in free-flowing creativity, endless collaboration and all things open-plan.

　　在教育界，保守者上演了一場(chǎng)反改革的運(yùn)動(dòng)，現(xiàn)在一些學(xué)者質(zhì)疑蒙特梭利管理的基本假設(shè)，特別是其對(duì)自由流動(dòng)的創(chuàng)造力，無 限的協(xié)作和完全開放的信念。

　　For example, Morten Hansen of the University of California, Berkeley studied 182 teams who were trying to win a contract on behalf of a professional-services firm.

　　例如，加州大學(xué)伯克利分校的莫滕·漢森研究了試圖贏得代表一個(gè)專業(yè)服務(wù)公司的合同的182個(gè)團(tuán)隊(duì)。

　　He found that the more time they spent consulting others, the less likely they were to win a deal.

　　他發(fā)現(xiàn)，他們?cè)绞腔ǜ�多的時(shí)間咨詢別人就越不太可能贏得這筆交易。

　　This shows, he says, that collaboration has costs as well as benefits.

　　他說這說明合作有效益也有成本。

　　These need to be weighed against each other, instead of simply assuming that the more teamwork the better.

　　這些都需要對(duì)各方面進(jìn)行權(quán)衡，而不是簡(jiǎn)單地假設(shè)團(tuán)隊(duì)合作越多結(jié)果就越好。

　　Mark de Rond, a Cambridge academic who once rowed for the university, argues that the most successful teams are marked by internal competition and clashing egos as well as Kum Bay Yah-style togetherness.

　　曾為劍橋大學(xué)賽艇的學(xué)者馬克·德·ROND認(rèn)為最成功的球隊(duì)是存住內(nèi)部競(jìng)爭(zhēng)和沖突以及自我風(fēng)格的統(tǒng)一性。

　　A focus on interpersonal harmony can actually hurt team performance, he suggests.

　　他說把重點(diǎn)放在人際和諧上會(huì)對(duì)球隊(duì)的表現(xiàn)不利。

　　Jake Breeden, a management thinker at Duke Corporate Education, worries that too much reliance on teamwork can create a culture of learned helplessness in which managers are terrified to take decisions without yet another round of consultations.

　　杜克大學(xué)企業(yè)教育管理思想家杰克·布里登擔(dān)心在管理者害怕在征求他人意見之前做出決定的團(tuán)隊(duì)里過于依賴團(tuán)隊(duì)合作會(huì)創(chuàng)造一種后天性無助的文化。

　　Excessive collaboration can lead to the very opposite of creativity:

　　過多的合作可能會(huì)走向創(chuàng)造力的反面：

　　groupthink, conformity and mediocrity.

　　群體思維，整合和平庸。

　　It is especially damaging at the top of an organisation. BlackBerry, a smartphone-maker, believed that having two CEOs with complementary skills would produce the best of both worlds:

　　這對(duì)組織的頂部害處特別大。智能手機(jī)制造商黑莓相信兩位具有互補(bǔ)技能的CEOs 會(huì)有最 好的產(chǎn)出：

　　Jim Balsillie was a professional manager and Mike Lazaridis was a technician.

　　吉姆·貝爾斯利是一名職業(yè)經(jīng)理人，邁克·拉扎里迪斯是技術(shù)員。

　　The company soon discovered the truth of Napoleon's dictum that one bad general is worth two good ones.

　　該公司很快就發(fā)現(xiàn)了拿破侖的名言：一個(gè)不好的將軍好于兩個(gè)好將軍的真理。

　　According to one survey around 70% of all offices in America have gone open-plan.

　　據(jù)一項(xiàng)調(diào)查顯示，美國約70%的辦公室已經(jīng)是開放式的。

　　Yet evidence is mounting that this is a bad idea.

　　然而越來越多的證據(jù)顯示這是一個(gè)壞主意。

　　Over the past five years Gensler, a design firm, has asked more than 90,000 people in 155 companies in ten industries what they think of this way of working.

　　設(shè)計(jì)公司 Gensler，在過去的五年里調(diào)查十大行業(yè)155家公司的90,000人怎么評(píng)價(jià)這種工作方式。

　　It has found an astonishing amount of antipathy.

　　發(fā)現(xiàn)絕大多數(shù)人對(duì)此反感。

　　Workers say that open-plan offices make it more difficult to concentrate, because the hubbub of human and electronic noise is so distracting.

　　他們說開放式辦公室使他們更難以集中精神，因?yàn)槠渌�人的喧鬧和電子噪音是如此令人分心。

　　What they really value is the ability to focus on their jobs with as few distractions as possible.

　　他們看重的是盡可能少分心把注意力放在工作上。

　　Ironically, going open-plan defeats another of Montessori management's main objectives:

　　具有諷刺意味的是，開放式的方式擊敗了另一個(gè)對(duì)蒙特梭利管理的主要目標(biāo)：

　　workers say it prevents them from collaborating, because they cannot talk without disturbing others or inviting an audience.

　　工作人員說這會(huì)阻礙他們合作，因?yàn)樗麄儾谎��?qǐng)別人或者想不打擾別人時(shí)就沒法進(jìn)行討論。

　　Other studies show that people who work in open-plan offices are more likely to suffer from high blood pressure, stress and airborne infections such as flu.

　　其他研究表明，在開放式辦公室工作的人更容易患高血壓，壓力更大大，更易被傳染，如流感。

　　Time for some discipline—and separate offices

　　是時(shí)候進(jìn)行懲罰了-和單獨(dú)的辦公室

　　It was the unthinking and indiscriminate application of child-centred education techniques, with little attention paid to outcomes, that eventually brought about a backlash.

　　以兒童為中心的教育技術(shù)沒頭沒腦的和不分青紅皂白的應(yīng)用，而且很少重視結(jié)果，最終帶來了反彈。

　　The more thoughtful critics did not wish to turn the clock back entirely and return to rote learning and tyrannical teachers; they simply said that structure and order have their place too.

　　深思熟慮的批評(píng)不希望時(shí)光完全倒流到死記硬背和教師強(qiáng)橫的時(shí)代，他們只是說結(jié)構(gòu)和順序也有自己的位置。

　　The same seems to be happening now in business.

　　現(xiàn)在在商業(yè)領(lǐng)域似乎也有同樣的情況。

　　Mr Breeden argues, sensibly, that managers should treat collaboration and creativity as techniques rather than dogmas.

　　布里登辯解說，很明顯管理者應(yīng)該把協(xié)作和創(chuàng)造力當(dāng)做技巧而非教條。

　　Diane Hoskins of Gensler speculates that her company's findings about open-plan offices are so striking that they may mark the beginning of a new era in workplace organisation.

　　公司Gensler的黛安·霍斯金斯推測(cè)，她們公司的開放辦公室表現(xiàn)是如此引人注目，標(biāo)志著辦公室組織方式的一個(gè)新時(shí)代。

　　When workers start being moved back into separate booths, and the office slide is replaced with a noticeboard bearing a list of staff instructions, you will know that the counter-revolution is well under way.

　　當(dāng)工人開始被搬回到單獨(dú)的辦公間，辦公室不知不覺替換的一個(gè)列著員工說明的布告板，你就會(huì)知道，反改革的工作正在順利進(jìn)行。

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