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職場雙語:窩裏鬥值不值得提倡?

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職場雙語:窩裏鬥值不值得提倡?

You would never hear a management consultant advise a company to create a more cutthroat environment. "You know what we need here? Fear. More backstabbing."

管理諮詢師絕對不會建議公司進一步激化內部已然殘酷而激烈的內部競爭。他們絕不會這麼說:“知道我們要怎麼做嗎?我們得讓員工心生恐懼、勾心鬥角。”

No, collaboration seems to be the word of choice for management experts and informed CEOs alike. "Collaboration is fundamentally the best approach towards management," says Michael Serino, executive director of Human Capital Development at Cornell's Industrial and Labor Relations School. Whether it's accurate or not, most people in business today tend to believe that collaborative work delivers better results.

管理專家和明智的首席執行官都會選擇協作,而非競爭。康奈爾大學工業及勞工關係學院(Human Capital Development at Cornell's Industrial and Labor Relations School)人力資本開發執行主任邁克爾·塞利諾稱:“從根本上而言,協作是最佳的管理方式。”不論是否果真如此,而今大多數商界人士都認爲,通力協作能帶來更好的結果。

And yet, several Fortune 500 companies foster competitive internal environments. Consulting companies and law firms are famous for this. They tend to have an "up or out" promotion model — everybody wants to make partner, and after a certain point, people either move up to those coveted positions or they are encouraged to find employment elsewhere.

然而,一些財富500強公司卻在培養競爭性的內部環境。諮詢公司和律師事務所在這方面比較典型。他們的晉升模式是“不升職就離職”。每個人都想成爲合夥人,到了一定的階段,要麼如願以償,獲得衆人夢寐以求的合夥人地位,要麼公司就會鼓勵他們另謀高就。

Take Goldman Sachs (GS). Every couple of years, the company promotes roughly a hundred employees to partner. It's a big deal — those select few receive a significant raise in salary and equity in the company. But there are fewer than 500 partners out of 35,000 employees at the firm. People are weeded out on the way up, and though it's rare, they can even get de-partnered once they reach the top.

以高盛公司(Goldman Sachs)爲例。每隔幾年,公司都會提升大約一百位員工成爲合夥人。成爲合夥人意義重大,他們的薪水和公司股權都會大幅增加。但公司35,000名員工中總計只有不到500名合夥人。員工在晉升階梯上會被逐步淘汰。此外,即使員工已經做到了最高的合夥人職位,也有可能被撤銷職位,當然這種情況比較少見。

Other companies have implemented hiring practices that would seem to spur internal competition. Former GE CEO Jack Welch was known for championing a "forced ranking" system. Top GE (GE) executives would rank employees by performance, and they generally let the bottom 10% go. PepsiCo is also known for having a high churn rate among employees. "It seems to work for them," says Mark Jaffe, president of executive search firm Wyatt & Jaffe, adding that the people who survive the system carry that cachet with them when they look for other jobs.

其他公司採取的一些用人措施可能會激發企業內部的競爭。衆所周知,通用電氣(GE)前任首席執行官傑克??韋爾奇大力支持“末位淘汰制”。通用電氣的高管根據業績對員工進行排名,一般來說,墊底的10%必須走人。百事可樂公司(PepsiCo)的員工流動率也相當高。懷亞特·傑婓高管獵頭公司(Wyatt & Jaffe)總裁馬克·傑婓稱:“這些方法對他們來說似乎同樣奏效。”他還表示,能夠順利通過排名考驗的員工在今後跳槽時也會因此而增加求職的砝碼

That can help mitigate the negative effects of an up-or-out model, such as having your staff feel terrified of losing their jobs. "If you think about McKinsey, it has always been an example of 'up or out,' but 'out' is not such a bad place," Serino says. People who leave often get good offers elsewhere. He adds, "The rules of the game are very clear to everybody coming in. It's up or out, ranked performance, it's, 'go go go.'"

這能降低“不升職就離職”的負面影響,比如員工不會再那麼擔憂失去工作了。塞利諾稱:“麥肯錫諮詢公司(McKinsey)就是‘不升職就離職’的典型,但‘離職’也並非一定是壞事。”辭職的員工常常能在其他公司尋得滿意職位。他補充說:“公司每個人都對這個遊戲規則心知肚明。不論是‘不升職就離職’,還是末位淘汰制,核心就是‘加油、加油、加油’。”

Still, there is a down side to the competitive environment. For one, employees who feel pitted against one another can devote valuable time and energy trying to figure out how to outshine their peers, instead of trying to figure out how to best contribute to projects, says Serino.

然而,競爭性環境也存在着負面影響。塞利諾表示,如果員工感受到內部競爭的壓力,他們會把寶貴的時間和精力用於琢磨如何搶同事風頭,而不是努力思考如何把工作幹好。

Also, there's strong evidence that some employees perform worse just knowing they're going to be ranked. In a controlled study of a randomized group of employees at Amazon's crowd-sourcing website Mechanical Turk, Wharton professor Iwan Barankay found that participants who knew they were ranked were generally less productive than those who didn't, and that's especially true for people who found out that they performed worse than their peers. The news didn't motivate them, they just checked out.

同樣,有明顯的證據表明,如果一些員工得知公司對他們進行排名,他們的業績表現會更差。沃頓商學院(Wharton)教授伊萬·巴蘭吉在亞馬遜(Amazon)旗下的服務網站、機械土耳其人(Mechanical Turk)公司中隨機抽取了一組員工進行對照研究。他發現,如果參與者知道公司對自己進行業績排名,他們的效率會比那些不知情的參與者更低。如果人們發現自己排名比同事還低,那就更是如此。這種信息並未激發他們的積極性,而是促使他們選擇離開。

But companies can actually use a competition to encourage a collaborative environment, says Dick Grote, chairman and CEO of Grote Consulting. Grote has worked with PepsiCo (PEP), and he says management there bases 40% of an employee's annual bonus on how well he or she helps promising colleagues develop their careers at the company. People will collaborate when they're ranked on how well they work with others, Grote says.

格洛特諮詢公司(Grote Consulting)董事長迪克·格洛特表示,實際上,公司可以採用競賽的方式來鼓勵人們通力合作。格洛特曾與百事可樂公司合作過。他表示百事可樂公司管理層的做法是,員工的年終獎有40%要取決於他們是否幫助有前途的同事獲得良好發展。格洛特稱,如果把與同事的合作也作爲評價員工的標準,人們就會彼此協作。

Grote claims that one of the benefits of forced ranking and other competitive measures is that it compels managers to actually assess their employees, which many top executives don't do well.

格洛特聲稱,末位淘汰制和其他競爭性措施的好處之一是,公司管理者們不得不對員工進行評估,而很多高管在這一點上做得並不好

But there are other options. There's nothing that says firms have to be structured to encourage everyone to strive for partner. "In an up–or-out model, the best consultants in the world get pushed out," says Dan Reardon, CEO of global consulting group North Highland.

可選擇的方式有很多。企業並不一定都要鼓勵員工爭當合夥人。全球諮詢集團漢彬洲公司(North Highland)首席執行官丹??瑞爾敦稱:“如果我們實行‘不升職就離職’的模式,可能有些最出色的諮詢師會被迫離開。”

Reardon's firm takes a different approach, and allows good consultants to keep their jobs as consultants, while other people focus on responsibilities that typically fall to partners, such as sales. Also, Reardon says, all employees, not just partners, have equity in the company. "Part of the core of our culture at North Highland is to have more camaraderie. We want everybody focused on client success, not individual success."

漢彬洲公司的做法是讓優秀的諮詢師安心做諮詢,由其他人擔負通常由合夥人承擔的銷售額等任務。瑞爾敦還表示,公司的所有員工都擁有股權而不僅僅侷限於合夥人。“同事間擁有更多情誼是我們公司文化核心內容的一部分。我們希望員工們都能關注客戶的成功,而不是個人的成功。”

Culture is actually the most important factor when considering whether or not to encourage competition. Executives are always looking around for the best practices out there, says Serino, and some could consider forced ranking: "It's easy to become enamored of perceived success, but then when you try to transplant it, it potentially can get botched."

考慮是否要鼓勵內部競爭時,文化其實是最重要的因素。塞利諾表示,管理者總是希望能找到最好的經驗和方法,有些公司可能會採用末位淘汰制的方法。“有些公司採用這種做法獲得了成功,但如果希望移植這種做法,則不見得一定會奏效,甚至有可能搞砸。”

While there are ways to take the edge off of a business that has a fiercely competitive environment, it's very difficult to turn a company that isn't cutthroat into one that is. And given the benefits many companies are finding from focusing on collaboration, you probably wouldn't want to anyway.

緩解公司激烈的內部競爭有很多辦法可循,但是,要把一家公司的內部環境從彼此協作轉變爲殘酷競爭卻很難做到。而且,鑑於很多公司都已經從集中力量、通力合作中嚐到了甜頭,他們不見得會這麼幹。

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