我在報社的日子:混日子員工歡樂多大綱

When I had been at the FT for about a year, a young woman who had just joined the paper invited me out for a drink. I had barely taken a first sip of acidic white wine when she declared herself terminally bored with writing mundane corporate news stories and asked if I was too. No, I replied. I found it very interesting.
在我加入英國《金融時報》約有一年的時候，一名剛剛加入這家報業公司的年輕女孩邀請我一起出去喝一杯。我幾乎還沒來得及啜上一口酸味白葡萄酒，她就已經宣佈自己對於撰寫平淡的公司新聞故事感到徹底厭倦，並詢問我是否也有同感。不，我回答道，我覺得這是一件很有趣的事。

“I really envy you,” she said, fixing her big, round eyes on me. I settled back into my seat, preparing to be told what a brilliant financial journalist I was. Instead she said: “You seem so happy just bumbling along. I wish I could be like that, but I can’t – I’ve always been a compulsive overachiever.”
“我真的很羨慕你，”她一邊說一邊用她又大又圓的眼睛看着我。我在自己的座位上坐好，等着聽她誇讚我是一名多麼出色的財經記者。誰知她卻說道：“你似乎對這樣子混着感到很開心。我希望自己也能像你一樣，但我做不到——一直以來我都要求自己取得超越常人的成就。”

As an insecure, rabidly ambitious 25-year-old, I wasn’t terribly pleased to be put in the bumbler class. Neither was I fooled by the faux-envy. Yet I now discover that she was on to a general truth that almost never gets acknowledged: bumblers make happier workers and may be worthy objects of envy.
當時作爲一名缺乏信心、同時又極有抱負的25歲青年，我對自己被歸入“瞎忙活型”(bumbler)的行列感到很不開心。她那虛假的羨慕也沒能將我騙過。如今我卻發現，她提到了一個幾乎從未有人承認過的一般事實：“瞎忙活”的員工在工作中更容易感到愉快，或許他們確實是值得羨慕的對象。

Last week I was sent a new piece of research showing that the worst-performing employees are often the most engaged ones. This is a radical departure from the standard view that performance and engagement go hand in hand: high performers are meant to be the motivated ones and the all-round cheerleaders, while low performers are supposed to belong to the awkward squad and be disaffected and grumpy.
我近期收到的一份最新研究報告顯示，表現最差的員工常常是那些在工作當中最投入的人。這一結果嚴重偏離了認爲業績表現應與員工投入程度成正比的標準看法：表現優異的員工本應是在工作中充滿動力的人，或者是多才多藝的啦啦隊長型員工，而表現落後的員工則被認爲是一羣笨拙的人，他們常常心懷不滿並且脾氣很壞。

Instead, according to the consultancy Leadership IQ, the feeblest workers in almost half the companies surveyed fared much better than the high-flyers on three measures of engagement. They were more likely “to give 100 per cent”, they were more likely to recommend their company to others, and they were more inclined to think that their bosses treated people fairly.
但諮詢公司Leadership IQ提供的資料顯示，在接受調查的近半數公司中，能力最弱的員工在三項有關投入程度的指標上表現得遠比抱負極高的員工要好得多。他們更有可能“100%地投入工作”，更願意將自己的公司介紹給其他人，並且他們更傾向於認爲自己的老闆對待員工的方式是公平的。The consultancy concludes that this is a worrying consequence of bad management. In these companies, the useless are not told that they are useless but are left to trundle along believing themselves to be good. The upshot is that their more able and hardworking colleagues come to resent them and end up cynical, disengaged, critical of the company and prone to quit the minute they get the chance.
Leadership IQ得出的結論是，這是管理不當所造成的令人擔憂的後果之一。在這類公司內部，能力不行的人沒有被告知他們難擔重任，而是被放任着瞎忙活，同時還自我感覺良好。由此產生的結果是，其他更有能力、也更努力工作的員工對這類同事心生厭惡，並最終變得憤世嫉俗，對工作不再全心投入，對公司心懷不滿，並且傾向於一有機會就立刻走人。

There may be some truth in this account of the relatively happy bumbler syndrome. But if I think back to my colleague all those years ago, there are some more elemental reasons for the bovine contentment of the terminally feeble and the gnawing dissatisfaction of the overachiever. For a start, poor performers may feel fortunate to have a job at all, while overachievers feel almost any job is a let-down. (My ex-colleague has risen through quite a few jobs since leaving the FT.) With lower expectations, bumblers feel less inclined to criticise their employers and don’t assume they are brighter than their bosses. Neither do they feel enraged that they are not being given more interesting things to do.
這份有關“低能員工更開心綜合症”的調查或許部分反映了真實情況。但當我回想這些年來自己共事過的所有人，我認爲，還有一些更加基本的原因導致了無可救藥的笨蛋感到心滿意足、而一心追求成功的人則感到苦惱。首先，能力較差的人或許對於能夠找到一份工作已經深感幸運，而對於追求卓越的人來說，幾乎任何工作都讓他們感到失望。（之前約我喝酒的那位同事在離開英國《金融時報》之後已在好幾個工作崗位上歷經升遷。）由於期望值較低，能力較低的員工不太傾向於批評自己的僱主，同時也不會自認爲比老闆聰明。這類員工也不會因爲自己沒有得到更有意思的工作任務而感到生氣。

It may be even more basic than this: bumblers are Type B personalities who are simply built to be happier. A recent academic study showed that ambitious, Type A personalities are more successful but bumbling Type Bs are at least as happy and live longer. Other studies have shown how life’s “satisficers”, who do the minimum to achieve the desired result, are generally better pleased with their work than the “maximisers”, who strive to do things as well as possible and are inevitably disappointed with the outcome.
事情甚至可能比以上的分析還要簡單：混日子的員工屬於B型人格，他們天生就比其他人更容易快樂。近期的一項學術研究顯示，充滿抱負的A型人格者通常更爲成功，而做事遲鈍的B型人格者則活得更加開心，壽命也更長久。其他研究已經表明，生活中的“滿足者”——他們爲達到預想結果只會採取儘可能少的努力——對於工作的滿意程度通常比“追求成就最大化者”更高，後一類人傾向於把事情做到盡善盡美，因而總是不可避免地對結果感到失望。

But whatever the reasons for the relative happiness of bumblers, their existence in such large numbers in most businesses I have experienced overturns two tenets of modern management practice.
但不管能力較低者究竟是出於什麼原因過得更加愉快，在我所接觸過的幾乎所有公司裏，這類員工都大量存在，這一事實推翻了現代管理學實踐的兩大原則。

First it shows that all this stuff about employee engagement is nonsense. The engagement of a high-flyer is worth a lot – or rather it is worth a lot if it means they stick around (which often they don’t). The engagement of the lowest flyer is worth less than nothing, as ideally you would want them to be so disengaged that they would slope off somewhere else. If moderately poor performers feel happy that’s nice for them, but surely not a top aim of management if the result does not lead to them working any harder.
首先，這一事實表明所有關於員工敬業度的理論都屬無稽之談。能力較高型員工對工作的投入態度很有價值——或者說，如果此類員工將留在公司的話（而他們通常不會這麼做），這種投入將會很有價值。而能力最低的員工對工作的投入則什麼價值也沒有，因爲在最理想的狀態下你會希望他們對工作極不投入以至於偷偷溜去了其他地方。如果業績表現中等偏下的員工在工作中感到愉快，那這對於他們而言是一件好事，但這絕對算不上是管理層的首要目標，除非讓員工開心能促使他們更加努力地工作。

The even more troubling implication of this survey is that there is little point in trying to manage people at all. If under-achievers are in part happy because management has washed its hands of them, then surely the same trick ought to be applied to everyone. If all staff were left to their own devices, the ambitious could get on with being ambitious and the bumblers could get on with bumbling. An awful lot of managerial effort would be saved, and everyone would be a little happier than they were before.
這項調查結果更加讓人感到不安的一點在於，它表明試圖對人進行管理幾乎沒有任何意義。如果表現較差的員工過得愉快的部分原因在於管理層對他們撒手不顧，那麼這一方法完全可以應用在全體員工身上。如果所有員工都被放任自生自滅，那麼事業心強的人大可放手追求成功，而能力較低的人則可繼續混日子。管理層由此可以省下大量精力，而每一個人也能比之前過得更加快活。