Montessori management

　　蒙特梭利管理

　　The backlash against running firms like progressive schools has begun

　　反對公司管理像學校改革的運動已經開始

　　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.

　　《挨踢實習生》是一部關于兩個有工作經驗沒有希望轉正的中年人在谷歌的故事，即使是按好萊塢夏天喜劇的標準，這也是一部頂 級作品。

　　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.

　　但有一件事情是對的：一家科技公司為員工提供幻燈片演講是相當荒謬的，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有一個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.

　　企業在模仿軍隊的指揮官和指揮鏈。

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

　　現在有很多通過在實踐中學習蒙臺梭利學校的模式。

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

　　蒙臺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不同思維方式的熱情歸于他們在蒙臺梭利接受的教育。

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

　　Bezos先生感謝蒙臺梭利是因為他對實驗的熱情，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.

　　例如倫敦商學院的加里·哈默爾和斯坦福大學商學院的杰弗里·普費弗，稱贊公司消除等級和鼓勵試驗。

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

　　不只是富有的世 界級企業相信這一理念：

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

　　印度軟件公司HCL邀請工人對老板進行評價并進行公開。

　　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用主義，混合了務實進取的理念，如傳統的鼓勵內部競爭和績效量化。

　　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，保守者上演了一場反改革的運動，現在一些學者質疑蒙特梭利管理的基本假設，特別是其對自由流動的創造力，無 限的協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，加州大學伯克利分校的莫滕·漢森研究了試圖贏得代表一個專業服務公司的合同的182個團隊。

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

　　他發現，他們越是花更多的時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.

　　這些都需要對各方面進行權衡，而不是簡單地假設團隊合作越多結果就越好。

　　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.

　　曾為劍橋大學賽艇的學者馬克·德·ROND認為最成功的球隊是存住內部競爭和沖突以及自我風格的統一性。

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

　　他說把重點放在人際和諧上會對球隊的表現不利。

　　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.

　　杜克大學企業教育管理思想家杰克·布里登擔心在管理者害怕在征求他人意見之前做出決定的團隊里過于依賴團隊合作會創造一種后天性無助的文化。

　　Excessive collaboration can lead to the very opposite of creativity:

　　過多的合作可能會走向創造力的反面：

　　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:

　　這對組織的頂部害處特別大。智能手機制造商黑莓相信兩位具有互補技能的CEOs 會有最 好的產出：

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

　　吉姆·貝爾斯利是一名職業經理人，邁克·拉扎里迪斯是技術員。

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

　　該公司很快就發現了拿破侖的名言：一個不好的將軍好于兩個好將軍的真理。

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

　　據一項調查顯示，美國約70%的辦公室已經是開放式的。

　　Yet evidence is mounting that this is a bad idea.

　　然而越來越多的證據顯示這是一個壞主意。

　　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.

　　設計公司 Gensler，在過去的五年里調查十大行業155家公司的90,000人怎么評價這種工作方式。

　　It has found an astonishing amount of antipathy.

　　發現絕大多數人對此反感。

　　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，因為其他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對蒙特梭利管理的主要目標：

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

　　工作人員說這會阻礙他們合作，因為他們不邀請別人或者想不打擾別人時就沒法進行討論。

　　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

　　是時候進行懲罰了-和單獨的辦公室

　　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沒頭沒腦的和不分青紅皂白的應用，而且很少重視結果，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.

　　深思熟慮的批評不希望時光完全倒流到死記硬背和教師強橫的時代，他們只是說結構和順序也有自己的位置。

　　The same seems to be happening now in business.

　　現在在商業領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，很明顯管理者應該把協作和創造力當做技巧而非教條。

　　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，她們公司的開放辦公室表現是如此引人注目，標志著辦公室組織方式的一個新時代。

　　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.

　　當工人開始被搬回到單獨的辦公間，辦公室不知不覺替換的一個列著員工說明的布告板，你就會知道，反改革的工作正在順利進行。

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