Montessori management

　　蒙特梭利管理

　　The backlash against running firms like progressive schools has begun

　　反对公司管理像学校改革的运动已经开始

　　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.

　　《挨踢实习生》是一部关于两个有工作经验没有希望转正的中年人在谷歌的故事，即使是按好莱坞夏天喜剧的标准，这也是一部顶级作品。

　　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.

　　但有一件事情是对的：一家科技公司为员工提供幻灯片演讲是相当荒谬的，而且让他们戴上傻螺旋桨一样的帽子。

　　Google is not alone in its juvenile tastes.

　　在对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公司在其总部安装秋千。

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

　　能量饮料公司红牛在其伦敦办公室内有一个巨大的滑板样的接待桌。

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

　　各类企业都在逐渐为员工提供开放式办公室，就像托儿所。

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

　　企业在模仿军队的指挥官和指挥链。

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

　　现在有很多通过在实践中学习蒙台梭利学校的模式。

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

　　蒙台梭利的管理拥有很多公司高层的支持。

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

　　谷歌，亚马逊和维基百科的老板都在蒙特梭利学校接受过教育。

　　So was Will Wright, a video-game pioneer.

　　视频游戏先锋威尔·赖特也是这样。

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

　　佩奇和布林把他们对不同思维方式的热情归于他们在蒙台梭利接受的教育。

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

　　Bezos先生感谢蒙台梭利是因为他对实验的热情，正如他所说的播种和减少弯路。

　　Mr Wright says SimCity comes right out of Montessori.

　　赖特先生说模拟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.

　　一些管理大师的秘方听起来非常像那些20世纪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.

　　例如伦敦商学院的加里·哈默尔和斯坦福大学商学院的杰弗里·普费弗，称赞公司消除等级和鼓励试验。

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

　　不只是富有的世界级企业相信这一理念：

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

　　印度软件公司HCL邀请工人对老板进行评价并进行公开。

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

　　但是仅用谷歌和亚马逊的成功就支持蒙特梭利管理的推断或许是错误的。

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

　　这两家公司都追求实用主义，混合了务实进取的理念，如传统的鼓励内部竞争和绩效量化。

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

　　贝索斯先生也是一位喜欢雇佣前军事人员的雇主。

　　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，保守者上演了一场反改革的运动，现在一些学者质疑蒙特梭利管理的基本假设，特别是其对自由流动的创造力，无限的协作和完全开放的信念。

　　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，加州大学伯克利分校的莫滕·汉森研究了试图赢得代表一个专业服务公司的合同的182个团队。

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

　　他发现，他们越是花更多的时间咨询别人就越不太可能赢得这笔交易。

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

　　他说这说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.

　　这些都需要对各方面进行权衡，而不是简单地假设团队合作越多结果就越好。

　　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.

　　曾为剑桥大学赛艇的学者马克·德·ROND认为最成功的球队是存住内部竞争和冲突以及自我风格的统一性。

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

　　他说把重点放在人际和谐上会对球队的表现不利。

　　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.

　　杜克大学企业教育管理思想家杰克·布里登担心在管理者害怕在征求他人意见之前做出决定的团队里过于依赖团队合作会创造一种后天性无助的文化。

　　Excessive collaboration can lead to the very opposite of creativity:

　　过多的合作可能会走向创造力的反面：

　　groupthink, conformity and mediocrity.

　　群体思维，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:

　　这对组织的顶部害处特别大。智能手机制造商黑莓相信两位具有互补技能的CEOs 会有最好的产出：

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

　　吉姆·贝尔斯利是一名职业经理人，迈克·拉扎里迪斯是技术员。

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

　　该公司很快就发现了拿破仑的名言：一个不好的将军好于两个好将军的真理。

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

　　据一项调查显示，美国约70%的办公室已经是开放式的。

　　Yet evidence is mounting that this is a bad idea.

　　然而越来越多的证据显示这是一个坏主意。

　　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.

　　设计公司 Gensler，在过去的五年里调查十大行业155家公司的90,000人怎么评价这种工作方式。

　　It has found an astonishing amount of antipathy.

　　发现绝大多数人对此反感。

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

　　他们说开放式办公室使他们更难以集中精神，因为其他人的喧闹和电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.

　　他们看重的是尽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:

　　具有讽刺意味的是，开放式的方式击败了另一个对蒙特梭利管理的主要目标：

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

　　工作人员说这会阻碍他们合作，因为他们不邀请别人或者想不打扰别人时就没法进行讨论。

　　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，在开放式办公室工作的人更容易患高血压，压力更大大，更易被传染，如流感。

　　Time for some discipline—and separate offices

　　是时候进行惩罚了-和单独的办公室

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

　　以儿童为中心的教育技术没头没脑的和不分青红皂白的应用，而且很少重视结果，最终带来了反弹。

　　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.

　　深思熟虑的批评不希望时光完全倒流到死记硬背和教师强横的时代，他们只是说结构和顺序也有自己的位置。

　　The same seems to be happening now in business.

　　现在在商业领域似乎也有同样的情况。

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

　　布里登辩解说，很明显管理者应该把协作和创造力当做技巧而非教条。

　　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·霍斯金斯推测，她们公司的开放办公室表现是如此引人注目，标志着办公室组织方式的一个新时代。

　　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.

　　当工人开始被搬回到单独的办公间，办公室不知不觉替换的一个列着员工说明的布告板，你就会知道，反改革的工作正在顺利进行。

(责任编辑：田学江)