工作中的“鸡群效应”

演讲题目：

Why it's time to forget the pecking order at work

演讲者：

Margaret Heffernan 

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中英文对照

An evolutionary biologist at Purdue University named William Muir studied chickens. He was interested in productivity — I think it's something that concerns all of us — but it's easy to measure in chickens because you just count the eggs. He wanted to know what could make his chickens more productive, so he devised a beautiful experiment.

普度大学一位名叫威廉.缪尔的生物进化学家研究了鸡群。他对生产率很感兴趣，我觉得他的研究关系到我们每个人，但计算鸡的生产率很简单，只需要数数鸡蛋就行了。他想要知道如何提高鸡的生蛋率，所以他设计了一个巧妙的实验。

Chickens live in groups, so first of all, he selected just an average flock, and he let it alone for six generations. But then he created a second group of the individually most productive chickens — you could call them superchickens — and he put them together in a superflock, and each generation, he selected only the most productive for breeding.

鸡都是群居的，所以他先选择了一群普通的鸡，然后他让这一群鸡独自生存繁衍直到第六代。然后他又用生产力最强的创建了第二个鸡群你可以叫它们“超级鸡”，他将超级鸡放在一起成了“超级鸡群”，然后在每一代里，他都选择最高产的鸡来繁衍。

After six generations had passed, what did he find? Well, the first group, the average group, was doing just fine. They were all plump and fully feathered and egg production had increased dramatically. What about the second group? Well, all but three were dead. They'd pecked the rest to death. (Laughter) The individually productive chickens had only achieved their success by suppressing the productivity of the rest.

在经过六代以后，他发现了什么呢？第一群普通的鸡，表现都还不错，它们都身形结实、羽翼丰满，并且鸡蛋的产量急剧增加。而第二群呢？除了三只以外全死了，那三只鸡把其他的鸡都啄死了。这些个个高产的鸡只是通过挤兑同伴才获得了成功。

Now, as I've gone around the world talking about this and telling this story in all sorts of organizations and companies, people have seen the relevance almost instantly, and they come up and they say things to me like, 'That superflock, that's my company.' (Laughter) Or, 'That's my country.' Or, 'That's my life.'

现在，我走遍世界，在各类组织和公司里讲述这个故事，人们几乎立刻就看出了其中的关联，然后都跑来对我说这样的话：“我们公司就是那个超级鸡群。”有的说：“那就是我的国家。”还有的说，“那就是我的人生。”

All my life I've been told that the way we have to get ahead is to compete: get into the right school, get into the right job, get to the top, and I've really never found it very inspiring. I've started and run businesses because invention is a joy, and because working alongside brilliant, creative people is its own reward. And I've never really felt very motivated by pecking orders or by superchickens or by superstars.

我的一生中都被告知要获得成功只有不断的竞争：进好的学校、找好的工作、要做人上人。但我从没觉得这些话有多激励人。我开始为我自己的事业奋斗，因为创造是快乐的，也因为与许多优秀的、有创造力的人并肩奋斗本身就是一种回报。我自己从来不会通过挤兑他人或从“超级鸡”或超级大明星那获得激励。

But for the past 50 years, we've run most organizations and some societies along the superchicken model. We've thought that success is achieved by picking the superstars, the brightest men, or occasionally women, in the room, and giving them all the resources and all the power. And the result has been just the same as in William Muir's experiment: aggression, dysfunction and waste. If the only way the most productive can be successful is by suppressing the productivity of the rest, then we badly need to find a better way to work and a richer way to live.

但是50多年过去了，我们用超级鸡的模式经营了大多数组织和很多社会。我们曾觉得成功靠的是挑选顶尖人才，把那些最聪明的男人或者女人放在一起，然后给他们所有的资源和权利。结果也和威廉的实验如出一辙：那些拔尖者野心勃勃，组织功能失调，还出现了各种资源的浪费。如果实现高生产率的唯一途径是通过抑制对手生产率的话，那我们就更加迫切的需要另外一条路和更多样的方法去生存。

So what is it that makes some groups obviously more successful and more productive than others? Well, that's the question a team at MIT took to research. They brought in hundreds of volunteers, they put them into groups, and they gave them very hard problems to solve.

那么，到底是什么造就了一些团队比其它的更加成功、更加高效呢？这也是麻省理工学院的一个研究团队提出的问题。他们邀请了几百名志愿者，将他们分成几组，让他们解决非常困难的问题。结果与你期望的一样，其中一些团队比另外一些优秀很多。

And what happened was exactly what you'd expect, that some groups were very much more successful than others, but what was really interesting was that the high-achieving groups were not those where they had one or two people with spectacularly high I.Q. Nor were the most successful groups the ones that had the highest aggregate I.Q. Instead, they had three characteristics, the really successful teams. First of all, they showed high degrees of social sensitivity to each other. This is measured by something called the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test. It's broadly considered a test for empathy, and the groups that scored highly on this did better.

但真正有趣的是，表现优异的团队并不是拥有一两个超高智商的团队，也不是那些整体智商水平最高的团队。反之，那些成功的团队都有三个特点.第一，他们都有着较高的社交灵敏度。这是由一种“由眼及心”的测试检验出来的。它被广泛的理解为同理心测试，在这个测试里获得高分的团队解决问题的表现更优异。

Secondly, the successful groups gave roughly equal time to each other, so that no one voice dominated, but neither were there any passengers. And thirdly, the more successful groups had more women in them. (Applause) Now, was this because women typically score more highly on the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test, so you're getting a doubling down on the empathy quotient? Or was it because they brought a more diverse perspective? We don't really know, but the striking thing about this experiment is that it showed what we know, which is some groups do better than others, but what's key to that is their social connectedness to each other.

第二，成功的团队给了每个人同样的时间，这样就没有任何人会成为主导，也没有任何人有机会搭便车。第三，成功的团队里都有更多的女性员工。是不是因为女性通常在“由眼及心”测试里得分更高，所以他们所在的团队具有双倍的同理心？或者是因为她们用更多的视角看问题？这个问题我们还无从知晓，然而重要的是这个实验证实了我们的理论：那些团队表现优异的关键在于每个人和队友的关系。

So how does this play out in the real world? Well, it means that what happens between people really counts, because in groups that are highly attuned and sensitive to each other, ideas can flow and grow. People don't get stuck. They don't waste energy down dead ends.

那么这个原理是怎样在现实中体现的？这意味着人与人之间的互动非常重要，因为在成员之间高度契合和反应灵敏的团队里创意才会涌动并且发展壮大。人们不会被某个想法困扰住，不会浪费精力钻牛角尖。

An example: Arup is one of the world's most successful engineering firms, and it was commissioned to build the equestrian center for the Beijing Olympics. Now, this building had to receive two and a half thousand really highly strung thoroughbred horses that were coming off long-haul flights, highly jet-lagged, not feeling their finest.

举个例子：Arup是世界上最成功的工程公司之一，它是北京奥运会马术中心的建造商。现在，这个建筑必须容纳2500匹刚由长途飞机运送过来的高质量的纯种马，这些马儿有很严重的时差，身体状况也并不算好。

And the problem the engineer confronted was, what quantity of waste to cater for? Now, you don't get taught this in engineering school — (Laughter) — and it's not really the kind of thing you want to get wrong, so he could have spent months talking to vets, doing the research, tweaking the spreadsheet.

而工程师面临的问题是要应付多少马粪？这个在工程学院可没有学过，但是谁也不想把这个问题搞砸。其实他本可以花上几个月时间和兽医交流，做各种研究，调整电子数据表。

Instead, he asked for help and he found someone who had designed the Jockey Club in New York. The problem was solved in less than a day. Arup believes that the culture of helpfulness is central to their success.

但实际上他四处寻求帮助,找到了一个曾经设计过纽约赛马场的人，问题用了不到一天就解决了。Arup相信他们成功的精髓是互帮互助的文化。

Now, helpfulness sounds really anemic, but it's absolutely core to successful teams, and it routinely outperforms individual intelligence. Helpfulness means I don't have to know everything, I just have to work among people who are good at getting and giving help.

互帮互助听起来很没士气，但它在成功的团队里至关重要，其作用往往胜过个体的智慧。互帮互助意味着“我没有必要了解所有事”,我只需要在一群愿意寻求并给予帮助的人之间工作。

At SAP, they reckon that you can answer any question in 17 minutes. But there isn't a single high-tech company I've worked with that imagines for a moment that this is a technology issue, because what drives helpfulness is people getting to know each other. Now that sounds so obvious, and we think it'll just happen normally, but it doesn't.

在SAP（德国软件公司），他们记得一个人可以在17分钟之内回答任何问题。但是，从没有一个和我合作过的高科技公司曾经觉得这是个技术问题，因为驱使大家互助的正是彼此间的互相了解。既然互助听起来那么浅显，让我们觉得它会自然发生，但并非如此。

When I was running my first software company, I realized that we were getting stuck. There was a lot of friction, but not much else, and I gradually realized the brilliant, creative people that I'd hired didn't know each other. They were so focused on their own individual work, they didn't even know who they were sitting next to, and it was only when I insisted that we stop working and invest time in getting to know each other that we achieved real momentum.

当我在经营第一家软件公司时，我意识到我们陷入了困境。除了许多摩擦就没有别的了，后来我渐渐意识到，我雇的那些聪明又有创造力的人并不了解彼此。他们将全部的精力都投入了彼此的工作，他们甚至都不知道是谁坐在他们旁边，只有当我坚持让大家停掉工作花些时间去认识他人的时候，我们才取得了一些突破性的进展。

Now, that was 20 years ago, and now I visit companies that have banned coffee cups at desks because they want people to hang out around the coffee machines and talk to each other. The Swedes even have a special term for this. They call it fika, which means more than a coffee break. It means collective restoration.

那是20年以前的事儿了，如今我访问的公司都不允许员工在桌上放咖啡杯，因为公司希望人们能够走到咖啡机前与人交流。在瑞士，甚至有个与之相关的专有名词，他们管这叫做fika，意思是超越茶歇的活动，也表示集体的休整。

At Idexx, a company up in Maine, they've created vegetable gardens on campus so that people from different parts of the business can work together and get to know the whole business that way. Have they all gone mad? Quite the opposite — they've figured out that when the going gets tough, and it always will get tough if you're doing breakthrough work that really matters, what people need is social support, and they need to know who to ask for help.

在缅因州的Idexx公司，他们在园区里修了一个菜园，让所有部门的人能够凑到一起干活儿，并且了解整个公司的运营状况。是这些人都疯了吗？恰恰相反，他们知道了当事情进展不顺时，事情总会这样难以避免。如果你做的是非常有突破性和重要的工作，人们需要的是社交上的支持，也需要知道他们可以向谁求助。

Companies don't have ideas; only people do. And what motivates people are the bonds and loyalty and trust they develop between each other. What matters is the mortar, not just the bricks.

公司造不出创意，只有人可以。真正激励人的是彼此间建立的联系、忠诚和信任。重要的是砂浆，而不只是砖头。

Now, when you put all of this together, what you get is something called social capital. Social capital is the reliance and interdependency that builds trust. The term comes from sociologists who were studying communities that proved particularly resilient in times of stress. Social capital is what gives companies momentum, and social capital is what makes companies robust. What does this mean in practical terms?

当你将两者放在一起，就是所谓的社会资本。它是一种信赖和依存，能够建立信任。这个名词来自于一位社会学家，他对社区的研究证明了社会在紧张时期具备更高的适应性。社会资本可以让公司稳固，也可以使公司更有活力。而它有什么实际意义吗？

It means that time is everything, because social capital compounds with time. So teams that work together longer get better, because it takes time to develop the trust you need for real candor and openness. And time is what builds value.

它代表时间就是一切，社会资本会随着时间增加。所以团队磨合的越久就工作的越好，因为要让人真正坦诚和坦率，就需要时间来建立信任。时间会造就价值。

When Alex Pentland suggested to one company that they synchronize coffee breaks so that people would have time to talk to each other, profits went up 15 million dollars, and employee satisfaction went up 10 percent. Not a bad return on social capital, which compounds even as you spend it.

当AlexPentland在建议一家公司整合茶歇时间，让所有人都有时间去和别人交流时，公司的利润增加了1500万美元，并且雇员满意度上升了10%。这份社会资本的回报还不赖吧，而且甚至它在消耗的过程中还会不断增加。

Now, this isn't about chumminess, and it's no charter for slackers, because people who work this way tend to be kind of scratchy, impatient, absolutely determined to think for themselves because that's what their contribution is.

这里不涉及裙带关系，也没有懒人的位置，因为这样去做的人总是会有些毛毛躁躁、急功近利，心里只有自己，因为他们觉得这才能体现出自己的价值。

Conflict is frequent because candor is safe. And that's how good ideas turn into great ideas, because no idea is born fully formed. It emerges a little bit as a child is born, kind of messy and confused, but full of possibilities. And it's only through the generous contribution, faith and challenge that they achieve their potential. And that's what social capital supports.

有时冲突会频繁，但这样的坦率总是好的，因为这是一个尚可的点子变成杰作的过程，没有哪个点子生来就完美。它就像新生儿的诞生一样，有点混乱、困惑，但是未来充满可能。在接受外界慷慨的帮助，有了信念战胜挑战之后才能发挥出它们最大的潜能，这就是社会资本所支持的。

Now, we aren't really used to talking about this, about talent, about creativity, in this way. We're used to talking about stars. So I started to wonder, well, if we start working this way, does that mean no more stars? So I went and I sat in on the auditions at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. And what I saw there really surprised me, because the teachers weren't looking for individual pyrotechnics. They were looking for what happened between the students, because that's where the drama is.

但我们很少谈论这个话题，很少用这种方式谈论智慧和创造力。我们习惯谈论明星员工,所以我开始想，如果我们开始以这种方式培养人才，是不是就不会再有明星员工了呢？所以当我在欣赏伦敦皇家艺术学院戏剧的试演时，眼前的一切真的让我很惊讶。因为教授们并不看重个人的表演能力，他们看重的是学生之间那种互动，因为戏剧就是这样产生的。

And when I talked to producers of hit albums, they said, 'Oh sure, we have lots of superstars in music. It's just, they don't last very long. It's the outstanding collaborators who enjoy the long careers, because bringing out the best in others is how they found the best in themselves.'

而当我与一些畅销专辑的制作人交谈时，他们说，“当然了，我们有很多音乐巨星。只不过他们的名气并没有持续很久。合作性非常强的人，在事业上往往可以做得更久，因为当他们激励别人做到最好的同时，也往往将最好的自己呈现出来。”

And when I went to visit companies that are renowned for their ingenuity and creativity, I couldn't even see any superstars, because everybody there really mattered. And when I reflected on my own career, and the extraordinary people I've had the privilege to work with, I realized how much more we could give each other if we just stopped trying to be super chickens.

当我访问那些以独特性和创造性闻名的公司，我甚至并没有看到什么明星员工，因为每个人都很重要。当我反思自己的事业，以及我有幸合作的出色的同事时，我意识到如果我们放弃做“超级鸡”的话，我们其实可以给予对方更多。一旦你们真正理解人与人之间的互动，很多问题就会迎刃而解。

Once you appreciate truly how social work is, a lot of things have to change. Management by talent contest has routinely pitted employees against each other. Now, rivalry has to be replaced by social capital. For decades, we've tried to motivate people with money, even though we've got a vast amount of research that shows that money erodes social connectedness. Now, we need to let people motivate each other.

人才竞赛类型的管理哲学总是鼓励员工们互相竞争。如今社会资本已经代替了竞争。几十年来，我们试过用金钱去激励人们，尽管已有大量的研究表明，金钱将破坏人与人之间的社会连接。现在，我们应该让人们互相激励。

And for years, we've thought that leaders were heroic soloists who were expected, all by themselves, to solve complex problems. Now, we need to redefine leadership as an activity in which conditions are created in which everyone can do their most courageous thinking together.

多年来，我们认为领导者应该像救世主那样独自解决复杂的难题。如今，我们应该重新定义领导力，领导力就是有能力去创造一种环境，让其中的每个人都能集思广益。我们知道这行得通。

We know that this works. When the Montreal Protocol called for the phasing out of CFCs, the chlorofluorocarbons implicated in the hole in the ozone layer, the risks were immense. CFCs were everywhere, and nobody knew if a substitute could be found. But one team that rose to the challenge adopted three key principles.

蒙特利尔协定书提倡逐步禁用氟氯烃，因为氟氯烃会导致臭氧空洞，这样的风险是极大的，氟氯烃无处不在，而且没有人清楚能否找到替代品。但是有个团队迎接了挑战并采用了三个关键原则。

The first was the head of engineering, Frank Maslen, said, there will be no stars in this team. We need everybody. Everybody has a valid perspective. Second, we work to one standard only: the best imaginable. And third, he told his boss, Geoff Tudhope, that he had to butt out, because he knew how disruptive power can be.

工程学院的院长FrankMaslen这样说：第一，团队里不应该有明星队员,我们需要每个人,每个人都有独到的见解。第二，我们做事只遵循一个标准：没有最好，只有更好。第三，他告诉他的老板GeoffTudhope,不应该进行干涉，因为Frank明白干涉别人的破坏力不容忽视。

Now, this didn't mean Tudhope did nothing. He gave the team air cover, and he listened to ensure that they honored their principles. And it worked: Ahead of all the other companies tackling this hard problem, this group cracked it first. And to date, the Montreal Protocol is the most successful international environmental agreement ever implemented.

当然，这并不意味着Tudhope只能毫无作为。他要保证团队的正常运作，也会倾听团队的意见并确保他们遵守原则。这招奏效了：Tudhope的公司在处理这个棘手问题时的表现，远远超越了其他公司，他们首先获得了成功。到目前为止，蒙特利尔协定书是执行最成功的国际环境公约。

There was a lot at stake then, and there's a lot at stake now, and we won't solve our problems if we expect it to be solved by a few supermen or superwomen. Now we need everybody, because it is only when we accept that everybody has value that we will liberate the energy and imagination and momentum we need to create the best beyond measure. Thank you.

之前有好多亟待处理的事情，现在也一样。如果我们仅仅寄希望于一两个超人，那么肯定不能解决问题。现在我们需要每一个人，因为只有我们承认每个人有价值，才能充分释放我们需要的能量、想象力和动力，创造出一片新天地。谢谢。

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