我在报社的日子:混日子员工欢乐多

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得出的结论是，这是管理不当所造成的令人担忧的后果之一。在这类公司内部，能力不行的人没有被告知他们难担重任，而是被放任着瞎忙活，同时还自我感觉良好。由此产生的结果是，其他更有能力、也更努力工作的员工对这类同事心生厌恶，并最终变得愤世嫉俗，对工作不再全心投入，对公司心怀不满，并且倾向于一有机会就立刻走人。

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.
这份有关“低能员工更开心综合症”的调查或许部分反映了真实情况。但当我回想这些年来自己共事过的所有人，我认为，还有一些更加基本的原因导致了无可救药的笨蛋感到心满意足、而一心追求成功的人则感到苦恼。首先，能力较差的人或许对于能够找到一份工作已经深感幸运，而对于追求卓越的人来说，几乎任何工作都让他们感到失望。（之前约我喝酒的那位同事在离开英国《金融时报》之后已在好几个工作岗位上历经升迁。）由于期望值较低，能力较低的员工不太倾向于批评自己的雇主，同时也不会自认为比老板聪明。这类员工也不会因为自己没有得到更有意思的工作任务而感到生气。

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还要简单：混日子的员工属于B型人格，他们天生就比其他人更容易快乐。近期的一项学术研究显示，充满抱负的A型人格者通常更为成功，而做事迟钝的B型人格者则活得更加开心，寿命也更长久。其他研究已经表明，生活中的“满足者”——他们为达到预想结果只会采取尽可能少的努力——对于工作的满意程度通常比“追求成就最大化者”更高，后一类人倾向于把事情做到尽善尽美，因而总是不可避免地对结果感到失望。

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.
但不管能力较低者究竟是出于什么原因过得更加愉快，在我所接触过的几乎所有公司里，这类员工都大量存在，这一事实推翻了现代管理学实践的两大原则。

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，这一事实表明所有关于员工敬业度的理论都属无稽之谈。能力较高型员工对工作的投入态度很有价值——或者说，如果此类员工将留在公司的话（而他们通常不会这么做），这种投入将会很有价值。而能力最低的员工对工作的投入则什么价值也没有，因为在最理想的状态下你会希望他们对工作极不投入以至于偷偷溜去了其他地方。如果业绩表现中等偏下的员工在工作中感到愉快，那这对于他们而言是一件好事，但这绝对算不上是管理层的首要目标，除非让员工开心能促使他们更加努力地工作。

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.
这项调查结果更加让人感到不安的一点在于，它表明试图对人进行管理几乎没有任何意义。如果表现较差的员工过得愉快的部分原因在于管理层对他们撒手不顾，那么这一方法完全可以应用在全体员工身上。如果所有员工都被放任自生自灭，那么事业心强的人大可放手追求成功，而能力较低的人则可继续混日子。管理层由此可以省下大量精力，而每一个人也能比之前过得更加快活。