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Business
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Bartleby
巴托比专栏
Citius, altius, spurious
更快、更高、更假
What can Olympians teach executives?
奥运会选手能教给高管们什么道理？
I want to be successful.
我想要成功。
That person is successful.
那个人是成功的。
So that person can teach me how to be successful.
所以那个人可以教我如何成功。
This syllogism helps explain the torrent of podcasts, books and speeches devoted to the secrets of high performance.
这个三段论有助于解释，为何有海量的播客、书籍和演讲致力于揭示取得卓越成绩的秘诀。
It is one reason why executive-leadership courses draw on case studies from well beyond business: politics, the army and even the Roman empire.
这也是高管领导力课程所借鉴的案例研究素材远超过商业以外的原因之一：政治、军队甚至罗马帝国。
And it has been much in evidence before and during the Olympics, which end in Paris on August 11th.
而且在奥运会之前和期间（奥运会于8月11日在巴黎结束），这个原因就已经很明显了。
Consultancies ask what CEOs can learn from the world’s best athletes.
咨询公司问道，CEO们可以从世界上最优秀的运动员身上学到什么？
Executives attend events in which Olympians describe what makes them tick.
高管们参加活动，在活动中，奥运会选手们描述是什么让他们取得成功。
Articles breathlessly assess the leadership qualities of Simone Biles, an American gymnast who pulled out of the Tokyo games and made a triumphant return in Paris.
许多文章滔滔不绝地评估了西蒙·拜尔斯的领导力素质，这位美国体操运动员退出了东京奥运会，并在巴黎胜利回归。
Bob Bowman, a swimming coach, wrote a book in 2016 called “The Golden Rules”, based on his success shepherding Michael Phelps to greatness;
游泳教练鲍勃·鲍曼基于他成功地将迈克尔·菲尔普斯培养成伟大运动员的经验，在2016年写了一本书，名为《黄金法则》；
the triumphs in this year’s games of Leon Marchand, a French swimmer who is also one of his charges, should give sales a bump.
今年奥运会上，他的另一位徒弟——法国游泳运动员莱昂·马尔尚取得胜利，应该会让这本书的销量大增。
There are threads that connect sporting success and business success.
体育成功和商业成功之间存在着一些联系。
Getting to the games requires intense dedication and hard work.
要参加比赛需要全身心的投入和努力。
Sporting excellence rests on the efforts of multiple people, not just a single individual.
卓越的体育成绩取决于许多人的努力，而不仅仅是一个人。
The people on the podium in Paris are competitive and resilient.
站在巴黎领奖台上的人们富有竞争心和韧性。
It is true that all these things are helpful in the workplace, but so is being able to dress yourself.
的确，所有这些品质在职场都很有帮助，但能够自己穿衣服也很有帮助。
Some things simply don’t need saying.
有些事情是不言而喻的。
Not that this stopped one consultancy from putting out research in 2023 marvelling at the fact that “100% of professional athletes and CEOs spend time mentally preparing” before a big competition or meeting.
但这并没有阻止一家咨询公司在2023年发布研究报告，惊叹地表示在重大比赛或会议之前，“100%的职业运动员和CEO都会花时间进行心理准备”。
If some of the similarities between sports and the workplace are the stuff of cliche, many of the differences are too big to be helpful.
如果说体育和职场之间的一些相似之处是陈词滥调，那么它们之间的许多差异则太大而无法提供助益。
Sporting contests have the objective clarity of finishing positions; most jobs lack such simple metrics.
体育竞赛有客观且明确的名次，而大多数工作缺乏这样简单的衡量标准。
A four-year Olympic cycle building to a contest that may last only seconds has few obvious analogues in business.
长达四年的奥运周期，最终只为了一场可能仅持续数秒的比赛，这在商业领域几乎没有明显的类似情况。
Sports-stars-turned-speakers and business audiences both have an interest in pretending that an Olympic final is like getting ready for a big presentation or end-of-year results.
体育明星出身的演讲者以及商业方面的听众都喜欢假装奥运会决赛就像是为一场大型演讲或年终业绩做准备。
If that were really the case, more executives would go to Olympic training camps to talk to athletes about their greatest earnings calls.
如果真是这样，那么更多的高管会去奥运训练营，与运动员谈论他们最大型的财报电话会议。
The athletes who win medals at the games are blessed not just with prodigious determination but also immense natural gifts.
在比赛中赢得奖牌的运动员不仅具有非凡的决心，而且还拥有无比的天赋。
“I got more speed in my little finger than most people have in their whole body, and I was just born that way,” Michael Johnson, a legendary sprinter, recently told “The High Performance Podcast”, a popular show that tries desperately to extract life lessons for mortals from people with superhuman skills.
“我小拇指的速度比大多数人整个身体的速度都要快，我生来就是这样。”传奇短跑运动员迈克尔·约翰逊最近在“卓越成绩播客”中说道，这是一档很受欢迎的节目，费尽心思地试图从拥有超人技能的人那里为凡夫俗子汲取人生经验。
The job of managers is partly to identify such superstars, but their real task is getting the best out of a workforce whose talents will vary and whose jobs will not depend as heavily on genetics.
管理者的部分工作是识别出这样的超级明星，但是他们真正的任务是让员工队伍展现出最好的一面，这些员工的才能各不相同，他们的工作也不会像超级明星那样严重依赖于基因。
“As soon as I saw that kid log on, I knew he was special,” are words you do not often hear.
“我一看到那个孩子登录电脑，我就知道他很特别。”你在职场不会经常听到这样的话。
The comparisons between sports and business can raise some interesting questions, although they are not necessarily the ones you might expect.
体育和商业之间的比较可以引发一些有趣的问题，尽管它们不一定是你可能期望看到的问题。
In her book “The Long Win”, Cath Bishop, a former Olympian turned consultant, describes how a rigid focus on winning can be self-defeating whether you are in a singlet or a suit.
前奥运会选手、现在从事咨询的凯思·毕晓普在她的书《漫长的胜利》中描述了，无论是穿着运动衫还是西装，过于执着地关注胜利可能会弄巧成拙。
Elite athletes increasingly like to talk about trusting in the process—focusing on the performance rather than on the results.
精英运动员越来越喜欢谈论要信任过程——专注于表现而不是结果。
Divorcing the way a business decision is made from its actual outcome is a discipline that companies might benefit from, too.
将企业决策的方式与其实际结果分开，这也是企业可能从中受益的一种训练。
The pressure on competitive sports teams to cut corners in pursuit of success can lead to toxic cultures and outright cheating, just as it can within firms.
竞技体育队伍为追求成功而走捷径，这种压力可能导致有毒文化和彻头彻尾的作弊，就像企业内部的情况一样。
The way that Olympians get feedback from coaches and the motivation that comes from genuinely mastering a skill: these, too, are things to reflect on.
奥运选手从教练那里得到反馈，以及真正精通一项技能所带来的激励：这些也是值得反思的事情。
But these parallels are not really why people listen to the podcasts or turn up at the events.
但这些相似之处并不是人们收听播客或参加活动的真正原因。
They want a simple formula for success.
人们只想要一个简单的成功公式。
And they want to hear what it is like to run faster, jump higher and vault better than anyone else.
而且他们想要听到人们描述，比其他人跑得更快、跳得更高、撑杆跳得更好是什么感觉。
They want to hear stories that can have no conceivable value back in the office (how Mr Bowman broke Mr Phelps’s goggles on purpose before a race to prepare him for anything, or why Mr Johnson ran in that famously upright style).
他们想听那种在办公室里可能没有任何价值的故事（鲍曼如何在比赛前故意打破菲尔普斯的护目镜，让他做好应对任何事情的准备，或者约翰逊为什么以那种著名的直立姿势跑步）。
If they can pretend it’s good for their career, so much the better.
如果他们能假装这些故事对他们的职业有好处，那就更好了。
