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Bartleby
巴托比专栏
Stupid rules and quick wins
愚蠢规定和速胜
Why every boss can benefit from asking employees what most infuriates them.
为什么每个老板都能从询问最让员工愤怒的事情是什么而受益。
Interrogate the internet about the most ridiculous rules people have experienced at work, and the stories roll in.
上网问一下人们在工作中经历过哪些最荒谬的规定，故事就会源源不断地出现。
The lab assistant instructed to label the expiry dates on all chemical samples, who was reprimanded for not writing when a bottle of sand would go off (to comply, they put in a date 65m years hence).
某个实验室助手被要求给所有化学样品贴上过期日期标签，他/她因为没有写明一瓶沙子何时过期而受到斥责（为了遵守规定，他/她在标签上写下了一个距今6500万年的日期）。
The accounting firm where only partners were allowed to have plants over a certain height.
某会计事务所规定，只有合伙人才能拥有超过一定高度的植物。
The company where employees were required to submit requests to maintenance if they wanted the height of their office chairs to be adjusted.
某公司规定， 员工如果想调整办公椅的高度，必须向维修部门提交请求。
The baroque limitations on how often people are allowed to go to the lavatory.
还有限制人们上厕所频率的巴洛克般繁复的规定。
These are extreme examples of corporate red tape.
这些都是公司繁文缛节的极端例子。
But most companies will have at least one pettifogging rule that hinders more than it helps.
但大多数公司都会有至少一条弊大于利的吹毛求疵的规定。
Does it really make sense to enforce a rigid definition of time off if someone has suffered a bereavement?
如果某人的亲人去世，严格按规定执行休假政策真的有意义吗？
Does getting an expenses claim paid have to feel like something Kafka would reject as implausible?
报销一项费用必须要像是连卡夫卡都会觉得不合理吗？（注：卡夫卡的《审判》和《城堡》批判了官僚体制的繁文缛节。）
By the same token, every company will have settled into a way of doing things that might once have served a useful purpose but no longer does.
同样地，每个公司都会形成一种做事方式，这种方式可能曾经有用，但现在已经不再有用了。
Such stones in the corporate shoe are that most welcome of things for managers: the quick win.
公司鞋子里的这种磨脚石子儿（这种带来麻烦的规定）是最受管理者欢迎的东西：它们是取得速胜的机会。
Quick wins are often associated with incoming bosses.
速胜通常与新上任的老板有关。
A new broom is more likely to see things that seem to make little sense, and on closer inspection, actually make none.
新官上任更有可能看到那些看似没多大意义、仔细看其实也毫无意义的东西。
Staff are happier to say what bothers them: any implied criticism is aimed at the old regime.
员工们更愿意对新老板说出困扰他们的事情：任何隐含的批评都是针对上一任老板的。
It helps a new chief executive if they can make changes that quickly demonstrate to staff and customers their ability to make things better.
如果一位新任CEO能够做出改变，迅速向员工和客户展示他们改善现状的能力，这对他们会有帮助。
Small victories also give them permission to take their time over bigger decisions.
小胜利也会让他们允许自己在更大的决策上慢慢来。
Hubert Joly, whose turnaround of Best Buy, an electronics retailer, has become case-study catnip, found nothing but quick wins when he became the CEO in 2012.
休伯特·乔利对电子产品零售企业百思买的扭亏为盈已成为案例研究的热门题材，他在2012年出任百思买CEO时，只是发现了一些可以取得速胜的地方。
He credits an initial stint working at a Best Buy store in St Cloud, Minnesota with giving him many of his ideas.
他认为自己有很多想法都要归功于最初在明尼苏达州圣克劳德的百思买商店工作的那段时间。
Staff were upset that the previous management had cut employee discounts on products.
员工们因为之前的管理层砍掉了员工购买产品的折扣而感到沮丧。
The store gave too much space to fading product categories like DVDs and CDs, and not enough to fast-growing ones like mobile phones.
这家商店给了像DVD和CD这类过时产品太多空间，而给像手机这样快速增长的品类的空间不够。
Flat-screen televisions were frequently damaged, partly because of the way they were stacked.
超薄平板电视经常损坏，部分原因是堆放方式不当。
All of these were easy enough to change.
所有这些都很容易改变。
In “The New CEO”, a book on how to make a successful start to life in the top job, Ty Wiggins of Russell Reynolds, an executive-search firm, tells a couple of other quick-win stories.
《新任CEO》讲述了如何在高级职位为职业生涯开个好头，在这本书中，高管猎头公司罗盛咨询的泰·威金斯讲述了几个速胜故事。
One boss found that people at headquarters were distributed chaotically throughout two buildings just across the street from each other.
一位老板发现，总部的员工混乱无序地分布在两座大楼里，这两座大楼隔街相望。
Within a month he had decided where everyone should be sitting, and saved a lot of time and moaning in the process.
一个月内，他就决定了每个人应该坐在哪里，并且在这个过程中节省了大量时间和抱怨。
Stephanie Tully, the boss of Jetstar, a low-cost Australian airline, made it her business to meet as many employees as she could in her first weeks.
斯蒂芬妮·塔利是澳大利亚低成本航空公司捷星的老板，在上任的头几周，她把与尽可能多的员工见面作为自己的任务。
Time and again, she heard complaints from crew about how much they hated the uniform.
她一次又一次地听到机务人员抱怨，他们有多讨厌这套制服。
An early decision to design a new range sent a very visible signal that they were being listened to.
于是她早早决定设计新的制服系列，这发出了一个非常明显的信号：他们的意见被听取了。
After a while, though, it gets harder for bosses to spot this low-hanging fruit.
然而过一段时间之后，老板们就更难发现这些容易实现的目标了。
They may have moved on to bigger things; they may well have introduced the rule that most infuriates everyone.
他们可能已经去做更大的事情，也很可能已经推行了让所有人都最愤怒的规定。
But they should be in no doubt that quick wins will still exist.
但是他们不应怀疑，速胜仍将存在。
Even in efficient companies, rules and bureaucracy accumulate.
即使在高效的公司中，规定和官僚主义也会积累。
The trick is to have a way to keep finding them.
诀窍是要有办法不断找到它们。
In “The Friction Project”, a recent book by Robert Sutton and Huggy Rao, two Stanford University academics, the authors write about a programme at Hawaii Pacific Health called “Getting Rid of Stupid Stuff”.
在《摩擦计划》这本新书中，两位斯坦福大学的学者罗伯特·萨顿和胡吉·拉奥写道，夏威夷太平洋健康中心有一个名为“摆脱蠢东西”的项目。
Clinical staff were asked to nominate idiotic record-keeping processes that they wanted to ditch.
临床工作人员被要求提名，他们想要抛弃哪些愚蠢的记录保存流程。
Eliminating a single data-entry requirement, to click on a patient’s name each time nurses and nursing assistants did an hourly round, freed up thousands of hours a year.
取消一项数据输入要求，即护士和护理助理每隔一小时查房时都要点击患者姓名，每年就省下了数千个小时的时间。
In a similar vein AT&T has a scheme called Project Raindrops, which encourages employees to submit ideas for policies that should be ditched, from excessive approval processes to a virtual private network that logged people out more often than anyone could bear.
同样地，AT&T也有一个名为“雨滴计划”的项目，鼓励员工提议哪些政策应该被废除，从过于繁琐的审批流程，到虚拟专用网络频繁让人退出登录，使人不胜其烦。
There is no reason why bosses cannot do “listening tours” throughout their tenure.
没有理由说明老板们在整个任期内不能进行“倾听之旅”。
Getting managers to do front-line work is another way for them to see where process has got out of hand.
让管理者们去做一线工作是让他们看到哪些流程已失控的另一种方式。
Running a business is hard.
经营企业是困难的。
Why turn down the chance of a quick win?
为什么要拒绝取得速胜的机会呢？
