Elon Musk roared into the Detroit Auto Show last week and made plain that it’s not only his Tesla TSLA 2.42% electric cars that are expected to meet the very highest performance standards, gunning from zero to 60 miles per hour in a McLaren-like 3.2 seconds. He rides his employees awfully hard, as well.
上周,埃隆o穆斯克在底特律车展上明确表示,特斯拉电动汽车有望达到最高的性能水平,从静止到时速60英里只需3.2秒——这完全是麦克拉伦赛车的加速水准。穆斯克还说,在他的调教下,员工们个个都很努力。
“If you are fighting a battle, it’s way better if you are at the front lines,” Musk told the Wall Street Journal, describing himself not as a mere micromanager but as something far more intense—a “nano-manager.”
穆斯克对《华尔街日报》表示:“如果你在打仗,亲临前线的效果要好得多。”他说,用“微管理”来形容自己还不够确切,他对员工的管理达到了更细致的“纳米级管理”。
Indeed, Musk makes no apologies for what theJournal described as “a hands-on obsession with the tiniest operational and car-design details at Tesla.” It’s safe to say that his domineering style doesn’t differ at SpaceX, the rocket company he founded and runs.
《华尔街日报》报道称,在特斯拉公司,穆斯克“事必躬亲,无论是日常运营,还是汽车设计的细节,他都会亲自过问”。穆斯克认为,这种描述其实并不夸张。穆斯克在他创办并运营的SpaceX火箭公司,他的管理风格也是如此。
Musk is the envy of many—and why not? He’s abillionaire. He was married (twice) to a beautiful actress. He has plans to visit Mars someday. He nonchalantly tosses around the word “Hyperloop.”Heck, he’s the model for Tony Stark, the swashbuckling genius played by Robert Downey Jr. in the “Iron Man” films.
穆斯克是很多人羡慕的对象。这当然很好理解,这位亿万富翁结过两次婚,而且娶的都是美艳动人的女明星。他还打算在将来的某一天去火星逛逛,并且经常兜售他的“超回路高铁”理念。小罗伯特o唐尼扮演的钢铁侠,就是以他为原型塑造的。不过,在大批高管试图尝试“纳米级管理”理念之前,我们必须提醒他们:这种管理并不能发挥员工的最大潜能。
When people’s autonomy in the workplace is sharply curtailed, they feel as if they’ve lost control—and, in turn, their brains react as if they’re being threatened. That raises their level of stress, which often causes them to perform poorly. “Feeling in control, even if it’s an illusion, is key to … cognitive ability staying intact,” Amy Arnsten, a professor of neurobiology and psychology at Yale, has pointed out.
如果人们在职场中的自主性被剥夺,他们就会觉得自己失去了控制力,这会令他们的大脑产生一种被威胁感。这种感受将提高员工感知的压力,从而导致他们的工作效率进一步下降。耶鲁大学神经生物学与心理学教授艾米o阿恩斯坦指出:“觉得自己具有控制力,哪怕那只是一种幻觉,是保持完整认知能力的关键所在。”
Great managers have always known the trouble with dictating to employees. Successfully motivating employees “involves teaching rather than telling,” William B. Given Jr., the president of American Brake Shoe Co., wrote in his 1949 classic Bottom-Up Management.
优秀的管理者通常都知道搞“一言堂”的后果。美国制动蹄有限公司总裁小威廉oBo盖文在其1949年的经典著作《自下而上的管理》中指出,要想成功地激励员工,需要的是“教育,而非说教”。