Companies Will Perform Better If Employees Are Not Cowed into Silence

别把员工吓得不敢开口 这样公司业绩会更好

In “dad’s army”, a British sitcom about a home-defence force, Sergeant Wilson would often query his commander’s various orders with the languid phrase “Do you think that’s wise, sir?” His scepticism, although it was often ignored, was usually justified.

有一部英国情景喜剧叫《老爸上战场》（Dad’s Army），讲述一支国防部队的故事。威尔逊中士在接到指挥官各种各样的命令时总会懒洋洋地反问一句：“长官，您觉得这么做明智吗？”他的质疑经常都被无视，但往往是有道理的。

Many employees must be tempted to echo Sgt. Wilson on a daily basis when they see their bosses headed down the wrong track. But caution, for fear of appearing insubordinate or foolish and thus possibly at risk of losing their jobs, often leads workers to keep silent.

看着自己的老板沿着错误的道路行进，许多员工肯定都恨不得天天都像威尔逊中士那样，给老板提个醒。但他们怕这会显得自己不服管或傻里傻气而丢了工作，所以谨慎起见，往往还是不发一言。

A culture of silence can be dangerous, argues a new book, “The Fearless Organisation”, by Amy Edmondson, a professor at Harvard Business School. Some of her examples are from the airline industry. One was its deadliest accident: a crash between Boeing 747s in the Canary Islands in 1977 when a co-pilot felt unable to query his captain’s decision to take off based on a misunderstanding of instructions from air-traffic control. Another case was that of the Columbia space shuttle in 2003; an engineer who may have diagnosed damage to the shuttle’s wing before the flight felt unable to speak as he was “too low down” at nasa.

哈佛大学商学院教授艾米·艾德蒙森（Amy Edmondson）在新书《无畏的组织》（The Fearless Organisation）中指出，这种沉默的文化可能会很危险。她列举的部分事例来自航空业。其中一个是史上最惨重的一场空难：1977年，两架波音747在加纳利群岛（Canary Islands）相撞。一名机长误解了空管指令，决定起飞，而副驾驶员无法开口质疑其决定。另一个例子是2003年的哥伦比亚号航天飞机事故。一名工程师可能在起飞前就已发现机翼有破损，但没办法说出口，因为他在NASA里“级别太低了”。

The stakes may be lower than life or death in most organisations, but companies also suffer when people keep schtum, Ms Edmondson believes. The mis-selling scandal in 2016 at Wells Fargo, an American bank, for example, related to its culture. The lender encouraged staff to persuade clients to buy additional products and for a while achieved levels of “cross-selling” that were twice the industry average rate.

在多数组织里，沉默带来的风险并不至于闹出人命，但艾德蒙森认为，如果员工都缄口不言，那么企业也会受损。例如，美国的富国银行在2016年爆出的违规销售丑闻就与其文化有关。富国激励员工说服客户购买更多该银行的产品，该行的“交叉销售”率一度达到行业平均水平的两倍。

Pressure on employees was intense. At some branches, staff were not allowed to leave until they met their daily target. Bonuses were based on sales figures and people who failed to meet the targets were fired. This was not a place where workers were likely to question the wisdom of the strategy. It is hardly surprising that employees resorted to subterfuge such as opening fake accounts to meet their goals.

员工们压力巨大。在有些分行，员工须达到每日的销售目标才能下班。奖金与销售数字挂钩，没达到销售目标的员工会被解雇。在这种地方，员工不大可能去质疑这种策略是否明智。毫不意外，为了达到目标，他们采取了开设虚假账户之类的招数。

Similar problems emerged at Volkswagen, which was caught up in a scandal over diesel emissions from 2015. The engines of its diesel models did not meet American emissions standards and engineers devised a system to fool the regulators. Ms Edmondson says the company’s culture had been one based on intimidation and fear; Ferdinand Piëch, its longtime boss, boasted of telling engineers they had six weeks to improve the bodywork fitting on pain of dismissal. In the circumstances, engineers were understandably unwilling to mention the bad news on emissions standards and instead worked around the problem.

自2015年起卷入柴油排放丑闻的大众汽车也出现了类似的问题。该公司柴油车的发动机未能达到美国的排放标准，于是大众的工程师设计了一个系统来欺骗监管部门。艾德蒙森表示，大众的文化是基于恐吓和恐惧。长期担任该公司老板的费迪南德·皮耶希（Ferdinand Piëch）得意洋洋地大谈自己要求工程师在六周之内改进车身装配，否则就开除他们。可想而知，工程师们在这种情况下自然不愿提及有关排放标准的坏消息，而是设法以偏门手段解决这个问题。

In a corporate culture based on fear and intimidation, it may appear that targets are being achieved in the short term. But in the long run the effect is likely to be counterproductive. Studies show that fear inhibits learning. And when confronted with a problem, scared workers find ways of covering it up or getting around it with inefficient practices.

在基于恐惧和恐吓的企业文化之下，企业在短期内似乎是有望实现目标，但长期来看效果很可能适得其反。研究表明，恐惧会阻碍学习。每当遇到问题，惶恐不安的员工要么会想办法掩盖问题，要么会用低效的方法去应付或绕过问题。

The answer is to create an atmosphere of “psychological safety” whereby workers can speak their minds. In a sense, this is the equivalent of Toyota’s “lean manufacturing” process, which allows any worker who spots a problem to stop the production line.

解决这个问题的办法是创造一种能提供“心理安全感”的氛围，让员工能畅所欲言。从某种意义上说，这相当于丰田的“精益生产法”。根据这种方法，任何发现问题的员工都有权对生产线喊停。

This does not mean that workers, or their ideas, are immune from criticism, or that they should complain incessantly. The book describes how the success of the second “Toy Story” film was due to a rigorous editing process, in which the early script was revamped. Pixar, the production firm, created what it called a “Braintrust” to give feedback to film directors. The rules were that feedback should be constructive and about the idea, not the person, and that filmmakers should not be defensive in response.

这并不表示员工和他们的想法就会免受批评，也不意味着他们可以抱怨个没完。这本书讲述道，《玩具总动员2》之所以获得成功，原因是它使用了严格而细致的剪辑流程改进早期剧本。皮克斯动画工作室设立了它所谓的“智囊团”（Braintrust），向影片导演提供反馈。根据规则，反馈应该是建设性的，且对事不对人，而影片制作人也不应回以抵触的态度。

And psychological safety is not about whistleblowing. Indeed, if an employee feels the need to act as a whistleblower by speaking to external authorities, that suggests managers have not created an environment within the firm where criticism can be aired.

增进心理安全感并不是为了鼓励检举揭发。事实上，如果一个员工觉得有必要当一个揭发者而向外部权威告发，只说明管理者没有在公司内创造一个供员工公开表达批评的环境。

Nor is such a culture only about safety or avoiding mistakes. As mundane tasks are automated, and workers rely on computers for data analysis, the added value of humans will stem from their creativity. But as Ms Edmondson’s book amply demonstrates, it is hard to be either constructive or creative if you are not confident about speaking out.

这样的文化也不仅仅是为了增强安全性和避免犯错。随着那些乏味的工作任务实现了自动化，员工也依赖计算机来进行数据分析，人类的附加值将源自他们的创造力。但就像艾德蒙森在书中已充分证明的那样，如果一个人不能大胆直言，就别指望他能做到有建设性或创造性了。

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