【英语中国】中国人要吃你的晚餐

It's amazing what you can learn while watching early morning children's TV. The other day I was startled to see an earnest-looking young woman, who was urging parents to get their children to start learning a foreign language as soon as possible.

“Think of the competitive edge you can give your child,” she declared. The message was clear: how could you consider leaving your kids to wallow in monoglot ignorance, while all over the world the next generation of leaders is already getting stuck into several foreign tongues? This was not a question I had been expecting to have to deal with so early in the day, in between the latest episodes of Fifi and the Flowertots and Peppa Pig.

The website touting these language courses makes plain what this is all about – the URL is www.early-advantage.com. And here you can find Connor, who has been learning French since he was four months old. This competitive learning “has subtly but indelibly left its mark on him”, we are told. Now, as a
two-year-old, Connor “is barely at the point where he can speak in complete sentences in English,” his father William reveals. But dad is convinced that Connor has “put in place a foundation . . . that I am sure he will be able to build on later.”

This column is all for multilingualism. The more the merrier. But might four months – or even four years – be a rather early age to start drilling our future leaders in languages that are not otherwise being spoken in the home or being picked up casually on holiday?

Parental anxiety about our children's prospects is kicking in ever earlier. There is a lot of it about in the UK right now, as 15- and 16-year-olds face their first major set of public exams. There seems to be so much at stake. Young people are fighting for survival even before they leave school.

Sir Digby Jones, the former head of the CBI, the UK employers organisation, enjoys reminding audiences (of all ages) that we live in “a brutally competitive world”, “a world where India wants your lunch and China wants your dinner”.

We bring our competitive instincts with us into the workplace, of course, and are confronted by career ladders, which we are supposed to climb. But what if that emphasis on upward progression is leading to what the gurus and academics might call a “sub-optimal allocation of resources”? (In English: the wrong people ending up in the wrong jobs.)

“You come across two types of people in business,” says Simon Mitchell, a director of DDI, the HR consultancy. “There are those who really like the journey to the top – bringing out the best in people, and achieving results through other people – and then there are those who just like the destination, being at the top.”

Not everybody is cut out to be a leader, or wants the responsibility that comes with being a leader. However, some of these same people may also be among the most talented and effective colleagues you have. It is vital to hang on to them, but it would be crazy to give them any significant management duties.

“You have to offer a career path that is not tied to leadership,” Mr Mitchell says. “Don't ‘promote' somebody just because they are good at what they do.” Other rewards – status, pay, job titles, development opportunities – can signal that certain colleagues are “senior” and highly valued.

This is a better and more sustainable approach than the more crudely mechanistic “up or out” theory of organisational life. This survival of the fittest ethos is derived from the view that holds that, ultimately, business is really only about competition, whether internal or external. And it is not enough to succeed: others must fail.

Students of the fashionable concept of “happiness economics” would tell us that the competitive instinct, and the idea that we must always try to do better than our peers, is leading to the terribly low satisfaction rates that surveys of people's happiness are uncovering. We are unable to resist constantly comparing ourselves with others. Hence the joke: if I can't have a pay rise this year, could the boss possibly see fit to cut everybody else's?

Even those chief executives, whose remuneration packages place them squarely in the upper quartile for top people's pay, show few signs of being prepared to ease up just a little or, perish the thought, of allowing others to overtake them in the pay stakes.

But without ambition, and the competitive urge, we would all still be living in caves. Wanting to get on in life is not only natural, it is healthy. So what is the wisest approach?

Some favour Michelangelo's take on all this: “The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.”

Myself, I find “dirty” Harry Callahan (played by Clint Eastwood) to be at least as good a guide as the divine Tuscan genius. In his second outing, in the film Magnum Force, Dirty Harry offers his own particular brand of homespun philosophy. “A man's gotta know his limitations,” he declares. Good advice.

你能通过收看早间儿童电视节目学到一些东西，这一点令人称奇。前几天，我惊讶地看到，一个看上去很真诚的年轻女士，正敦促父母们让他们的孩子尽早开始学习外语。她说道：“想一想你会给自己的孩子什么样的竞争优势。”言下之意很明确：当全世界的下一代领导者都已经在学好几门外语的时候，你怎么能让自己的孩子沦落到只会一种语言的无知人群中？我本来可没打算这么一大清早、在最新一集《花童菲菲》(Fifi and the Flowertots)和《粉红猪小妹》(Peppa Pig)的间隙处理这个问题，

大肆吹捧这些语言课程的网站说得很清楚——网址是www.early-advantage.com。在网站上，你可以找到有关康纳(Connor)的信息，他从四个月大的时候起就学习法语。据说，这种竞争学习“会在他身上留下微妙却不可磨灭的印记”。他的父亲透露说，现在，作为一个两岁的孩子，康纳“几乎达不到用英语说出完整句子的程度”。不过，他爸爸相信，康纳已经“打下了基础，相信他以后一定能够不断进步。”

本文完全赞成掌握多种语言。越多越好。但是，要开始对我们未来的领导者进行语言训练，四个月（或者4岁）也许还是为时太早了吧？而且还是那些非此也不会在家里说、或者休息时可以偶然学到的话。

对于我们孩子的前途，父母担心得比以往更早了。英国现在明显有这种趋势，因为十五六岁的孩子就要面对自己第一轮重要的公开考试。这似乎事关重大。年轻人甚至在离开学校前就在为生存奋斗。

英国雇主组织“英国工商联合会(CBI)”前任理事长迪格比•琼斯爵士(Sir Digby Jones)喜欢提醒（不同年龄的）听众，我们生活在“一个竞争残酷的世界”、“一个印度人想抢你午餐、而中国人要吃你晚餐的世界上”。

当然，我们把自己的竞争本能带到了工作场所，同时面临着要去攀登的职业阶梯。不过，如果这种对晋升的强调正导致大师和学者们所说的“资源不理想配置”，又该怎么办呢？（这句话用人话说就是：错误的人最后担任了错误的职位。）

人力资源顾问公司DDI的一位主管西蒙•米切尔(Simon Mitchell)表示：“在公司里，你会遇到两种类型的人。”“有一些人确实喜欢通往最高层的过程——他们唤起人们的最佳潜能，通过他人实现成果。但也有一些人只是喜欢结果：位居最高层。”

并非每个人都是天生的领导者，也并非每个人都想承担领导者的责任。然而，在你那些最有才华、最高效的同事中，可能就有那种不是天生领导者、不想承担领导责任的人。抓牢他们是必需的，但如果给他们任何重要的管理岗位，那就是发疯。

“你必须提供一条不与领导岗位挂钩的职业道路，”米切尔表示。“不要仅仅因为他们擅长做自己的工作就‘提升'他们。”其它奖励（地位、薪酬、头衔、发展机会）可以表明某位同事是“高级”员工，并且颇受赏识。

与组织生命中更呆板机械的“不晋则退”理论相比，这种方法更胜一筹，也更可持续。这种适者生存的理念来自于这样一种观点：归根结底，商业真正只关乎竞争，无论是内部抑或外部的竞争。而且，成功并不够，还必须击败他人。

掌握时髦“幸福经济学”概念的学生可能会告诉我们，竞争本能，以及我们总得努力胜过同辈的想法，导致幸福程度调查发现，人们的满意率极低。我们无法抗拒经常拿自己与别人比较。因此有一个笑话就讲：如果我今年没能加薪，那么老板可不可以适当地削减其他所有人的薪水呢？

首席执行官的薪酬，让他们径直进入薪酬排前四分之一的梯队。即便是他们，也没有表现出愿意放轻松一点、或是让其他人的薪酬超过他们（让这种想法见鬼去吧）的迹象。

但是，没有这种雄心和竞争的迫切要求，我们可能还生活在穴居时代。希望生活更上一层楼的想法不仅天经地义，而且健康。那么最明智的做法是什么呢？

一些人赞成米开朗基罗(Michelangelo)的说法：“对于我们中多数人来说，最大的危险并不是我们的目标高不可攀，而是目标低得唾手可得。”

至于我自己，我发现“警探哈里”(“dirty”Harry Callahan)[由克林特•伊斯特伍德 (Clint Eastwood)扮演]至少与这位托斯卡纳的天才加圣人一样，不失为一个很好的导师。在电影《紧急搜捕令》(Magnum Force)里，警探哈里在第二次出勤时说出了贴有他独特标签、朴实的哲学。他声称：“一个人必须知道自己的弱点。”这真是个不错的建议。

译者/何黎

《FT商学院》