【英语生活】商业烂书奖应该颁给谁？

“Sorry to bug you,” wrote a reader, “but my brother-in-law, a senior banker at Goldman, wants a ‘bad' business book for Christmas and I thought you might have some ideas. Surely there is an opportunity here for a bad business book award? The sector deserves it. Best regards.”

My first thought was that people give each other pretty odd things for Christmas.

One year, my mother-in-law was given a crocheted flamenco doll with a skirt designed to fit perfectly over a toilet roll, to remove any risk of embarrassment that naked toilet paper might cause. While it is hard to know why anyone would want a crocheted loo roll cover, it is harder still to know why anyone would want a bad business book. In particular, I wonder: a) why a senior Goldman banker has asked for such a thing; and b) whether it is responsible to give him one. Haven't bankers had enough bad ideas about business recently without encouraging them to have more?

My second thought was that, yes, I have plenty of ideas about bad business books and, yes, the sector definitely deserves an award. Every year many thousands of business books are published – most of which seem to be piled all around me in the office, in crates, on desks, on the floor and falling out of cupboards. Of these, almost all are bad, some exceedingly so.

The blame for this lies in both the content and the style. The content is generally unpromising – as the big macro business points tend to be obvious and the small micro ones tend to be dull. The style is unpromising, too. Writers who are good at writing are generally more drawn to subjects such as love and death than cash flow and beta coefficients.

Many of the business books that surround me wear their badness on their sleeve. Last week a book arrived in the office with the title: Waging War on Complexity Costs – Reshape Your Cost Structure, Free Up Cash Flows and Boost Productivity by Attacking Process, Product and Organizational Complexity. I found myself so weakened by the title I couldn't even open the cover to see what was inside. If the authors really want to wage war on complexity, the title might have been a good place to start.

Some books are not just bad, they are dangerous too. Happy at Work, Happy at Home, by Caitlin Friedman and Kimberly Yorio, has on its cover a slim young woman in a pink cardigan holding a baby who is laughing prettily. With her spare hand she is typing on her laptop. This is downright irresponsible. Working when you are in charge of children is never happy unless the child is either fast asleep or awake but plugged into Modern Warfare 2 on their PlayStation 3.

A more seriously bad book is Edward De Bono's Think! Before It's Too Late. De Bono's view appears to be that no one has done any proper thinking since the ancient Greeks – with the exception of De Bono himself. Unfortunately, judging from the contents page, it is already too late for him to do any fresh thinking: he has merely rehashed all his old stuff about lateral thinking and Six Thinking Hats.

De Bono is not the only writer of business books who thinks the ancients have a role to play. Another contender for my 2009 prize is Socrates in the Boardroom, which turns out to have nothing to do with either Socrates or boardrooms but is about why top research universities should be led by scholars. I can see mileage in further books in the same series: Socrates in the kitchen, Socrates in the bedroom, Socrates in the downstairs loo.

Although all these books are bad, none is as bad as Who Killed Change? by Ken Blanchard. The story is a “witty whodunnit” featuring a Columbo-style detective investigating the murder of someone called Change and who interviews suspects called Ernest Urgency, Clair Communication and Peter Performance Management. Laboured, tired, moronic and utterly tedious, this little volume leads to the following conclusion, written out in big writing on the last page: “Change Can Be Successful Only When The Usual Characters In An Organisation Combine Their Unique Talents and Consistently Involve Others In Initiating, Implementing And Sustaining Change.”

I don't know about that, but I do know that Sentences Are More Successful When Upper and Lower Case Are Used Properly.

I also know that the reader's brother-in-law banker would be very happy to find this book in his Christmas stocking.

“很抱歉打扰你，”一位读者写道，“我的姐夫，高盛(Goldman)的一位资深银行家，希望圣诞节得到一本‘很烂'的商业书籍作为礼物，我想，你对此可能略知一二。想必还可以趁此机会设一项商业烂书奖？这个领域理应设立这样的奖项。谨致问候。”

我的第一个想法是，人们在圣诞节会互赠稀奇古怪的礼物。

有一年，我婆婆收到一件钩针编织的弗拉明戈舞者玩偶，身上的裙子正好可以完全遮盖住成卷的卫生纸，从而避免了没有遮挡的卫生纸可能引起的一切尴尬。很难理解为什么会有人想要钩针编织的卫生纸套子，而为什么会有人想要一本很烂的商业书籍，更加让人想不通。我尤其奇怪的是：一、为什么一名高盛的资深银行家开口要这样的东西；二、送他一本烂书是否是负责任的做法。在没有受到鼓励的情况下，最近银行家关于商业的坏思想还不够多吗？

我的第二个想法是，是的，我相当了解商业烂书，是的，这个领域确实可以设个奖项。每年出版的商业图书有数千种——其中多数似乎都会被堆到我的办公室，在我周围摆得到处都是：箱子里、桌子上、地板上，在柜橱上摇摇欲坠。其中绝大部分是烂书，有些尤其烂得透顶。

无论内容还是风格，都能以烂冠之。内容通常毫无看头——大的宏观商业观点常常流于肤浅，小的微观商业观点则往往枯燥无味。风格也同样不可指望。对擅长写作的作家来说，爱情和死亡这类题材，通常比现金流和贝塔系数更有吸引力。

环绕在我周围的许多商业书籍，从封面上看就很差劲。上周送到办公室的一本书叫做：《向复杂性成本开战——通过解决流程、产品和组织复杂性，重塑你的成本结构，解放现金流，提高生产率》(Waging War on Complexity Costs – Reshape Your Cost Structure, Free Up Cash Flows and Boost Productivity by Attacking Process, Product and Organizational Complexity)。这个书名看得我浑身乏力，甚至没法翻开书来看看里面写着什么。假如作者真的要向复杂性开战，这个标题或许是不错的出发点。

有些书不仅烂，还危险。凯特琳•弗里德曼(Caitlin Friedman)和金佰利•约里奥(Kimberly Yorio)合著的《快乐工作、快乐居家》(Happy at Work, Happy at Home)封面上印着一位苗条的年轻女子，身着粉红色开襟毛衫，一手抱着咯咯笑的婴儿，另一只手在笔记本电脑上敲敲打打。这完全是不负责任的。除非孩子睡得正香，或是在用PlayStation 3全神贯注地玩“现代战争2”游戏，否则，一边照顾孩子一边工作绝不会是让人开心的事情。

一本烂得更严重的书是爱德华•德•博诺(Edward De Bono)的《思考！在为时已晚之前》(Think! Before It's Too Late)。德博诺的观点似乎是，自从古希腊人以来，没有人进行过正确的思考——除了德•博诺自己以外。遗憾的是，从目录页来判断，他要进行任何新的思考都为时已晚：他不过是重弹横向思维和《六顶思考帽》(Six Thinking Hats)的老调。

德•博诺不是唯一认为古人有其作用的商业书作者。我列出的2009年度烂书奖入围名单中的另一本书是《董事会会议室里的苏格拉底》(Socrates in the Boardroom)，该书其实与苏格拉底或董事会会议室都无关，而是讲为什么一流研究型大学应由学者来领导。由此，我可以联想出一长串的同系列图书：《厨房里的苏格拉底》、《卧室里的苏格拉底》、《楼下卫生间里的苏格拉底》……

尽管这些书都很烂，但没有一本比得过肯•布兰佳(Ken Blanchard)的《谁杀死了变革？》(Who Killed Change?)。书里讲了一个“机智的侦探故事”：一位科伦坡(Columbo)式的侦探，调查一个名为“变革”之人的谋杀案件，他审问的嫌疑犯包括欧内斯特•紧迫(Ernest Urgency)、克莱尔•沟通(Clair Communication)和彼得•绩效管理(Peter Performance Management)。这本薄薄的图书文字吃力，内容俗套、弱智、乏味之至，最终得出如下结论（以首字母大写的形式印刷在最后一页上）：“一个组织的变革，只有在该组织的常见角色将其独特才能结合起来，并在发起、实施和维持变革时始终让其它角色参与其中的情况下，才会成功。”(Change Can Be Successful Only When The Usual Characters In An Organisation Combine Their Unique Talents and Consistently Involve Others In Initiating, Implementing And Sustaining Change.)

对此，我不太了解，我只知道，“在大小写字母正当使用的情况下，句子的效果更好”。(Sentences Are More Successful When Upper and Lower Case Are Used Properly)

我也知道，那位读者的银行家姐夫会很高兴地在他的圣诞节长袜中，发现这本书。

译者/何黎