【英语生活】火山灰提高工作效率？

The eruption of Eyjafjallajökull had some unfortunate consequences last week. Airlines lost billions in revenues; stranded passengers lost tempers and sleep; Kenyan flowers lost their bloom and the celebrity Dannii Minogue lost her new maternity clothes that were being flown in from Hong Kong.

Yet in spite of these losses, there were some sweeping but unreported gains whose impact will be felt for long after passengers have collapsed into their own beds and Dannii has been reunited with her clothes.

For offices all over the western world, last week was one of the sanest and most productive for a very long time. On Monday, people got to work to find half the appointments logged into their BlackBerrys suddenly cancelled. In normal times, I find the mere cancellation of a stray lunch enough to make me feel happy and lucky all day long. Last week, lunches and meetings were cancelled en masse as people were stranded halfway across the world.

Mid-week, the self-styled philosopher Alain de Botton mused on Twitter: "There are meetings which, when cancelled at the last minute, give one an ecstatic feeling of having cheated death for a little longer."

I wouldn't have put it quite so portentously, but I agree with the sentiment. A cancelled meeting is even better than a cancelled lunch, as the latter usually has to be rescheduled later. A cancelled meeting is a net productivity gain: it tends to go away altogether.

The volcano proved what we know already: office work is more inefficient than schoolwork. Last Thursday, my son's dreaded French test was cancelled due to a no-show by the teacher, but because boys need to learn the passé composé, it will take place this week instead. But with meetings, as there is little to be learnt, there are seldom consequences when they fail to take place.

Still more telling was the contrast between schools and offices when lessons and meetings went ahead sparsely attended. The children who missed learning about simultaneous equations will have to catch up; absent office workers not only do not need to catch up, but the meetings ran smoother without them. I went to a meeting on Tuesday where the number of people in attendance was reduced from about 12 to eight. Never have proceedings gone faster.

Even more miraculous was what the volcano did to business conferences. At the time when it was erupting, a lawyer I know was speaking at a conference on cross-border M&A. The audience stopped even pretending to listen and instead were panicking about how they were going to get across borders themselves that evening.

Last week many conferences were cancelled entirely. Personnel Today carried the following story: "The travel chaos caused by the volcanic eruption in Iceland has hit the heart of the HR community, with the (CIPD) forced to cancel the first day of its (IFTDO) conference." Which sounds like pretty good news to me.

Conferences are one of the greatest mysteries of business life. I often ask people who go to a lot of them if they have ever learnt anything. They nearly always say no, but add that the point is the hobnobbing. This is a feeble argument: the hobnobbing would have to be unimaginably good to justify such a waste of time and money.

As well as meetings and conferences, business trips were up the spout last week, too. A friend called on Monday to say that a vital trip to Dubai had been cancelled. But by Wednesday, after three enforced days in the office, he was claiming to have had his most productive week in years. For once he'd been able to talk to his team and find what they were up to, read his e-mails properly and even had a new idea. And rather than let the idea wither and die, he had time to follow it through.

Will we learn anything from this? Will we learn that offices can function better with fewer people - so long as there are fewer meetings, conferences and business trips?

Early reports are not encouraging. By Friday the productivity gains enjoyed by those who worked through last week were already being undermined as some of the volcano refugees started to return to their desks. Instead of sitting down to absorb the lessons learnt in their absence, they were distracting the workers who had held the fort so admirably, telling their travel-delay stories over and over again, like the Ancient Mariner.

冰岛埃亚菲亚德拉冰盖火山(Eyjafjallajökull)的爆发，造成了一些不幸的后果。航空公司损失惨重；滞留旅客情绪失控，严重缺觉；肯尼亚的鲜花失去了光彩，而名人丹妮•米洛（Dannii Minogue，英国选秀节目《The X Factor》评委）则没能拿到从香港空运来的新孕妇服。

但尽管有这些损失，仍有一些影响面颇广的收获，只是没有报道而已。在旅客精疲力竭地倒在自己床上、而丹妮也与自己的衣服团聚之后，这些收获的影响仍将长久存在。

对于整个西方世界的办公场所而言，上周是很长一段时期以来最清醒、也最富成效的一周。上周一，人们上班后发现，记在黑莓(BlackBerrys)里的约会有一半突然被取消了。搁在往常，不过是取消一顿午餐，就足以让我一整天感到开心和幸运了。而上周，由于人们被困在了地球各个角落，所有的午餐和会议都宣告取消。

周三的时候，自诩为哲学家的阿兰•德波顿(Alain de Botton)在Twitter上若有所思地说：“有那么一些会议，在最后一刻被取消后，会让人发自心底地狂喜，感觉像是逃过了一劫，能再多活一段时间。”

我不会如此高深莫测地描述，但却深有同感。取消会议甚至比取消午餐更让人愉悦，因为午餐通常还会改期。取消会议是生产力的净提高：因为它往往一去不返。

火山爆发印证了我们早已清楚的一点：办公室的效率比学校还要低下。上周四，由于一个老师缺席，我儿子害怕的法语测验被取消了，但由于孩子们必须学会过去式，测验推迟到了本周进行。可对于从中学不到什么东西的会议而言，即使未能如期举行，也不会产生什么后果。

但更能说明问题的是，在尽管参加人数寥寥，但课程和会议仍如期进行的情况下，学校与办公室之间的反差。错过联立方程课程的孩子必须补课；而缺席的上班族不仅无须补习，甚至可以说，没有了他们，会议进行得会更顺利。上周二我参加了一个会议，与会人数从12位减少到了8位。会议进行得前所未有地迅速。

更令人不可思议的，是火山爆发对商务会议的影响。火山爆发之际，我认识的一位律师正在一个会议上就跨境并购交易侃侃而谈。当时听众们甚至不再假装听讲，为自己当晚如何“跨境”而惶恐不安。

上周，许多会议被彻底取消。行业杂志《今日人事》(Personnel Today)里报道了这样一件事：“冰岛火山爆发引起的交通混乱，打击了人力资源行业的核心。英国特许人事和发展协会(CIPD)被迫取消了其主办的国际培训发展联合会(IFTDO)会议的首日议程。”在我听来，这是个十足的好消息。

会议是商务生涯中最令人不解的事物之一。我常常问一些没完没了地参加会议的人，他们到底有没有从中学到什么东西。每一次他们几乎都说没有，但补充称，开会的目的在于社交。这个理由难以服人：这种社交的价值必须高得令人难以想象，才对得起这种对时间和金钱的浪费。

与大大小小的会议一样，上周一切出差活动也被叫停。一位朋友上周一打电话给我，说一个至关重要的迪拜之旅被取消了。但到了周三，被迫在办公室呆了3天的他声称，这一周是多年来最富成果的一周。他第一次有机会和他的团队交谈，了解他们下一步的打算，认真地读电子邮件，甚至还想出了一个新主意。而且，他并没有让这个想法自生自灭，而是有时间实践了一遍。

我们会从中学到些什么吗？我们会发现，只要减少了会议和出差，少了些人的办公室能运转得更好吗？

一开始的结果并不令人鼓舞。到上周五，随着一些“火山难民”开始回到岗位，那些已工作了一整周的人，提高的产能开始渐渐下降。这些刚回来的人并没有坐下来，消化不在时欠下的课，反而让那些令人钦佩地坚守岗位的同事分心，一遍遍地给他们讲述滞留期间的旅途见闻，活像是《古舟子咏》 (Ancient Mariner)中的古代水手。

译者/陈云飞