【英语生活】大讨厌鬼理论

A month or so ago, I had lunch with the chief executive of a well-known British company. I am not going to say who he was as he insisted that the occasion should be strictly off-the-record: for background only.

First we discussed the cricket. Or rather he did, as I have nothing to say on that subject. Next he told me about his leadership philosophy. The crucial thing about leading, he said, is that you have to take people along with you.

Then he discussed his business at some length. His two central observations were a) that the market is pretty competitive right now and b) that there has been a lot of change brought on by the web and companies should exploit it.

In all, the occasion was profoundly, shockingly dull. How could this be, I wondered. This man was well respected. And since he had been anointed CEO a year earlier, his company was doing noticeably better.

Yet his performance during those 90 long minutes of lunch showed not a trace of charisma or charm. He said nothing wise nor surprising nor engaging. Behind his defences he might have been a bully or a thoroughly decent man. I had no way of knowing: the face he presented to me was a perfect blank.

Still, it wouldn't be true to say that he left no impression. The impression was deep and it took me the rest of the day to get rid of it. I felt as if I had been sat on by someone heavy for a long time and emerged crushed in spirit and, oddly, in body too. If the lunch had been a battle, he emerged as the clear winner. This man's secret weapon was his ability not just to bore but to bore relentlessly: to be the last bore standing. To him, all opponents would eventually succumb, bored into submission.

I suspect this leader-as-great-bore syndrome is quite common, and becoming more so. CEOs are not necessarily born boring but as they get more successful they become more so. Like politicians, they are terrified of saying anything that might conceivably be used against them to financial journalists, to shareholders, employees, colleagues, competitors or to more or less anyone else. So they learn how to bore instead.

To verify my Great Bore theory I turn to the Harvard Business Review which has asked various executives to write about their greatest strength as leaders. Hardly surprisingly, no one cites his ability to bore as a distinguishing characteristic. Instead each chooses from the hackneyed traits that every modern leader is supposed to possess: humility, learning, intuition, energy and so on. Yet as I read some of these personal accounts I found my GB theory was there after all, lurking unmistakably between the lines.

Take Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, the newish boss of Nokia. His name is interesting but there, alas, it ends. He selects humility as his key virtue and observes: “If CEOs aren't committed to their jobs 101 per cent they will not make it.” The only controversial thing here is the number. Some might think 101 on the low side and plump for, say, 120 per cent, as my colleague Martin Lukes so often does. Others (like me) are numerical sticklers and regard 100 per cent as a logical ceiling, one impossible to reach in practice even by the most committed.

Then take Alexander Cummings, head of Coca-Cola in Africa. He names conviction as his own leadership quality and tells a story about a tough decision he once made. “People expected me to cave in, but once I held my ground, it was the beginning of a whole new chapter,” he says. Here the mixed metaphor is quite impressive, the rest less so.

Third up is Gary Jackson. He is the head of Blackwater, a US military contractor that he built up from next to nothing. Mr Jackson claims to have a great deal of energy, and his hair-raising stories leave you inclined to take his word. He tells how he fired 12 people for wanting to “discuss possibilities” instead of getting on with it. He has a database of his staff and next to every name he marks T or D, according to whether he considers them a talker or doer. The implication being that Ts will soon be given marching orders.

Last of my exhibits is Sergey Petrov, founder of Russia's largest car importer. His chief leadership skill is to police a deep and dangerous cultural divide between his managers. On one side are ambitious Russians who don't understand Anglo-Saxon business basics, such as the need to pay bills. On the other are European managers who do understand about bills but are “strange” and who believe in HR practices. In between stands Mr Petrov. “That's it, stop!” he says when things start to get nasty. “If you can't work with them, we'll just have to replace you!”

The first two leaders sound like Great Bores; the second two sound anything but. It can be no coincidence that the GBs are the wage-slave leaders of big corporations, while the non-GBs are entrepreneurs. The lesson is not that the wage-slave leaders are hopeless. It is that they are not taking any chances and there is therefore no point asking them about leadership skills, as they aren't going to say anything worth hearing. By contrast entrepreneurs take many chances and are worth listening to – though that doesn't necessarily mean they are worth following.

I'm not at all sure about Mr Jackson's idea that people are either talkers or doers. I know many who are both and many more who are neither. But still, his codification sets me thinking. And the result of such thought is a new rule: to be a successful wage-slave CEO in a big organisation you have to be a D, but you must be able to T and T until the cows come home – without saying anything much at all.

前一阵子，我曾与英国一家著名企业的首席执行官共进午餐。我不会透露他的姓名，因为他一再要求我不要把那次会面的内容写成文章发表：只能用于背景描述。

首先，我们讨论了板球运动。或者说，是他在讨论，因为我在这个话题上什么都没说。接下来，他向我讲述了自己的领导哲学。他表示，所谓领导，至关重要的东西就是你必须让人们跟着你走。

然后，他相当详尽地“论述”了自己的情况。他的两个中心观点是：1、当今市场竞争十分激烈；2、网络引起了许多变化，而企业界应该充分利用这一点。

总而言之，此次会面极度、非常无聊。怎么搞成这样呢？我对此感到很奇怪。这个人很受尊重。自一年前他被任命为首席执行官以来，他们公司的业绩有了显著提高。

然而，在那顿历时90分钟的午餐中，他却没有表现出一丁点儿领袖气质或超凡魅力。他没讲出任何睿智的话，也没有惊天动地或感人肺腑的言语。在正襟危坐的背后，他要么是个横行霸道的人，要么是个极其正派的人。我无法知晓：在我面前，是他那张毫无表情的脸。

尽管如此，却不能说他没有给人留下印象。那种印象极为深刻，我花了那天全部剩余时间才摆脱它。我觉得自己仿佛被某个很沉重的家伙压在身下很长时间，精神几近崩溃，而且奇怪的是，身体也近乎崩溃。如果这顿午餐是场战斗的话，那他显然大获全胜。这个人的秘密武器，不仅在于他能够令人感到厌烦，还在于他这种能力已经到了残酷无情的地步：他成为最后一个屹立战场的讨厌鬼。对他而言，所有对手最终都会屈服，厌烦得屈服。

我估计，这种“讨厌鬼领导”综合症如今非常普遍，而且有愈演愈烈之势。首席执行官们未必生来就令人讨厌，但随着自己越来越成功，他们越来越让人厌烦。像政客一样，他们害怕说出任何可能对自己不利的话，不仅面对财经记者如此，面对股东、雇员、同事、竞争者时也一样——他们面对其它任何人时，或多或少都这样。因此，他们学会了如何令人厌烦。

为了验证我的“大讨厌鬼理论”，我翻看了《哈佛商业评论》(Harvard Business Review)。这份杂志约请了多名企业高管，写出自己作为领导者所具备的最大优势。意料之中的是，没有一个人将自己能够令人厌烦作为一个与众不同的特征。相反，每个人都从人们公认的现代领导者常见特征中做出了选择：谦逊、求知、直觉、精力等等。然而，在我读了其中的一些个人描述后，我发现，这完全符合我的“大讨厌鬼理论”，它就清晰明白地潜伏在字里行间。

以诺基亚(Nokia)新任首席执行官奥利-佩卡•卡拉斯沃(Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo)为例。他的名字很有趣，但是，仅此而已。他选择谦逊作为自己的关键美德，并表示：“如果首席执行官们不以101%的努力工作，那么他们就不能把工作干好。”这里唯一有争议的东西就是那个数字。有人可能会认为101有些偏低，起码要120%——就像我的同事马丁•卢克斯(Martin Lukes)经常做的那样。其他有些人（比如我），在数字方面有些固执，认为100%是逻辑上的上限，即便是最努力的人，在实践中也不可能达到100%。

接下来看看可口可乐(Coca-Cola)非洲业务主管亚历山大•卡明斯(Alexander Cummings)。他将“信念”作为自己的领导特点，还讲述了自己曾经做出一个艰难抉择的故事。他说：“人们以为我会放弃，但是，当我一旦坚持下来，一个完全崭新的篇章就开始了。”这里的矛盾比喻令人印象深刻，其余就没什么了。

第三位是美国国防承包商黑水公司(Blackwater)总裁加里•杰克逊(Gary Jackson)。他白手起家，创立了这家公司。杰克逊声称，自己拥有旺盛的精力，而他那些令人毛骨悚然的故事，让你很容易相信他的话。他会告诉你，自己是如何解雇12个人的，原因是这些人打算“讨论可能性”，而不是去实践这些可能性。他有一个员工数据库，并根据自己的判断，依次确定每位员工是“空谈者”(talker)还是“实干者”(doer)，然后在每个名字旁边标注T或D。被标注T，意味着这些人将很快被炒鱿鱼。

我要说的最后一位，是谢尔盖耶•彼得罗夫(Sergey Petrov)——俄罗斯最大的汽车进口商的创始人。他主要的领导才能是，控制经理之间深刻而又危险的文化隔阂。一方面是雄心勃勃的俄罗斯人，他们不理解盎格鲁-撒克逊式的商业原则，比如付账的必要性。另一方面是欧洲的经理人，他们懂付账，但却很“古怪”，而且相信人力资源方面的惯例。彼得罗夫站在中间。“就这样，停！”当事情变得糟糕时，他就会这么说，“如果你不能和他们合作，我们只能把你换掉！”

头两个领导者听起来像是“大讨厌鬼”；后两个却不是。“大讨厌鬼”都是大公司的雇佣领导者，不是“大讨厌鬼”的人都是创业者，这并非偶然。我们从中得到的教训，并不是雇佣领导者不可救药。问题在于他们没有冒险经历，因此，问他们有关领导技能的问题毫无意义，因为他们不会讲出任何值得一听的话。相反，创业者冒过许多险，因而值得听听他们的故事——不过，这并不意味着他们值得效仿。

对于杰克逊将人们分为“空谈者”和“实干者”的创意，我并不完全赞同。我知道，许多人同时扮演两种角色，还有很多人两者都不是。但尽管如此，他的编排仍使我陷入沉思。最终，我得出一条新规律：要在一家大型机构成为一名成功的雇佣首席执行官，你必须是个“实干者”，但你也必须能够“空谈”，而且要一直“空谈”下去——但对什么都不要说得太多。

译者/梁鸥

《FT商学院》