【英语生活】2008年3月28日你有空吗？

What is the hardest thing that company boards have to do?I can answer this with considerable authority, having been on a board for all of two months. The hardest thing is not strategy. It isn't complying with hundreds of petty regulations. It isn't setting the chief executive's pay, or even sacking him.

Doubtless, these things can be hard. But harder is arranging to meet at all. Getting 10 or 15 busy people to agree that they are all free on a certain day far in the future is an extraordinarily tricky matter.

I am a novice at this and until now have cheerfully admitted that I have no engagements for 2007, let alone for 2008. In fact, I still don't even own diaries for either of those years to put any dates into.

A friend who sits on a lot of boards took me out to dinner recently to tell me that I was getting it all wrong. Any self-respecting non-exec must be in demand, he said, and that means having many distant dates in your diary. If you don't have any you must dissemble. Never, he said, make a virtue out of being free.

Here is his drill: you are asked if you can do, say, March 28 2008. You refuse to confirm or deny at once, but say that your PA keeps your diary. Later, you e-mail saying you might be able to juggle things, though it will mean cutting short a business trip to Asia, so you'll get back in a couple of days to confirm. And so the e-mails bat to and fro, until finally the dates are agreed. Then someone announces that they can't do it after all, and it is back to square one.

This whole process is harder than it used to be, though the reason is not the one usually offered. It is not that working life is increasingly hectic, with everyone working 24/7/365, as is so irritatingly and so often said.

Instead, if my friend is right, part of the lack of availability is bravado. An even bigger part is school holidays. I am guilty here. It is not true that I have been a pushover in arranging meetings. I have already objected to at least one date in the distant future (having previously agreed to it) on the grounds that it might clash with an Easter holiday.

The week before last, when I was safely out of the office for my children's half-term, I got an e-mail from an exasperated reader, complaining that it was impossible to arrange anything at all that week. He did not remember his father ever taking half-terms off, he grumbled. Because different schools are on holiday at different times, there are only 30 weeks of the year in which it is possible to do business.

Last week, I found further evidence of how very hard it is to pin people down. I sent out a round-robin e-mail to a mailing list of about 500 people all of whom do busy, supposedly workaholic jobs. Back bounced nearly 150 out-of-office replies. Far from being nose to the grindstone in workaholic fashion, a third of these professionals were either on holiday, on maternity leave, travelling, ill or, most likely, just off for some unspecified reason. Being at work and being available seems to be increasingly a minority sport.

It was not always like this. The great Lord Weinstock of GEC used never to go anywhere. He used to spend all his time in his office so that people knew where to find him. Although the management style of that growling, stingy, old-style boss is not altogether to be emulated, there was something rather wonderful about his permanent presence.

A couple of weeks ago, I contacted a very important person in business and requested an interview. I could do breakfast, coffee, lunch, drink, dinner – anything that suited him. His PA got back and said he could do coffee at 11.30 on a Wednesday in early January, but there was really nothing before that.

This meant one of two things. Either that he was managing his diary badly by having far too much in it, or (more likely) that he didn't want to see me, in which case he was managing his diary even worse.

I know all about this sort of inept diary management, as I do it myself. People ask if I would like to have lunch and instead of following the famous New Yorker cartoon and saying: “How about never? Is never good for you?,” I say that actually I'm working on a big project at the moment, and then suggest a date a long way off.

This is irrational. The date has a nasty way of rolling around, and when it does I am no keener than I was at the time I made it. And in the meantime, having the wretched thing sitting out there in my diary causes a sinking feeling every time I think of it.

This sort of dread is a big deal: some neuroscientists in the US recently did an experiment in which they went around giving people electric shocks and threatening them with further shocks in the future. They found that people would rather have a bigger shock now than have the prospect of a smaller one hanging over them. I should bear this in mind next time I am arranging anything. Do it now and get it over with.

However, there is one difference between a distant lunch and a distant electric shock and that is that, with lunch, the other person might cancel. When this happens it gets the day off to the best possible start. Not only is it a gift of a few hours but it means that if another date has to be found (and sometimes it doesn't) you can be the one to cancel with impunity next time.

Alas this wriggling out at the last minute is not an option for the non-exec. Once you have agreed to a board meeting you have to go, or else you find that, like a naughty truanting school child, your absence will be written up and revealed to shareholders in the annual report.

公司董事会必须要做的事中，哪一件是最难的？我在一家公司的董事会呆了整整两个月，回答这个问题相当有权威。最难的不是战略，不是遵守数百个复杂的条例，也不是设定首席执行官的工资，或者解雇他。

毫无疑问，这些事会很难，但还有更难的。让10或15个忙碌的人答应在未来的某一天都有空，就是一个格外复杂的问题。

我在这方面是个新手，而且迄今止愉快地承认，在2007年和2008年没有工作约会。事实上，我甚至没有这两年的日记本，所以没法安排日程。

最近，一位在多家公司董事会任职的朋友请我吃饭。他告诉我，我全搞错了。他说，任何自重的非执行董事肯定都有人找，这意味着在你的日程中拥有许多遥远的约见。如果你没有工作约会，就必须加以遮掩。他表示，千万别说你有空。

这位朋友的做法如下：如果有人问你，2008年3月28日有没有空，你不要马上确认或拒绝，就说你的日程由私人助理管。随后，你发电子邮件说，你或许有能力同时处理几件事，但这将意味着打断一次去亚洲的商务旅行，所以你将在几天内回来，然后再定。电子邮件就这样来来往往，直到最终把日期定下来。然后，某人宣布毕竟没法赴约，一切又从头来过。

与过去相比，这一过程难度大了，尽管理由与往常不同。原因并非像人们又恼人又常说的那样，每年365天，每周7天，每天24个小时，工作越来越忙乱。

但我的朋友是对的，没空，在一定程度上是在虚张声势，在更大程度上甚至是学校假期。这一点，我感到内疚。在安排会面方面，我并非弱者，我已经拒绝了至少一次安排在未来的会面（先前已经答应了会面），理由是它可能与一个复活节假期发生冲突。

前一阵子，当我安全地走出办公室，奔赴孩子的期中假时，收到了来自一位愤怒读者的电子邮件，抱怨那周他根本不可能安排任何事。他抱怨道，不记得自己的父亲曾放过期中假。因为不同学校在不同的时间放假，一年只有30周可供办公。

最近，我发现了约会不易的新证据。我给邮件列表上大约500人群发了一封电子邮件，他们按说都是繁忙的工作狂。结果，将近150人的回复显示他们不在公司，远非像工作狂那样认真地工作。在这些专业人中，有三分之一不是放假，就是在休产假、旅行、生病，或者很可能是因为某种未指名的理由而不在办公室。忙于工作或者有空，似乎日益成为少数人的事。

以前就并非如此。GEC伟大的温斯托克勋爵(Lord Weinstock)曾经哪儿也不去。他把所有时间都花在办公室里，人们知道在哪儿可以找到他。尽管人们不会完全仿效这位愤怒、吝啬、老派老板的管理风格，他能一直呆在办公室，倒是挺了不起的。

几周前，我联系一位非常重要的商务人士，要求对他进行采访。我可以和他共进早餐、咖啡、午餐、饮料和晚餐——任他方便。此人的私人助理回复说，他会在1月初的一个星期三上午11点30分与我喝咖啡，此前实在是没有任何时间。

这有两种可能，要么是他把日程管理得非常糟糕，事情多的做不过来；要么是他不想见我（这个可能性更大）。如果是这样，他的日程管理更糟。

对这种不恰当的日程管理，我十分清楚。因为我自己就那么做。有人问我是否愿意共进午餐，我并没有跟著名的《纽约客》(New Yorker)漫画学着说：“‘哪天都没空'怎么样？你觉得行吗？”我的答复是，实际上，我这会儿正在处理一个大项目，然后提出一个很久以后的约见日期。

这么做不理智，约期会令人厌恶地来临。当它到来时，我还和当初约定日子时一样不想赴约。在这期间，这件讨厌的事一直记在我的日记本里，让我每次想起它都会心情低落。

这种忧虑可是件大事儿：美国一些神经科学家最近做过一项实验，他们走来走去，给人实施一些电击、并威胁他们以后还有电击。神经科学家发现，人们宁愿现在接受一次较大的电击，也不愿意有较小的电击等着他们。我下次安排事情的时候，应该记住这一点。现在就做，把它做完。

不过，一顿遥远的午餐与一次遥远的电击不同。那就是，另一个人可能会取消午餐。出现这种情况时，那天就好过了，可以说是一天最好的开始。不仅可以节约几个小时，也意味着如果必须另找一天的话（有时候不会出现这种情况），你可以毫无内疚地取消下次约会。

唉，这种周旋到最后的办法，对非执行董事不适用。一旦你同意参加董事会会议，就必须得去。不然，你会发现（像一个淘气的、逃学的孩子那样），董事会将把你的缺席记录在案，而且还会在年度报告中通告股东。

译者/何黎