【英语生活】“驾驭”活力太荒谬

Last Monday lunchtime I hurried down Piccadilly towards Green Park tube as fast as my high heels would carry me. I felt lifted, full of enthusiasm and oblivious to the pain in the balls of my feet.This heightened mental state was the result of having spent three hours in a room at the Hilton Hotel with Lord Kirkham, purveyor of sofas to the Great British people.

He and I had been interviewing five young female entrepreneurs for a Women of the Future Award. Each had made a pile of money in different ways. One sold tailors’ dummies, another had developed software that tells you what your house is worth. Some gushed and others were more measured, but they had one thing in common: energy. In fact, each had so much of it that as they talked their excess supply flowed into me.

（奖名是自己翻的）

Unfortunately, the transfusion didn’t last. By the time I had emerged at London Bridge station and walked in the drizzle to the FT office I was a tired and bedraggled middle-aged woman in uncomfortable shoes with too much work to do.

By chance, sitting waiting for me on my desk was a report from Cranfield School of Management called Energy at Work – A Look at Generating a Vital Commodity for Success at Work Today. The press release said companies waste 520 hours of productivity per employee per year by failing to manage their energy levels.

（报告名是自己翻的）

As a statistic, this is beneath contempt. What is less contemptible is to ask if energy can be managed, and if so how. Energy levels ebb and flow, both for people and for companies. My own are all over the place: when I have lots I can take over the world, but when I have little I can hardly put one word in front of another.

Equally, at the FT, there are times when the place hums, and times when it sags. The energy of the employee and the company are related: the more saggy the company the harder it is for an employee to muster any energy at all. And if the employees have no energy, the company won’t have any either.

To get at this dynamic between individuals and companies, Cranfield has come up with a simple formula:

E Org = ΣE Individual + E Social-Net +ΔEmergent.

Actually the formula isn’t simple and I don’t understand it, but I do understand that it doesn’t help me be like the women I met on Monday.

More concretely, it suggests that every company should hire an Energy Resource Manager whose jobs is to “drive people, teams and the organisation to leverage energy to drive value creation in business development”.

Again, this doesn’t help. I can ignore one “drive” when there is no car involved, but two carless drives in one sentence sap my energy. When I read on to discover that the manager must “unleash and marshal energy in order to create the appropriate energy levels to deal with the contingent competitive environment threats and opportunities” my energy levels fell so low I had to go to the vending machine to get a KitKat （http://mnc.people.com.cn/GB/54823/4873476.html ）to redress the damage.

As the business school has failed to throw any light on the subject, I have done some research of my own, and asked acquaintances what drains their energy at work.

The list turns out to be a long one. Some said the first glimpse of their office building in the morning was enough to do some damage. Others mentioned computers, meetings, flickering lights, pointless management change, boredom, bureaucracy, empty desks, colleagues who are energy black holes and dysfunctional bosses.

For me, little things can have a big, bad effect. An e-mail with a subject line “IMPORTANT, PLEASE READ: Change computer password!” is too draining to open. Then I don’t open it and consequently find my computer is in trouble. More energy drains away.

Most of all, though, my energy is sapped by dwelling on these sapping things about offices, so much so that I can’t think of anything that boosts it at all. So I head off for a Diet Coke, which always lifts me up. However, there is a problem with this (as with the KitKat) as it always let me down again afterwards.

Fortunately, there is something else more reliable than anything dispensed in a vending machine: a deadline. Columns need to be written, and the fact that one’s work is needed RIGHT NOW generates a reliable boost.

This sort of energy is really just adrenaline, and is by its nature temporary. Though exhilarating, it is not terribly good for you taken in large doses over a long time.

The best hope is that the work itself gives you energy, which it can if it isn’t too deadly. It is partly a matter of getting the quantity right. For me, having slightly too much work is good. Having far too much is bad, but the worst is not having enough.

Recognition always helps in my experience. If someone, preferably a boss (though anyone will do), tells you you are great, your energy soars.

Working for energetic leaders can be good, though it isn’t always. I once had a boss who devoted his massive energy to making bad decisions, and that wasn’t such a great thing at all.

Which in the end means there is nothing magic about energy. In a well managed company with an energetic (though sensible) leader and enough averagely energetic employees, there should be no problem at all.

A final word on the women entrepreneurs. I got a big lift from meeting them last Monday, but on reflection I don’t want to work with them. Entrepreneurs are not suited to the corporate life as their extraordinary energy makes them disruptive – and makes the rest of us look like wasters by comparison.

上周一的午饭时间，我以高高的鞋跟所能承受的最快速度，沿着皮卡迪利大街(Piccadilly)匆忙赶往格林公园(Green Park)地铁站。我觉得身轻如燕，精神饱满，脚掌的疼痛完全抛在了脑后。

这种高昂的精神状态，是我与大不列颠人民的沙发供应商柯卡姆勋爵(Lord Kirkham)，在希尔顿酒店(Hilton Hotel)某个房间共度三个小时的结果。

我和他一直在为“未来女性奖”(Women of the Future Award)面试5位年轻的女性企业家。她们每个人都通过不同的方式赚到了很多钱。其中一位出售裁缝用的人体模型，另一位开发了一种能计算你的房子值多少钱的软件。有几位滔滔不绝，其他几位则较为出言谨慎，不过，她们都有一个共同点：充满活力。实际上，她们每一位的活力都是如此充沛，以至于在她们说话的时候，她们的过剩活力都流入了我的身体。

不幸的是，这种流入并不持久。等到我出现在伦敦桥(London Bridge)地铁站、冒着细雨走进英国《金融时报》办公楼的时候，我已经成了一个疲惫不堪、全身湿透、穿着不舒服的鞋子、有太多工作要做的中年女人。

凑巧的是，在我桌子上等着我的，是一份来自于克兰菲尔德管理学院(Cranfield School of Management)的报告，名为《工作中的活力——对今日职业成功起到关键作用的要素》(Energy at Work – A Look at Generating a Vital Commodity for Success at Work Today)。这篇新闻稿表示，因为未能管理好雇员的活力，企业每年在每个雇员身上浪费的生产力高达520小时。

这是一项极为荒谬的统计数据。如果问一问活力能否管理，如果能的话，该怎么管理？那还不至于这么荒谬。活力如潮起潮落，对人和对公司都是如此。我自己的活力就七零八落：当我很有活力时，我能接管整个世界，但当我没有活力时，我说话都不连贯。

同样的，在英国《金融时报》，有忙碌的时候，也有消沉的时候。员工和公司的活力是相互联系的：公司士气越消沉，员工鼓起干劲的难度就越大。而如果员工没有活力的话，那么公司也就不会有任何活力了。

克兰菲尔德管理学院有一个简单的公式，来计算个人和公司之间的活力关系：

组织活力 = Σ个人活力 + 社会网活力 + Δ紧急程度

事实上这个公式并不简单，反正我搞不明白。但我确实明白的一点是，它不能帮我变成与我周一遇到的那些女士一样。

更具体地说，这个公式表明，每家公司都应雇用一位“活力资源经理”，其工作职责是“驾驭(drive)员工、团队和组织，提高活力水平，以便驾驭(drive)业务发展中的价值创造”。

同样，这也没什么帮助。在没有谈到汽车的条件下，我可以忽略一次“驾驭”，但一句话中有两个无车“驾驭”，则会让我活力衰竭。当我继续读下去，发现经理人必须“释放活力并鼓足干劲儿，创造适当的活力水平，以应对突发的竞争环境威胁和机遇“时，我的活力水平已经降得实在太低，让我不得不去自动售货机买一个雀巢奇巧(KitKat)巧克力，以补充能量消耗。

由于那家商学院未能在这方面给出任何解释，因此我自己做了一些研究，问问我的熟人，是什么让他们在工作中耗干了精力。

最终的研究结果是一个长长的列表。一些人称，早晨第一眼望见他们的办公楼，就足以损害他们的活力。其他人提到了电脑、会议、闪烁的灯光、毫无意义的管理层变动、无聊、官僚、空空的办公桌、死气沉沉的同事以及不正常的老板。

对我而言，一些小事就能产生很大的恶劣影响。主题为“重要，请阅读：更改电脑密码”的电子邮件让我觉得太耗精力，以致于不敢打开它。因此，我没有打开它，随后就发现我的电脑出了麻烦。更多的精力被消耗掉了。

然而，最糟糕的是，我的精力是被研究这些关于办公室的消耗性事件消耗掉的，它们是如此之多，我甚至想不出任何能够增强活力的东西。因此，我索性不去想它，转而打开一听健怡可乐(Diet Coke)，它总是能让我振奋起来。然而，这里有个问题（就像吃奇巧巧克力遇到的问题一样），喝完健怡可乐之后，我总是再度感到失落。

幸运的是，相对于那些售货机中贩卖的商品，还有一些东西更为可靠：最终期限。专栏必须写，某人的工作需要马上完成，这些事实是一种可靠的增强活力的东西。

这种类型的活力，实际上只是肾上腺素，而且作用效果短暂。尽管它令人欢欣振奋，但如果在长期内大剂量服用，那对你实在不是什么好事。

最好的希望是，工作本身赋予你活力，如果工作不是太枯燥的话，这是可以做到的。合适的工作量也是部分关键所在。对我而言，工作稍微过多是件好事。工作太多是坏事，但没有足够的工作则是最糟糕的事。

按照我的经验，赞誉和认可往往会起到作用。如果有人（任何人都行，最好是老板）说你很棒，你的活力就会高涨。

为活力充沛的领导者工作可能是件好事，但并非总是如此。我曾经有位老板，他把很多精力投入到做出坏的决定上，这绝对不是什么好事。

最后想说的是，活力并没有什么神秘之处。在一家管理良好的公司，有一位活力充沛（但通情达理）的领导者，和足够多的活力一般的雇员，应该就完全足够了。

最后一点是关于女性创业者的：通过上周一与她们的会面，我获得了巨大的活力，但回想起来，我却不想和她们共事。创业者不适合企业生活，因为他们非凡的活力使他们容易引发混乱和干扰——相形之下，会让我们其他人看上去像废物一样。

译者/何黎