【每天一篇经济学人】How to be a better boss 如何做一个更

文章来源：《经济学人》Oct 28th 2023 期 Leaders 栏目 How to be a better boss 如何做一个更好的老板

视频总结：

随着远程工作和技术的发展，管理工作发生了巨大变化。管理者需要更好地协调员工的不同利益，以实现共同目标。研究表明，良好的管理可以提高公司的生产力和员工满意度。本中介绍了一些实用的管理技巧，如明确流程和会议目的，避免不必要的会议和电子邮件，让员工专注于工作。管理是一项技能，需要更多的实践和培训。

·如何成为一个更好的老板,包括明确工作流程和减少不必要的会议和邮件等。

00:18 远程工作和技术进步带来的好处和挑战01:02 管理者对员工的影响和重要性

03:53 管理者可以通过减少会议和邮件等方式为员工创造价值

·The useful ones were eventually added back But thefirm says that meetings are down by fourteen

percent Since the mass deletion Productivity hasgone up by a similar amount Good management is a skill There are too many accidental managers

promoted

04:00 Good management is a skill, but many people are promoted without proper training.

04:16 Companies can fill the gap by offering two track promotion systems.

04:48 Promotion should not be based solely on seniority, as the stakes are too high.

视频文本：

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Workplaces have changed dramatically over the past four years, let alone the past 40. Teams have become more dispersed, thanks to remote work, as well as more diverse. Technology has brought with it great benefits but also constant interruptions, from endless Zoom calls to the ping of another message on Slack. After globalisation spread customers and suppliers around the world, geopolitical tension has made distant relationships seem like a new source of risk.

过去4年来，工作场所发生了翻天覆地的变化，更不用说过去 40 年的变化了。由于远程办公的出现，团队变得更加分散，也更加多样化。科技带来了巨大的好处，但也带来了持续的干扰，例如一个接一个的Zoom会议，Slack又有一条消息提示。由于全球化的发展，客户和供应商遍布世界各地，地缘政治紧张局势使得遥远的关系似乎成为新的风险来源。

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With each of these shifts, the job of the manager—the person tasked with getting workers with disparate interests to achieve a common goal—has become harder still. There was a time when managers could cope simply by being technical experts. Now they say they are juggling more tasks and have more activities to co-ordinate. Many report feeling burnt-out, overloaded and confused.

由于这些变化，管理者--是负责让利益不同的员工实现共同目标的人--的工作变得越来越困难。曾几何时，管理人员只需具备技术专家的能力就能应付自如。现在，他们说自己要兼顾更多的任务，协调更多的活动。许多管理者感到疲惫不堪、负荷过重和无所适从。

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Bosses are rarely the objects of sympathy. In fiction, they are portrayed as cold-hearted or weaselly. Yet in real life everyone suffers when management is bad and benefits when it is good. Far more effort is needed to make it better.

老板很难成为同情的对象。在小说中，他们被描绘成冷酷无情或奸诈狡猾的形象。然而，在现实生活中，当管理不善时，每个人都会受到影响，而当管理得当时，每个人都会受益。要想让管理变得更好，需要付出更多的努力。

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Start with how managers affect workers. Roughly a fifth of corporate employees in America are managers, and almost everyone has one. In a survey in ten rich countries, 69% of workers said their boss influenced their mental health as much as their spouse did. Half of Americans who have left a job said they did so because of a bad manager, as did nearly a third of British job-leavers.

从管理者如何影响员工开始谈起。在美国，大约有1/5的企业员工是管理者，并且几乎每个员工都会有一个上司。在一项关于10个发达国家的调查中，有69％的员工说，上司对员工心理健康的影响不亚于他们配偶的影响。半数离职的美国人说，他们是因为糟糕的管理者而离职，近1/3的英国离职者也是如此。

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Better management does not just mean happier staff. It means better-performing companies, too. Research based on a long-running survey of management techniques across countries has found that well-managed firms tend to be more productive. They also export more and spend more on research and development.And the effect is large. Research by Nicholas Bloom of Stanford University and others concluded that differences in management practices account for a third of the gap in economy-wide productivity between America and the rest of the world.

更好的管理不仅意味着员工更快乐，也意味着公司业绩更好。基于对各国管理技巧进行长期调查研究发现，管理良好的企业往往生产率更高。这类企业的出口量也更大，研发投入也更多，而且效果显著。斯坦福大学的尼古拉斯·布鲁姆等人的研究得出的结论，美国与世界其他国家在整个经济生产率方面的差距，有三分之一是由管理方法的差异造成的。

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The prize for better management, then, is big. But how to obtain it? Read enough management books and you might conclude that managers need full-on personality transplants, becoming either Machiavelli’s prince or a Marvel superhero. Study successful managers, though, and the lessons are more prosaic. They are also far more useful—as “Boss Class”, our new podcast, discovers. Over seven episodes starting this week it will take a wry but practical look at problems facing the modern manager, from meeting etiquette to hiring strategy, while bringing together tips from experts and practitioners alike.

那么，改善管理的奖赏是丰厚的。但如何获得呢？读了足够多的管理书籍，你可能会得出这样的结论：管理者需要进行全面的个性改造，要么成为马基雅维利笔下的君主，要么成为漫威式超级英雄。不过，研究成功的管理者，会得到更接地气的建议。正如我们的新播客《老板课堂》所展现的那样，这些经验也更加有用。从本周开始的7集节目中，它将以诙谐而实用的方式探讨现代管理者面临的问题，从会议礼仪到招聘策略，同时也融入了专家和从业者的观点建议。

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This approach yields several lessons. One is to be explicit about a firm’s processes. Managers should make clear the purpose of a team, what a meeting should achieve and who will take a decision. Meeting agendas at GSK, a British drugs firm, clearly say whether an item is for awareness, to gather participants’ input or intended to yield a decision. Moderna, another drugmaker, lists 12 “mindsets” that define its corporate culture and seeks job applicants with at least some of them. Such clarity means that everyone knows what they are doing, and why.

从节目中得出几条经验。一是明确公司的流程。管理者应该明确团队的目的、会议应该实现的目标以及谁做决策。英国制药公司葛兰素史克 (GSK) 的会议议程明确说明了某个项目是旨在提高认识、收集参与者的意见还是旨在做决策。另一家制药商“莫德纳”列出了定义其企业文化的 12 种 "心态"，并希望求职者至少具备其中一些心态。流程明确意味着每个人都知道自己在做什么，以及为什么这么做。

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Yet management isn’t all about accumulating tasks, meetings or processes. A second lesson is that managers can add value by subtracting. Sparing workers from pointless meetings, emails and projects frees them to concentrate on the work that fattens the bottom line. At the start of the year Shopify, an e-commerce firm, deleted 12,000 recurring meetings from its employees’ calendars. The useful ones were eventually added back. But the firm says that meetings are down by 14% since the mass deletion. Productivity has gone up by a similar amount.

然而，管理并不全是做任务、会议或流程的加法。第二条经验是，管理者可以通过做减法来增加价值。减掉无意义的会议、电子邮件和项目，让员工能够集中精力在增加利润的工作上。今年年初，电子商务公司 Shopify 从员工日历中删除了 1.2万个定期会议。有用的会议最终又被添加回去了。但该公司表示，自大规模做减法以来，会议减少了 14%。生产率也有了同样幅度的提高。

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Good management is a skill. There are too many accidental managers, promoted because they were good at what they did, rather than because they were suited to what lay ahead. Fully 82% of managers told a survey in Britain that they had no proper management skills or training. Providing that training is one way for companies to fill the gap.

管理是一项技术活。有太多人是偶然成为管理者的，他们被提拔是因为他们擅长所做的工作，而不是因为他们适合未来的管理工作。英国的一项调查显示，82% 的管理者表示他们没有适当的管理技能或培训。提供管理培训是公司弥补技能不足的一种方式。

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Another is to establish two-track promotion systems that offer a way to rise through the ranks without going into management, as Google and Shopify do already. That gives people who either can’t or don’t want to manage a way to progress. Management should not be something people fall into simply by dint of seniority. The stakes are too high.

另一种方法是建立双轨晋升制度，提供一种无需进入管理层也能晋升的途径，谷歌和Shopify已经这样做了。这样一来，那些无法或不愿意从事管理工作的人也有了继续发展的途径。管理岗位不应该仅仅取决于论资排辈。这样代价太大了。