The woolliest words in business

商業(yè)中最模糊的詞語

FIRE-FIGHTING FOAM starves the flames of oxygen. A handful of overused words have the same deadening effect on people’s ability to think. These are words like “innovation”, “collaboration”, “flexibility”, “purpose” and “sustainability”. They coat consultants’ websites, blanket candidates’ CVs and spray from managers’ mouths. They are anodyne to the point of being useless.

【1】deadening 麻痹的

【2】anodyne （尤指通過不表達強烈的感情或意見而）不得罪人的，一團和氣的；溫和的

[釋義] intended to avoid causing offence or disagreement, especially by not expressing strong feelings or opinions

消防泡沫可以讓火焰與氧隔絕。一些過度使用的詞匯也會對人們的思維能力產(chǎn)生同樣的抑制作用。這些詞包括“創(chuàng)新”、“合作”、“靈活性”、“目的”和“可持續(xù)性”。它們覆蓋在顧問的網(wǎng)站上，在候選人的簡歷上，并從管理者的口中說出來。它們是不得罪人的，以至于毫無用處。

These words are ubiquitous in part because they are so hard to argue against. Who really wants to be the person making the case for silos? Which executive secretly thirsts to be chief stagnation officer? Is it even possible to have purposelessness as a goal? Just as Karl Popper, a philosopher, made falsifiability a test of whether a theory could be described as scientific, antonymy is a good way to work out whether an idea has any value. Unless its opposite could possibly have something to recommend it, a word is too woolly to be truly helpful.

【1】silo（公司、機構(gòu)或系統(tǒng)內(nèi)部與其他單位不聯(lián)系、不了解、不合作的）孤立單位

這些詞之所以無處不在，部分原因是它們難以反駁。誰真的想成為為孤立組織辯護的人？哪位高管暗地里渴望成為首席停滯官？有沒有可能把無目的作為一個目標(biāo)？正如哲學(xué)家卡爾·波普爾將可證偽性作為一種檢驗理論是否可以被描述為科學(xué)的標(biāo)準(zhǔn)，反義詞是衡量一種觀點是否有價值的好方法。除非它的反義詞可能有什么可取之處，否則一個詞太模糊了，不會有真正的幫助。

Woolliness is the enemy of accuracy as well as utility. A word like “sustainability” is so fuzzy that it is used to encompass everything from a business that thinks sensibly about the long term to the end of capitalism. This column may well count as sustainable because it keeps recycling the same ideas. The lack of precision opens the door to grandstanding and greenwashing. Earlier this year Morningstar, a data provider, culled 1,200 funds from its European sustainable-investment list after a closer review of their prospectuses and annual reports. Regulators in America and Europe have been scrambling to define standards of sustainability disclosure.

【1】greenwash 綠色外衣 [指機構(gòu)為樹立對環(huán)境負責(zé)的公眾形象而散布的虛假信息]

【2】open the door to (sth) 使…成為可能； 為（新事物）敞開大門，為（新事物）鋪平道路

【3】cull 剔除

模糊不僅是實用的敵人，也是準(zhǔn)確性的敵人。像“可持續(xù)性”這樣的詞是如此模糊，以至于它可以用來涵蓋從理性思考長期問題的企業(yè)到資本主義終結(jié)的一切。這個專欄很可能被認為是可持續(xù)的，因為它一直在重復(fù)同樣的想法。準(zhǔn)確性的缺乏為嘩眾取寵和“漂綠”敞開大門。今年早些時候，數(shù)據(jù)提供商Morningstar在對招股說明書和年報進行了更仔細的審查后，從其歐洲可持續(xù)投資基金名單中剔除了1,200只基金。美國和歐洲的監(jiān)管機構(gòu)一直在爭先恐后地制定可持續(xù)信息披露的標(biāo)準(zhǔn)。

Woolliness also smothers debate about whether you can have too much of a good thing. Take “innovation”, for example. Too much innovation can be a turn-off for customers. A recent paper from Yingyue Luan and Yeun Joon Kim of the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge looks at the effect of perceived novelty on the response of audiences to films. The researchers find that there is a sweet spot in experimentation, where films are distinctive enough to pique curiosity but not so radical that they up-end expectations. In that space between “Home Alone 4” and “Tenet” lie the real moneymaking opportunities.

【1】turn-off 討厭的事物；討厭的人

【2】pique 激起

模糊也會平息關(guān)于好東西是否泛濫的爭論。以“創(chuàng)新”為例。太多的創(chuàng)新可能會讓客戶感到厭煩。劍橋大學(xué)賈奇商學(xué)院的Yingyue Luan和Joon Kim最近發(fā)表了一篇論文，研究新鮮感對于“觀眾對電影反應(yīng)”的影響。研究人員發(fā)現(xiàn)，在實驗中有一個最佳點，即電影要有足夠的獨特性來激發(fā)好奇心，但又不能太過激進，以至于顛覆人們的預(yù)期。在《小鬼當(dāng)家4》和《信條》之間的空間里存在著真正的賺錢機會。

Innovation can also be trying for employees. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) recently looked at factors that predicted high levels of attrition among companies’ workforces. To their surprise, they found that employees were more likely to leave firms—like Tesla and Nvidia—with high levels of innovation. The authors hypothesise that the long hours and high pressure that typify innovative cultures can lead to higher staff turnover.

對員工來說，創(chuàng)新也是令人厭煩的。麻省理工學(xué)院的研究人員最近研究了預(yù)測公司員工高流失率的因素。令他們驚訝的是，他們發(fā)現(xiàn)員工更有可能離開像特斯拉和英偉達這樣創(chuàng)新水平高的公司。作者假設(shè)，創(chuàng)新文化所代表的長時間工作和高壓力會導(dǎo)致更高的員工流動率。

“Collaboration” is another word that repays closer scrutiny. It can be marvellous: boundaries dissolved, expertise and ideas flowing. But collaboration can also run wild. It often means having more and more people on every email thread and in every meeting. It can paralyse decision-making, as everyone and their dog gets to weigh in with their view. (To be fair, the dog often makes the most useful points.)

【1】weigh in with sth 發(fā)表；提出

“合作”是另一個值得仔細審視的詞。它可以很棒：界限消失，專業(yè)知識和想法在流動。但合作也可能失控。這通常意味著每一封郵件和每一次會議上都有越來越多的人。它會使決策癱瘓，因為每個人和他們的狗都可以提出他們的觀點。(說句公道話，狗通常會提出最有用的觀點。)

And the rewards that flow from collaborativeness are uneven. “The No Club”, a new book by Linda Babcock, Brenda Peyser, Lise Vesterlund and Laurie Weingart, examines the disproportionate amount of “non-promotable work” done by women—tasks like covering absences, organising logistics and mentoring. Collaboration is a much less attractive proposition if helping others means spending less time on the sort of work that gets recognised when it is time to hand out actual promotions.

而且來自合作的回報是不均衡的。Linda Babcock, Brenda Peyser, Lise Vesterlund和Laurie Weingart的新書《The No Club》調(diào)查了女性完成的大量的“非晉升性工作”——比如補缺、組織后勤和指導(dǎo)等。如果幫助他人意味著花更少的時間在那些實際升職時得到認可的工作上，那么合作就不那么有吸引力了。

A host of other woolly words also mask genuine trade-offs. The supremely fluffy notion of “purpose” disguises hard-edged questions of how managers should balance the interests of multiple stakeholders. “Flexibility” sounds like a boon to workers, but the reality for employees of coping with last-minute changes to schedules is often very different. The MIT study found that having a regular schedule was six times more powerful as a predictor of blue-collar-employee retention than having a flexible schedule.

許多其他模糊的詞也掩蓋了真正的權(quán)衡?！澳康摹边@個極其模糊的概念掩蓋了管理者應(yīng)該如何平衡多個利益相關(guān)者利益的尖銳問題。“靈活性”聽起來像是員工的福利，但對員工來說，現(xiàn)實是不同的，他們需要應(yīng)對日程安排會在最后一分鐘變化的情況。麻省理工學(xué)院的研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，有規(guī)律的工作時間比靈活的工作時間相比藍領(lǐng)員工留存率高出六倍。

Traits like innovativeness or collaborativeness are still qualities for firms to aspire to. And this is not an argument for constant qualification of what is meant: the one way to make “purpose” more annoying is to put the word “smart” in front of it. But it is a plea for managers to use woolly words thoughtfully. They are not going away, but they do not have to suffocate mental activity.

創(chuàng)新精神或合作精神等特質(zhì)仍然是企業(yè)追求的品質(zhì)。這并不是對其意義進行不斷限定的論點：讓“目的”變得更煩人的一種方法是在它前面加上“smart”這個詞。但這是在懇求經(jīng)理們深思熟慮地使用含混不清的詞語。它們不會消失，但它們不會扼制精神活動。