如何选出真正优秀的管理者? | 经济学人商业

财富   2024-10-18 11:59   云南  

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What makes a good manager

如何成为一名优秀的管理者?

英文部分选自经济学人20241005期商业板块

Business | Bartleby

商业|巴托比专栏

What makes a good manager

如何成为一名优秀的管理者?

Hint: not someone who says I am a good manager

提示:优秀管理者可不是靠自我标榜的

1The IG Nobel awards, an annual ceremony for laugh-out-loud scientific papers, celebrate the joyfully improbable nature of much academic research. One of this year’s Ig Nobel winners, “Factors involved in the ejection of milk”, was published in 1941 and tests whether fear causes cows to involuntarily drain their udders. Its authors drew their conclusions by placing a cat on a cow’s back and repeatedly exploding paper bags beside it. “Genetic determinism and hemispheric influence in hair whorl formation”, another winner, asks whether hair tends to swirl in the same direction depending on which hemisphere you live in.

每年定期颁发的搞笑诺贝尔奖(IgNobel)旨在表彰那些让人捧腹大笑的科学研究,看重的是众多学术研究中不可思议的喜感属性。今年一位研究者凭借题为《影响产奶的因素》的论文获奖,这篇研究发表于1941年,旨在研究恐惧情绪是否会导致奶牛不自觉的降低产奶量。研究人员通过把猫放在奶牛背上,并在一旁引爆纸袋来获取研究结果。另一篇获奖的研究《发旋形成的遗传决定论与半球影响》则是探讨了发旋的旋转方向是否会因人们生活在不同的半球而有所区别。

IG Nobel: (英语:Ig Nobel Prize),又名幽默诺贝尔奖,是对诺贝尔奖的有趣模仿。获奖成就是一种社会批评,讽刺地揭露出荒谬的现象;并且是有用的研究和知识。

https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-cn/搞笑諾貝爾獎

2Sometimes you come across an academic paper that asks a deeply practical question in a refreshingly plain way. “How do you find a good manager?”, a new study by Ben Weidmann of the Harvard Kennedy School and his co-authors, sits in this category. Answering that question well is important. Other research, to say nothing of the experience of everybody everywhere, shows that variations in the quality of management help explain differences in performance between companies and even between countries.

有时候,人们会遇到一些学术论文,对一些非常实际问题从全新的角度直截了当的抛出问题。例如,哈佛大学肯尼迪学院的本·魏德曼(Ben Weidmann)和合作者们进行的新研究《如何找到一位好管理者?》就属于这一类型。回答好这一问题十分重要,其他许多研究、或是人们的切身体验都表明了,管理水平的差异也会带来不同企业甚至不同国家的实力差别。

3Yet a survey conducted last year by the Chartered Management Institute in Britain found that four in every five people entering management had received no formal training. And loads of bosses accrue managerial responsibilities for reasons unrelated to their ability to discharge them. Another paper, by Alan Benson of the Carlson School of Management and his co-authors, looked at the career paths of thousands of sales workers in over 200 American firms. They found that better sales performance increased the likelihood of people being promoted but was also associated with worse performance among their new subordinates. The “Peter Principle”, the idea that people rise up the ladder if they do their current job well until they reach a job at which they are incompetent, appears to be alive and well.

然而,英国特许管理学会(Chartered Management Institute)去年进行的一项调查发现,每五个进入管理岗位的人,就有四个从未接受过正式的管理培训。有许多管理者并不是因为具备管理才能才获得相关职位。另一篇由明尼苏达大学卡尔森管理学院的艾伦·本森(Alan Benson)和合作者们共同发表的论文,研究了200多家美国公司中数千名销售人员的职业发展轨迹。研究表明,销售业绩越好的员工更可能升职,但同时,他们在新团队中的表现却会更差。彼得原理Peter Principle)指出,人们在当前岗位上表现出色后会逐步升迁,直到他们升到一个以自身能力难以胜任的职位,这种现象依然存在且十分普遍。

4How then should managers be selected? The study by Mr Weidmann et al sought to answer that question by running a series of repeated experiments in which participants were randomly assigned to three-person teams of one manager and two subordinates. Each member of the team, including the manager, had to complete a number of problem-solving tasks. The manager’s job was to assign people to the task they were most suited to; monitor their performance and reassign them as needed; and keep them motivated. In the real world bosses do more things, but this captures a big part of their role.

那么,应该如何选拔管理者呢?魏德曼等人的研究旨在解答这个问题。他们进行了一系列重复实验,实验中参与者被随机指派组成三人小组,其中一名作为管理者,另外两名作为下属。小组中每一名成员,包括管理者,必须完成一些解决问题型的任务。管理者的工作是给下属分配最适合的任务,监测他们的表现并根据需要重新分配任务,同时还要保持下属的积极性。在现实生活中,管理者要做的更多,但这个实验囊括了他们的大部分工作。

5The researchers found that a competent manager had about twice as much impact on the team’s performance as a competent worker. More usefully, they also found out which traits were associated with good and bad managerial performance. Teams run by people who said they really, really wanted to be managers performed worse than those who were assigned to lead them by chance. Self-promoting types tended to be overconfident about their own abilities; in a huge shock, they also tended to be men.

研究者发现,一名称职管理者对团队成绩的影响几乎是一名称职员工的两倍。更有价值的是,他们也发现了哪些特质会影响管理业绩的好坏。口口声声想担任管理者的人带领的小组成绩反而不如那些被随机指派管理者的小组。自荐型管理者往往对于自己能力过于自信,令人吃惊的是,他们往往是男性。

6If appointing a manager just because he sticks his hand up and says he can read people is not a great selection strategy, what would be better? The researchers found that good managerial outcomes were associated with certain skills. One in particular stood out: people who did well on a test of economic IQ developed by researchers at Harvard called the “assignment game”, in which you have to quickly spot patterns in the performance data of fictional workers and match them to the tasks they are best at. (Anyone can play the game online: you end up with a percentile score and a mild headache.)

选择那些主动请缨并声称自己知人善用的人当管理者不是一个良好的选择策略。那么怎样做会更好呢?研究者发现优异的管理业绩与某些技能相关。而其中一项技能尤为重要,即那些在指派博弈测试中表现优异的人。这是一项由哈佛大学研究者开发的经济智商测试,被测试者需从虚拟工人的业绩数据中迅速发现规律,并给他们指派最合适的任务。(任何人都可以进行在线测试:这项令人头疼的游戏最终会给您一个百分等级。)

7Since the assignment game is similar to the experiment in the study, you would expect people who were good at one to shine in the other. But for David Deming, also of the Harvard Kennedy School and another of the paper’s authors, that is precisely the point. Management tasks can be identified, codified and incorporated into selection processes: that is a better way of choosing bosses than drawing only on those who thrust themselves forward or looking at how people perform in other jobs.

由于指派博弈与研究中的实验类似,人们自然会认为擅长指派博弈的人在实验中也会大放异彩。但对于哈佛大学肯尼迪学院戴维·戴明(David Deming)及其合著者来说,这正是问题的关键所在。遴选程序可以识别、编纂并纳入管理任务,相较于选择毛遂自荐的人,或只看他们在其它岗位上的工作表现,这样能更好的挑选上司。

8There are echoes here of a paper by Alessandro Pluchino of the University of Catania and his co-authors, who found that it was better to promote people at random than based on how well they did their current role. That won an Ig Nobel in 2010. Just because something is funny doesn’t mean it should be dismissed.

这样的结论也从卡塔尼亚大学的亚历山德罗·普鲁奇诺(Alessandro Pluchino)及其合著者的一篇论文中得到了呼应。普路奇诺的论文指出,比起依据员工在当前岗位上的表现来选拔管理者,随机提拔是更优的方案。2010年,该研究获得了搞笑诺贝尔奖。科学论文的结论不能因为搞笑就被忽略。
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