評論
打印
Business
商業版塊
Bartleby: The bird and the boss
巴托比：小藍鳥與大老板
A billionaire’s challenge to management thinking
億萬富翁的管理思維挑戰
Elon musk’s takeover of Twitter raises questions of policy: is it right for the world’s richest man to own such an important forum for public debate?
埃隆·馬斯克接管推特后，人們從多個角度提出了質疑，首先是政策角度：這么重要的公共論壇成為全球首富的所屬物，這合適嗎？
It raises issues of law: is his decision to get rid of so many workers within days of completing the acquisition above board?
其次是法律角度：他剛完成收購就在短短幾天內決定解雇這么多員工，這合法嗎？
And it raises questions of strategy: can Twitter make money by moving from a business model based on advertising to one based on subscription?
最后是戰略角度：推特從依靠廣告盈利改為通過訂閱創收，這樣還能賺到錢嗎？
But it is also an extremely public test of a particular style of management.
但這也是對特定管理風格的一次極其公開的考驗。
In the way he thinks about work, decision-making and the role of the CEO, Mr Musk is swimming against the tide.
在工作、決策和首席執行官的職責這些方面，馬斯克的思維方式與當下的趨勢背道而馳。
His attitude to employees is an obvious example of his counter-cultural approach.
他對待員工的態度就明顯體現出了他的反主流文化行事風格。
For a futurist, Mr Musk is a very old-fashioned boss.
馬斯克是一名未來主義者，但他當起老板來卻非常老派。
He doesn’t like remote work.
他不喜歡遠程辦公。
Earlier this year he sent an email to employees at Tesla demanding that they come to the office for at least 40 hours a week.
今年早些時候，他給特斯拉的員工發了一封電子郵件，要求他們每周至少坐班40個小時。
Anyone who thought this was antiquated could “pretend to work somewhere else”, he tweeted.
他在推特上寫道，任何認為坐班已經過時的人都可以“假裝在其他地方工作”。
Whatever the legality of his decision to fire so many Twitter workers, his methods are brutal: people locked out of corporate IT accounts, careers ended with an impersonal email, half the workforce gone at a stroke.
無論他解雇這么多推特員工的決定是否合法，他的方法都很殘酷，比如封禁企業IT賬戶，用一封沒有人情味的電子郵件掐斷職業生涯，一口氣裁掉半數員工等等。
It is as if Thanos had decided to try his hand at business.
這就好像滅霸決定用他的手在商業領域打響指一樣。
For those who remain, hard graft is the expectation; insiders say that one of Mr Musk’s first acts at the firm was to cancel monthly firm-wide “days of rest”.
至于那些留下來的人，就只?！芭ぷ鳌边@一條路可走了；內部人士透露，馬斯克接管后一上來就取消了公司每月的“休息日”。
The template for the modern manager tends to be a low-ego, compassionate boss who gives people autonomy.
如今，無私、富有同情心以及給員工自主權是老板的標配。
Someone didn’t get the memo.
某人看來是不知道這事兒。
His critics have to accept that the my-way-or-the-highway approach has worked before.
但批評他的人不得不承認，“順我者昌，逆我者亡”這種做法以前奏效過。
At his other firms, like Tesla and SpaceX, Mr Musk may not have offered empathy but he has provided a planet-sized sense of purpose, from popularising electric vehicles to colonising Mars.
在他的其他公司，如特斯拉和SpaceX，盡管馬斯克可能沒有表現出同理心，但他提供了如星球般宏大的使命感，既普及了電動汽車，又開拓了火星。
Whether this can work for him at Twitter is less clear.
至于這招在推特能否奏效就不好說了。
His vision for the product as a “digital town square” where free speech flourishes is a typically grand one.
他希望將推特打造成一個言論高度自由的“數字城市廣場”，這想法本身就是個典型的宏大愿景。
This time, however, he is not taking on lumbering incumbents, but fixing an existing business where judgment and politics matter as much as engineering.
然而，這一次，他不是在與笨拙的現任老板較量，而是在修復一家現有的企業，而且在這家企業中，判斷與權術的重要程度絲毫不亞于管理。
The way that Mr Musk takes decisions also cuts across consensus.
馬斯克做決策的方式也有悖常理。
Comparatively little research has been done on how CEOs make their choices, but a Harvard Business School working paper published in 2020 had a bash by asking 262 of the school’s own alumni how they went about making strategy.
關于首席執行官如何做決策的研究一直相對較少，但哈佛商學院的研究人員進行了一番嘗試，他們在2020年發表的一篇工作論文中，對262名校友制定戰略的方式進行了調查。
譯文由可可原創，僅供學習交流使用，未經許可請勿轉載。
