“最佳實踐”詛咒

If I have learnt one thing in business journalism, it is that flops and failures are rarely available for interview, while successes flock to the limelight.

如果說我從商業記者這一行學到了一樣東西，那就是受挫與失敗的商界領袖很少願意接受採訪，而成功的老總往往主動要求在聚光燈下亮相。

By the same token, business leaders love biographies, where in the lives of great figures they can trace the similarities to their own careers. Consultants and academics research leading companies while corporate laggards shrink from study.

同理，商界領袖們愛看人物傳記，在那些偉大人物的生平中，他們能夠追尋那些與自身職業生涯相似的地方。諮詢師和學者們研究領先企業，而落後的企業不願成爲研究對象。

So the curse of “best practice” spreads. Chief executives seek simple, repeatable patterns in success stories. Here is the problem, though: often those patterns are neither simple nor repeatable. Worse still, they may propagate bad behaviour and unproductive methods.

於是“最佳實踐”詛咒傳播開來。首席執行官們從成功故事中尋找簡單、可複製的規律。但有個問題：這些規律往往既不簡單又不可複製。更糟的是，它們可能助長糟糕行爲和不具成效的方法。

It would be senseless for every generation of leaders to have to start from scratch, ignoring proven ways to be more productive and profitable. But the follow-the-leader approach can backfire.

如果每一代領導者都要從一張白紙開始，無視那些更具成效、也更有利可圖的做法，那未免很愚蠢。但對成功的先行者亦步亦趨也可能事與願違。

Freek Vermeulen of London Business School points out that perception bias, imperfect copying of methods, herd-like benchmarking against top-ranked rivals and an obsession with short-term results can sucker companies into bad habits.

倫敦商學院(London Business School)的弗裏克?韋穆倫(Freek Vermeulen)指出，感知偏差、對方法的不完善複製、對排名靠前的競爭對手進行羊羣式的基準比對，以及癡迷於短期結果，都可能令企業沾染上陋習。

Like a virus, rather than killing their host quickly, bad practices linger long enough to be transmitted to others.

陋習就像病毒，它們不會迅速殺死它們的宿主，而是會持續很久，以便被傳染到其他人。

A bias towards perceived success is inevitable, Prof Vermeulen says. He and Xu Li, now at ESMT in Berlin, showed people a decade’s worth of performance data for 1,000 companies, each of which followed one of three strategies. After a while they noticed that people stopped poring over complex information on each company and fell back on the performance ranking. Using the rank of a few successful companies as a rule of thumb, most wrongly decided that their strategy was best, when most companies following that path underperformed.

韋穆倫稱，人們對成功的認識不可避免地會存在偏見。他與柏林歐洲管理技術學院(ESMT Berlin)的Xu Li，向人們展示了1000家企業10年來的業績數據，每家企業都遵循三種戰略之一。不久，他們發現人們不再注意每家公司的複雜信息，而是把目光重新投向業績排名。多數人把少數幾家排名靠前的成功企業當作正確戰略的化身，錯誤地認定它們的戰略就是最好的，而實際上遵循這條路線的多數企業表現不佳。

“It’s human [nature], when people have information overload and there’s a lot of companies to look at,” Prof Vermeulen told me. “[But] I don’t think it’s necessarily inevitable that we can’t do something about those biases.”

“這是人的本性，當人們掌握的信息過多，又有大量公司要研究，”韋穆倫告訴我。“但我並不認爲我們對這些偏見就真的無能爲力。”

Managers sometimes stick with what was once deemed best practice simply because they never question why such methods still apply. In his book, Breaking Bad Habits, Prof Vermeulen cites Britain’s broadsheet newspapers, whose format is a relic of a long-repealed tax on the number of pages printed.

有時，管理者之所以堅持以往公認的最佳實踐，只是因爲他們從不質疑這些方法爲何仍然適用。在其新書《破除陋習》(Breaking Bad Habits)中，韋穆倫提到了英國的大報，歷史上英國曾針對報紙的頁數徵稅，後來這個稅種被廢止，但這種報紙規格保留了下來。

One way to lift the curse of best practice is to be aware of how — and where — a method is being used and whether its success is specific to one sector, company or country.

破解最佳實踐詛咒的一個方法，就是弄清一種方法如何——以及在哪裏——被應用，以及它的成功是否侷限於某一行業、企業或是國家。

Prof Vermeulen points out, for example, that US companies stuttered when they tried to introduce Total Quality Management, the meticulous Japanese method for process and product improvement, in the 1980s and 1990s. US imitators applied it in idiosyncratic ways. They simplified the system, took shortcuts and added features such as performance measurement, although W Edwards Deming, one of TQM’s architects, believed this “builds fear, demolishes teamwork, [and] nourishes rivalry and politics”.

韋穆倫指出，當年美國公司在試圖引入全面質量管理(Total Quality Management)時就不順利，這是20世紀80及90年代一種旨在改進流程與產品的日式精細管理方法。美國的效仿者採用全面質量管理的方式很獨特。他們簡化了這一體系，大走捷徑，還添加了績效評定等花樣，儘管全面質量管理的設計者之一威廉?愛德華茲?德明(W. Edwards Deming)認爲這樣做會“營造恐懼心理、破壞團隊協作、並滋生較勁行爲和勾心鬥角”。

Similarly, when Michelin, the tyremaker, tried to introduce lean production methods — as pioneered by Toyota — in the 1990s, it succeeded in improving productivity at the expense of agility and at a cost to its carefully nurtured humane corporate culture.

同樣，上世紀90年代，輪胎製造商米其林(Michelin)在嘗試引進了由豐田(Toyota)首創的精益製造方法後，成功地提高了生產率，但卻犧牲了靈活性以及該公司精心培育的人性化的企業文化。

Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup and The Startup Way, has laid out broad principles for “lean” methods to be used by companies launching products, but he agrees that “there’s always going to be a tension between wanting to seek out universal laws [and] recognising that context matters a great deal.”

《精益創業》(The Lean Startup)及《創業之路》（The Startup Way）的作者埃裏克?里斯(Eric Ries，見文首照片)，闡述了推出產品的公司所用的“精益”方法的籠統原則，但他也同意“在尋求普遍規律與認識到具體情況很重要之間總是存在矛盾”。

Another way to avoid bad habits is to put working methods to the test. Start small and revisit practices regularly to assess consequences. In other words, apply a version of the “build-measure-learn” method taught by Ries.

另一個避免陋習的辦法是對工作方法進行檢驗。以小規模起步，定期審議相關實踐以評估後果。換句話說，就是採用里斯所倡導的“打造——衡量——學習”方法的某個版本。

Michelin, seeking a way to make itself more agile and responsive to customers five years ago, tried a new management approach first with selected teams, giving more responsibility to frontline workers. It extended the successful experiment to production lines, then pilot factories, before this year rolling it out to the group.

五年前，米其林開始設法變得更靈巧，更快地響應客戶需求，該公司先與選定的團隊嘗試一種新的管理方法，讓第一線員工承擔更多責任。隨後，米其林將成功的實驗推廣到生產線，接着是試點工廠，最後在今年在整個集團實施。

Of course, the good practices of today, such as Michelin’s initiative or Ries’s lean start-up methods, adopted by companies such as General Electric, may become the bad habits of tomorrow.

當然，今天的最佳實踐也許會成爲明日的陋習。米其林的舉措或里斯的精益創業法都是如此，後者已被通用電氣(General Electric)等企業採用。

The key is not to be lulled by short-term success into pursuing practices that jeopardise long-term survival.

關鍵是不要被短期成功矇蔽，去追逐那些危及長期生存的實踐。

Consider the lemming. Bounding cliffwards in the slipstream of its furry comrades, it must feel as though running with the pack is best practice. It is only just before impact that the hapless creature realises it should have veered away from the dangerously popular path that leads to the precipice.

想想旅鼠。追隨着它們毛茸茸的同伴一起跳下懸崖，它們一定認爲隨大流就是最佳實踐。只有在快要落地時，這些可憐的生物纔會意識到，自己本應遠離危險地撲向懸崖的羣體。