2023年经济学人 如何促进团队合作

（单词翻译）

Business

商业版块

Bartleby

巴托比专栏

The collaboration¹ conundrum²

团队合作难题

If teams matter so much, why do firms still focus on individuals?

如果团队如此重要，为什么公司仍然注重个人？

There is no “i” in team. But there is one in “autopilot”.

团队这个单词中没有i这个字母。但“自动驾驶”一词中有。（注：双关，I意为“我”。）

Despite the growing importance of teamwork in organisations, the processes used to manage employees have carried on much as before.

尽管团队合作在组织中的重要性与日俱增，但管理员工的流程仍然和以前一样。

Bosses may wax lyrical about collaboration, but the way they reward, review and recruit has not caught up.

老板们说起团队合作可能会滔滔不绝，但他们奖励、考核和招聘员工的方式却没有跟上。

People in organisations have always worked in concert with others.

组织中的人一直都是与其他人协同工作。

But the emphasis on teams is growing, for a variety of reasons.

但由于各种原因，现在人们对团队越来越重视。

Technology has made the sharing of ideas and information easier, while hybrid⁴ working has made it more vital.

技术使共享观点和信息变得更容易，而混合办公则使这种共享变得更加必不可少。

(There’s a reason it’s not called Microsoft Silos.)

(混合办公不被称为“用微软软件独立办公”是有原因的。)

The software industry has spread the gospel of teams—agile, scrums, OKRs and all the rest of it—into all kinds of places.

软件行业已经将团队的信条--敏捷开发、scrum管理框架、OKR目标等等--传播到了各种地方。

Teams, it turns out, are better at solving complex problems, according to a recent paper by Abdullah Almaatouq of the MIT Sloan School of Management.

根据麻省理工学院斯隆管理学院的阿卜杜拉·阿尔马图克最近的一篇论文，事实证明，团队更善于解决复杂的问题。

Research also suggests that people have a greater attachment⁵ to their work group than to their organisation³; you’re less likely to go for lunch with a logo.

研究还表明，人们对工作团队的依恋程度比对组织的依恋程度更高，毕竟你不太可能带着公司logo去吃午餐。

Knowledge is also accumulating as to what makes teams tick, the subject of this week’s episode of Boss Class, our new management podcast.

关于是什么让团队运转起来的知识也在积累，这也是《经济学人》新推出的管理学播客“老板课堂”节目本周的主题。

Project Aristotle, a famous bit of research by Google into the characteristics of its best-performing teams, identified “psychological safety”—comfort to speak one’s mind—as the most important ingredient, alongside things like dependability, role clarity and meaningful work.

《亚里士多德项目》是谷歌的一项著名研究，探究了其表现最好的团队有何特征。该研究认为，“心理安全”（即可以畅所欲言）是最重要的因素，此外还有可靠性、角色清晰和有意义的工作等因素。

Different teams excel at different things.

不同的团队擅长不同的事情。

Analysis by Lingfei Wu of the University of Chicago and his co-authors found a correlation⁶ between team size and types of scientific research: larger teams develop existing ideas and smaller ones disrupt the field with new ones.

芝加哥大学的吴凌飞（音译）及其合著者的分析发现，团队规模和科学研究类型之间存在相关性：较大的团队善于发展现有想法，较小的团队善于用新的想法颠覆所在领域。

But a greater emphasis on, and understanding of, teams does not generally translate into matching management practices.

但是，更重视团队并对团队的理解加深通常不会转化为与之相匹配的管理实践。

Recruitment processes focus on the achievements of the individual rather than the collectives they have been in.

招聘过程关注的是个人的成就，而不是他们所在集体的成就。

Performance management is still largely a one-player sport.

绩效管理在很大程度上仍然只看个人表现。

Reviews are usually based on individual targets, as are bonuses.

考核通常以个人目标为基础，奖金的发放也是如此。

Metrics are often confined to concrete outputs rather than softer team-based measures, such as how trusted people are.

衡量标准往往局限于具体的产出，而不是基于团队的软性指标，比如在多大程度上能信任员工。

It doesn’t help that many bosses have little idea what their teams really do.

许多老板对他们的团队真正做了什么事情知之甚少，这也对团队管理没有任何助益。

Soroco, a software firm, and academics at Harvard Business School and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania asked managers to describe the processes that they thought took up most of their teams’ time.

软件公司Soroco以及哈佛商学院和宾夕法尼亚大学沃顿商学院的学者让经理们描述，他们认为团队的大部分时间都花在什么流程上。

On average they did not know or could not recall 60% of what their team members did, making them more like high-functioning goldfish than bosses.

平均而言，他们不知道或无法回忆起团队成员60%的工作，这让他们更像是高功能、低记忆力的金鱼，而不是员工的上司。

There are good reasons for much of this.

这种情况的出现是有充分理由的。

People move jobs and get promoted one by one, not as battalions⁷.

人们换工作和得到提拔都是以个人而非团队为单位。

Rewarding people on the basis of team performance can lead to unfairness: free-riders might get too much recognition or hard workers might be penalised for someone else not pulling their weight.

根据团队表现来奖励员工可能会导致不公平：搭便车的人可能会得到太多认可，或者勤恳工作的人可能会因为其他人没有尽到自己的责任而受到惩罚。

It’s difficult to quantify team contributions.

团队的贡献也很难量化。

When teams are made up of people from different departments—or form for limited periods—managers find it harder to know what their direct reports are up to.

当团队由来自不同部门的人组成时--或者只是暂时组成团队时--经理们很难知道他们的直接下属在做什么。

But these problems are not insurmountable.

但这些问题并不是无法克服的。

When hiring people, it is possible to assess traits that make for good group members: scoring well on a test that asks participants to determine what people are feeling from a snapshot of their eyes is correlated with being a good team player, for example.

在招聘员工时，可以评估候选人在团队合作方面的特质：例如，要求参与者根据眼睛的快照来判断人们有何感受，如果得分较高，就说明这个参与者可能具备良好的团队合作精神。

Peer reviews can give a good sense of how people are seen within teams.

同事间的评审也可以很好地表明队友如何看待某人。

The worry that team-based bonuses may encourage free-riding also seems to be overblown.

认为基于团队的表现来发放奖金可能会鼓励搭便车行为，这种担忧似乎也被夸大了。

A recent study by Anders Frederiksen of Aarhus University and his co-authors looked at the impact of introducing group-based incentives⁸ at a manufacturing firm, and found it sparked a big leap in performance.

奥胡斯大学的安德斯·弗雷德里克森及其合著者最近进行了一项研究，探究了在一家制造公司推行基于团队的激励措施的影响，并发现这种激励措施促进了业绩的大幅飞跃。

That jump was not just because the scheme incentivised existing workers to be more efficient, but also because it attracted more productive new hires.

这一跃升不仅是因为这种措施激励现有员工提高效率，还因为它也吸引了更有效率的新员工。

Employees are individuals; managers should never forget that.

员工是个体的人，经理们永远不应该忘记这一点。

But if teams are where a lot of the magic happens, bosses should have better ways to get the most out of them.

但如果团队可以创造各种奇迹，那么老板们应该采取更好的办法来最大限度地发挥团队的力量。

Working out what they do all day might be a good place to start.

弄清楚团队每天都在做什么或许就是一个很好的开始。