如果一家公司的首席執(zhí)行官和部門經(jīng)理三令五申，而且還宣稱尊重可持續(xù)發(fā)展，但仍不能讓其員工做到撿起橡皮筋這類簡(jiǎn)單的事情，那么它面臨著比投遞業(yè)務(wù)每年虧損約4000萬(wàn)英鎊更深層次的問(wèn)題。下面學(xué)習(xí)啦小編為大家?guī)?lái)職場(chǎng)雙語(yǔ)閱讀：從橡皮筋看管理，歡迎大家閱讀!

　　When I come home from work in the evenings there is often something waiting for me on the doorstep.It is a red rubber band left there by the postman.When my elder son was little he would seize on these bands and add them to the giant rubber band ball he was making.But now I scoop them up along with the junk mail that has been pushed through the letter box and sling them into the bin.

　　當(dāng)我晚上下班回家的時(shí)候，通常會(huì)在門口看到郵遞員丟棄的紅色橡皮筋。在我的大兒子小的時(shí)候，他會(huì)利用這些橡皮筋，把它們纏繞在自己制作的巨大橡皮筋球上。但現(xiàn)在我會(huì)撿起這些皮筋，然后把它們和塞進(jìn)信筒里的那些垃圾郵件一起扔到垃圾桶里。

　　Last week I got an email from a reader who takes a more assertive approach to stray bands.For years he has been collecting them in a pot but when the pot overflowed recently he emptied the lot into a large jiffy bag and sent it to Moya Greene,chief executive of Royal Mail.He pointed out that the little red bands carelessly discarded by her staff were an eyesore, a waste of rubber – and of money.

　　上周，我的一位讀者給我發(fā)來(lái)電子郵件，告訴了一種處理這些廢棄橡皮筋的更為果斷的做法。多年來(lái)，這位讀者一直把收集到的橡皮筋放到一個(gè)罐子里，但當(dāng)罐子最近滿了的時(shí)候，他把它們?nèi)挤胚M(jìn)一個(gè)大牛皮紙信封里，然后寄給皇家郵政(Royal Mail)的首席執(zhí)行官莫亞?格林(Moya Greene)。他指出，格林的員工們隨便丟棄的這些紅色小皮筋令人討厭，是在浪費(fèi)橡膠和錢財(cái)。

　　He got a nice letter back saying that she was aware of the problem and had passed the matter on to his local delivery office. In due course he got a second letter sent by the local manager who confirmed that for years Royal Mail had been trying to make staff aware of the "nconvenient [sic] that the rubber bands cause our customers". It briefed "all staff regularly about the problem in our cuddles"(or did he mean "huddles"?) and discussed the issue during "Work Time Listening and Learning". The letter ended by telling the reader to contact the manager directly if he had further "issues regarding elastic bands", so that he could "tackle the person responsible right away".

　　這位讀者收到了措辭友好的回信。格林在回信中稱，她意識(shí)到了這些問(wèn)題，并已將此事轉(zhuǎn)至讀者所在地的郵局處理。沒(méi)過(guò)多久，他收到了第二封信，這封信是當(dāng)?shù)剜]局經(jīng)理寄來(lái)的。這位經(jīng)理在信中強(qiáng)調(diào)，皇家郵政多年來(lái)一直努力讓員工意識(shí)到“這些橡皮筋給我們客戶帶來(lái)的不便的(原文如此，用了形容詞inconvenient而非名詞inconvenience)”。信中寫道，“所有員工定期抱在一起討論該問(wèn)題”(或者他是想說(shuō)“聚在一起”)，并在“工作時(shí)間聆聽(tīng)和學(xué)習(xí)”環(huán)節(jié)討論這個(gè)問(wèn)題。經(jīng)理在信的末尾告訴那位讀者，如果他有進(jìn)一步“與橡皮筋有關(guān)的問(wèn)題”，可以直接與他聯(lián)系，以便他能“立即處理責(zé)任人”。

　　In some ways this wasn't a bad letter.It admitted to the existence of a problem and appeared to take some responsibility for it.Yet what it says about Royal Mail,apart from the piffling detail that its managers can neither write nor proofread, is deeply troubling.If the company can't get its staff to do something as simple as pick up litter despite years of bleating from the chief executive and line managers and despite the fact that it claims to revere sustainability,it has deeper problems than losing about ￡40m a year delivering letters.

　　某種程度上這并非一封糟糕的來(lái)信。它承認(rèn)問(wèn)題的存在，并表示出愿意為此承擔(dān)部分責(zé)任的態(tài)度。然而，它除了暴露出經(jīng)理們既不會(huì)寫信、也不會(huì)檢查錯(cuò)字這一瑣碎細(xì)節(jié)以外，它對(duì)皇家郵政的揭示也令人深感不安。如果多年來(lái)該公司的首席執(zhí)行官和部門經(jīng)理三令五申，而且還宣稱尊重可持續(xù)發(fā)展，但仍不能讓其員工做到撿起橡皮筋這類簡(jiǎn)單的事情，那么它面臨著比投遞業(yè)務(wù)每年虧損約4000萬(wàn)英鎊更深層次的問(wèn)題。

　　Royal Mail's conversion to trendy management practices evidently isn't helping. No amount of huddles – or cuddles – will ever crack the rubber band problem. As for the "Work Time Listening and Learning", what has Royal Mail become? A nursery school?

　　皇家郵政向流行的管理方式的轉(zhuǎn)變顯然沒(méi)有取得效果。多少次的開(kāi)會(huì)或“摟抱”都不會(huì)解決橡皮筋問(wèn)題。至于“工作時(shí)間聆聽(tīng)和學(xué)習(xí)”環(huán)節(jié)，皇家郵政變成了什么?一家幼兒園?

　　Even the manager doesn't seem to be expecting success as he falls back on a more traditional (though also flawed) way of getting people to do as they are told: find a culprit and give him a bollocking.

　　甚至那位經(jīng)理似乎也沒(méi)指望成功，因?yàn)樗詈笥衷V諸更為傳統(tǒng)(并且錯(cuò)誤)的讓人們俯首聽(tīng)命的方式：找到犯錯(cuò)者，狠批一頓。

　　My reader isn't the first to have seen red over rubber bands. The charity Keep Britain Tidy has calculated that Royal Mail has spent ￡5m buying 4bn bands in the past five years, many of which litter the streets. There have been constant calls for an answer, including the suggestion that littering postmen get fined, but all to no avail.

　　我的讀者并非第一個(gè)對(duì)橡皮筋不滿的。慈善機(jī)構(gòu)“保持英國(guó)清潔”(Keep Britain Tidy)估算，皇家郵政在過(guò)去5年花費(fèi)500萬(wàn)英鎊購(gòu)買了40億條橡皮筋，其中許多被丟到了街道上。人們一直在呼吁解決這個(gè)問(wèn)題，包括建議對(duì)丟棄皮筋的投遞員罰款，但全都沒(méi)有效果。

　　Fortunately I have a solution to the problem, which I've just popped into a jiffy bag and sent to Ms Greene. It's a copy of The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, which argues that the best way of reviving a sick organisation is to pick on one bad habit and change it. Thus when Paul O'Neill took over at Alcoa in the late 1980s he resolved to cut accidents to zero. Shareholders were first appalled but then amazed – in the process of improving safety, communication, trust, efficiency and profits were all improved too.

　　幸運(yùn)的是，我有了一個(gè)解決辦法，并把它裝進(jìn)大牛皮紙信封里寄給了格林。它就是一本查爾斯·都希格(Charles Duhigg)所著的《習(xí)慣的力量》(The Power of Habit)，這本書指出，重振一個(gè)衰落組織的最佳方式是找出一個(gè)壞習(xí)慣，然后改正它。因此當(dāng)保羅?奧尼爾(Paul O'Neill)在上世紀(jì)80年代末接管美國(guó)鋁業(yè)(Alcoa)的時(shí)候，他決心將事故發(fā)生率降至零。股東們起初感到駭然，但隨后感到驚奇——在改善安全的過(guò)程中，溝通、信任、效率和利潤(rùn)全都有所改善。

　　I wonder if rubber bands couldn't do the same for Royal Mail. To stop them disfiguring the nation's doorsteps would involve understanding why they get dropped in the first place. I suspect the reasons are complex and many. The fact you often see postmen running to do the job in time may be part of it. It may be that Royal Mail, despite its protestations, doesn't care about rubber bands because they are too cheap. But I am pretty sure that low morale, high absenteeism and above all poor management will have something to do with it too.

　　我懷疑橡皮筋是否無(wú)法為皇家郵政帶來(lái)同樣的契機(jī)。要想讓它們不再弄臟英國(guó)家庭的門口，首先需要理解它們?yōu)楹螘?huì)被丟棄。我懷疑原因很復(fù)雜而且有許多。你經(jīng)常看到郵遞員急匆匆地趕著時(shí)間投遞郵件，這可能是原因之一。另一個(gè)可能的原因是，皇家郵政盡管嘴上說(shuō)得漂亮，但實(shí)際上因?yàn)橄鹌そ钸^(guò)于廉價(jià)而并不重視。但我非常確信的是，紀(jì)律渙散、高曠工率以及管理不善(這一點(diǎn)最重要)也脫不了干系。

　　If Ms Greene were to declare that she had only one aim – to win the rubber band war–everyone would think she'd gone mad, especially as the company is preparing for privatisation next year. But if she kicked this one habit, she would unearth deeper problems and start to solve them too. She would also be saved from all the faux-important stuff that chief executives so often get deflected by.

　　如果格林宣布她只有一個(gè)目標(biāo)——打贏橡皮筋之戰(zhàn)，所有人都會(huì)認(rèn)為她瘋了，尤其是該公司準(zhǔn)備在明年私有化。但如果她從這一積習(xí)開(kāi)刀，她就會(huì)發(fā)掘出更深層次的問(wèn)題，并且也會(huì)著手解決它們。她還將免受所有那些偽重要事務(wù)的困擾——首席執(zhí)行官們往往被這些事務(wù)分散了精力。

　　On the organisation's website it says its aim is to "deliver a market-leading corporate responsibility agenda". All I want Royal Mail to deliver is my mail-without a rubber band.

　　皇家郵政在其官方網(wǎng)站上表示，其目標(biāo)是“投遞市場(chǎng)領(lǐng)先的企業(yè)責(zé)任”。而我只想要皇家郵政投遞我的郵件——沒(méi)有橡皮筋的郵件。