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At this time of year many of us look back at the past 12 months, castigate ourselves for not having achieved more and resolve to become more productive. I’m beginning to wonder, though, if individuals are really the biggest obstacles to our own efficiency. It feels as though more and more time is being soaked up by things beyond our control: compliance, “computer says no” systems, and the forces of verbiage.
每年這個時候，許多人回顧過去的12個月，責備自己沒有取得更多成就，並決心提高生產力。然而，我開始懷疑，個人是否真的是我們效率的最大障礙。似乎越來越多的時間被我們無法控制的事情佔據：合規要求、「電腦說不」系統，以及冗長的語言。
In 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that technological advances would enable his grandchildren to work a 15-hour week. Instead, we seem busier than ever. Keynes didn’t reckon on computerised call centre menus telling us at length how our data will be handled, and urging us to try the website, which of course we have, otherwise why would we have picked up the phone to enter the sixth circle of hell?
1930年，約翰•梅納德•凱恩斯(John Maynard Keynes)預測，技術進步將使他的孫輩每週只需工作15小時。然而，實際上我們似乎比以往任何時候都更忙。凱恩斯沒有預料到電腦化的呼叫中心菜單會長篇大論地告訴我們數據將如何處理，並敦促我們嘗試訪問網站。當然，我們已經嘗試過了，否則我們爲什麼要拿起電話進入第六層地獄呢？
Nor did he foresee the proliferation of words and jargon which seems to be a 21st-century hallmark. In the UK, the average FTSE 100 annual report now contains more pages than a Charles Dickens novel. In the US, ESG reports from the S&P 500, have grown a fifth longer in three years. Board packs have expanded too: the average one is 226 pages long. Majorities of board directors in both the US and UK have told surveys that the packs have little impact or prove an obstacle to understanding the business.
他也沒有預見到辭彙和術語的激增，這似乎是21世紀的一個標誌。在英國，富時100(FTSE 100)的平均年度報告現在包含的頁數比查爾斯•狄更斯(Charles Dickens)的小說還多。在美國，標普500的ESG報告在三年內成長了五分之一。董事會檔案也在擴展：平均長度爲226頁。美國和英國的大多數董事會成員在調查中表示，這些檔案對理解業務影響不大，甚至成爲障礙。
For contrast, I suggest reading Watson and Crick’s 1953 paper describing the molecular structure of DNA. It is only a few pages long. Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, which moved a nation, was 10 sentences. Both are shorter than the introductions to most reports on my desk. Here’s a line from one I just picked up: “a lack of absorptive capacity can easily become a critical bottleneck for continuous innovation”. The report is by a consulting firm about — er — productivity.
爲了對比，我建議閱讀沃森和克里克1953年描述DNA分子結構的論文，只有幾頁長。亞伯拉罕•林肯(Abraham Lincoln)的葛底斯堡演說，曾感動整個國家，僅有10句話。兩者都比我桌上大多數報告的引言要短。這裏是我剛拿起的一份報告中的一句話：「吸收能力的缺乏很容易成爲持續創新的關鍵瓶頸」。這份報告是由一家諮詢公司撰寫的，主題是——呃——生產力。
Sitting in a café in Massachusetts a few months ago I tried not to listen to a woman on a lengthy call about whether her presentation should say “key learning objectives” or “stakeholder outcomes”. Last week in London, I saw a friend who had been asked to give advice to a Whitehall department, only to find that the two-page note she had sent in advance had been converted by officials into what she described as a “word salad” that it took most of the meeting to decipher.
幾個月前，我坐在麻薩諸塞州的一家咖啡館裏，努力不去聽一個女人在電話中冗長地討論她的簡報是應該說「關鍵學習目標」還是「利益相關者成果」。上週在倫敦，我見到了一個朋友，她被要求爲白廳的一個部門提供建議，結果她提前發出的兩頁筆記被官員們變成了她所稱的「文字沙拉」，會議的大部分時間都花在解讀上。
How have we generated a caste of people who write gobbledegook? How will we cope when AI models are trained on it, producing even more gibberish? Management consultants are partly to blame. When I started my career at McKinsey many years ago, we were taught pithy phrases which clarified: “Quick wins” was one. Nowadays, many consultant reports are drowning in prolixity, perhaps to cover up a void in thinking — or justify a higher fee. Yet even those who charge by the hour don’t want to actually read this stuff. A wonderful experiment by an American attorney, Joseph Kimble, found that lawyers dislike complexity just as much as everyone else. When Kimble sent two versions of a court judgment to 700 lawyers, they overwhelmingly preferred the comprehensible version.
我們是如何培養出一羣寫晦澀難懂文字的人呢？當人工智慧模型以此爲基礎進行訓練，產生更多胡言亂語時，我們該如何應對？管理顧問對此負有部分責任。多年前我在麥肯錫(McKinsey)開始職業生涯時，我們被教導使用簡潔明瞭的短語，比如「快速勝利」。如今，許多顧問報告充斥著冗長的文字，可能是爲了掩蓋思維的空洞，或者爲更高的費用提供理由。然而，即使是按小時收費的人也不願意真正閱讀這些內容。美國律師約瑟夫•金布爾(Joseph Kimble)進行了一項精彩的實驗，發現律師和其他人一樣不喜歡複雜性。當金布爾將兩種版本的法院判決發送給700名律師時，他們壓倒性地更喜歡易懂的版本。
“When you write more, people understand less”. Those are the sage words of a UK government design manual which urges officials to write shorter sentences, in plain English. Unfortunately, the message is being lost. Some parts of the public sector are models of efficacy — I have just reported the death of an elderly relative to the “Tell Us Once” service which transmits news of a bereavement across the system — but others are bastions of jargon. A framework agreement for architects wishing to bid for building contracts with three London councils asks potential applicants, among other otiose questions, how they will “conceptualise collaborative social value, and what strategies [they] will implement to support clients in maximising social value returns through collaboration with stakeholders”.
「當你寫得越多，人們理解得越少。」 這些是英國政府設計手冊中的智慧之言，手冊敦促官員們用簡明的英語寫更短的句子。不幸的是，這個資訊正在被忽視。公共部門的某些部分是效率的典範——我剛剛向「Tell Us Once」服務報告了一位年長親屬的去世，該服務會在系統中傳遞喪親之訊——但其他部分卻是行話的堡壘。一個爲希望與三個倫敦市政會簽訂建築合同的建築師準備的框架協議，除了其他冗餘的問題外，還詢問潛在申請者他們將如何「概念化協作社會價值，以及他們將實施哪些策略來支援客戶透過與利益相關者的協作最大化社會價值回報」。
Supposedly, one purpose of this document is to encourage small firms to bid for building work. Yet they will be the most stretched in trying to generate responses of sufficient verbosity to meet the criteria.
據說，這份檔案的一個目的是鼓勵小公司參與建築工程的投標。然而，他們在努力撰寫足夠詳細的回應以滿足標準時，將面臨最大的壓力。
I am reminded of Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, by the anthropologist David Graeber, who argued that around a third of modern jobs are pointless, and simply make work for other people. These included “Taskmasters”: middle managers who create work that isn’t needed; and “goons” — lobbyists and marketers who try to sell things that no one needs or wants. Graeber’s thesis had a huge response — many wrote to admit that they themselves had a bullshit job, and were miserable.
我想起了人類學家戴維•格雷伯(David Graeber)的《狗屁工作：一種理論》（Bullshit Jobs: A Theory）。他認爲現代大約三分之一的工作毫無意義，僅僅是在爲他人制造工作。這些工作包括「任務主管」：那些創造不必要工作的中層管理者；以及「打下手的」——比如遊說者和行銷人員，他們試圖推銷沒人需要或想要的東西。格雷伯的論點引發了巨大反響，許多人寫信承認，他們自己也有一份狗屁工作，並因此感到痛苦。
Verbosity — or what the former Lord Chief Justice Igor Judge used to call the “anxious parade of knowledge” — makes us miserable. No one wants to be invited to an “ideation session”.
冗長——或者用前任首席大法官伊戈爾•賈奇(Igor Judge)的話來說，就是「焦慮的知識遊行」——讓我們感到痛苦。沒有人願意被邀請參加「創意會議」。
In Douglas Adams’ novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the problem of bullshit jobs was solved, on the planet Golgafrincham, by sending all the marketing consultants to colonise a new planet. On Planet Earth, perhaps organisations could start moving all the people who create pointless complexity to roles that are useful. It could lower our blood pressure, save time and even solve labour shortages. As for me, I’m going to make the Plain English Campaign one of my charities for 2025.
在道格拉斯•亞當斯(Douglas Adams)的小說《銀河系漫遊指南》中，戈爾加芬查姆星球透過將所有市場顧問送去殖民新星球來解決廢話工作的難題。在地球上，或許組織可以開始將那些製造無意義複雜性的人轉移到有用的崗位上。這可以降低我們的血壓，節省時間，甚至解決勞動力短缺問題。至於我，我計劃將簡明英語運動(Plain English Campaign)作爲我2025年的慈善項目之一。