当今高管史上最卖力？
|
商业世界流传着这样一种说法，即当今白领的工作比以往任何时候都要辛苦。由于智能手机的存在，我们总是随叫随到。由于热心于团队合作，我们成天开会——然后在下班后才真正开始干活。当今世界肯定跟五、六十年前有所不同，然后我们理所当然地认为，组织人（Organization Man）企业结构意味着流线型的决策。电子邮件没出现的时候，人们只在工作时间工作。真是这样吗？ 并不尽然。根据《财富》杂志（Fortune ）于1954年发表的一篇题为《公司高管的工作有多辛苦？》的文章，高管们历来认为自己的工作比任何人都要辛苦。有趣的是，上世纪50年代是这样，而如今的工作人群抱怨的也是类似的事情。 1954年，小威廉•怀特（他后来因写作《组织人》而声名鹊起）开始着手研究现代公司高管每周工作时间的表现。他和自己的团队采访了221名“管理人士”，并进行了问卷调查。战后节省人力的机器设备发展起来，经济普遍繁荣，并且出现了针对高收入人群的没收性赋税。在这种情况下，经济学家们认为每周工作时间将缩短。 如果真是这样的话，这种设想似乎并没有影响到上世纪50年代的那些公司高管们。“高管的工作跟以往任何时候一样辛苦。，”怀特写道。“很难看出他们还能怎么样更卖力一些。”事实上，“对公司人（corporation man）来说，平衡的生活方式跟以往一样难以捉摸，如今可能还要更难一些。” 这些公司高管所描述的正常工作周似乎并不是很劳累。“大多数地方，高管办公室每周的办公时间平均在45-48小时之间，”怀特写道。“大多数高管在上午8:00至9:00之间到达办公室，他们离开的时间则为下午5:30或6:00。”问题是，这样的工作时间仅仅刚刚超过“中位线”，怀特指出，这对一位像样的公司高管来说确实如此。“一般而言，高管们五天里有四天会在夜间工作，还有一天夜里他们会预定商务娱乐活动——如果他们是公司总裁的话，这种活动还要更多一些。另一夜，高管们可能会呆在办公室，或是在别处开一场冗长的会议。在其他两个夜晚，高管们会回家，而不是去一处避难所甚或分公司办公室。只有极少数的高管在家里装备了口述记录机、计算器等设备，而大多数高管每周至少会花两晚时间进行商务阅读。” 至于保持联系，事实证明，没有智能手机也同样可以随时待命，只要是电话就行。“很多公司高管根本没办法忍住不用（电话）。”怀特写道——甚至连家庭座机也一样。他引用一位亚特兰大公司高管的话说：“我经常会在家里用电话进行抽查……比起白天，我更愿意在夜晚做这件事。我的时间更充裕，而且那时候大多数人都会放松戒备。” 一位来自芝加哥的公司高管表示，有时候家里电话响起来“并不那么好……尤其是当你从孩子那里赢得观看某个电视节目的权力时，你在谈公事的时候孩子们就得坐在那里看你想看的节目”——这在没有视频录像机的年代倒是一种合理的牺牲，如果你错过了某个节目那就真的错过了，除非电视台肯发善心重播。“但就整体而言，”高管们坦承，“我并不介意。” 高管们把工作带回家做是出于什么原因呢？这跟当今职员是一样的：要想在办公室把所有事情做好难于登天。“由于‘委员会式管理’已经变得相当普遍，一般高管每天8小时工作时间里有6小时是花在跟其他高管进行会议交流，”怀特写道。“另外2小时并非用于独自沉思，高管们辗转会议和电话之间的空隙不会超过几分钟。正如有人说的那样，公司高管永远不会孤身一人，至少身体上是不会。在很多情形下，团队行动变得太过狂热，以至于公司高管将上班时间看成是对自己实际工作的打断。这不仅解释了人们为什么在下班后继续工作，也解释了高管们为什么倾向于比其他人更早地去上班。” |
There's a certain narrative circling the business world that modern white-collar types work harder than ever. Thanks to our smartphones, we're always on call. Thanks to our zest for teamwork, we spend our days in meetings -- and do our real work after hours. Certainly things must have been different 50-60 years ago. Then, we suppose, the Organization Man corporate structure meant streamlined decisions. Without email, people left work at work. Right? Not really. According to a 1954 Fortune story titled "How hard do executives work?" executives have always thought they were working harder than anyone else in history. Intriguingly, 1950s sorts and our current crop of workers complain about very similar things. In 1954, William H. Whyte Jr. (who later gained fame for writing The Organization Man) set out to study the modern executive's workweek. He and his team interviewed and compiled questionnaires from 221 "management men." With the post-war rise of labor saving devices, broad prosperity, and confiscatory tax rates on higher incomes, the smart money assumed that workweeks would become shorter. If so, this assumption had yet to influence these 1950s high-flyers. "Executives are working as hard as they ever did," Whyte wrote. "It is difficult to see how they could possibly work harder." Indeed, "For the corporation man the balanced life is as elusive as ever, possibly more so." The normal workweek these executives described doesn't seem too grueling. "In most places the average executive office week runs between forty-five and forty-eight hours," Whyte wrote. "Most executives arrive at the office between 8:00 and 9:00 A.M. and leave about 5:30 or 6:00 P.M." The problem was that this was only just past the "halfway mark," Whyte noted, for a serious executive. "On the average he will work four nights out of five. One night he will be booked for business entertaining -- more, probably if he's a president. Another night he will probably spend at the office, or in a lengthy conference somewhere else. On two other nights he goes home, not to a sanctuary so much as to a branch office. Only a minority of executives have equipped their dens with dictating machines and calculators and such, but the majority devote at least two nights a week to business reading." As for constant contact, it turns out that you don't need a smartphone to stay on all the time. Any phone will do. "Many executives simply cannot resist [the phone]," Whyte wrote -- even if it's the family landline. He quotes an Atlanta executive claiming, "I do a lot of spot checking by phone from home...I'd rather do that at night than in the day time. I have more time, and besides, most people have their guard down then." A Chicago executive reported that sometimes dialing in from the home line was "not so good...particularly when you've won a battle with the kids as to which television program to turn on and then they have to sit and watch your program while you talk business" -- a reasonable sacrifice in a world where, without DVR, if you missed a program you missed it until the network deigned to do a rerun. "But on the whole," the executive confessed, "I don't really mind it." One reason executives took work home? The same reason modern workers do: it's beastly hard to get anything done at the office. "Now that 'committee management' has become so much the rule, the average executive spends roughly six of his eight office hours talking with other executives in meetings and conferences," Whyte wrote. "The other two hours are not spent in solitary contemplation; they are no more than the sum of a few minutes here and there between meetings and the ringing of the telephone. The executive, as one puts it, is never alone. Never physically at any rate. In many instances the team play has grown so frenetic that executives look on the office day as something of an interruption in their actual work. This not only explains the amount of after-hours work, it also explains the tendency of many executives to get to work in the morning earlier than anyone else." |
