如何拆穿企业中的胡扯？

Students at the University of Washington were offered a new course last month, entitled Calling Bullshit In the Age of Big Data. For the past couple of decades, week in and week out, I have been calling bullshit for this publication, and so was delighted to hear my favourite pastime had made it into academia.

上个月，华盛顿大学(University of Washington)开了一门新课，名为《在大数据时代拆穿胡扯》(Calling Bullshit In the Age of Big Data)。过去三十多年，我每周都在这个专栏里拆穿胡扯，因此听说这种我最喜欢的消遣打入了学术界，我很高兴。

While this course is limited to spotting bullshit in numbers, there is an equal need for one spotting it in words, especially words used in business. What follows is an outline for a rival course aimed to fill that gap.

尽管这门课程仅限于发现数字上的胡扯，但发现用词(特别是商界的用词)上的胡扯也同样必要。以下是我为一门旨在填补这一空白的与之竞争的课程拟出的概要。

It starts with a definition: bullshit means nonsense, usually of a puffed-up variety that pretends to be something it is not. Sharp eyes will spot at once the difficulty in applying this to corporate life — almost everything fits the description. Before I have even got inside my office I have tripped over a yellow plastic sign saying “Caution Wet Floor” — bullshit because usually the floor is not wet, and if it were, the picture of someone falling spectacularly is wildly overdoing it.

先从定义开始：胡扯意味着废话，通常夸大其词、装模作样。目光敏锐者会立刻发现，这一定义很难应用于企业生活——几乎所有事都符合这一描述。还没走进办公室，我就发现了一块黄色的塑料牌，上面写着“小心地面湿滑”(Caution Wet Floor)——这是胡扯，因为地面通常并不湿滑，即使地面确实湿滑，但牌子上画的一个人四仰八叉地摔倒在地的样子也太夸张了。

The first rule about calling corporate bullshit is not to do it too assiduously or you will go insane. I have learnt to ignore 95 per cent of it, and of the remainder ask myself two questions: what is the quality? And: how damaging is it?

在企业里拆穿胡扯的第一原则是，别太认真，否则你会疯掉。我已经学会忽略95%的胡扯，对于剩余的那些，我会问自己两个问题：品质如何?以及破坏性有多大?

I have gone through dozens of examples of bullshit that have come my way in the past couple of days and picked three that are worth calling. The first is a branding document produced for a new Pepsi logo in 2008, and resuscitated last week on Twitter. With diagrams comparing the Earth’s magnetic fields to “Pepsi energy fields” and text that reads: “The Pepsi DNA finds its origin in the dynamic of perimeter oscillations” — it is grade A, unadulterated BS. But on the second question — whether it was damaging — the answer is no. Pepsi changed its logo and carried on selling its brown sugar-water around the world willy-nilly.

过去几天，我见识了数十个胡扯的例子，并挑出了3个值得拆穿的。第一个是2008年为百事(Pepsi)新标志所做的品牌文案，最近在Twitter上重新流传开来。文案中用示意图把地球磁场与“百事能量场”相比，配以文字：“百事在边缘震荡的动力学中找到了其DNA的起源(The Pepsi DNA finds its origin in the dynamic of perimeter oscillations)”——这是A级，纯粹的胡扯。但是在第二个问题上——是否具有破坏性——答案是否定的。百事改了标志，继续随心所欲地在全世界卖它的棕色甜饮料。

Even so, bullshit like this deserves to be called both for its exceptional quality, and because doing so might encourage its perpetrators to have a dark night of the soul in which they wonder what on earth they are up to.

即便如此，这样的胡扯也值得拆穿，因为它“令人叫绝”的品质，也因为拆穿它可能会促使它的炮制者在深夜拷问灵魂，反思自己到底要干嘛。

Exhibit two is a document from Deliveroo on its preferred language for describing the poor sods who cycle round with other people’s smelly takeaways on their backs. The memo bans “employees”, replacing it with “independent suppliers”, and forbids “pay” and “hiring” preferring “invoices” and “onboarding” instead.

第二个例子是Deliveroo的一份文件，它在文件中列出了自己倾向于用哪些字眼来形容那些骑着车、背着气味浓重的外卖包到处送外卖的可怜人。这份文件禁止使用“雇员”一词，代之以“独立供应商”;禁止使用“薪水”和“雇佣”这两个词，而倾向于用“发票”和“登船”替代。

On the quality measure this bullshit is tame. “Independent supplier” and “invoice” are innocuous, and “onboarding”, though regrettable as a gerund, especially with no boat in sight, is so common there is little point in protesting. But on the measure of harm, Deliveroo’s memo is wicked. It knows that if people used the ordinary words “employee” and “hire”, they might make the mistake of thinking they were due ordinary things like holidays and sick pay — which Deliveroo doggedly denies them.

就品质而言，这条胡扯平淡无奇。“独立供应商”和“发票”无伤大雅;至于“登船”，尽管这个词令人遗憾地是个动名词(尤其是在语境跟船毫无关系的情况下)，但这个词那么普通，抗议它根本没有什么意义。但就破坏性而言，Deliveroo的文件是不道德的。它知道如果人们使用了“雇员”和“雇佣”这类普通词汇，他们可能会错以为自己有权享有假期和病假这些普通的福利——这是Deliveroo坚决否认的。

The third example comes from Jim Norton, who has the delightfully bullshitty title of chief business officer, president of revenue at Condé Nast. Last week he outlined his new strategy to all staff in a memo that began “Team” and proceeded with a stream of corporate nonsense about playbooks and journeys and wide arrays of differentiated solutions. It glossed over sackings as “hard personnel decisions”, only to declare the new corporate plan: “Condé Nast One”.

第3个例子来自吉姆•诺顿(Jim Norton)，他在康泰纳仕出版集团(Condé Nast)的头衔荒谬到令人发笑——首席业务官、营收总裁。不久前，他在发给全体员工的备忘录中概述了他的新策略，备忘录中以“团队”开头，继而展开了一连串有关剧本和旅程的企业废话以及大量差异化解决方案。它把解雇包装成了“艰难的人事决策”，只为了宣布新的企业计划：“康泰纳仕同舟共济”(Condé Nast One)。

For companies to claim themselves “one” is standard bullshit — it is a cliché and a lie, given the inevitable number of vested interests in any organisation. If Mr Norton were in the motor trade or banking, I might let this pass. Yet Condé Nast publishes Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, where standards of editing are so exacting that one of the latter’s editors has written a whole book based on the correct placement of a comma.

对于企业来说，自称“同舟”是标准的胡扯——鉴于任何组织中都不可避免地存在一些既得利益，这么说既老套、也是谎言。如果诺顿在汽车业或银行业，我可能放他一马。但康泰纳仕是《名利场》(Vanity Fair)和《纽约客》(The New Yorker)的出版商，其编辑标准如此严苛，以至于《纽约客》的一名编辑就插入逗号的正确位置写了整整一本书。

Mr Norton may well bang on about the “heritage of quality journalism”, but had he asked his staff to edit his battle cry: “We will all transition this business together”, they would surely have told him transition was ugly as a verb, but as a transitive one was a monster. He did not ask; what his staff did instead was read the memo, call it, and forward it to me.

诺顿完全可以继续大谈“高质量新闻的传统”，但要是他在备忘录发出前让员工编辑了一下他的战斗口号——“我们所有人将一起转型这家企业”——的话，他们必然会告诉他，把转型用作动词就够糟糕了，用作及物动词简直就是灾难。可惜他没有问;于是他的员工阅读了这篇备忘录，心里暗骂胡扯，然后转发给了我。