适合当领导的超级英雄！

The enhanced abilities of some superheroes and supervillains come straight from leadership handbooks.

一些超级英雄和超级反派的超能力简直像是从领导力手册中照搬的。

Inspirational Avenger Captain America is an expert military tactician, blessed with extraordinary agility, a quality much sought after in would-be corporate leaders. Evil robot Ultron boasts strength, speed and stamina to overcome the energy-sapping long-haul travel schedule that reportedly helped do in HSBC’s Mr Flint. (Ultron can also “make calculations with superhuman speed and accuracy”, according to one fan site, which might recommend him for chief financial officer if the top job is unavailable).

鼓舞人心的复仇者(Avenger)美国队长(Captain America)是一名军事战术专家，拥有非凡的敏捷身手，这是想要成为企业领导人极为追捧的能力。邪恶的机器人奥创(Ultron)拥有力量、速度和耐力，可以克服耗费精力的长途旅行行程——据报道，这些能力也帮助汇丰的范宁做到了这一点。(据一家粉丝网站的信息显示，奥创还能“以超人的速度和精准度进行计算”，这一点会让他被推举担任首席财务官，如果他当不了首席执行官的话。)

Chief executives are always receiving glib advice to spot patterns in weak signals, so Spider-Man or Black Panther’s powers of “precognition” would come in handy. Such traits would make it easier for a new HSBC chief executive to monitor a global company with nearly 250,000 staff.

首席执行官总会收到华而不实的建议：从微小的讯号中发现模式。所以，蜘蛛侠(Spider-Man)或者黑豹(Black Panther)的“预知”能力也很有用处。这样的能力会让汇丰新任行政总裁更容易监控一个有近25万员工的国际企业。

Any chief executive would envy The Thing’s rocklike skin, an important defence against the rough and tumble of volatile markets, not to mention the brickbats of analysts and the media. Just occasionally, after a particularly poor quarter, they may even want to draw on the Invisible Woman’s signature superpower or the shape-shifting abilities of anti-hero Loki.

任何首席执行官都会羡慕石头人(The Thing)岩石一样的皮肤，这是应对动荡市场的磕碰与颠簸的重要防御，更不用说分析师和媒体的口诛笔伐了。首席执行官在偶尔经历了一个特别糟糕的季度之后，甚至可能很想运用隐形女侠(Invisible Woman)的标志性超能力，或者是反英雄洛基(Loki)的变身能力。

Then there are the superfluous powers. Some superskills — I’m thinking of Ant Man’s ability to communicate telepathically with insects or even Spider-Man’s web-shooters — are of less use in the weekly strategy meeting.

还有些能力是多余的。有些超能力——我说的是蚁人(Ant Man)与昆虫进行心灵感应交流的能力，或者甚至是蜘蛛侠射出蛛丝的能力——在每周战略会议当中都没什么用。

Others are positively counter-productive. There will be times when, as the boss, you might yearn for the retractable adamantium claws of Wolverine, if only to put a bit of force behind your often ignored commands. You may even wish to fix colleagues with the hellfire of a “penance stare” like Ghost Rider, who visits his wrath on the wicked like an overzealous compliance officer.

其他能力事实上是有负作用的。作为老板，有时候你会渴望拥有金刚狼(Wolverine)的可伸缩艾德曼合金(adamantium)爪，如果它能为你总被别人忽略的命令加一点强制力就好了。甚至你还可能希望能像恶灵骑士(Ghost Rider)那样，用带有地狱之火的“审判之眼”解决你的同事，他就像一个过分尽职的合规官一样对恶人降下他的怒火。

A gentler style of management is generally preferred in the boardroom these days, though. Staff may whisper “you wouldn’t like him when he’s angry” about the ambitious and seemingly mild-mannered middle manager, but Hulk-style vengeance-seeking tends to disqualify candidates from the leadership fast track.

不过，现在的董事会普遍更喜欢温和一些的管理方式。对于雄心勃勃又看似温和的中层经理，员工有可能会窃窃私语“他发起怒来你可就不会喜欢他了”，但是绿巨人浩克(Hulk)式的寻仇往往会让候选人失去走上通向领导层的快速道的资格。

As for “genius-level intellect”, a quality shared by many Marvel characters, this is more of a handicap to achieving high corporate office. EQ is as important as IQ for the 21st century chief executive. John Cryan, the ill-fated former chief executive of Deutsche Bank, was noted for his “enormous brain” — an attribute shared with Avenger Iron Man — but he could not think the German lender out of its predicament. Mr Flint himself was “respected for his quiet intelligence”, according to a damning-with-faint-praise note by the Financial Times Lex column.

至于“天才级别的智力”——这是许多漫威角色都具备的——对于晋升高层职位更可能是个缺陷。对于21世纪的首席执行官来说，情商与智商一样重要。运气不佳的德意志银行(Deutsche Bank)前首席执行官约翰•克赖恩(John Cryan)就以他 “绝顶聪明的大脑”而闻名——复仇者钢铁侠(Iron Man)也有同样的品质——但是克赖恩并没有想出让这家德国银行走出困境的方法。据英国《金融时报》Lex专栏的一篇明褒暗贬的文章称，范宁本人也“因为其冷静睿智而受到尊敬”。

Let’s face it, most corporate bosses fall into the category of more minor characters listed on Marvel’s official website, which include an Administrator and “the woman known as Appraiser”, whose less-than-thrilling role seems to have been to determine the value of mutants. A job at one of the Big Four audit firms awaits her.

面对现实吧，大部分企业老板在漫威官网上只能被列为一些更边缘的角色，包括“行政长官”(Administrator)和“被叫做鉴定师的女人”(the woman known as Appraiser)，后者不怎么让人激动的角色能力似乎是确定突变者的价值。四大审计师事务所之一肯定会为她留一个岗位的。

Similarly, everybody knows a long-serving chief executive who has “performed his duty for untold millennia” like the sorcerer called Aged Genghis, whose mind was “long ago consumed by mystic forces”. It is to protect against such superannuatedsuperheroes that the UK governance code suggests a nine-year limit on directors before they are deemed to be no longer independent.

类似地，每个人都知道一个任职多年、像巫师成吉思大耋(Aged Genghis)一样“在数不清的千年中尽职尽责”的首席执行官，其头脑“早已被神秘力量占据”。为了避免出现这样过时的超级英雄，英国的治理准则建议为企业董事设置9年的工作时限，因为在此时限之后他们会被认为不再具备独立性了。

In truth, though, while the analyst’s comment was a throwaway line, it says more about the unmanageably broad scope of some modern multinationals than it does about the dearthof executives with the superhuman skills to lead them.

不过，事实上，虽然文首那位分析师的评价只是随口一说，但与其说这句话说明了缺乏那种拥有超能力以领导现代跨国企业的高管，不如说这句话揭示了这些企业规模大到难以管理。

The collective strength and cohesion of the whole team at the top is the true organisational superpower. Irrespective of title or place in the nominal hierarchy, teams perform better when the chief executive defers to fellow executives best-equipped to tackle a particular challenge. Marvel’s fantasy world has a model and a motto for this, too: Avengers, assemble!

最高管理团队的集体力量和团结才是一个组织真正的超能力。撇开企业层级中名义上的头衔和职位，如果首席执行官能听从最有能力解决特定挑战的其他执行官的意见，团队会运作得更好。漫威的幻想世界也有对应的样板和格言：复仇者，集结吧!