從橡皮筋看管理Break bad habits and profits will be in the post

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

當我晚上下班回家的時候，通常會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候，他會利用這些橡皮筋，把它們纏繞在自己製作的巨大橡皮筋球上。但現在我會撿起這些皮筋，然後把它們和塞進信筒裏的那些垃圾郵件一起扔到垃圾桶裏。

Last week I got an email from a reader who takes a more assertive approach to stray 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 pointed out that the little red bands carelessly discarded by her staff were an eyesore, a waste of rubber – and of money.

上週，我的一位讀者給我發來電子郵件，告訴了一種處理這些廢棄橡皮筋的更爲果斷的做法。多年來，這位讀者一直把收集到的橡皮筋放到一個罐子裏，但當罐子最近滿了的時候，他把它們全都放進一個大牛皮紙信封裏，然後寄給皇家郵政(Royal Mail)的首席執行官莫亞•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，是在浪費橡膠和錢財。

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，她意識到了這些問題，並已將此事轉至讀者所在地的郵局處理。沒過多久，他收到了第二封信，這封信是當地郵局經理寄來的。這位經理在信中強調，皇家郵政多年來一直努力讓員工意識到“這些橡皮筋給我們客戶帶來的不便的（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題”（或者他是想說“聚在一起”？），並在“工作時間聆聽和學習”環節討論這個問題。經理在信的末尾告訴那位讀者，如果他有進一步“與橡皮筋有關的問題”，可以直接與他聯繫，以便他能“立即處理責任人”。

In some ways this wasn't a bad admitted to the existence of a problem and appeared to take some responsibility for what it says about Royal Mail,apart from the piffling detail that its managers can neither write nor proofread, is deeply 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.

某種程度上這並非一封糟糕的來信。它承認問題的存在，並表示出願意爲此承擔部分責任的態度。然而，它除了暴露出經理們既不會寫信、也不會檢查錯字這一瑣碎細節以外，它對皇家郵政的揭示也令人深感不安。如果多年來該公司的首席執行官和部門經理三令五申，而且還宣稱尊重可持續發展，但仍不能讓其員工做到撿起橡皮筋這類簡單的事情，那麼它面臨着比投遞業務每年虧損約4000萬英鎊更深層次的問題。

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變顯然沒有取得效果。多少次的開會或“摟抱”都不會解決橡皮筋問題。至於“工作時間聆聽和學習”環節，皇家郵政變成了什麼？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.

甚至那位經理似乎也沒指望成功，因爲他最後又訴諸更爲傳統（並且錯誤）的讓人們俯首聽命的方式：找到犯錯者，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.

我的讀者並非第一個對橡皮筋不滿的。慈善機構“保持英國清潔”(Keep Britain Tidy)估算，皇家郵政在過去5年花費500萬英鎊購買了40億條橡皮筋，其中許多被丟到了街道上。人們一直在呼籲解決這個問題，包括建議對丟棄皮筋的投遞員罰款，但全都沒有效果。

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.

幸運的是，我有了一個解決辦法，並把它裝進大牛皮紙信封裏寄給了格林。它就是一本查爾斯•都希格(Charles Duhigg)所著的《習慣的力量》(The Power of Habit)，這本書指出，重振一個衰落組織的最佳方式是找出一個壞習慣，然後改正它。因此當保羅•奧尼爾(Paul O'Neill)在上世紀80年代末接管美國鋁業(Alcoa)的時候，他決心將事故發生率降至零。股東們起初感到駭然，但隨後感到驚奇——在改善安全的過程中，溝通、信任、效率和利潤全都有所改善。

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法爲皇家郵政帶來同樣的契機。要想讓它們不再弄髒英國家庭的門口，首先需要理解它們爲何會被丟棄。我懷疑原因很複雜而且有許多。你經常看到郵遞員急匆匆地趕着時間投遞郵件，這可能是原因之一。另一個可能的原因是，皇家郵政儘管嘴上說得漂亮，但實際上因爲橡皮筋過於廉價而並不重視。但我非常確信的是，紀律渙散、高曠工率以及管理不善（這一點最重要）也脫不了干係。

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.

如果格林宣佈她只有一個目標——打贏橡皮筋之戰，所有人都會認爲她瘋了，尤其是該公司準備在明年私有化。但如果她從這一積習開刀，她就會發掘出更深層次的問題，並且也會着手解決它們。她還將免受所有那些僞重要事務的困擾——首席執行官們往往被這些事務分散了精力。

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站上表示，其目標是“投遞市場領先的企業責任”。而我只想要皇家郵政投遞我的郵件——沒有橡皮筋的郵件。