培養成長型企業文化，而非績效型文化
Here’s the dilemma: In a competitive, complex, and volatile business environment, companies need more from their employees than ever. But the same forces rocking businesses are also overwhelming employees, driving up their fear, and compromising their capacity.
現在的困境是:在競爭激烈、複雜多變的商業環境中，企業比以往任何時候都更需要員工。但是，同樣可以動搖企業也是僱員，他們也令企業感到害怕，並損害了企業的能力。
It’s no wonder that so many C-Suite leaders are focused on how to build higher performance cultures. The irony, we’ve found, is that building a culture focused on performance may not be the best, healthiest, or most sustainable way to fuel results. Instead, it may be more effective to focus on creating a culture of growth.
難怪這麼多高層領導都專注於如何建立更高的績效文化。我們發現，具有諷刺意味的是，建立一種注重績效的文化可能不是最好的、最健康的、或者最可持續的。相反，專注於創造一種成長型文化可能更有效。
A culture is simply the collection of beliefs on which people build their behavior. Learning organizations classically focus on intellectually oriented issues such as knowledge and expertise. That’s plainly critical, but a true growth culture also focuses on deeper issues connected to how people feel, and how they behave as a result. In a growth culture, people build their capacity to see through blind spots; acknowledge insecurities and shortcomings rather than unconsciously acting them out; and spend less energy defending their personal value so they have more energy available to create external value. How people feel — and make other people feel — becomes as important as how much they know.
文化就是人們建立自己行爲的信念的集合。學習型公司組織專注於專業知識等面向知識的問題。這顯然是至關重要的，但真正的成長型文化也關注與人們的感受有關的更深層次的問題，以及他們的行爲方式。在成長型文化中，人們通過培養自己的能力來克服盲區，承認不安全感和缺點，而不是無意識地把它們表現出來，花更少的精力來保護他們的個人價值，這樣他們就有更多的精力去創造外在的價值。人們的感受——以及給別人的感覺——與他們知道多少都是一樣重要的。
Building a growth culture, we’ve found, requires a blend of individual and organizational components:
我們發現，建立個人及公司成長型文化需要以下要素：
1. An environment that feels safe, fueled first by top by leaders willing to role model vulnerability and take personal responsibility for their shortcomings and missteps.
讓員工感到安全的工作環境，領導者首先表露自己的缺點，並積極改正和克服缺點。
2. A focus on continuous learning through inquiry, curiosity and transparency, in place of judgment, certainty and self-protection.
通過問詢、培養好奇心和事務公開、準確判斷和自我保護機制等注重長期性學習能力的培養。
3. Time-limited, manageable experiments with new behaviors in order to test our unconscious assumption that changing the status quo is dangerous and likely to have negative consequences.
有時間限制的、可管理的新行爲實驗，以此來檢驗我們這種無意識的假設:改變現狀是危險的，可能會產生消極的後果。
4. Continuous feedback – up, down and across the organization – grounded in a shared commitment to helping each other grow and get better.
不斷的向上、向下、跨組織的反饋。這種反饋應該基於共同的信念，幫助彼此成長和進步。
By contrast, a performance-driven culture often exacerbates people’s fears by creating up a zero-sum game in which people are either succeeding or failing and “winners” quickly get weeded out from “losers.” Results also matter in growth cultures, but in addition to rewarding success, they also treat failures and shortcomings as critical opportunities for learning and improving, individually and collectively.
相比之下，以業績爲導向的文化往往會加劇人們的恐懼，創造出一種零和遊戲，人們要麼成功，要麼失敗，“贏家”很快就會從“失敗者”中除名。“結果在成長型文化中也很重要，但除了獎勵成功之外，他們還把失敗和缺點當作學習和改進的關鍵機會，不管是個人還是集體都是這樣。”
These are easy words to say, but they’re much harder to practice. Instinctively, we’re each inclined to hide, rationalize, minimize, cover up, and deny our weaknesses and mistakes because they make us feel vulnerable, at risk, and unworthy. These fears narrow and limit our perspective rather than enlarging it — at a time when the complexity of the problems we face often exceeds the complexity of thinking necessary to solve them.
這些話說起來容易，但做起來難多了。本能地，我們都傾向於隱藏、合理化、最小化、掩蓋、否認我們的弱點和錯誤，因爲它們讓我們感到脆弱、危險和不值得。這些恐懼是狹隘的，限制了我們的視野——在我們所面對的問題的複雜性超出我們想象時尤其如此。
We began building a growth culture at my own company in the aftermath of a tumultuous period during which we brought in several new leaders, with different skill sets, to reinvent what we provided to clients and how we ran our business. Until then, we had always been a conflict-averse culture, preferring to see ourselves as a happy family for as long as our business prospered. Resentments got pushed beneath the surface, but they became harder to contain as we struggled through this period of change and uncertainty. Tension grew between our old and new employees, and our old and new ways of running our business. As CEO, I was seen as insufficiently respectful of who we’d been, and what values needed to be retained.
在經歷了一段動盪的時期之後，我們開始在我自己的公司建立一個成長型文化。在這段時間裏，我們引進了幾位不同技能的新領導人，以徹底改造我們爲客戶提供的服務，以及我們如何經營我們的業務。在那之前，我們一直都是一種不喜歡衝突的文化，喜歡把自己看作一個幸福的家庭，只要我們的生意興隆就可以了。憤恨被隱藏。但隨着我們在這一變化和不確定時期的掙扎，他們變得更難控制了。我們的老員工和新員工之間的關係越來越緊張，新老方法之間也有矛盾。作爲CEO，人們認爲我不夠尊重公司過去的文化和價值。
Once our new team was in place and I had greater clarity about the path forward, my first instinct was to surface the remaining tensions across the organization, and then work to be more transparent with one another. But realistically, we hadn’t built enough safety to make that possible. Instead, we began our work with our smaller team of senior leaders, inviting all employees to anonymously share their relative level of trust in each of us, in areas including our honesty, intentions, authenticity, skills, integrity, standards, and results.
一旦我們的新團隊就位，並且我對前進的道路有了更清晰的認識，我的第一反應就是解決那些隱藏起來的緊張和矛盾。但是實際上，我們並沒有給員工足夠的安全感來實現這個想法。取而代之的是，我們開始與高層領導團隊合作，邀請所有員工匿名分享他們對我們每個人的信任程度，包括我們的誠實、意圖、真實性、技能、正直、標準和結果。
The feedback we got was raw and tough. When we sat down together to discuss it, we agreed to try to view the feedback through a lens of personal responsibility, rather than defensively. One of my colleagues jumped in courageously, owning her inclination to be controlling and harsh at times, and reflecting on what in her past influenced that self-protective behavior. She made no excuses, and her vulnerability set the tone for the rest of us. We followed by sharing the toughest feedback we’d each received, what felt most significant about it, and where we thought it came from, and what behaving differently would look like. It was intense and demanding work, but we all left feeling buoyed.
我們得到的反饋是殘酷的。當我們坐下來討論這個問題時，我們同意嘗試通過個人責任的視角來看待反饋，而不是防禦性的視角。我的一個同事勇敢地站了出來，直言自己有時太過嚴厲、控制慾強，並且反思她過去一些自我保護行爲的影響。她沒有找藉口，她的誠實和勇敢也鼓勵了我們這樣做。接下來，我們分享了每個人收到的最嚴厲的反饋，最重要的是什麼，以及我們認爲它來自哪裏，以及我們的行爲會有什麼不同。這個過程並不容易，但我們都感到興奮。
A week later, we shared specific experiments we had devised to try out new ways of behaving in response to the primary challenge each of us had defined. We also agreed to meet once a week to share progress and setbacks, and invite feedback from one another. Eight weeks later, at an offsite, we shared with the rest of the company what we’d heard from them, what had resonated for us most deeply, and what we were doing about it. We’d begun the journey of building our own growth culture.
一週後，我們分享了我們設計的一些具體實驗，試圖找出應對我們每個人所定義的主要挑戰的新方法。我們還同意每週舉行一次會議，分享進展和挫折，並分享彼此的反饋。八週後，在一個非公開場合，我們與公司的其他成員分享了我們從他們那裏聽到的消息，以及我們最深刻的共鳴，以及我們正在做的事情。我們開始了建立自己的成長型文化的旅程。
Perhaps the most fundamental lesson we’ve learned – including in our subsequent work with clients – is that fueling growth requires a delicate balance between challenging and nurturing. Think about a young child beginning to venture into the world. The infant crawls away from its mother to explore the environment, but frequently looks back and returns periodically in order to feel reassured and comforted. We are not so different as adults. Too much challenge, too continuously – without sufficient reassurance — eventually overwhelms us and breaks us down. Too little challenge – too much time spent in our comfort zone – precludes our growth and eventually makes us weaker.
我們學到的最基本的教訓——包括在我們與客戶的後續工作中——是需要在刺激增長和培養員工之間保持一個微妙的平衡。想想一個小孩開始冒險進入這個世界、嬰兒從母親身邊爬出來探索周圍的環境，他們經常會回頭看，時不時地回來，以感到安心和安慰。我們成年人也是這樣。面臨頻繁激烈的挑戰，卻又得不到安慰時，我們最終會崩潰。缺乏挑戰——在我們的舒適區花費太多的時間——則會阻礙了我們的成長，最終使我們變得更弱。
A performance culture asks, “How much energy can we mobilize?” and the answer is only a finite amount. A growth culture asks, “How much energy can we liberate?” and the answer is infinite.
績效型文化會問:“我們有多少精力?”答案是有限的。成長型文化問:“我們能釋放多少能量?”答案是無限的。
