????如果你已經工作了一段時間，你可能會發現一種悖論：讓許多人（在一定程度上）大獲成功的那些品質，如果太過出格，可能產生相反的效果。比如，一位老板太過專注于一視同仁，對懶惰的員工和明星員工給予相同的獎勵，結果導致最優秀的下屬跳槽。再比如，一位同事太過追求在每一個微小的細節上實現卓越，結果上司可能認為他是沉迷于爭權奪利。

????杰克?布雷登寫道，要想看清“最優質的資本什么時候會變成阻礙職業發展的障礙”并不是件容易的事，因為“人性、社會準則和企業文化，都可能將我們推向未曾證實過的、所謂“美德”的邊緣。”布雷登是非營利性高管發展組織杜克企業教育學院（Duke Corporate Education）的教職員工，這間學院隸屬于杜克大學富科商學院（Duke University's Fuqua School of Business）。布雷登曾與微軟（Microsoft）、思科（Cisco）、谷歌（Google）、IBM等公司的管理層合作，致力于發現阻礙管理者職業發展的盲點。目前，他出版了一本關于這個話題的新書——《打到圣牛：踢爆披著美德外衣的職場壞習慣》（Tipping Sacred Cows: Kick the Bad Work Habits that Masquerade as Virtues）。

????他所指的“圣牛”是指傳統觀點認為所有人都渴求無限量擁有的品質，比如平衡、合作、創造力、卓越、公平、熱情和準備。布雷登寫道：“如果領導者堅持某些信念，但卻不能理解和管理潛在的副作用，這些信念便變成了‘圣牛’。”就像齋普爾街頭阻塞交通的那些四處游蕩的牲畜一樣，這些信念也會影響公司發展的進程。以創造力為例，上個世紀，索尼（Sony）未能生產出一款成功產品，分析師絞盡腦汁分析其中的原因，最后認為公司缺乏創造力才是罪魁禍首。但布雷登卻認為事實恰恰相反，索尼“失敗的根源在于創造力過盛”，或者更準確地說，是源于創造力的陰暗面——自大。

????“索尼的工程師并沒有謙遜地傾聽來自市場的聲音，而是把他們最好的技術一股腦地塞進一臺MP3播放器中，結果導致產品太過煩瑣，不易于使用。而消費者對簡單的追求，索尼卻視而不見，反而對公司工程師的需要非常重視，”布雷登寫道。“索尼內部的工程師認為，蘋果（Apple）iPod所用的硬盤技術遠遠落后于索尼，所以他們依然我行我素。這些創新者們滿腦子都是創意。他們的問題不在于缺乏創意，而是太過自戀。”

????再以卓越為例。自從湯姆?皮特斯與羅伯特?沃特曼的《追求卓越》（In Search of Excellence）一書出版后，卓越便成為各大公司的“圣牛”。布雷登認為，當負責人將流程與結果混淆時，卓越的邪惡化身便會出現。因為要想達到偉大的結果，必須接受過程中的混亂和不確定性。他寫道：“一旦領導者在每天的工作當中，對哪怕根本無關緊要的細節也要求做到盡善盡美時，他們其實是在浪費自己的情感和智力能量。通常情況下，領導者要求在小事上做到完美，是因為他們不愿意優先考慮什么事最為重要。”

????布雷登認為，要想打倒這些特殊的“圣牛”，需要心甘情愿潛下心來，敢于犯錯，正如馬克?扎克伯格對于Facebook“黑客倫理”的說法。扎克伯格在寫給股東的一封信中說道：“黑客們不會花幾天時間去爭論新創意到底是否可行，或者什么才是打造產品的最佳途徑。他們直接行動起來，動手去驗證是否可行。”

????或者再來看看皮克斯（Pixar）。皮克斯的動畫師們會定期分享還沒有最后定稿的場景草圖，其中包括“可能沒有任何用處的、非常粗略的作品，”布雷登寫道。“每一位動畫師都能接受過程中的混亂，因為每一個人都清楚，最終成品的質量不能打任何折扣……必須降低日常的工作標準，這樣才能在最終達到真正的最高標準。”對于那些妨礙人們實現最佳表現的“圣牛”，應該如何將他們“馴服”呢？布雷登的書中提出了非常實用的建議。但我們并不清楚某一種品質會在什么情況下會變成障礙。想知道自己的職業可能會受到哪種品質的阻礙，不妨點擊breedenideas.com/assessment，回答21個問題。（財富中文網）

????譯者：劉進龍/汪皓

????If you've been working for a while, odds are that you've noticed a paradox: The very same traits that make some people successful (up to a point) can backfire if carried too far. Maybe it's a boss who's so intent on treating everyone fairly that she rewards slackers the same as stars, so that the best performers quit. Or it could be the colleague who's so bent on achieving excellence in every tiny detail that higher-ups see him as too deep in the weeds for a promotion.

????Recognizing "when your greatest assets turn into career-limiting liabilities" isn't easy, writes Jake Breeden, since "human nature, social norms, and corporate culture can all pull us toward the territory of unexamined virtues." A faculty member at Duke Corporate Education, a nonprofit executive-development offshoot of Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, Breeden has worked with managers at Microsoft (MSFT), Cisco (CSCO), Google (GOOG), IBM (IBM), and elsewhere on identifying the blind spots that hold them back. Now he's written a book about it,Tipping Sacred Cows: Kick the Bad Work Habits that Masquerade as Virtues.

????The sacred cows he's referring to -- all desirable in unlimited quantities, says the conventional wisdom -- are balance, collaboration, creativity, excellence, fairness, passion, and preparation. "When leaders embrace beliefs without understanding and managing the potential side effects, the beliefs become sacred cows," Breeden writes. Like the wandering herds that clog the streets of Japiur, they get in the way of progress.

????Consider, for instance, creativity. Analysts scratching their heads over why Sony (SNE) hasn't produced a hit product since the last century tend to blame the company's supposed lack of creativity. Breeden believes that just the opposite is true, and that Sony's "failures stem from too much creativity" -- or, more precisely, from creativity's dark side, arrogance.

????"Instead of listening to the market with humility, Sony's engineers crammed their best technology into an MP3 player that was too cumbersome to use. Instead of taking care of their customers' need for simplicity, they took care of their own engineers' need for complexity," Breeden writes. "Engineers inside Sony viewed the hard disk technology used in Apple's iPod as beneath them, so they went their own way. These innovators had brains full of ideas. Their problem wasn't too few ideas. Their problem was too much narcissism."

????Or take excellence, companies' Holy Grail, particularly since the publication of Tom Peters and Robert Waterman's In Search of Excellence. The evil twin of excellence, Breeden believes, takes over when the people in charge confuse the process with the outcome, because getting to a great result requires embracing some chaos and uncertainty along the way. "When leaders demand perfection even in the unimportant details of their workday, they waste emotional and intellectual energy," he writes. "Leaders too often demand excellence in small things because they lack the will to prioritize what matters most."

????Tipping over that particular sacred cow, Breeden says, takes a willingness to dive in and make mistakes, as in what Mark Zuckerberg has called Facebook's (FB) "hacker ethic." As Zuckerberg wrote in a letter to shareholders, "Instead of debating for days whether a new idea is possible or what the best way to build something is, hackers would rather just prototype something and see what works."

????Or look at Pixar, where animators routinely share unfinished scene sketches, including "very rough work that may not turn into anything usable," Breeden writes. "Each animator embraces the mess of progress, just as each one understands that there is no compromising on the quality of the finished product ... You must lower the day-to-day standards of work so that you can achieve the absolute highest standards at the end."

????Breeden's book offers practical advice on how to tame each of the sacred cows he sees as blocking people's best performance, but the exact point where a virtue goes bad is not always obvious. Curious about whether one of them might be holding back your own career? You can take a 21-question quiz at breedenideas.com/assessment.