當今高管史上最賣力？
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????商業世界流傳著這樣一種說法，即當今白領的工作比以往任何時候都要辛苦。由于智能手機的存在，我們總是隨叫隨到。由于熱心于團隊合作，我們成天開會——然后在下班后才真正開始干活。當今世界肯定跟五、六十年前有所不同，然后我們理所當然地認為，組織人（Organization Man）企業結構意味著流線型的決策。電子郵件沒出現的時候，人們只在工作時間工作。真是這樣嗎？ ????并不盡然。根據《財富》雜志（Fortune ）于1954年發表的一篇題為《公司高管的工作有多辛苦？》的文章，高管們歷來認為自己的工作比任何人都要辛苦。有趣的是，上世紀50年代是這樣，而如今的工作人群抱怨的也是類似的事情。 ????1954年，小威廉?懷特（他后來因寫作《組織人》而聲名鵲起）開始著手研究現代公司高管每周工作時間的表現。他和自己的團隊采訪了221名“管理人士”，并進行了問卷調查。戰后節省人力的機器設備發展起來，經濟普遍繁榮，并且出現了針對高收入人群的沒收性賦稅。在這種情況下，經濟學家們認為每周工作時間將縮短。 ????如果真是這樣的話，這種設想似乎并沒有影響到上世紀50年代的那些公司高管們。“高管的工作跟以往任何時候一樣辛苦。，”懷特寫道。“很難看出他們還能怎么樣更賣力一些。”事實上，“對公司人（corporation man）來說，平衡的生活方式跟以往一樣難以捉摸，如今可能還要更難一些。” ????這些公司高管所描述的正常工作周似乎并不是很勞累。“大多數地方，高管辦公室每周的辦公時間平均在45-48小時之間，”懷特寫道。“大多數高管在上午8:00至9:00之間到達辦公室，他們離開的時間則為下午5:30或6:00。”問題是，這樣的工作時間僅僅剛剛超過“中位線”，懷特指出，這對一位像樣的公司高管來說確實如此。“一般而言，高管們五天里有四天會在夜間工作，還有一天夜里他們會預定商務娛樂活動——如果他們是公司總裁的話，這種活動還要更多一些。另一夜，高管們可能會呆在辦公室，或是在別處開一場冗長的會議。在其他兩個夜晚，高管們會回家，而不是去一處避難所甚或分公司辦公室。只有極少數的高管在家里裝備了口述記錄機、計算器等設備，而大多數高管每周至少會花兩晚時間進行商務閱讀。” ????至于保持聯系，事實證明，沒有智能手機也同樣可以隨時待命，只要是電話就行。“很多公司高管根本沒辦法忍住不用（電話）。”懷特寫道——甚至連家庭座機也一樣。他引用一位亞特蘭大公司高管的話說：“我經常會在家里用電話進行抽查……比起白天，我更愿意在夜晚做這件事。我的時間更充裕，而且那時候大多數人都會放松戒備。” ????一位來自芝加哥的公司高管表示，有時候家里電話響起來“并不那么好……尤其是當你從孩子那里贏得觀看某個電視節目的權力時，你在談公事的時候孩子們就得坐在那里看你想看的節目”——這在沒有視頻錄像機的年代倒是一種合理的犧牲，如果你錯過了某個節目那就真的錯過了，除非電視臺肯發善心重播。“但就整體而言，”高管們坦承，“我并不介意。” ????高管們把工作帶回家做是出于什么原因呢？這跟當今職員是一樣的：要想在辦公室把所有事情做好難于登天。“由于‘委員會式管理’已經變得相當普遍，一般高管每天8小時工作時間里有6小時是花在跟其他高管進行會議交流，”懷特寫道。“另外2小時并非用于獨自沉思，高管們輾轉會議和電話之間的空隙不會超過幾分鐘。正如有人說的那樣，公司高管永遠不會孤身一人，至少身體上是不會。在很多情形下，團隊行動變得太過狂熱，以至于公司高管將上班時間看成是對自己實際工作的打斷。這不僅解釋了人們為什么在下班后繼續工作，也解釋了高管們為什么傾向于比其他人更早地去上班。” |
????There's a certain narrative circling the business world that modern white-collar types work harder than ever. Thanks to our smartphones, we're always on call. Thanks to our zest for teamwork, we spend our days in meetings -- and do our real work after hours. Certainly things must have been different 50-60 years ago. Then, we suppose, the Organization Man corporate structure meant streamlined decisions. Without email, people left work at work. Right? ????Not really. According to a 1954 Fortune story titled "How hard do executives work?" executives have always thought they were working harder than anyone else in history. Intriguingly, 1950s sorts and our current crop of workers complain about very similar things. ????In 1954, William H. Whyte Jr. (who later gained fame for writing The Organization Man) set out to study the modern executive's workweek. He and his team interviewed and compiled questionnaires from 221 "management men." With the post-war rise of labor saving devices, broad prosperity, and confiscatory tax rates on higher incomes, the smart money assumed that workweeks would become shorter. ????If so, this assumption had yet to influence these 1950s high-flyers. "Executives are working as hard as they ever did," Whyte wrote. "It is difficult to see how they could possibly work harder." Indeed, "For the corporation man the balanced life is as elusive as ever, possibly more so." ????The normal workweek these executives described doesn't seem too grueling. "In most places the average executive office week runs between forty-five and forty-eight hours," Whyte wrote. "Most executives arrive at the office between 8:00 and 9:00 A.M. and leave about 5:30 or 6:00 P.M." The problem was that this was only just past the "halfway mark," Whyte noted, for a serious executive. "On the average he will work four nights out of five. One night he will be booked for business entertaining -- more, probably if he's a president. Another night he will probably spend at the office, or in a lengthy conference somewhere else. On two other nights he goes home, not to a sanctuary so much as to a branch office. Only a minority of executives have equipped their dens with dictating machines and calculators and such, but the majority devote at least two nights a week to business reading." ????As for constant contact, it turns out that you don't need a smartphone to stay on all the time. Any phone will do. "Many executives simply cannot resist [the phone]," Whyte wrote -- even if it's the family landline. He quotes an Atlanta executive claiming, "I do a lot of spot checking by phone from home...I'd rather do that at night than in the day time. I have more time, and besides, most people have their guard down then." ????A Chicago executive reported that sometimes dialing in from the home line was "not so good...particularly when you've won a battle with the kids as to which television program to turn on and then they have to sit and watch your program while you talk business" -- a reasonable sacrifice in a world where, without DVR, if you missed a program you missed it until the network deigned to do a rerun. "But on the whole," the executive confessed, "I don't really mind it." ????One reason executives took work home? The same reason modern workers do: it's beastly hard to get anything done at the office. "Now that 'committee management' has become so much the rule, the average executive spends roughly six of his eight office hours talking with other executives in meetings and conferences," Whyte wrote. "The other two hours are not spent in solitary contemplation; they are no more than the sum of a few minutes here and there between meetings and the ringing of the telephone. The executive, as one puts it, is never alone. Never physically at any rate. In many instances the team play has grown so frenetic that executives look on the office day as something of an interruption in their actual work. This not only explains the amount of after-hours work, it also explains the tendency of many executives to get to work in the morning earlier than anyone else." |
