When I moved from New York to Boston in 1989, I completely lost my sense of direction. It wasn't me, though, it was those winding, nonsensical Boston roads. Urban legend has it that in Boston, they paved over cow paths to form the very roads we have today. Now, if you're an urban planner designing a city from scratch, you would not base it on how the cows wandered.
当我在1989年从纽约来到波士顿时, 我完全失去了方向感。 然而这并不是因为我, 而是因为波士顿那些曲折 和让人摸不着头脑的小路。 城市奇迹发生在了波士顿, 人们将牲畜走过的羊肠小道 铺成了今天的公路。 如果你是一个从零开始的城市规划者, 你并不会以牲畜的行进方式来规划道路,
And if you think about it, that's exactly what we've done with work. Hundreds of years ago, in the industrial revolution, people left their homes to perform repetitive tasks in the fixed time and place of the factory floor. And when knowledge workers entered the scene, we kept the same model, this time with fixed job descriptions and fields of cubicles from nine to five. Even globalization and technology did little to change the dynamic.
可又转念一想, 这确是我们对待工作的方式。 几百年前,在工业革命时, 人们背井离乡, 日复一日地做着同样的工作, 在固定的时间和工厂地点。 当知识工作者出现时, 我们却还使用着同样的模式, 用着固定的职业描述 和朝九晚五的工作时间。 全球化和科技发展 并没有办法改变现状。
Fixed time, place and job descriptions are the cow paths of work. And like cow paths for roads, it just doesn’t make any sense.
固定的时间、地点和职业描述 属于动物的工作方式, 就像将牲畜走过的路铺成公路一样, 极其荒谬。
I've been challenging and changing how companies work for the past 15 years, starting with my own company, Boston Consulting Group, and then with dozens of other Fortune 500 organizations. And I have to tell you something amazing happened to work during the tragedy of COVID-19, especially those first weeks and months. If you remember, all the low-value work disappeared. It didn't matter what your job technically was. People just worked together across silos and even companies to get stuff done wherever, whenever, however it was needed. Leaders simply had to trust their people. They didn't have time for endless steering committees or death by PowerPoint. We just needed to trust people to deliver, and they did.
在过去的十五年中, 我挑战和尝试改变公司的运作方式, 先从我自己的公司开始—— 波士顿顾问公司, 再慢慢到其他的数十家 世界五百强企业。 在此我也想和你们分享一件 在工作时发生的令人惊奇的事, 这件事发生在新冠病毒一开始 肆意横行的一段时间里。 如果你还记得, 所有低价值的工作都消失了。 这跟一个人具体的工作无关。 人们跨域孤岛和不同的公司 来一起完成工作, 随时随地,只要有需要。 领袖们需要信任自己手下的员工。 他们没有时间面对无休止的指导委员会, 亦或者是ppt所出的问题。 我们需要信任员工 他们也做到了。
So I'm on a mission. A mission to bottle these great work practices and not go back to the old ways. And yes, of course, I want to get rid of endless back-to-back zooms and loneliness and days that blend into evenings. But we have to make sure we don't go back to the rigid, structured, bureaucratic, sluggish ways that sucked the joy out of work.
所以现在我有了一个任务。 一个想要保留所有好的工作制度的任务, 并且确保我们的工作制度 不会倒退回原先的时候。 当然,我想要改变接连不断的视屏会面 和每天孤单地从白天过渡到黑夜的现状。 然而我们要确定我们不会倒退回从前的 那种死板、结构化、官僚主义 和懒散的让人失去工作兴趣的方式。
And I have to tell you, the future of work is not going to be created with top-down, opinion-driven edicts from senior leaders whose day-to-day realities don't match those of us dual-career, time-pressed and income-pressed people. Of course, senior leaders want to go back. That worked for them. But they have to recognize that for 18 months now, their people experienced unprecedented agency, control, flexibility, trust and accountability.
我需要告诉大家的是, 职业的未来不会被从上至下 和以意见主导的布告 而人为创造出来, 来自资历深的业界领袖,他们每天的生活 与我们这种时间紧迫、 收入紧迫的双重职业的人不同。 当然,资深的业界领袖想要回到从前。 他们熟悉从前的方式。 但他们必须承认在这过去的十八个月里, 员工们体验到了前所未有的 能力、掌控、灵活性、 信任和责任感。
And people don't want to go back. And it's this difference in perspective from senior leaders and their people that's one of the main reasons driving so much backlash to all these return-to-office announcements over the past months, with employees venting on social media and quitting in what’s being called the “great resignation.” And employees, I don't blame you. But before you take to social media and walk, try talking to your leaders, tell them what you loved about the past 18 months. Tell them what you want to keep. They might be more receptive than you think.
人们也不再想要回到从前。 正是因为领导者和员工对此的观念不同, 这才因此成为过去几个月里 推动强烈抵制回归办公室宣令的 主要诱因之一。 雇员在社交媒体上发泄对此的不满, 同时大量的离职也造成了“大辞职”风潮。 我并不埋怨雇员们,这不是他们的错。 但当你们想在社交媒体上发泄和准备离职时, 不妨试着和领导们沟通, 告诉他们你在这过去十八个月里 最喜欢这种新模式的什么方面。 告诉他们你希望有哪些方面值得保留。 领导们也可能会比你想象中的 更愿意接受你的想法。
And leaders, let me share three tips -- rather three must-do’s -- to get the future of work right. Number one, trust your people. Millions of workers and employees have proved their trustworthiness since March 2020. But even with that, so many leaders want to go backwards. As part of the work I do, I've spoken with hundreds of leaders over the past 18 months, and I get some really crazy questions. One is, "Well, Debbie, how can I tell if my workers are productive when they're working from home?" And I can't help but say, "Well, how do you know they were productive when they were in the office?" Just because you could see someone, doesn't mean they're productive.
在座的领导者们, 我也想和你们分享三个窍门, 这三个窍门更倾向于帮助 未来工作顺利的三件必要做的事。 第一:信任你的员工。 数以百万计的员工从2020年三月起 就已经证明了他们能够被领导者们信任。 尽管这样,还是有那么多的领导们 想要回到新冠肆虐前的工作方式。 作为我工作的一部分, 我和诸多领导者在过去的18个月里 有过交流, 我也因此收到很多有些疯狂的问题。 其一是:“黛比,我如何知道 我的员工在家工作时 是有效率的呢?” 我也只能回复, “那你是又是如何知道他们在办公室里工作时 是有效率的呢?” 就算员工在你的眼皮子底下, 你也不能笃定地说他们是否有效率。
Or I have to love this, "You know, when it's safe to go back to the office, we're going to let people work from home two days a week, as long as it's not a Monday or Friday because we don't trust them not to slack off and take long weekends." What does that say about the culture of trust? Will there be abusers? Of course, but they'll be a tiny few. So why make rules for the vast majority who've earned your trust every day for the past 18 months?
我爱这个,“在员工能够 安全回到办公室上班的时候, 我们还是会让大家每周在家办公两天, 当然不能是周一和周五, 因为我们不敢信任员工能够不懈怠, 也不延长他们的周末。” 这又说明了信任氛围的什么? 会有人借机滥用吗? 当然,很一小部分的人会这么做。 所以那又为什么要为大部分 在过去18个月里获得你信任的人 再添新的规定约束他们呢?
A trusting culture will not only attract, retain and motivate your people, it'll also save you a lot of time enforcing rules. So that's number one. Trust your people.
彼此信任的氛围不仅有吸引力, 还能更好地鞭策和激励你们的员工, 这也节省了很多 为了服从规定而花的时间。 这就是第一点。 相信你的下属。
Number two, be data-driven. We all have our opinions about how work should be done, and the more senior we are, the more we're convinced that our opinions are not just opinion, but they're fact, they're truth. But one thing COVID’s taught us is that people are so different. I have genetically identical 17-year-old twin boys, Abraham and Boaz, and I emphasize the point "genetically identical," because these two guys could not be more different. Abraham really struggled when school went online. He did everything he could to engineer outdoor, socially distant get-togethers because you can't call them playdates when the boys are 17.
第二:依靠数据。 我们所有人都有对于如何工作的想法, 当我们更资历更深时, 我们更容易被自己的意见说服, 相信这些意见为事实,为真理。 但新冠肺炎教导我们了一件事, 那就是每个人都很不一样。 我有一对同卵双胞胎的儿子, 亚伯拉罕和博阿斯, 在此我想强调“同卵”, 因为他们非常不同。 亚伯拉罕在家上网课的时候遇到了困境。 他尝试了所有能想到的方法, 去做户外活动, 在聚会时保持良好的社交距离, 尤其是因为我儿子已经17了, 不能再称作这游玩了。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
But his brother, Boaz -- Bo was loving life! "Ma, this is fantastic! I don't ever have to leave my bed!" My boys couldn't be more different, and so are your workers, so we must get data.
但他的兄弟,博阿斯,热爱这样的日子! “妈,这简直太好了! 我再也不需要离开我的床了!“ 我的儿子不能更不同了, 所以我相信你们的下属也是这样。 我们必须要获得数据。
How? Well, try this. Get some of your best people together and ask them, "What did you love about these last 18 months? What did you hate? If we were to give you a magic wand and you could create the perfect work environment for you, what would your days, weeks and months look like?" And then experiment. Yes. Experiment. So many people are saying COVID's been the biggest work experiment ever. I beg to differ. I'm not a scientist, but I know that prospective experiments have hypotheses, control groups, data collection, learning loops and revisions. We didn't do that. And so now’s the time to experiment.
怎么做到呢?不妨试一下这个。 让你最好的员工们聚集在一起, 问问他们, “你们最喜欢过去这18个月的那些部分? 又有什么地方无法忍受? 如果我们给你们一个魔法杖, 你们可以用这个魔法杖 创造出一个完美的工作环境, 那你们的工作日又会是什么样的?” 接下来等待实验结果。是的,实验结果。 很多人说新冠肺炎是历史上 最大型的工作环境实验。 我并不认同这种说法。 我不是科学家,但我知道 所有前瞻性实验都有假设、控制组、 数据采集、学习循环和修订。 我们没有这样做。 所以现在是做实验的时候了。
And we don’t have to wait until it’s safe to go back to the office. We could do it now. Take two teams that do similar work, let one flex and work whenever and however they need, and another, give them fixed times. You want them online and you want them working. And then measure. Survey them every week. Everyone says people are oversurveyed. People are not oversurveyed when it comes to this topic. They want to have their opinions heard. So ask them, "How's it going? Are you delivering value? Are you able to collaborate well? How's your work-life balance? What do you love? What do you hate?" And take those learning and spread them around.
我们不需要等到 能够安全回到办公室的时候。 现在就可以开始实验。 让两组做同样的工作, 让其中一组自由选择什么时候工作, 要怎么工作, 让另一组在固定时间里工作。 你需要他们在线上办公。 接着只要测量和记录。 每一周都调查他们的工作情况。 每个人都说员工们被过度调查了。 但是在这个问题上没有人是被过度调查的。 他们想要他们的意见被听取。 所以我们只需问:“怎么样了? 你有在创造价值吗? 和其他组员合作的好吗? 你的工作和生活平衡得怎么样? 你有什么喜欢或者讨厌的地方吗?” 把这些学习到的部分,散播开来。
This is new for all of us. We're not going to get it right the first, second, third or even fourth time. But together with conversation and data, and experiments, we're going to learn our way to a better future of work. So that's number two. Number one, trust your people. Number two, be data-driven.
对所有人来说这一切都是全新的。 我们在前几次的尝试中 可能都无法做对。 但配合上沟通、数据和实验, 我们能学到各人工作更美好的未来。 这是其二。 首先,相信你的下属。 其次,以数据说话。
Here's number three. Think beyond the schedule. Guess what? The future of work is not two days that you get to work from home. This is our chance right now to reimagine, reduce, replace or even eliminate things like long commutes, endless meetings with too many people there, recurring meetings that never go away, synchronous work, silos, command-and-control leaders, administrivia -- that's my word for the low-value stuff that clogs our calendars. In other words, we could stop contorting our lives around work, but we could actually reshape work to better fit our lives. So that's number three. Think beyond the schedule.
接下来是第三点。 不要局限于时间表的限制。 职业的未来不再是 能够每周在家办公两天。 这是我们的机会 去大胆地重新构想、减少、替换, 甚至消除一些事物, 比如长时间的通勤, 无休止的大型会面, 重复且不消停的会议, 同步的工作、生活, 指挥控制型的领导者, 行政—— 这些都是挤满我们个人日程的 低价值的事物。 换句话来说,我们可以 停止让工作扭曲我们的生活, 而其实可以重铸我们的工作 去更好地贴合我们的生活。 这就是我想强调的第三点。 不要局限于时间表的限制。
And guess what, a lot of companies are getting it right. Take Dropbox, for example. Before COVID, Dropbox only had three percent of their workers working from home. They're now moving forward with a remote-first model and trying to push as much asynchronous work as possible. And to help collaboration with their model, they're setting core collaboration hours that very slightly by time zone, so they have four hours a day when you know everyone is online in case you need to collaborate.
现在很多公司也理解了这点。 以Dropbox为例。 在新冠发生之前,Dropbox 只有百分之三的员工 在家办公。 他们使用远程优先模式稳步前进, 尝试推动尽可能多的异步和远程工作。 同时为了和他们的模式相辅相成, 他们设定了和时区有关的核心协作时间, 每天都有四小时的时间每个人都在线, 当你想要协作时知道用哪一时段。
One of my favorite examples is the Mr. Cooper Group. And Mr. Cooper Group's been described as a mortgage giant no one's heard of. A lot of their workers, a large percentage, are call center operators. And like many, in the first days of COVID, they got them all home safely and successfully. And guess what? They were more productive, and they were happier. But even with that data, many on the leadership team wanted them back in the office as soon as it was safe to do so. They just couldn't imagine call center work being done from home permanently. Well, that's where Kelly Ann Doherty, their amazing Chief People Officer comes in. When Kelly Ann and her team presented their recommendation for a home-centric working model, she got a ton of questions. "Well, Kelly Ann, what about onboarding and training?"
我最喜欢的其中一个例子 是库博格鲁伯先生。 库博格鲁伯先生被称作 没有听说过的抵押贷款巨头。 他们大部分的员工, 是呼叫中心的接电话人员。 就像很多其他雇员一样, 在新冠刚出现的前几天, 他们都成功地安全回到了家。 结果你猜发生了什么? 他们的工作效率更高了,也更开心了。 尽管数据支持这一观点, 还有很多领导者想要 在确认安全以后 尽快召集员工回归办公室。 领导者们只是无法想象 呼叫中心的接电话工作 能够永久地在家完成。 这就是他们的首席人事官凯莉·安·多尔蒂 出力的时候。 当凯莉·安和她的组员展示他们推荐的 一个围绕家庭的工作模式时, 凯莉·安收获了一堆问题。 “凯莉·安,那入职和培训又怎么办呢?”
She said, "Of course, we're going to get people together for that. Home-centric doesn't mean we're never together."
她回复道:“当然, 我们会为此召集所有人。 围绕家庭不代表我们不可以在一起。”
"Well, what about day-to-day coaching and mentoring?"
“那每天的辅导和指导又怎么办呢?”
"We're experimenting with software that allows managers to do that even better."
“我们正在实验用软件让我们的经理 能够更好地做到这样。”
"Well, what about culture? Communication? What about --"
“那企业文化怎么办? 交流呢?那其他的——”
And she just stopped them It was a moment, and she said, "I know you all want to go back to your offices. So do I, but we have to take a minute to walk in the shoes of our call center operators. They are loving the flexibility. They're saving real money by not commuting, and we know this is a high-turnover population. Imagine if one of our competitors is more flexible than us. How many people are we going to lose?"
凯莉·安暂停了他们的问题。 一瞬过后,她回答: “我知道你们都想回到办公室。 这也是我的想法,但我们需要停一下, 也为我们的呼叫中心运营的人员想一想。 他们喜爱这样的灵活性。 他们能够因为不用通勤而真正地存好钱, 我们也知道这是一个高周转率的人群。 让我们想一想,如果我们的对手 比我们更有灵活性, 那我们会失去多少员工?”
And with that, Kelly Ann and her team had the leadership team on board. They’re moving forward with a home-centric model, and they're investing in upskilling all of their managers to be able to coach, mentor and manage their teams remotely. And now they're taking it one step further. They're tapping into more flexible talent pools, like military spouses, who need a ton of flexibility when their spouses are deployed. In other words, Kelly Ann and the Mr. Cooper Group are urban planners of the future of work. They're trusting their people. They're using data. They're thinking beyond the schedule to not go back to the old cow paths of call center work. They're making work better for them, for the company, the customers and their people.
就这样,凯莉·安和她的组员 说服了领导层。 他们决定推行一个围绕家庭的工作模式, 他们也投资让公司的经理得到技能培训, 这样他们才能更好地 远程指导和管理他们的工作小组。 现在他们也更进了一步。 他们正在利用更灵活的人才库, 像军人配偶一样, 在他们的配偶在调配时 需要非常多的灵活性。 换句话来说, 凯莉·安和库博先生的公司, 都是未来工作的城市规划者。 他们相信手底下的员工。 他们使用数据。 他们先于日程表, 选择不要回到旧式的呼叫中心的工作。 他们将工作为他们自己,为他们的公司, 为他们的顾客和员工变得更好。
This is our moment, right now, to together with our people and our teams design a future of work that's more engaging, more productive and more humane.
现在是我们的时刻, 和我们的雇员和团队一起 设计让未来的工作更有参与性, 更高效和人性化。
Thank you.
谢谢。
(Applause)
(掌声)