Those of you who may remember me from TEDGlobal remember me asking a few questions which still preoccupy me. One of them was: Why is it necessary to spend six billion pounds speeding up the Eurostar train when, for about 10 percent of that money, you could have top supermodels, male and female, serving free Chateau Petrus to all the passengers for the entire duration of the journey? You'd still have five billion left in change, and people would ask for the trains to be slowed down. Now, you may remember me asking the question as well, a very interesting observation, that actually those strange little signs that actually flash "35" at you, occasionally accompanying a little smiley face or a frown, according to whether you're within or outside the speed limit -- those are actually more effective at preventing road accidents than speed cameras, which come with the actual threat of real punishment.
那些在 TEDGlobal 對我還有印象的觀眾 大概會記得我提過的一些問題, 至今,它們仍然困擾著我。 有個問題是:為什麼要花費 六十億英鎊 來提昇歐洲之星的速度, 當你只要花費這龐大預算的十分之一 就可以請到頂級名模,無論男女, 為乘客免費送上彼德綠堡 (Château Pétrus) 紅酒 讓他們享受整個旅程呢? 這樣政府還可以省下五十億英鎊的預算, 而且乘客還會希望列車跑慢一點。 你們現在也許會記得 我提出的另一個問題, 一個很有趣的觀察, 公路上奇特的小標示牌 持續閃爍著數字:「35」 偶爾旁邊還會擺一個笑臉、 或是哭臉, 來表示你是否超速—— 它們其實比測速機 更能有效預防車禍, 儘管測速機是以實際的罰鍰 警戒違規者。
So there seems to be a strange disproportionality at work, I think, in many areas of human problem solving, particularly those which involve human psychology, which is: The tendency of the organization or the institution is to deploy as much force as possible, as much compulsion as possible, whereas actually, the tendency of the person is to be almost influenced in absolute reverse proportion to the amount of force being applied. So there seems to be a complete disconnect here. So what I'm asking for is the creation of a new job title -- I'll come to this a little later -- and perhaps the addition of a new word into the English language. Because it does seem to me that large organizations including government, which is, of course, the largest organization of all, have actually become completely disconnected with what actually matters to people.
所以,這裡就出現了一個奇怪的失衡, 我想,在我們解決各種問題的時候, 特別是那些涉及人類心理因素的問題, 意即,各種組織或機構 往往傾向於 盡量佈置最多的財力物力 —— 施加最大的壓力; 但實際上,人們的傾向 所受到的影響 和數量卻往往呈現 反比關係。 這裡就出現一個完全不對頭的情況, 我認為應該出現一個新型職業 —— 稍後我就會提到, 並且可能會成為英文裡的 一個新名詞。 在我看來,多數的大型組織, 包括政府,算是所有組織裡最大型的, 實際上,已變得 完全脫節, 不能配合群眾的實際需要
Let me give you one example of this. You may remember this as the AOL-Time Warner merger, okay, heralded at the time as the largest single deal of all time. It may still be, for all I know. Now, all of you in this room, in one form or other, are probably customers of one or both of those organizations that merged. Just interested, did anybody notice anything different as a result of this at all? So unless you happened to be a shareholder of one or the other organizations or one of the dealmakers or lawyers involved in the no-doubt lucrative activity, you're actually engaging in a huge piece of activity that meant absolutely bugger-all to anybody, okay? By contrast, years of marketing have taught me that if you actually want people to remember you and to appreciate what you do, the most potent things are actually very, very small. This is from Virgin Atlantic upper-class, it's the cruet salt and pepper set. Quite nice in itself, they're little, sort of, airplane things. What's really, really sweet is every single person looking at these things has exactly the same mischievous thought, which is, "I reckon I can heist these." However, you pick them up and underneath, actually engraved in the metal, are the words, "Stolen from Virgin Atlantic Airways upper-class." (Laughter) Now, years after you remember the strategic question of whether you're flying in a 777 or an Airbus, you remember those words and that experience.
讓我舉個例子, 還記得「美國線上時代華納」的合併吧? 當時,它被稱為有史以來最大的 單筆交易。 據我所知,現在可能還是如此。 我想,在座的各位來自不同的領域, 都有可能是兩間合併公司 或是其中之一的客戶。 那麼,是否有人注意到 合併所造成的任何變化? 所以除非你恰好持有 兩間公司的部分股份 或是曾經參與這次「高利潤活動」的交易者或律師, 否則你實際上不會察覺任何變化, 其實這對各位來說都無關緊要。是吧。 相比之下,多年的行銷經驗讓我瞭解 如果你真的想要其他人記得你 並感激你的貢獻的話, 最有用的,其實是那些非常、非常細微的事。 這是維珍航空(Virgin Atlantic)的頭等艙 使用的鹽和胡椒罐。 看起來很可愛的小東西,確實像是可以免費帶走的用品。 有趣的是 當每位乘客看到它們的時候 內心都會暗地尋思: 「我猜我可以帶走它們。」 但是,要是你拿起那些罐子, 會發現底座刻著這段句子: 「竊取自維珍航空頭等艙。」 (大笑) 多年以後, 當你已經淡忘 當年坐的是波音 777 還是空中巴士後, 你會記得那段有趣的語句和經驗。
Similarly, this is from a hotel in Stockholm, the Lydmar. Has anybody stayed there? It's the lift, it's a series of buttons in the lift. Nothing unusual about that at all, except that these are actually not the buttons that take you to an individual floor. It starts with garage at the bottom, I suppose, appropriately, but it doesn't go up garage, grand floor, mezzanine, one, two, three, four. It actually says garage, funk, rhythm and blues. You have a series of buttons. You actually choose your lift music. My guess is that the cost of installing this in the lift in the Lydmar Hotel in Stockholm is probably 500 to 1,000 pounds max. It's frankly more memorable than all those millions of hotels we've all stayed at that tell you that your room has actually been recently renovated at a cost of 500,000 dollars, in order to make it resemble every other hotel room you've ever stayed in in the entire course of your life.
同樣的,這是在斯德哥爾摩的 Lydmar 賓館。 有人住過那嗎? 那裡的電梯有一串按鈕, 看似平常, 然而它們並不是用來指示要到達的樓層。 最下面的按鈕是 「Garage(車庫)」,沒錯吧? 但是上面這些按鈕 並不是寫著「車庫、大廳、夾層、一樓、二樓、三樓、四樓」。 事實上,它們寫著「車庫、放克、節奏、藍調」。 這列按鈕是供你選擇在電梯內播放的音樂。 我猜 Lydmar 賓館的電梯裡 安裝這種音樂點播的系統 大約花費五百到一千英鎊。 但它真的很令人難忘, 比起我們住過的其他旅館更加印象深刻, 儘管那些旅館常常告訴我們 你的住房才剛全新裝潢 裝修耗資五十萬美元, 但那房間與其他旅館的客房相比之下,沒什麼兩樣 根本就是過眼雲煙。
Now, these are trivial marketing examples, I accept. But I was at a TED event recently and Esther Duflo, probably one of the leading experts in, effectively, the eradication of poverty in the developing world, actually spoke. And she came across a similar example of something that fascinated me as being something which, in a business context or a government context, would simply be so trivial a solution as to seem embarrassing. It was simply to encourage the inoculation of children by, not only making it a social event -- I think good use of behavioral economics in that, if you turn up with several other mothers to have your child inoculated, your sense of confidence is much greater than if you turn up alone. But secondly, to incentivize that inoculation by giving a kilo of lentils to everybody who participated. It's a tiny, tiny thing. If you're a senior person at UNESCO and someone says, "So what are you doing to eradicate world poverty?" you're not really confident standing up there saying, "I've got it cracked; it's the lentils," are you?
這些都是很細微的市場行銷案例。 但是,在我最近參與的一次 TED 活動中,經濟學家 Esther Duflo 很可能是當前,在有效消除發展中國家貧困現象的這一領域上 的主要的專家之一, 她談到了一個案例。 她提出一個類似的方案 我感到極大的興趣 然而對於企業界和政府機關來說, 這方案是如此微不足道, 以至於顯得很尷尬。 這個方案是提倡兒童的疫苗接種 不僅僅是個社會活動 —— 這是對行為經濟學的良好應用。 如果你同另外幾位母親一起 帶自己的小孩去接種, 你會比獨自前往更有信心。 但第二點是,為了鼓勵接種, 政府會配給每位參與接種的人一公斤扁豆。 這是很小很小的事情。 如果你是聯合國教科文組織的一個高級官員 當有人問起:「那你要怎麼 消除當今世界的貧困問題?」 你不可能滿懷自信地回答 「我搞定了,答案就是扁豆。」對吧?
Our own sense of self-aggrandizement feels that big important problems need to have big important, and most of all, expensive solutions attached to them. And yet, what behavioral economics shows time after time after time is in human behavioral and behavioral change there's a very, very strong disproportionality at work, that actually what changes our behavior and what changes our attitude to things is not actually proportionate to the degree of expense entailed, or the degree of force that's applied. But everything about institutions makes them uncomfortable with that disproportionality. So what happens in an institution is the very person who has the power to solve the problem also has a very, very large budget. And once you have a very, very large budget, you actually look for expensive things to spend it on. What is completely lacking is a class of people who have immense amounts of power, but no money at all. (Laughter) It's those people I'd quite like to create in the world going forward.
自我優越性往往使我們覺得 重要的問題 必須用看起來重大、而且通常很昂貴的 方式才能解決。 其實不然,行為經濟學一再地表明 在人類的行為與行為的改變之間 出現非常嚴重的比例失調。 那些能夠真正改變我們行為 和態度的事 實際上不需要花費 很可觀的財力 或是物力。 但所有和機構有關的事物 都使他們無法適應 這種不等比例的情況。 於是,這就造成機構中 有權解決問題的人 往往擁有鉅額的預算。 一旦你有了鉅額預算, 解決問題的眼光就會放在較昂貴的事情上。 如今我們所缺乏的正是 有著巨大權力,但身無分文的人。 (笑聲) 我希望在這日新月異的世界中 能出現這樣的人才。
Now, here's another thing that happens, which is what I call sometimes "Terminal 5 syndrome," which is that big, expensive things get big, highly-intelligent attention, and they're great, and Terminal 5 is absolutely magnificent, until you get down to the small detail, the usability, which is the signage, which is catastrophic. You come out of "Arrive" at the airport, and you follow a big yellow sign that says "Trains" and it's in front of you. So you walk for another hundred yards, expecting perhaps another sign, that might courteously be yellow, in front of you and saying "Trains." No, no, no, the next one is actually blue, to your left, and says "Heathrow Express." I mean, it could almost be rather like that scene from the film "Airplane." A yellow sign? That's exactly what they'll be expecting.
還有一個現象, 有時,我會稱它為「第五航廈症候群」, 它是指,當完成耗資鉅額的重要事件時, 人們集中才智、精力, 成果看起來就會很棒,而(倫敦希斯路機場)第五航廈的確是華麗壯觀, 直到你開始注意小細節與實用性時, 例如指示牌, 你就會發現,這簡直是個災難。 走出機場的入境關口後,你看到 眼前有一個標明「列車」的大型黃色指示牌, 於是你跟隨指示走上幾百碼, 搜尋著新的指示牌, 你希望在前方找到另一個黃色的「列車」指示, 但,錯了。下一個指示牌其實是藍色的,且位置在你左方, 上面是寫「希斯路機場快線」。 這實在太像喜劇電影《空前絕後滿天飛》(Airplane)的搞笑片段了, 黃色的指示牌?這正是他們所期待的。
Actually, what happens in the world increasingly -- now, all credit to the British Airport Authority. I spoke about this before, and a brilliant person got in touch with me and said, "Okay, what can you do?" So I did come up with five suggestions, which they are actually actioning. One of them also being, although logically it's quite a good idea to have a lift with no up and down button in it, if it only serves two floors, it's actually bloody terrifying, okay? Because when the door closes and there's nothing for you to do, you've actually just stepped into a Hammer film.
實際上,這種情況在世上可是層出不窮 —— 全歸功於英國機場管理局(對細節的忽略)。 我以前就談過這問題了, 當時一個聰明的人當面跑來問我說:「好,那你會怎麼做?」 於是我給他五個建議,而且已經付諸實行了。 其中一個建議 儘管在邏輯上說來是個好點子 —— 一個沒有「上」與「下」鍵的電梯。 但如果電梯只在二層樓間運行的話, 真的那樣做其實蠻恐怖的,是吧。 因為當門關上後, 你根本就不用動手, 彷彿一腳踏進恐怖電影的場景裡。
(Laughter)
(大笑)
So these questions ... what is happening in the world is the big stuff, actually, is done magnificently well. But the small stuff, what you might call the user interface, is done spectacularly badly. But also, there seems to be a complete sort of gridlock in terms of solving these small solutions. Because the people who can actually solve them actually are too powerful and too preoccupied with something they think of as "strategy" to actually solve them. I tried this exercise recently, talking about banking. They said, "Can we do an advertising campaign? What can we do and encourage more online banking?" I said, "It's really, really easy." I said, "When people login to their online bank there are lots and lots of things they'd probably quite like to look at. The last thing in the world you ever want to see is your balance." I've got friends who actually never use their own bank cash machines because there's the risk that it might display their balance on the screen.
這些問題都說明了當今世界發生的 真正重要的問題, 我們都能妥善解決。 但細節問題,比如使用者介面, 就處理得糟糕透頂。 同時,人們往往陷入一種僵局 以致於更難以解決這些細節問題。 因為能真正解決問題的人們 往往位高權重,時常流於 思考「策略性」的問題而非實際解決。 我最近遇到這樣一件事,我和銀行業的一些人談話。 他們問「我們能夠以廣告競爭嗎? 如何推廣網路銀行業務?」 我回答:「相當容易。」 比如「當人們登入到網路銀行中, 是為了查看各種訊息, 而最不願意看的訊息就是自己的結餘。」 我有一些朋友 從來不用銀行的提款機, 僅僅是因為不願看到 自己的結餘顯示在螢幕上。
Why would you willingly expose yourself to bad news? Okay, you simply wouldn't. I said, "If you make, actually, 'Tell me my balance.' If you make that an option rather than the default, you'll find twice as many people log on to online banking, and they do it three times as often." Let's face it, most of us -- how many of you actually check your balance before you remove cash from a cash machine? And you're pretty rich by the standards of the world at large. Now, interesting that no single person does that, or at least can admit to being so anal as to do it. But what's interesting about that suggestion was that, to implement that suggestion wouldn't cost 10 million pounds; it wouldn't involve large amounts of expenditure; it would actually cost about 50 quid. And yet, it never happens.
誰願意讓自己得知壞消息呢? 對,你當然不願意。 我告訴他們:「如果將『顯示結餘』 從自動顯示改為使用者自行選擇的話, 你會發現,使用網路銀行的用戶將會增長一倍, 而且登入頻率也會增加兩倍。」 說實話,我們之間有多少人 會在提款前查看自己的結餘? 更不用說以世界平均衡量,你們相當富裕。 看吧,在場沒有一位會看的, 或是說,即使會看也不敢讓別人知道。 關於這個提議,有趣的是 執行的花費不會超過一千萬英鎊, 實際上,開支非常少, 不過五十英鎊左右。 然而它至今從未實行。
Because there's a fundamental disconnect, as I said, that actually, the people with the power want to do big expensive things. And there's to some extent a big strategy myth that's prevalent in business now. And if you think about it, it's very, very important that the strategy myth is maintained. Because, if the board of directors convince everybody that the success of any organization is almost entirely dependent on the decisions made by the board of directors, it makes the disparity in salaries slightly more justifiable than if you actually acknowledge that quite a lot of the credit for a company's success might actually lie somewhere else, in small pieces of tactical activity.
這就回到我所說的嚴重脫節的問題上, 即,有權的人, 只想做巨大、浪費錢的事。 然而,現在有一種策略上的迷思 在企業界很普遍。 如果多加思考就會發現,非常、非常重要的一點是 這個策略迷思仍然普遍維持著。 因為,董事會必須說服公司成員 任何共同成就 幾乎都得完全歸功於董事會的決策, 這才能使薪資的巨大差異 顯得更合理, 而不會承認公司的成功有大多數 其實都在於別的方面, 比如那些細微的策略運作。
But what is happening is that effectively -- and the invention of the spreadsheet hasn't helped this; lots of things haven't helped this -- business and government suffers from a kind of physics envy. It wants the world to be the kind of place where the input and the change are proportionate. It's a kind of mechanistic world that we'd all love to live in where, effectively, it sits very nicely on spreadsheets, everything is numerically expressible, and the amount you spend on something is proportionate to the scale of your success. That's the world people actually want. In truth, we do live in a world that science can understand. Unfortunately, the science is probably closer to being climatology in that in many cases, very, very small changes can have disproportionately huge effects, and equally, vast areas of activity, enormous mergers, can actually accomplish absolutely bugger-all. But it's very, very uncomfortable for us to actually acknowledge that we're living in such a world.
但,現在的實際情況是 —— 試算表軟體的發明與此無關, 許多事情和它絲毫沒有一點關聯 —— 在企業界和政府部門中都承受一種類似物理欽羨(physics envy)的心理, 他們希望這個世界是 有一分投注就有一分收穫的。 如果世界是符合機械理論的 我們應該都會樂見於此, 像是所有的事物都可以在試算表軟體上 以數據形式清晰地顯示出來, 而你在事物上所投入的時間 會完全回饋於你的收效上。 大家都渴望這樣的世界。 而實際上,我們也生活在一個以科學為基礎的世界; 不幸的是,這種科學很可能更類似氣象學。 在許多情況下, 非常、非常微小的變動 就可以造成翻天覆地的變化。 相反的,大範圍活動、大企業合併, 到頭來不過是無關痛癢。 但我們很難實際地 承認世界就是如此不合邏輯。
But what I'm saying is we could just make things a little bit better for ourselves if we looked at it in this very simple four-way approach. That is actually strategy, and I'm not denying that strategy has a role. You know, there are cases where you spend quite a lot of money and you accomplish quite a lot. And I'd be wrong to dis that completely. Moving over, we come, of course, to consultancy.
我想說的是,許多事情 都能變得更加容易, 只要我們將此分成四個大類。 這是「策略」方面,當然不否認每個策略都有實用的地方。 要知道,畢竟有些事情確實需要耗資不斐 才有可觀的成果。 我不否認這種可能。 然後我們來說一下,沒錯,「諮詢」方面。
(Laughter)
(大笑)
I thought it was very indecent of Accenture to ditch Tiger Woods in such a sort of hurried and hasty way. I mean, Tiger surely was actually obeying the Accenture model. He developed an interesting outsourcing model for sexual services, (Laughter) no longer tied to a single monopoly provider, in many cases, sourcing things locally, and of course, the ability to have between one and three girls delivered at any time led for better load-balancing. So what Accenture suddenly found so unattractive about that, I'm not sure.
在我看來,埃森哲(管理諮詢公司)這樣草率地 棄 Tiger Woods 不顧, 是一件很不光彩的事。 因為 Tiger 實際上遵循了埃森哲的服務模式。 他建立一個很有趣的性服務外包服務, (笑聲) 不再被單一的「供應商」壟斷, 在多數情況下本地「採購」, 同時,在任何時候都有一到三個女生持續供應服務 使負載更加平衡。 所以埃森哲為什麼突然不喜歡 Tiger 了?真是難以理解。
Then there are other things that don't cost much and achieve absolutely nothing. That's called trivia. But there's a fourth thing. And the fundamental problem is we don't actually have a word for this stuff. We don't know what to call it. And actually we don't spend nearly enough money looking for those things, looking for those tiny things that may or may not work, but which, if they do work, can have a success absolutely out of proportion to their expense, their efforts and the disruption they cause.
還有一類事情雖然花費不高,卻也沒什麼成效。 人們稱之「瑣事」。 但最後還有第四類事情。 根本的問題是 我們沒有語詞來形容這類事情。 我們不知道該如何稱呼它。 而且我們很少花費資金 來尋找這類事物。 儘管它們微不足道,但卻可能帶來大的改變。 如果確實起了作用, 那麼它們取得的成功絕對會遠超 當初所投入的人力、物力 以及實行中造成的干擾。
So the first thing I'd like is a competition -- to anybody watching this as a film -- is to come up with a name for that stuff on the bottom right. And the second thing, I think, is that the world needs to have people in charge of that. That's why I call for the "Chief Detail Officer." Every corporation should have one, and every government should have a Ministry of Detail. The people who actually have no money, who have no extravagant budget, but who realize that actually you might achieve greater success in uptake of a government program by actually doubling the level of benefits you pay, but you'll probably achieve exactly that same effect simply by redesigning the form and writing it in comprehensible English. And if actually we created a Ministry of Detail and business actually had Chief Detail Officers, then that fourth quadrant, which is so woefully neglected at the moment, might finally get the attention it deserves.
因此,首先我希望 每一個看過這次演講的人都來參與一個競賽 就是為右下角第四項事項命名。 其次,我認為, 這個世界需要有人來掌握這類事情。 這就是為何我呼籲「細節總監」的設立。 每個公司都該有這個職位, 而每個政府都該設立「細節部門」。 擔任此職的人不能有太多錢, 不能有龐大的預算, 並且要能意識這一點: 付出雙倍的津貼有可能 在政府工作中 取得更大的績效; 但要取得同樣的效果,你通常 只需要重新設計表格 並以更明白的英文表示。 如果政府真的設立了細節部門, 而企業有細節總監, 那麼這個第四類領域, 這個時常不幸遭人漠視的事項, 到時大概就會得到應有的關注。
Thank you very much.
非常感謝大家。