傻瓜比瘾君子对社会的危害更大
Who makes a worse company chairman: one who is always scratching his head, or one who is off his head?
哪种人当董事长更糟糕：永远在挠头的人，还是头脑发昏的人？I have been turning over the question of blockhead-versus-cokehead since the ex-chairman of Co-op Bank was a) filmed apparently handing over ￡300 for cocaine and crystal meth and b) told a Treasury select committee that the bank had ￡3bn in assets when it had ￡47bn.
我一直在反复思考这个“傻瓜VS瘾君子”问题，起因是Co-op Bank的前董事长曾被拍到递出300英镑购买可卡因和冰毒的画面，他还曾对财政部的一个专门委员会表示，自己的银行拥有30亿英镑资产，其实该行的资产规模为470亿英镑。I’m not saying that Paul Flowers himself is either cokehead or blockhead, as I don’t know enough about him to judge. Instead I’m asking more broadly: if you were a shareholder of any company, which type would you be more appalled to find you had in a position of power?
我并非意在指出保罗?弗劳尔斯(Paul Flowers)要么是个瘾君子，要么是个傻瓜，因为我对他的了解不足以做出判断。我的问题是更加广泛意义上的：如果你是一家公司的股东，哪种人执掌公司大权会让你更感不安？
You could protest that cokeheads and blockheads go hand in hand; though which leads to which is hard to say. If you are on drugs, that could make your command of the facts a little hazy. (Though coke tends to make you wildly optimistic, so you’d be more likely to overestimate your assets 10-fold than the other way round.) On the other hand, if your command of the facts was hazy initially, that might drive you to coke as a way of dealing with your low self-esteem and the clawing fear of getting found out.
你可以反驳，声称瘾君子常常也是傻瓜，虽然谁因谁果难以判断。如果你吸食毒品，你对事实的把握可能会有点糊涂。（不过毒品通常会让你异常乐观，因此你更有可能将自己的资产规模夸大十倍，而非反其道而行之。）而另一方面，如果你对事实的把握从一开始就稀里糊涂，这可能促使你走上吸毒的道路，以解决自己缺乏自尊的问题，并缓解害怕被人识破的百爪挠心般的焦虑感。Yet if you take the two types as distinct, the obvious answer is that the cokehead is more lethal. For a start, coke is illegal – and having a chairman arrested, as Mr Flowers was last week, never does any good to a company’s reputation. More than that, a coke habit can make people irritable and unpredictable, distort their judgment, lead to paranoid psychosis as well as doing nothing for the lining of their noses.
但如果你认为这是两种完全不同类型的人，那么容易得出的结论是瘾君子危害更大。首先，毒品违法——公司董事长被捕（就像弗劳尔斯最近那样），对一个公司的声誉绝没有任何好处。更重要的是，吸毒成瘾可使人变得易怒急躁，不可预测，扭曲人的判断力，导致偏执的精神状态，对于鼻腔粘膜也绝无好处。None of that is desirable. But it is still better than being ruled by a blockhead. Anyone who is ignorant of the basic facts of a business can only do harm to a company.
虽然以上这些都不令人满意，但仍好于由一个傻瓜来执掌公司大权。一个对企业业务的基本情况一无所知的人只能给这家公司带来损害。It is true that ignorance on the scale of Mr Flowers’ is exceptional (the Co-op’s structure is so idiosyncratic it made a virtue of having people on the board who knew nothing about banking). Yet my strong hunch is that there is a great deal of ignorance on most boards that may not be quite as jaw-dropping as at the Co-op, but is still worrying.
像弗劳尔斯那样的极度无知确实罕见（Co-op Bank的企业构架是如此独特，以至于让对银行业一无所知的人加入董事会成了一件好事）。但我有一种强烈的直觉，即多数企业的董事会中都有很多无知的人，虽然情况或许不至于像Co-op Bank那样令人震惊，但也足够引人担忧。If I think of some of the directors I have come across, many have large and shaming gaps in their knowledge. These arise either because their markets have changed in ways they have not kept up with, or because they hop from one industry to another, and after a bit in a new one it becomes too embarrassing to ask: can someone explain how we actually make our money? Add to that the fact that businesses are increasingly complicated – and keeping up becomes increasingly hard.
我在回想自己遇见过的董事时发现，很多人的知识结构都存在令人汗颜的巨大断层。这种情况产生的原因之一在于他们所处的市场环境发生了变化，而他们没有跟上形势，或者是因为他们从一个行业跳到了另一个行业，而在对新行业初涉皮毛之后，向人求教对他们来说变得过于难为情，他们不好意思问：有人能帮我解释一下我们究竟是怎么赚钱的吗？此外，商业模式正变得愈加复杂，跟上发展变得越来越难，这进一步加剧了董事们的知识断层。If ignorance is so common, how come we almost never hear of it? Politicians occasionally let their inner bonehead show – Sarah Palin was caught getting her Iran and Iraq confused – yet the people who rise to the top in business are worryingly good at keeping theirs hidden.
如果董事们的无知如此普遍，为什么我们几乎从未听说？政客们偶尔会暴露出他们愚蠢的一面——莎拉?佩林(Sarah Palin)被人发现分不清伊朗和伊拉克——但升至商界顶层的人物似乎非常善于掩饰自己的无知，这很令人担忧。This is for three reasons. First, they delegate. Don’t know how big your assets are? Never mind – your finance director can answer that one.
商界高层善于隐藏有三个原因。其一在于他们可以把任务分派下去。不知道公司的资产规模有多大？没关系——可以让财务总监来回答这个问题。Second, jargon and flannel come to their aid. “This is an issue currently out of my sightline, and I’ll revert going forward when I have some clarity around it” sounds more impressive than: no idea.
其二，行业术语和废话可以助他们一臂之力。相对于“我不知道”，“这个问题目前不在我的关注范围内，当我对它有更多了解时我会重新回到这个话题上”听起来更上档次。Thirdly, when you are really senior, nobody ever calls your bluff. If a tiresome journalist asks a tricky question, then it is quite simple: you answer another question instead.
其三，当你真的身居高位时，没有人会戳穿你的虚张声势。如果一个惹人生厌的记者问了一个刁钻的问题，接下来非常简单：你回答另一个问题作为替代。Indeed the only time that directors are really put on the spot is when they get hauled before the regulator or a select committee, where there is no finance director to field tough questions, and where bluster doesn’t work. But even then, they have time to prepare. When I was summoned before the Financial Services Authority (as a routine part of being a non-exec) I spent several weeks beforehand revising furiously.
董事们唯一真的陷入困境的时刻，是当他们被传到监管当局或者专门委员会面前时，此时他们既不能找财务总监来替他们回答棘手问题，咆哮恐吓也失去了效力。但即便如此，他们仍有时间进行准备。当我被英国金融服务管理局(Financial Services Authority)传唤时（这是对待非执行董事的一种惯例），我就花了好几周的时间拼命复习。What is needed is a new system of fierce and random knowledge tests for all directors, just like drugs tests for sportsmen. Directors would be accosted at unpredictable times and forced to answer basic questions about their company, its performance, its risks, and the market in general. This would flush out the most lethal blockheads and focus the minds of all directors, all of the time.
现在所亟需的是一个针对所有董事、强大而又随机的新知识测试系统，就像运动员的药检一样。董事们将会在不可预测的时间被问话，回答有关自身公司的基本问题，例如业绩、风险以及市场整体状况。这将有助于淘汰危害最大的傻瓜，并使所有董事在任何时间都精力集中。Just as Andy Murray recently almost missed getting to Buckingham Palace on time to collect his OBE because the drugs testers had showed up on his doorstep demanding a urine sample, so it should be for company directors. No excuses. No diverting the questions to someone else. No flannel. If you don’t know the answer, you’re out.
安迪?穆雷(Andy Murray)几乎没能按时赶到白金汉宫领取他的大英帝国勋章(OBE)，因为药检官员突然出现在他门前，要求他提供一份尿样。针对公司董事的测试也应如此。没有任何借口。不能将问题交由其他人代为回答。不允许说废话。如果你不知道答案，就将被扫地出门。
