評論
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Business Bartleby
商業(yè)版塊，巴托比專欄
Faulty Reasoning
錯誤推理
Why pointing fingers is unhelpful and why bosses do it more than anyone
為什么指責(zé)于事無補(bǔ)，為什么老板樂此不疲
Casting blame is natural: it is tempting to fault someone else for a snafu rather than taking responsibility yourself.
責(zé)怪他人是很自然的：把混亂局面歸咎于別人，而不是自己承擔(dān)責(zé)任，這種做法極具誘惑力。
But blame is also corrosive.
但指責(zé)也具有破壞性。
Pointing fingers saps team cohesion.
相互指責(zé)會削弱團(tuán)隊凝聚力。
It makes it less likely that people will own up to mistakes, and thus less likely that organisations can learn from them.
這使得人們不太可能承認(rèn)錯誤，因此組織也不太可能從錯誤中吸取教訓(xùn)。
Research published in 2015 suggests that a Shaggy culture (“It wasn’t me”) shows up in share prices.
2015年發(fā)表的一項研究表明，甩鍋文化(“不是我干的”)會反映在股價上。
Firms whose managers pointed to external factors to explain their failings underperformed companies that blamed themselves.
有些公司的經(jīng)理用外部因素來解釋業(yè)績不佳，這些公司的表現(xiàn)遜于那些責(zé)怪自己的公司。
Some industries have long recognised the drawbacks of fault-finding.
一些行業(yè)很早就意識到了挑錯的弊端。
The proud record of aviation in reducing accidents partly reflects no-blame processes for investigating crashes and close calls.
航空業(yè)在減少事故方面取得驕人成績，這在一定程度上反映了調(diào)查墜機(jī)和僥幸脫險事故時不問責(zé)的做法。
The National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates accidents in America, is explicit that its role is not to assign blame or liability but to find out what went wrong and to issue recommendations to avoid a repeat.
負(fù)責(zé)調(diào)查事故的美國國家運輸安全委員會明確表示，它的職責(zé)不是把責(zé)任歸咎于某一方，而是找出哪里出了問題，并提出建議，避免重蹈覆轍。
There are similar lessons from health care.
醫(yī)療保健方面也有類似的教訓(xùn)。
When things go wrong in medical settings, the systems by which patients are compensated vary between countries.
當(dāng)出現(xiàn)醫(yī)療問題時，賠償患者的制度因國家而異。
Some, like Britain, depend on a process of litigation in which fault must be found.
有些國家，比如英國，依賴必須找出過錯的訴訟過程。
Others, like Sweden, do not require blame to be allocated and compensate patients if the harm suffered is deemed “avoidable”.
其他國家，如瑞典，不要求把責(zé)任歸給某一方，如果所遭受的傷害被認(rèn)為是“可以避免的”，那么就對患者進(jìn)行賠償。
A report published by a British parliamentary committee last year strongly recommended moving away from a system based on proving clinical negligence:
英國議會的一個委員會去年發(fā)布了一份報告，強(qiáng)烈建議放棄基于證明臨床疏忽的制度：
“It is grossly expensive, adversarial and promotes individual blame instead of collective learning.”
“這種制度代價高昂，具有對抗性，鼓勵個人指責(zé)，而不是集體學(xué)習(xí)。”
The incentives to learn from errors are particularly strong in aviation and health care, where safety is paramount and lives are at risk.
從錯誤中吸取教訓(xùn)的動機(jī)在航空和醫(yī)療保健領(lǐng)域尤為強(qiáng)烈，在這些領(lǐng)域，安全至上，生死攸關(guān)。
But they also exist when the stakes are lower.
但當(dāng)風(fēng)險較低時，這種動機(jī)也會存在。
That is why software engineers and developers routinely conduct “blameless postmortems” to investigate, say, what went wrong if a website crashes or a server goes down.
這就是軟件工程師和開發(fā)人員經(jīng)常進(jìn)行“免責(zé)事后調(diào)查”的原因，比如，如果網(wǎng)站崩潰或服務(wù)器宕機(jī)，問題出在哪里。
There is an obvious worry about embracing blamelessness.
人們對免責(zé)存在明顯的擔(dān)憂。
What if the wretched website keeps crashing and the same person is at fault?
如果這個倒霉網(wǎng)站不斷崩潰，而且是同一個人一直出錯，該怎么辦？
Sometimes, after all, blame is deserved.
畢竟，有時責(zé)備是理所應(yīng)當(dāng)?shù)摹?/p>
The idea of the “just culture”, a framework developed in the 1990s by James Reason, a psychologist, addresses the concern that the incompetent and the malevolent will be let off the hook.
20世紀(jì)90年代，心理學(xué)家詹姆斯·瑞森提出了“公正文化”的理論，解決了人們對無能和惡意者逃脫懲罰的擔(dān)憂。
The line that Britain’s aviation regulator draws between honest errors and the other sort is a good starting-point.
英國航空監(jiān)管機(jī)構(gòu)在誠實錯誤和其他錯誤之間劃出的界限是一個很好的起點。
It promises a culture in which people “are not punished for actions, omissions or decisions taken by them that are commensurate with their experience and training”.
它承諾建立一種文化，在這種文化中，人們“不會因為與他們的資歷和所受培訓(xùn)相符合的行動、疏忽或決定而受到懲罰”。
That narrows room for blame but does not remove it entirely.
這縮小了指責(zé)的空間，但并沒有完全消除它。
There are two bigger problems with trying to move away from the tendency to blame.
要想擺脫指責(zé)的傾向有兩個更大的問題。
The first is that it requires a lot of effort.
首先，這需要付出很大的努力。
Blame is cheap and fast: “It was Nigel” takes one second to say and has the ring of truth.
指責(zé)不費力也不費時間：“是奈杰爾的錯”只需要一秒鐘就能說出來，而且聽起來很有道理。
Documenting mistakes and making sure processes change as a result require much more structure.
記錄錯誤并確保流程因此發(fā)生變化則需要更多的組織安排。
Blameless postmortems have long been part of the culture at Google, for instance, which has templates, reviews and discussion groups for them.
例如，免責(zé)事后調(diào)查長期以來一直是谷歌文化的一部分，谷歌有進(jìn)行免責(zé)事后調(diào)查的模板、述評和討論小組。
The second problem is the boss.
第二個問題是老板。
People with power are particularly prone to point fingers.
有權(quán)力的人特別容易指責(zé)他人。
A recent paper by academics at the University of California, San Diego, and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore found that people who are in positions of authority are more likely to assume that others have choices and to blame them for failures.
加州大學(xué)圣地亞哥分校和新加坡南洋理工大學(xué)的學(xué)者最近發(fā)表的一篇論文發(fā)現(xiàn)，處于權(quán)威地位的人更有可能認(rèn)為其他人有選擇余地，并將失敗歸咎于他們。
In one experiment, for example, people were randomly assigned the roles of supervisor and worker, and shown a transcript of an audio recording that contained errors;
例如，在一項實驗中，參與者被隨機(jī)分配了主管和員工的角色，并給他們一段包含錯誤的錄音文字記錄；
they were also shown an apology from the transcriber, saying that an unstable internet connection had meant they could not complete the task properly.
他們還看到了抄寫員的致歉，稱不穩(wěn)定的網(wǎng)絡(luò)意味著他們無法正常完成任務(wù)。
The person in the supervisor role was much more likely to agree that the transcriber was to blame for the errors and to want to withhold payment.
主管角色的人更有可能同意抄寫員應(yīng)為錯誤負(fù)責(zé)，并希望扣留付款。
Power and punitiveness went together.
權(quán)力和懲罰性相伴而生。
Blame also seems to be contagious.
指責(zé)似乎也有傳染性。
In a paper from 2009, researchers asked volunteers to read news articles about a political failure and then to write about a failure of their own.
在2009年的一篇論文中，研究人員讓志愿者閱讀有關(guān)政治失敗的新聞文章，然后寫下他們自己的一次失敗經(jīng)歷。
Participants who read that the politician blamed special interests for the screw-up were more likely to pin their own failures on others;
那些讀到這位政客將失敗歸咎于特殊利益集團(tuán)的參與者更有可能將自己的失敗歸咎于他人；
those who read that the politician accepted responsibility were more likely to shoulder the blame for their shortfall.
而讀到這位政客接受責(zé)任的參與者則更有可能為自己的不足承擔(dān)責(zé)任。
Bosses are the most visible people in a firm; when they point fingers, others will, too.
老板是公司中最醒目的人；當(dāng)他們指責(zé)他人時，其他人也會效仿。
If your company has a blame culture, the fault lies there.
如果你的公司有指責(zé)文化，那么問題就出在這里。
