我們是否應該容忍"誠實"的錯誤
Last week the chief executive of UBS told all the bankers who work for him that henceforth it was OK for them to make mistakes. A culture in which everyone was petrified of taking risks, Sergio ErMotti said, was not in the interests of the bank or its clients.
近日，瑞銀(UBS)首席執行官塞爾吉奧埃爾默蒂(Sergio Ermotti)向所有爲他工作的銀行家表示，從今以後他們就算出錯也沒什麼關係。埃爾默蒂表示，人人害怕承擔風險的企業文化，不符合這家銀行或其客戶的利益。
How mature, came the response. How refreshing to hear a bank chief acknowledge that risks need to be taken and honest mistakes will sometimes be made.
對此，人們的迴應是，這是多麼成熟的表現啊。聽到一位銀行首席執行官承認風險必須有人承擔、人有時會犯一些“誠實的”錯誤，是一件多麼新鮮的事啊。
But it wasn’t mature. It was mad.
然而，這並不是成熟，這是瘋狂。
In a limited sort of way what he said made sense. The main point about risks is that they are risky — and risky things have a way of going wrong. Places where people get a bollocking for making the slightest slip tend not to be where the best decisions are made.
從某種有限的意義上說，他的話是正確的。風險的主要問題就是它們有“風險”——有風險的事物總有某種出錯可能性。那種犯最小的過失也會遭到一場大罵的地方，往往不能做出最佳決策。
Yet the answer is not to tell bankers that it is fine to screw up. Mistakes are never OK. And they are particularly un-OK in banking. If I were a UBS client, I would be exceedingly displeased to learn that the bankers to whom I was handing over a king’s ransom were being taught that errors were perfectly acceptable.
然而，答案不是告訴銀行家們，把事情搞砸了也沒關係。錯誤永遠也不會沒有關係。在銀行業尤其如此。如果我是瑞銀的一名客戶，我瞭解到我交付了一筆鉅款的瑞銀銀行家們正被教導錯誤完全可以接受，我一定很不高興。
This mistake-loving nonsense is an export from Silicon Valley, where “fail fast and fail often” is what passes for wisdom. Errors have been elevated to such a level that to get something wrong is spoken of as more admirable than getting it right.
這種熱愛錯誤的謬論源於硅谷。在硅谷，“快速失敗、經常失敗”被當作一種智慧。錯誤被提升到了一個高度，以至於做錯事情被說成是一種比做對事情更值得讚賞的事。
One company that dares to be different is Amazon. Among its values is the seditiously sensible notion that its leaders “are right, a lot”. Far from stifling innovation, this seems to have done the reverse. On the 2015 Forbes list of the world’s most innovative companies, Amazon is number eight. Facebook and Google, which have long talked about the marvellousness of failing, are not on it at all.
敢於與衆不同的是亞馬遜(Amazon)。在亞馬遜的價值觀中，包含了一條具有煽動性的理性觀念，即其領導者“決策正確”。這條價值觀並沒有扼殺創新，事實似乎正與此相反。2015年福布斯(Forbes)最具創新力企業榜上，亞馬遜名列第八。而一直以來談論失敗的美妙之處的Facebook和谷歌(Google)，則根本未曾上榜。
The glorification of failure is based on a couple of psychological misapprehensions. The first is the idea that we learn from our mistakes, when there is no evidence of anything of the kind. I certainly don’t learn from mine. I keep buying uncomfortable shoes, each time thinking I will wear them in. But they go on being uncomfortable, and I go out and buy more that pinch just as badly.
對失敗的美化建立在兩個心理學上的誤解之上。第一個謬論是我們能夠從我們的錯誤中學習，事實上根本沒有任何這一類的證據。我就完全沒有從我自己犯的錯誤中學到東西。我不斷地購買不舒服的鞋子，每次我都想着自己會穿上它們。但它們依然穿着不舒服，而我繼續購買更多穿起來一樣擠腳的鞋子。
The world is full of people who go on making the same mistake. Men marry the same sort of unsuitable woman. Most of the journalists I’ve ever worked with display extraordinary loyalty to their particular brand of mistake — they are endlessly inaccurate, or endlessly prone to cliché.
世界充滿了重複同樣錯誤的人。男人與不適合自己的同一類女人結婚。我共事過的大多數記者對他們的標誌性錯誤“忠貞不渝”——他們永遠不準確，或者永遠愛用陳詞濫調。
A study a few years ago by neuroscientists at MIT showed that monkeys learn much more from getting things right than getting things wrong. When rewarded for making a correct choice they remembered it and could repeat it, but after a wrong choice they remembered nothing.
幾年前，麻省理工學院(MIT)的神經科學家表明，猴子從做對事情中學到的東西要比從做錯事情中多得多。當做出正確選擇並得到獎勵後，它們會記住這件事並能夠加以重複，但在做出錯誤選擇後，它們什麼也記不住。
The second fallacy — which UBS has fallen for — says that fear of making mistakes paralyses us, so we must make them seem less scary.
第二個謬論——瑞銀對此信以爲真——是害怕犯錯會讓我們無法行動，因此我們必須讓錯誤顯得不那麼可怕。
The experience of Henry Marsh, one of Britain’s best neurosurgeons, shows this is nonsense. He has to take mistakes seriously as when he screws up people die. Far from consoling himself with the thought that honest mistakes are fine, he has written a book, Do No Harm , cataloguing all his errors in goriest detail and making each one appear as un-fine as possible.
英國最優秀的神經外科醫生之一亨利氠什(Henry Marsh)的經驗表明，這也是一派胡言。他必須嚴肅對待錯誤，因爲如果他搞砸了，病人就會死去。他並沒有用所謂誠實的錯誤沒關係的想法來安慰自己，相反他寫了一本書《不要傷害》(Do No Harm)，極其詳盡地羅列了他犯過的所有錯誤，並讓每一個錯誤看起來都儘可能的不可接受。
Yet even with mistakes cast as catastrophes, Mr Marsh has not been paralysed. He admits to feeling dread before every operation, but once he gets started he feels a “fierce and happy concentration”. Nor is there any sign that his proper dread has stopped him taking risks. Instead he has pioneered a brilliant and daring system, in which patients are kept awake while he rummages around in their brains.
然而，即使馬什把這些錯誤描述爲災難，他並未因此裹足不前。他承認，在每次手術前他都會感到恐懼，然而一旦他開始手術，他就會感到一種“強烈和愉悅的專注”。也沒有跡象表明，他的這種恐懼讓他無法承擔風險。相反，他開創了一種絕妙和大膽的系統，在這個系統下，他在病人的整個腦部做檢查時，病人是保持清醒狀態的。
He catalogues his failures not in a Pollyanna-ish attempt to show how much he learnt, but simply as a fact of life — and death. It is as if the mistakes have become part of him, and have made him the person he is.
他羅列失敗，不是一種顯示自己學到了多少的盲目樂觀的嘗試，而僅僅是把它們當作一種生和死的現實。就好像這些錯誤已成了他的一部分，把他塑造成現在的樣子。
Equally the mistakes we’ve made make us the employees we are.
同樣的，我們犯的錯誤把我們塑造爲現在這樣的員工。
I haven’t killed anyone through my work, but I have harmed them. I often write about people anonymously in my columns, but sometimes they recognise themselves and they feel rightly hurt. Each time I have failed to disguise them well enough, or have misjudged their reactions.
我在工作中不曾置任何人於死地，但是卻傷害過一些人。我常常在專欄中不指名道姓地寫到一些人。但有時候他們能從中認出自己，理所應當地，他們因此覺得非常受傷。每次我都沒有把他們的身份掩飾得足夠好，或者誤判了他們的反應。
Yet far from learning, I go on doing it. I never think: honest mistakes are OK. Instead I remember all the people I have wronged and wear them as a guilty badge. It might not make me a better journalist, but it makes me more clear sighted about what I do for a living.
然而我並沒有從中吸取教訓，依然在做着同樣的事。我從來不去想：誠實的錯誤是可以接受的。但是我記得每一個我傷害過的人，並且一直揹負着這種罪責。這也許不會讓我成爲一個更好的記者，但是它讓我對自己的工作有一個更清楚的認識。
What Mr Ermotti should have made clear was that sometimes his employees must take risks, and sometimes things will go wrong. When that happens, no one must ever make light of their cock-ups. Instead they should carry the memory of all their mistakes as part of their own internal score sheet of how they have fared as a banker.
埃爾默蒂本應該做出這樣的明確表示：有時他的員工必須要承擔風險，而且有時事情會出錯。當錯誤發生的時候，每個人都不應對自己的差錯輕描淡寫。相反，他們應該銘記所有犯過的錯誤，把它們記在自己心中評估自己作爲銀行家表現的計分表上。
