穆斯克的人生值得羨慕 但有一點千萬別學他

Elon Musk roared into the Detroit Auto Show last week and made plain that it’s not only his Tesla TSLA 2.42% electric cars that are expected to meet the very highest performance standards, gunning from zero to 60 miles per hour in a McLaren-like 3.2 seconds. He rides his employees awfully hard, as well.

上週，埃隆o穆斯克在底特律車展上明確表示，特斯拉電動汽車有望達到最高的性能水平，從靜止到時速60英里只需3.2秒——這完全是麥克拉倫賽車的加速水準。穆斯克還說，在他的調教下，員工們個個都很努力。

“If you are fighting a battle, it’s way better if you are at the front lines,” Musk told the Wall Street Journal, describing himself not as a mere micromanager but as something far more intense—a “nano-manager.”

穆斯克對《華爾街日報》表示：“如果你在打仗，親臨前線的效果要好得多。”他說，用“微管理”來形容自己還不夠確切，他對員工的管理達到了更細緻的“納米級管理”。

Indeed, Musk makes no apologies for what theJournal described as “a hands-on obsession with the tiniest operational and car-design details at Tesla.” It’s safe to say that his domineering style doesn’t differ at SpaceX, the rocket company he founded and runs.

《華爾街日報》報道稱，在特斯拉公司，穆斯克“事必躬親，無論是日常運營，還是汽車設計的細節，他都會親自過問”。穆斯克認爲，這種描述其實並不誇張。穆斯克在他創辦並運營的SpaceX火箭公司，他的管理風格也是如此。

Musk is the envy of many—and why not? He’s abillionaire. He was married (twice) to a beautiful actress. He has plans to visit Mars someday. He nonchalantly tosses around the word “Hyperloop.”Heck, he’s the model for Tony Stark, the swashbuckling genius played by Robert Downey Jr. in the “Iron Man” films.

穆斯克是很多人羨慕的對象。這當然很好理解，這位億萬富翁結過兩次婚，而且娶的都是美豔動人的女明星。他還打算在將來的某一天去火星逛逛，並且經常兜售他的“超迴路高鐵”理念。小羅伯特o唐尼扮演的鋼鐵俠，就是以他爲原型塑造的。不過，在大批高管試圖嘗試“納米級管理”理念之前，我們必須提醒他們：這種管理並不能發揮員工的最大潛能。

When people’s autonomy in the workplace is sharply curtailed, they feel as if they’ve lost control—and, in turn, their brains react as if they’re being threatened. That raises their level of stress, which often causes them to perform poorly. “Feeling in control, even if it’s an illusion, is key to … cognitive ability staying intact,” Amy Arnsten, a professor of neurobiology and psychology at Yale, has pointed out.

如果人們在職場中的自主性被剝奪，他們就會覺得自己失去了控制力，這會令他們的大腦產生一種被威脅感。這種感受將提高員工感知的壓力，從而導致他們的工作效率進一步下降。耶魯大學神經生物學與心理學教授艾米o阿恩斯坦指出：“覺得自己具有控制力，哪怕那只是一種幻覺，是保持完整認知能力的關鍵所在。”

Great managers have always known the trouble with dictating to employees. Successfully motivating employees “involves teaching rather than telling,” William B. Given Jr., the president of American Brake Shoe Co., wrote in his 1949 classic Bottom-Up Management.

優秀的管理者通常都知道搞“一言堂”的後果。美國製動蹄有限公司總裁小威廉oBo蓋文在其1949年的經典著作《自下而上的管理》中指出，要想成功地激勵員工，需要的是“教育，而非說教”。