TED | 谁说改变一定是艰苦的？

演讲精彩片段（节选）欣赏

When it comes to self-transformation, you can’t help but get a sense of the excitement. But there’s another type of transformation that occupies a very different emotional space. The transformation of organizations. If you’re like most people, when you hear the words “Our organization is going to start a transformation,” you’re thinking, “Uh-oh.”

谈到自我改造，你会不由自主产生兴奋感。但是有另外一种改造，会产生截然不同的情绪。组织改造。如果你像普罗大众，在听到「我们的组织即将开始改造」时，你心里想的是「糟糕！」

“Layoffs.” The blood drains from your face, your mind goes into overdrive, frantically searching for some place to run and hide.

「裁员。」你脸色发白，脑部进入超载状态，发狂的想找地方逃走、躲起来。

Well, you can run, but you really can’t hide. Most of us spend the majority of our waking hours involved in organizations. And due to changes in globalization, changes due to advances in technology and other factors, the reality is our organizations are constantly having to adapt. In fact, I call this the era of “always-on” transformation.

没错，你可以逃，但是你真的躲不掉。大部分人醒着的时间都在参与组织。因为全球化的改变，或是因为科技进步或其它因素的改变，现实就是我们的组织也跟着一直在变。事实上，我称这个时代为「永远都在改造」。

When I shared this idea with my wife Nicola, she said, “Always-on transformation? That sounds exhausting.” And that may be exactly what you’re thinking - and you would be right. Particularly if we continue to approach the transformation of organizations the way we always have been.

我跟我太太妮可拉分享这个想法时，她说：「永远都在改造？听起来累死了！」这大概也是你心中所想的，而你是对的。特别是如果我们继续用以往的方法来改造组织。

But because we can’t hide, we need to sort out two things. First, why is transformation so exhausting? And second, how do we fix it?

但是因为我们躲不掉，我们就需要理出两件事。第一，为什么改造感觉这么累？第二，怎么改进呢

First of all, let’s acknowledge that change is hard. People naturally resist change, especially when it’s imposed on them. But there are things that organizations do that make change even harder and more exhausting for people than it needs to be. First of all, leaders often wait too long to act. As a result, everything is happening in crisis mode. Which, of course, tends to be exhausting.

首先，让我们承认改变很难。人类天生就拒绝改变，尤其是强加在他们身上的改变。然而组织会做一些事让改变难上加难，累上加累。首先，领导者常常等太久才行动。结果就是，每件事都处于危机模式。这样当然很累。

Or, given the urgency, what they’ll do is they’ll just focus on the short-term results, but that doesn’t give any hope for the future. Or they’ll just take a superficial, one-off approach, hoping that they can return back to business as usual as soon as the crisis is over.

或是，因为情况危急，他们只专注于短期的效果，却没有给未来带来希望。或者他们就头痛医头、脚痛医脚，希望业务能在危机结束后尽快回到正常。

This kind of approach is kind of the way some students approach preparing for standardized tests. In order to get test scores to go up, teachers will end up teaching to the test. Now, that approach can work; test results often do go up. But it fails the fundamental goal of education: to prepare students to succeed over the long term.

这种方法是某些学生在准备标准化测验的方法。为了让成绩上升，老师只教考试会考的。这个方法有效，考试成绩通常会上升。但是这完全达不到教育的基本目标：培养学生长期性的成功。

So given these obstacles, what can we do to transform the way we transform organizations so rather than being exhausting, it’s actually empowering and energizing? To do that, we need to focus on five strategic imperatives, all of which have one thing in common: putting people first.

既然有这些阻碍，我们能做什么来改变组织改造的方式，让大家不至精疲力竭，却能真的给人自主权与活力？要做到这点，我们必须专注于五项策略性规则，这些规则有一个共同点：以人为本。

The first imperative for putting people first is to inspire through purpose. Most transformations have financial and operational goals. These are important and they can be energizing to leaders, but they tend not to be very motivating to most people in the organization. To motivate more broadly, the transformation needs to connect with a deeper sense of purpose.

以人为本的第一个规则是透过目的来启发。大部分的改造都有财务或营运上的目标。这些目标很重要，领导者会觉得精力充沛，但是对于组织内的众人这些目标却不是那么有力。要更加激励众人，改造需要有更深的使命感。