职业女性升职难的真正原因

Q168

The Real Women's Issue: Time
职业女性升职难的真正原因
Why aren't more women running things in America? It isn't for lack of ambition or life skills or credentials. The real barrier to getting more women to the top is the unsexy but immensely difficult issue of time commitment: Today's top jobs in major organizations demand 60-plus hours of work a week.

为什么在美国没有多少女性执掌大权？她们并不缺乏抱负、技能或职业资质。阻止更多女性晋升高层的真正障碍是时间上的付出，虽然这看起来一点都不“冠冕堂皇”，但却是个非常棘手的问题：现今大公司的高级职位都要求一周工作60小时以上。

Q168

In her much-discussed new book, Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg tells women with high aspirations that they need to 'lean in' at work -- that is, assert themselves more. It's fine advice, but it misdiagnoses the problem. It isn't any shortage of drive that leads those phalanxes of female Harvard Business School grads to opt out. It's the assumption that senior roles have to consume their every waking moment. More great women don't 'lean in' because they don't like the world they're being asked to lean into.

Facebook首席运营长谢丽尔•桑德伯格（Sheryl Sandberg）在其引发热议的新书中劝说那些志存高远的女性应更“倾心于”工作──即更勇于表达展现自我。她的建议不错，但却没有找到问题的真正症结。大批哈佛商学院（Harvard Business School）女毕业生退出职场并非因为缺乏动力，而是因为高级职位意味着要消耗她们醒着的每时每刻。越来越多的优秀女性选择不“倾心于”工作是因为她们本并不喜欢这个召唤她们加入的世界。

Q168

It doesn't have to be this way. A little organizational imagination bolstered by a commitment from the C-suite can point the path to a saner, more satisfying blend of the things that ambitious women want from work and life. It's time that we put the clock at the heart of this debate.

这种状况是可以改变的。只需要一点对于组织架构的想象力，加上来自最高管理层的支持，就能为雄心勃勃的职业女性铺设一条更健康的道路，让其对生活工作皆满意。现在该是直面这个争议的时候了。

Q168

I know this is doable because I run a growing startup company in which more than half the professionals work fewer than 40 hours a week by choice. They are alumnae of top schools and firms like General Electric and McKinsey, and they are mostly women. The key is that we design jobs to enable people to contribute at varying levels of time commitment while still meeting our overall goals for the company.

我知道这是可行的，因为我自己经营着一家成长中的初创公司。公司里超过半数的职员选择每周工作少于40小时。这些职员都是名校毕业生，曾任职于像通用电气（General Electric）、麦肯锡（McKinsey）这样的名企，他们中大部分是女性。关键点在于，我们的职位设计使得员工能够选择不同的工作时长来完成任务，同时仍能达到公司的整体目标。

Q168

This isn't advanced physics, but it does mean thinking through the math of how work in a company adds up. It's also an iterative process; we hardly get it right every time. But for businesses and reformers serious about cracking the real glass ceiling for women -- and making their firms magnets for the huge swath of American talent now sitting on the sidelines -- here are four ways to start going about it.

这并不是高等物理学，但它的确意味着要通过数学思维考虑如何把一个公司的工作组织起来。它也是个迭代过程；我们并不是每次都能做对。然而，对于真心想帮助女性打破实际存在的玻璃天花板的公司和改革者们──同时使自己的公司能吸引到大批目前仍处于外围的美国人才──建议可从以下四个办法开始着手。

Q168

Rethink time. Break away from the arbitrary notion that high-level work can be done only by people who work 10 or more hours a day, five or more days a week, 12 months a year. Why not just three days a week, or six hours a day, or 10 months a year?

第一，重新考虑工作时长的概念。抛弃那些主观臆断，认为高水平工作只能由每天工作超过10小时、每周工作超过五天、每年工作12个月的人来完成。为什么就不能每周工作三天、每天工作六小时或每年工作10个月呢？

Q168

It sounds simple, but the only thing that matters is quantifying the work that needs to get done and having the right set of resources in place to do it. Senior roles should actually be easier to reimagine in this way because highly paid people have the ability and, often, the desire to give up some income in order to work less. Flexibility and working from home can soften the blow, of course, but they don't solve the overall time problem.

这听起来简单，但唯一的关键是将需要完成的工作进行量化，并且拥有促使工作得以完成的合适资源。高级职位其实应该更容易实现这点，因为高薪人士有能力而且通常希望为了减少工作时间而放弃一定的收入。工作的灵活度以及在家办公当然可以弱化部分矛盾，但仍解决不了整体工作时长问题。

Q168

Break work into projects. Once work is quantified, it must be broken up into discrete parts to allow for varying time commitments. Instead of thinking in terms of broad functions like the head of marketing, finance, corporate development or sales, a firm needs to define key roles in terms of specific, measurable tasks.

第二，将工作分解成小项目。一旦工作被量化，它就必须被分解成各个独立部分以适应不同的时间投入要求。公司需要以具体、可衡量的任务来定义重要职位，而不是从市场主管、财务主管、业务开发或销售主管等广义的职能来考虑。

Q168

Once you think of work as a series of projects, it's easy to see how people can tailor how much to take on. The growth of consulting and outsourcing came precisely when firms realized they could carve work into projects that could be done more effectively outside. The next step is to design internal roles in smaller bites, too. An experienced marketer for a pharma company could lead one major drug launch, for example, without having to oversee all drug launches. Instead of managing a portfolio with 10 products, a senior person could manage five. If a client-service executive working five days a week has a quota of 10 deals a month, then one who chooses to work three days a week has a quota of only six. Lower the quota but not the quality of the work or the executive's seniority.

一旦把工作当成一系列项目看待，就很容易看出人们应该如何选择工作量。咨询和外包服务就是在各公司意识到可以将工作分成项目，且外包出去更有效率的情况下发展起来的。它的下一步就是内部职能的细化。例如，制药公司一名经验丰富的营销人员可以主管一个大的药品推广项目，而不用负责所有的药品推广。高级职员可以管理包括五个产品的项目而不是10个。如果一位每周工作五天的客户服务高管每个月有10项交易的任务，那么选择每周工作三天的人就只有六项交易的任务。任务减少了，但工作质量和执行人员的资历并不会改变。

Q168

One reason this doesn't happen more is managerial laziness: It's easier to find a 'superwoman' to lead marketing (someone who will work as long as humanly possible) than it is to design work around discrete projects. But even superwoman has a limit, and when she hits it, organizations adjust by breaking up jobs and adding staff. Why not do this before people hit the wall?

管理上的懒惰导致这种方式未能更广泛得以实施：较之以具体项目来安排工作，找到一个主管市场（还可以无限加班）的“女超人”来得更容易。但即使女超人也有极限，当她到达极限时，公司就只能靠分解工作和扩充员工来进行调整。那又为何不在撞到南 之前就这样做呢？