The plague of professional life is . . .well, professional life
What could you live without in your professional life?
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This question was recently put to an assortment of business commentators by Across the Board, a US management magazine. The response went as follows: variously they could live without bragging chief executives' autobiographies. They could do without BlackBerries. Without consultants. And without people banging on about the inevitable advance of China.
I have got no fondness for any of the above and would happily dump them all in my rubbish bin - with the possible exception of my BlackBerry, which was a gift and, even though I barely use it, simply owning it makes me feel important and a bit modern.
The only trouble is that my rubbish bin is rather full already. Nearly every Monday I write about something new I want to put in there - in the last few weeks I have added Jack and Suzy Welch, moronic team leadership courses and hysterical talk about workplace stress, all of which take up quite a bit of room.
Just today I have had yet another idea for something to be thrown away. I've received two e-mails containing pointless surveys about respected people. One told me that Sir Terry Leahy, Tesco chief, has been crowned Britain's most respected leader, and Michael Porter is the world's most respected living management thinker. All these things tell you is that people say they respect the people who already have the reputation for being respectable.
And then reading Sir Terry's quote about his award gave me an idea of something else for the bin: the faux-humble style of the CEO who professes himself "proud to lead" the 360,000 people who "deliver a great shopping trip for our customers". Come to that, the word "deliver", used like this when no lorry is involved, is in my bin already.
However, in the interests of variety I have decided to give readers a break from the things I would dispense
with and offer some of my colleagues a chance to nominate the things
they would like to throw away instead.
Last week I went around with a pencil and pad holding impromptu focus groups about what they could do without in their working lives. At first the question drew a blank. What do you mean, they all said. I would repeat the question. Ah, they, said. Let us think.
After a bit, someone said: the sound of the woman on the voice-mail when she says in that staccato tone: "Sor-ry . . . Your . . . Pin . . . Number . . . Is . . . Incorrect. Please . . . Try . . . Again."
Then further suggestions came. Computers that crash. Fire drills. Pointless e-mails. People showing off their baby photos. Artificial light in offices. Meetings. Too much paper. Pettifogging economies. Annual career assessment interviews. Staff newsletters and magazines.
With each focus group the pattern was the same: the responses started slowly and built up momentum. Someone started by saying: the tampon machine in the loo that eats your money and then refuses to hand over the goods. Then bigger suggestions came: morale-raising e-mails from the boss. Working for more than one boss. Security guards. Office plants. Having to be friendly to people you do not like. Office politics. Incomprehensible messages from the IT department.
The flow of nominated bad things grows and grows until eventually someone in one of my focus groups said: what I really hate is sitting here all day staring at the screen. To which someone else added: yes - what I could really do without is work.
This is the trouble. When you start actively searching for things you could do without in working life, you quickly talk yourself into the position that you can do without the whole blinking lot of it.
Alas, most of us cannot do without work at all. We need to earn some money and we need something to do with our days. Ditto with most of the bigger things we think we can do without - meetings, e-mails, communications from the boss. These are not really dispensable either. We can do without them when they are bad (which they probably are 80 per cent of the time) but not when they are good. The difficulty is you do not usually know in advance which are going to be the worthwhile bits and which the pointless bits.
So in the end I am left with a list of quite specific things that my colleagues think we could live without. And among them I find lots of things I would rather keep. Take fire drills. They remind me of being at school, which makes me feel pleasantly youthful. They are a nice break to the day, and they mean you end up walking down the stairs with someone you do not usually talk to.
As for people showing pictures of their babies - no one ever does this to me, but if they did I think I would quite like it.
Lots of the complaints were levied against the IT department, but I am not going to endorse any of those. Last time I slagged off the help desk in a column I was invited to join them for a day. I have learnt my lesson.
So what from the focus groups would I really axe? I can declare with confidence that the dodgy drawer on the tampon machine has very little going for it. As does the woman on voice-mail. But that is about it.
In the interests of accuracy there was one other specific thing that a colleague suggested axing, something I cannot really comment on one way or another: Lucy Kellaway.
工作是多余的？
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业生活中，什么东西是多余的？
这是美国管理杂志《通览全局》（Across the Board）中提出的一个问题，要各方商业评论人士回答。结果如下：首席执行官的夸耀式自传；黑莓邮件收发器；顾问；那些鼓吹中国必将崛起的人。
对上述人或物我全都没有好感，要是能将其投进我的垃圾桶再好不过。不过或许黑莓邮件收发器应予破例，它是别人送的礼物。我不是经常使用，不过拥有它就足以让我觉得自己重要，觉得有些摩登。
唯一的问题是我的垃圾箱已经太满。我每个星期一都会写一些“想扔进垃圾桶”的新东西。过去几周，我给垃圾桶增添的内容包括，杰克?韦尔奇（Jack Welch） 和苏茜?韦尔奇（Suzy Welch）夫妇 、弱智团队领导力培训课程、关于职场压力的歇斯底里式言论等，这些内容都很占空间。
今天我又生出扔点东西的念头。我收到了两封邮件，内容是针对令人尊敬人士的无聊问卷调查。其中一封告诉我，特易购(Tesco)首席执行官 特里?莱西爵士（Sir Terry Leahy）被封为英国最受人尊敬的领导。迈克尔?波特（Michael Porter）是全球在世者中，最受人尊敬的商业思想家。所有这些都告诉你，这些人本已盛名在外，又被画蛇添足地评为受人尊敬的人。
读完特里爵士获奖答谢辞后，我又生出一个装垃圾箱的新念头：我要把这位首席执行官故作谦虚的风格扔掉。他坦称自己“很自豪能够领导”36万员工，这些员工“向我们的顾客交付了一流的购物体验。”说到这里，我又想到“交付”一词，又不是要用货车来搬运，说什么交付？我已将这词扔进垃圾箱了。
但是，为了增加多样性，我决定给读者换换口味，说说我自己会放弃的东西，也给我的同事们一个机会，让他们能够推举他们愿意扔掉的东西。
上周，我就拿了一支笔，一本便笺，四处走过，临时召集专题讨论会，请各位与会者说明他们在职业生活中多余的东西。问题刚抛出来，无人回答。你这问题是什么意思？他们问。我又把问题重复了一遍。原来如此，他们说。我们来考虑考虑。
不一会儿，有人说是语音留言里那个断断续续的女声说明：“对不起，您的密码错误，请重新再试。”
然后他们又陆续提出了一些新的建议。会死机的电脑。消防演习。无聊的电子邮件。拿着自己宝宝照片四处炫耀的人。办公室的非天然光线。会议。纸张的过度使用。 吹毛求疵的省钱。每年职业评估面谈。员工新闻简报和杂志。
每次这样的专题讨论都是同一个套路：开始大家的回答总是涓涓细流，渐渐地就滔滔不绝，一发不可收拾。有人开始说：厕所里自动出售卫生巾的机器可以不要，因为它会把钱吞掉，却不出货。然后就有更大的建议了：老板发送的让员工振作士气的邮件可以不要。不要给多个老板做事。保安人员可以不要。办公室植物可以不要。不要违心向不喜欢的人表示友好。办公室政治可以不要。IT部门发来的谁也不懂的信息可以不要。
就这样，大家推举的坏东西越来越多，直到某个小组的讨论上有人说：我最痛恨的就是成天坐在这里看电脑屏幕。此言一出，又有人补充说：是啊，我们最不想要的就是工作。
问题就在这里。如果你开始积极寻找工作中多余的东西，说着说着就会进入这样的一种状态，你会觉得工作整个就是多余的。
当然，我们大部分人离了工作根本就不行。我们需要挣些钱，我们需要每天有事可做。同样，我们也离不了大部分我们认为可有可无的东西：如会议、电子邮件、老板和员工的沟通。这些也不能不要。如果它们不利（大概80%的时候都不利），我们可以丢弃，不过它们如果有利，我们就不丢弃。难就难在我们事先通常并不知道哪些东西重要，哪些毫无价值。
最后我整理出了我同事列举的多余事物清单，其条目非常具体。但其中还有很多我觉得不应该丢弃的东西。比如消防演习。这些演习让我想到我上学的时候，这种活动让我愉快，让我感觉年轻。它们是一天当中很好的休息，它还有一层意义，就是最后你走下楼梯时，总是和平常不大在一起讲话的人走在一起。
至于拿着孩子照片炫耀的情况，我没有碰到过。但是，如果别人给我看的话，我会挺喜欢的。
很多抱怨集中在IT部门，不过我不想一一详述。我上回在专栏文章中抨击IT服务台之后，被请去和他们在一起呆了一整天，我已经吸取教训了。
那么，从这些专题讨论会上收集来的清单里，有哪个是我真正想砍掉的呢？我可以自信地宣布，那个售卫生巾的骗人机器实在不该保留。还有那语音信箱的女声提示。但也仅此而已。
为准确起见，一同事专门提到了一个需要砍掉的东西，就是：露西?凯拉韦。这个，我就无法置评了。
