《德鲁克日志》第十三篇：行政工作的规则

2017.11.27

提示：Staff习惯译法为“参谋”，这是军队用语。在企业，Staff译为行政，或行政人员比较贴切。企业之所以低效甚至无效，往往是因为行政人员过多，人浮于事。他们不仅不创造价值，还会给业务人员制造麻烦,浪费他们的宝贵时间。因此，要将行政人员的数量降到最低。

巴菲特公司总部人数的只有24人，却管理着几千亿美元的资产。尽管总部只有24个人，巴菲特仍然抱怨行政人员太多了。

 文｜彼得德鲁克

行政工作的规则

Rules for staff work

行政工作不是为了提高知识；它存在的唯一正当理由是为了改善业务人员以及整个公司的绩效。

Staff work is not done to advance knowledge; its only justification is the improvement of the performance of operating people and of the entire organization.

首先，行政人员应当将精力集中在那些持续多年的重要任务上。一项重要但不会持续的任务 – 如管理层的重组– 最好作为临时工作来处理。必须将行政工作限制在几项优先级任务之内。自我繁殖的行政工作将剥夺其的效能。更糟的是，它将毁掉创造成果人员，即业务人员的有效性。除非严格控制行政工作的数量，行政人员将吞噬越来越多业务人员的紧俏资源：时间。

First, staff should concentrate on tasks of major importance that will continue for many years. A task of major importance that will not last forever - for example, the reorganization of a company’smanagement - is better handled it as a onetime assignment. Staff work should belimited to a few tasks of high priority. Proliferation of staff services deprives them of effectiveness. Worse, it destroys the effectiveness of the people who produce results, the operating people. Unless the number of staff tasks is closely controlled, staff will gobble up more and more of operating peoples’ scarcest resource: time.

有效的行政工作要求有具体的目的与目标，有清晰的标的与截止日期。“我们期望，从现在开始，用三年的时间将缺勤率减少一半。”或者“两年之后，希望了解充分了解我们的细跟市场，将产品线至少降低三分之一”。类似这样的目标使得行政工作有成效。而含糊其辞的目标，如“掌握员工行为特征”或者说“研究顾客的动机”则做不到。

Effective staff work requires specific goals and objectives, clear targets and deadlines. “We expect to cut absenteeism in half within three years” or “two years from now we expect to understand thes egmentation of our markets sufficiently to reduce the number of product lines  y at least a 1/3.” Objectives like this make for productive staff work. Vague goals such as “getting a handle on employee behavior” or “a study of customer motivation” do not.

大约每隔三年与行政部门坐下来问“在过去三年里，你对企业目标的重要贡献是什么？”，这样做非常重要。

Every three years or so it is important to sit down with every staff unit and ask, “What have you contributed this last three years that makes a real difference to this company?”

行动要点：

保证行政人员少而精。为行政工作设定目标以及截止日期。确认行政目标与组织的目标直接相关。

Action Point: keep support staff small and few. Establish specific goals and deadlines for all staff work. Make sure goals are linked directly to one or more organizational goals.