近日在读一本传记“the everything store", 是关于Amazon的创始人Jeff Bezos和他公司成长成功的故事。今日读到第六章，非常感慨里面的一个情节，特分享于此。
书中提到，九十年代后期，一群junior executives聚集开会，讨论如何解决公司面临的困境，如何协调远程的部门，大家的建议是增加部门间的对话交流。就在他们自认为意见很新颖，以此为荣时，没料到，Jeff Bezos满脸通红，脸上青筋直跳，“如果他是个敲桌子的人，那桌子一定被敲得震耳欲聋”。
下面是摘录的原文：
“ I unders what you're saying, but you are completely wrong." Jeff said. "Communication is a sign of dysfunction. It means people aren't working together in a close, organic way. We should be trying to figure out a way for teams to communicate less with each other, not more."
Bezos's counterintuitive point was that coordination among employees wasted time, and that the people closest to problems were usually in the best position to solve them. That would come to represent something akin to the conventional wisdom in the high-tech industry over the next decade. The companies that embraced this philosophy, like Google, Amazon, and, later, Facebook, were in part drawing lessons from theories about lean and agile software development. In the seminal high-tech book The Mythical Man-Month, IBM veteran and computer science professor Frederick Brooks argued that adding manpower to complex software project actually delayed progress. One reason was that the time and money spent on communication increased in proportion to the number of people on a project.
"....Layers of middle managers, a system that ended up slowing down decision and stifling innovation". He (Jeff) wanted doers--engineers, developers, perhaps merchandise buyers, but not managers.
团队精神和沟通协调，是很时髦的用语。别人我不知道，反正我的简历里不敢漏掉这两点，好像漏掉了，被录用的概率会降低很多似的。美国长大的孩子，从小学就开始做project, 而且很多时候是team project, 一直做到大学, 到工作。女儿就不喜欢做team project，因为往往到最后都是她花的时间最多，或者干脆一个人做完，有时候协调起来也很累。team work很容易滋生浑水摸鱼像南郭先生那样的人。在公司，那些不干活，会说话，往往成了team work最后的功臣。所谓的team work, 有时效率低，还不如一个人做。可你还不能明说，否则被标上“没有团队精神“，可就坏了。
美国公司的人浮于事是很常见的，中层干部有很多是不干活，专派派活，写写email，指手画脚，很多情况下，真是多余的。还有更烦心的，动不动开会，要communicate啊, 要coordinate啊。P大的事，几分钟或几小时能搞定的事非得开会，列个长长的agenda，我想，有这功夫写agenda，问题早已解决了。可那些人不，想想也是，要不然要那些人干嘛，他们是通过开会宣告，"我是很忙的，我有一大堆的projects等着我"。而像我这样，时常一个人就搞定的，会议的list没有我的名字，倒是给人印象你没在干活，你不重要，何以谈得上visibility.
今日很高兴读到这章这段，看来真正有能耐的人还是看到了，所谓的合作，所谓的沟通, 弊大于利。
