50年後 麥肯錫(McKinsey)是否還會存在

Will McKinsey exist in 50 years’ time? This question has lodged itself in my mind after reading a piece in the firm’s magazine that tells us what business people will be thinking about for the next half-century.

50年後，麥肯錫(McKinsey)是否還會存在？當我在該公司的雜誌裏讀到一篇關於商界人士在接下來的半個世紀裏會思考什麼的文章後，這個問題佔據了我的心頭。

The McKinsey Quarterly is 50 years old, and it has chosen to celebrate its birthday with a momentous article based on many years’ research by the firm’s sharpest minds.

《麥肯錫季刊》(McKinsey Quarterly)已經50歲了。它選擇來爲自己慶生的，是一篇以該公司最敏銳的思想家多年研究爲基礎得出的重要文章。

As the resulting piece isn’t terribly snappy, here is a potted summary. The future, the consultants say, is going to be very big. Unfortunately, the past isn’t going to be a good guide to it. Or as they put it: “With more discontinuity and volatility and with long-term charts no longer looking like smooth upward curves, long-held assumptions giving way, and seemingly powerful business models becoming upended.”

由於文章本身並不十分生動有趣，我在這裏作一個簡短的概述。諮詢顧問們表示，未來將是非常宏大的。遺憾的是，過去並不是未來的好指引。用這些顧問們的話說：“隨着出現更多的不連續性和波動性、長期圖表不再呈現爲平滑上升的曲線，長期成立的假設將不再有效，看似強大的商業模式也將被顛覆。”

More specifically, three trends will shape this volatile, discontinuous, upended future. The first is technology. Its growth will be exponential and there will be “turbocharging advances in connectivity”. Second, growth in emerging markets will continue and a lot more big cities will spring up in places we’ve hardly heard of. Finally, all over the world everyone is going to go on getting older.

更具體地說，三個趨勢將決定這一不穩定、不連續和被顛覆的未來。首先是技術。技術的發展將是指數型的，將“在連通性方面出現急速的進步”。其次，新興市場將持續成長，將有比以前多得多的大城市在我們幾乎從未聽說過的地方涌現。最後，世界各地的人口都會日趨老齡化。

The banality of this is quite arresting. These aren’t trends of the future but of the present; if there is one thing that is true of the distant future it is that it tends not to be ruled by the same things that rule us now.

這種陳詞濫調很引人注目。上面說的並不是什麼未來的趨勢，而是當下的趨勢；如果說關於遙遠的未來有一點肯定沒錯，那就是遙遠的未來往往不受制於當下支配我們的那些事物。

But wait, there is more. These trends will have “extraordinary implications for global leaders”, it warns, before getting down to specifics: “It’s likely that different regions, countries, and individuals will have different fates, depending on the strength and flexibility of their institutions and policies.” I’d put it stronger than that. It is certain that some countries and people will do better than others, as it was always thus, and always will be.

但是請等等，還有更多呢。文章警告說，這些趨勢會“對全球領導者產生異乎尋常的影響”；接下來，它詳細解釋道：“不同地區、國家和個人很可能會有不同的命運，具體取決於他們自身制度和政策的強度及靈活性。”我想用更強的語氣來闡述下這點：“肯定”會有某些國家和人民過得比別人更好，過去一直如此，未來也將永遠如此。

As for technology, McKinsey says it will shake up business “in unimaginable ways”. This has the advantage of being right. But it has the disadvantage of being a shameful cop-out as if you are forecasting it is your job to imagine those ways – and to tell us what they are.

至於技術，麥肯錫表示，它將以“難以想象的方式”撼動商業。這句話的優點在於它是對的。但它的缺點在於它逃避了應盡的責任：如果你要作預測，就該由你來想象這些方式，並告訴我們這些方式是什麼。

The conclusion to all this? “Change is hard” – a declaration so crashingly obvious, it is odd that the authors feel the need to back it up with reference to “social scientists and behavioural economists” who have noticed a bias towards the status quo.

這一切的結論是什麼？“改變是困難的”——文章宣佈的這一結論簡直是一個再明白不過的道理。奇怪的是，作者們覺得有必要援引那些已注意到事物發展傾向於維持現狀的“社會學家和行爲經濟學家們”來支持這一結論。

There are various things that can be said about this sorry exercise in windy platitudes. First, 50 years is a ludicrously long time to try to forecast. Accountants, who are on the whole a more sensible lot than management consultants, typically don’t look out for more than a year when establishing if a business is a going concern. I sit on a board where we sometimes plan for the next five years – which is quite an enjoyable exercise, and it is useful to play with various things that might happen – but everyone always takes it with a handful of salt.

對於這種拙劣的陳詞濫調，有幾點可以說一下。首先，試圖預測50年這麼長的時間簡直是一個笑話。總體而言比管理顧問更爲理智的會計師，在判斷一家企業能否持續經營時，一般不會關注一年以後的事。我是某家公司的董事會成員，我們董事會有時會規劃未來五年的事——這是一種相當有趣的實踐，而且琢磨一下各種可能情況是有價值的，但我們每個人都自始至終不敢全然相信這種規劃。

Second, as my colleague Tim Harford recently pointed out, one of the reasons forecasts are so useless is that they aren’t forecasts at all. They are marketing exercises. Seen this way, the McKinsey piece starts to look a lot less boneheaded. “Tomorrow’s strategist must comprehend a world where offerings may vary . . . necessitating increasingly diverse approaches. All this will place a premium on agility: both to ‘zoom out’ in the development of a coherent global approach and to ‘zoom in’ on extremely granular product or market segments.” In other words, chief executives should get on the phone and appoint McKinsey at once.

其次，正如我同事蒂姆•哈福德(Tim Harford)最近指出的，說預測毫無價值的一個理由是，它們根本就不是什麼預測。它們是營銷活動。從這個角度看，麥肯錫這篇文章的愚蠢程度大大降低。“明日的戰略家必須理解一個產品可能多種多樣、因而應對之策必須日益多元化的世界。這一切使得敏銳性變得重要起來：既要在制定條理清晰的全球策略時做到‘高瞻遠矚’，也要在考察非常細分的產品或市場時做到‘細緻入微’”。換句話說，首席執行官們應該立刻打電話委任麥肯錫作顧問。

My own forecast is rather different. Fifty years hence, McKinsey won’t exist. This is based on three trends similar to those the firm spotted. If economic activity moves to new and far-flung cities, these are the very parts of the world where western strategy consultants tend not to flourish.

我個人的預測則截然不同：50年後，麥肯錫將不會再存在。這個預測是依據三個趨勢得出的，這三個趨勢與麥肯錫點明的那些趨勢類似。如果經濟活動移向新的、遙遠的城市，那麼這些城市恰恰是西方戰略諮詢公司難以蓬勃發展的地方。

The next trend is that as executives get smarter in dealing with this complex world, they will be more able to solve their own problems. One of the reasons management consultants flourish is that chief executives look at their mediocre underlings and outsource work to brains on sticks instead. If the homegrown talent gets better, they will stop doing this.

下一個趨勢是，隨着企業高管在應對這個複雜的世界時變得更加聰明，他們將更有能力解決自己的問題。管理諮詢公司能夠蓬勃發展的原因之一是，首席執行官們看着他們平庸的下屬，然後把工作外包給了一些書呆子。如果自家栽培的人才變得更優秀，他們就不會再這樣做。

Most important is the effect of technology. All the grunt stuff consultants do analysing markets can be done by anyone with an internet connection. The two things that people will always be better at than machines are motivating others and coming up with original ideas. Yet on neither score does the consultant look good. Strategy firms don’t do much in the way of motivation. And as for originality, if the best McKinsey can do after years of study is say that technology, globalisation and ageing will feature in the next 50 years – a robot could have come up with that in a jiffy.

最重要的是技術的影響。諮詢顧問在分析市場時所做的所有苦活累活，都可由任何一個能上互聯網的人來完成。人永遠比機器更擅長的兩件事是，激勵他人和想出有創意的點子。但諮詢顧問在這兩方面的表現看起來都不怎麼樣。戰略公司不太採取激勵他人的方式。至於創意，如果說經過多年的研究麥肯錫最多隻能得出技術、全球化和人口老齡化將主導未來50年的結論，那麼一個機器人能在片刻之間得出同樣的東西。