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年后，麦肯锡(McKinsey)是否还会存在？当我在该公司的杂志里读到一篇关于商界人士在接下来的半个世纪里会思考什么的文章后，这个问题占据了我的心头。

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.
《麦肯锡季刊》(McKinsey Quarterly)已经50岁了。它选择来为自己庆生的，是一篇以该公司最敏锐的思想家多年研究为基础得出的重要文章。
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.”
由于文章本身并不十分生动有趣，我在这里作一个简短的概述。咨询顾问们表示，未来将是非常宏大的。遗憾的是，过去并不是未来的好指引。用这些顾问们的话说：“随着出现更多的不连续性和波动性、长期图表不再呈现为平滑上升的曲线，长期成立的假设将不再有效，看似强大的商业模式也将被颠覆。”
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.
更具体地说，三个趋势将决定这一不稳定、不连续和被颠覆的未来。首先是技术。技术的发展将是指数型的，将“在连通性方面出现急速的进步”。其次，新兴市场将持续成长，将有比以前多得多的大城市在我们几乎从未听说过的地方涌现。最后，世界各地的人口都会日趋老龄化。
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.
这种陈词滥调很引人注目。上面说的并不是什么未来的趋势，而是当下的趋势；如果说关于遥远的未来有一点肯定没错，那就是遥远的未来往往不受制于当下支配我们的那些事物。
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.
但是请等等，还有更多呢。文章警告说，这些趋势会“对全球领导者产生异乎寻常的影响”；接下来，它详细解释道：“不同地区、国家和个人很可能会有不同的命运，具体取决于他们自身制度和政策的强度及灵活性。”我想用更强的语气来阐述下这点：“肯定”会有某些国家和人民过得比别人更好，过去一直如此，未来也将永远如此。
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.
至于技术，麦肯锡表示，它将以“难以想象的方式”撼动商业。这句话的优点在于它是对的。但它的缺点在于它逃避了应尽的责任：如果你要作预测，就该由你来想象这些方式，并告诉我们这些方式是什么。
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.
这一切的结论是什么？“改变是困难的”——文章宣布的这一结论简直是一个再明白不过的道理。奇怪的是，作者们觉得有必要援引那些已注意到事物发展倾向于维持现状的“社会学家和行为经济学家们”来支持这一结论。
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.
对于这种拙劣的陈词滥调，有几点可以说一下。首先，试图预测50年这么长的时间简直是一个笑话。总体而言比管理顾问更为理智的会计师，在判断一家企业能否持续经营时，一般不会关注一年以后的事。我是某家公司的董事会成员，我们董事会有时会规划未来五年的事——这是一种相当有趣的实践，而且琢磨一下各种可能情况是有价值的，但我们每个人都自始至终不敢全然相信这种规划。
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，说预测毫无价值的一个理由是，它们根本就不是什么预测。它们是营销活动。从这个角度看，麦肯锡这篇文章的愚蠢程度大大降低。“明日的战略家必须理解一个产品可能多种多样、因而应对之策必须日益多元化的世界。这一切使得敏锐性变得重要起来：既要在制定条理清晰的全球策略时做到‘高瞻远瞩’，也要在考察非常细分的产品或市场时做到‘细致入微’”。换句话说，首席执行官们应该立刻打电话委任麦肯锡作顾问。
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.
我个人的预测则截然不同：50年后，麦肯锡将不会再存在。这个预测是依据三个趋势得出的，这三个趋势与麦肯锡点明的那些趋势类似。如果经济活动移向新的、遥远的城市，那么这些城市恰恰是西方战略咨询公司难以蓬勃发展的地方。
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.
下一个趋势是，随着企业高管在应对这个复杂的世界时变得更加聪明，他们将更有能力解决自己的问题。管理咨询公司能够蓬勃发展的原因之一是，首席执行官们看着他们平庸的下属，然后把工作外包给了一些书呆子。如果自家栽培的人才变得更优秀，他们就不会再这样做。
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.
最重要的是技术的影响。咨询顾问在分析市场时所做的所有苦活累活，都可由任何一个能上互联网的人来完成。人永远比机器更擅长的两件事是，激励他人和想出有创意的点子。但咨询顾问在这两方面的表现看起来都不怎么样。战略公司不太采取激励他人的方式。至于创意，如果说经过多年的研究麦肯锡最多只能得出技术、全球化和人口老龄化将主导未来50年的结论，那么一个机器人能在片刻之间得出同样的东西。