A colleague who headed an overseas editorial bureau of the Financial Times once called me to ask my advice: did I think he should devote more time to managing the journalists in his team or to writing front page scoops?
有一次，一位领导英国《金融时报》海外分社的同事打电话征询我的建议：他到底应该投入更多时间管理他团队里的记者，还是投入更多时间撰写头版独家新闻？

Easy, I replied. Unless the bureau was so dysfunctional that its output dried up, he should concentrate on news gathering. A similar answer still applies to a whole range of professions, from consulting to law to accounting, where successful lone wolves are celebrated, workhorses tolerated and managers quietly denigrated.
我回答说，很简单。除非分社无法正常运作，以至于文章的产出都枯竭了，否则他应该专注于新闻采写。类似的答案也适用于咨询、法律和会计等一系列专业领域。在这些专业领域，人们赞美成功的“孤狼”，容忍“老黄牛”，暗地里则诋毁管理者。
Rainmakers fighting among themselves for clients feed a whole genre of film and television, including The Good Wife (for law) and House of Lies (for consulting), full of back-stabbing professionals politicking for superiority in an atmosphere of mutual mistrust. Collaboration, by definition, makes for poor drama. But it does yield excellent results, according to a study of a range of professions, by Heidi Gardner of Harvard Law School. Summarising the work in the latest Harvard Business Review, she writes that when specialists work together across their areas of expertise, their employers “earn higher margins, inspire greater client loyalty and gain a competitive edge”.
互相争夺客户的企业干将们为一类电影和电视剧提供了素材，包括《傲骨贤妻》（The Good Wife，法律业）和《谎言屋》（House of Lies，咨询业）。这些影视作品中充斥着专业人士们彼此暗中加害，在一种互不信任的气氛下谋求上位的剧情。本质上，协作带不来劲爆的故事情节。但协作确实能带来好结果，这是哈佛法学院(Harvard Law School)的海迪•加德纳(Heidi Gardner)对一系列专业领域进行研究后得出的结论。这篇研究论文刊登在《哈佛商业评论》(Harvard Business Review)上，加德纳在文中总结道，如果专才们能够跨越自己的专业领域通力合作，他们的雇主能“赚取更高的利润，增强客户忠诚度，获得竞争优势”。
As the caricature consultants in House of Lies might say: “What’s not to like?” Plenty, in fact. Getting specialists out of their own silos is hard enough; persuading their fellow partners to let them into theirs even harder. Making collaboration work also requires professionals to pay more attention to what my bureau chief colleague decided to ignore: management.
就如《谎言屋》中形象夸张的咨询师所说的：“有什么理由不喜欢这样呢？”事实上，有很多理由。让专才们从自己的领地里走出来就够困难了；再说服他们的伙伴允许他们进入自己的领地就更困难了。要真正实现协作，还需要专业人才更加重视我那位同事决定忽略的东西——管理。
Professional services groups try to project an image of collaborative harmony to the outside world. But Prof Gardner says 23 groups have invited her to talk about her work in the past six months because their leaders said they were struggling to persuade partners to share their expertise.
专业服务公司试图向外界传达一种和谐合作的形象。但加德纳教授表示，过去6个月有23家企业邀请她讲授她的研究，因为这些企业的领导者表示，他们难以说服合伙人分享自己的专业技能。
“I don’t want it to come across as though these people are complete assholes, just looking after themselves,” Prof Gardner told me last week. “They’re legitimately primed to think in this way.”
“我不想给人这样一种感觉，好像这些人都是彻头彻尾的混蛋，只顾他们自己，”加德纳教授上周告诉我说，“他们这样思考有相当合理的原因。”
Short-term incentives, such as bonuses based on how much income individuals generate, or how many clients they acquire, skew behaviour towards the selfish. The hassle of getting together with colleagues is simply not worth most partners’ while. Many groups favour “the rock star, not the whole band”, as one person interviewed for the Harvard study said.
短期激励措施，比如依据个人收入贡献、或者个人争取到的客户数量派发的奖金，会使行为趋向于自私。对大多数合伙人来说，费心与同事们一起工作根本不值得。正如接受加德纳访问的一个人所说的，许多企业更爱“摇滚明星，而非整个乐队”。
Even if professional services firms can convince individuals to work together, the sight of more than one partner in the room can spook clients, who may suspect they are being cross-sold more expensive partner time. To overcome this hurdle, the lawyers or accountants really have to agree to absorb the short-term cost. Once the benefits of collaboration start to become clear, including the payback to partners when they share leads with colleagues (mapped by Prof Gardner), objections raised by customers and senior professionals should fall away.
即使专业服务公司能说服个人相互合作，但看到房间里不止一个合伙人，客户可能会被吓退，怀疑公司向他们交叉销售更昂贵的合伙人服务。要克服这个障碍，律师或者会计师必须愿意共同承担短期成本。一旦协作的好处开始显现，包括（加德纳教授提出的）与同事分享客户资源能提高合伙人回报，客户和资深专业人士的反对应该也会随之消退。
In research published in 2013, Laura Empson of Cass Business School described one firm that claimed to have achieved such seamless co-operation between partners, partly by using the recruitment process to reinforce the need for collaboration, partly by paying partners on a “lockstep model” by seniority, regardless of performance. One partner memorably likened the culture to “the Borg”, an alien race in the Star Trek series: “The Borg is a collective. They are this mass of things that go forward. If bits drop off, like limbs and heads, it’s completely replaced. And that’s us.”
卡斯商学院(Cass Business School)的劳拉•恩普森(Laura Empson) 2013年发表的研究论文描述了一家公司，该公司称在合伙人之间实现了这种无缝合作，部分手段是通过招聘过程加强协作需求，部分手段是采用不问业绩、只凭资历的“同级同薪”制。一位合伙人的说法让人印象深刻，他把这种文化比作《星际迷航》(Star Trek)系列里的外星种族“博格人”(Borg)：“博格人是一个集体。他们一齐向前进。如果有一些部分脱落，比如四肢或者头脑，这些东西会被完全替代。这就是我们。”
But at less cult-like organisations, leaders have to work harder to achieve such a state, weeding out toxic candidates for partnership before they pollute the culture, reducing friction that impedes co-operation, restructuring pay and bonuses, and underlining the value of cross-disciplinary work.
但在不那么崇尚集体的组织里，要达到这样一种状态，领导者需要付出更多努力，在“坏苹果”毒害整个企业文化前就淘汰这样的候选人，阻止他们晋升合伙人，减少阻碍合作的摩擦，重新设定薪资和奖金结构，强调跨学科工作的价值。
Easier said than done. Partners still prefer client work to leading, while outside managers lack influence. One partner damned them to Prof Empson as “functionaries”, adding faint praise: “That’s not to denigrate [them] because they are very talented . . . but culturally we have a snobbery about lawyers being superior.”
说起来容易做起来难。比起承担领导工作，合伙人们更喜欢的还是客户工作，而来自专业领域以外的管理者又缺乏影响力。一位合伙人在恩普森教授面前称这类管理者是“杂务人员”，又苍白无力地补上赞美：“这不是贬低（他们），因为他们很有才能……但在文化上，我们有种律师才最高等的优越感。”
Such ingrained attitudes are hard to break. As one person with 32 years of consulting experience has written in an online comment on Prof Gardner’s suggestion that leaders should turn away selfish rainmakers: “Yeah, right.”
这种根深蒂固的态度很难打破。正如加德纳教授建议领导者应对自私的能人说不时，一位有32年咨询业经验的人发表了一条网络评论：“是吗，说得真对啊。”