Husband-and-wife PhD students Eric Minikel and Sonia Vallabh have switched careers to pursue research into a rare genetic disease that killed Ms Vallabh’s mother and could kill her.

埃里克•米尼克尔(Eric Minikel)和索尼娅•瓦拉巴(Sonia Vallabh)夫妇都是博士生，为了研究一种罕见的遗传疾病，他们放弃了自己原本的职业。这种病已经夺去了瓦拉巴母亲的生命，而且可能还会夺去她的生命。

Insurance executive Mark Bertolini once quit his job to manage his cancer-stricken son’s care in person, learning lessons he later used to run one of the largest US health insurers. “Time is short,” says the chief executive of Aetna, who wears a black skull-shaped ring as a memento mori.

安泰保险(Aetna)的首席执行官马克•贝托里尼(Mark Bertolini)曾辞掉工作，专心照料自己深受癌症折磨的儿子，后来他将这段经验运用到对这家美国大型健康保险企业的管理中。贝托里尼说：“生命短暂。”他手上带着一枚象征死亡的黑骷髅戒指。

Here are two examples of people whose work is driven by meaning and purpose. A cynic might say they are extreme exceptions to the rule that most staff slouch into the office without much sense of what they give to their job, other than too many hours each day, and what they want from it, other than a prompt finish and a regular pay cheque.

在以上两个例子中，人们的工作动力来自于意义和目的。一个玩世不恭的人可能会说这些不过是极端个例，大多数上班族通常都是没精打采地走进办公室，既不知道除了每天贡献那么多时间，自己还为这份工作贡献了什么；也不知道除了按部就班地工作、按时领薪水以外，自己还能从这份工作中得到什么。

This default cynicism is understandable, but it is too easy.

这种预设的嘲讽可以理解，但未免说得太过轻巧。

Polished and promoted by corporate marketers, declarations of purpose, values and meaning at work will always run the risk of becoming as hollow as most mission statements. When they collide with the harsher reality of key performance indicators and bonus targets, they often shatter.

在企业营销人员的美化和宣传下，关于工作目的、价值和意义的声明总是有流于空洞的风险，就像大多数使命宣言那样。当这些空话碰上关键绩效指标和奖金目标，往往被这些严酷现实撞得粉碎。

At a recent conference run by Blueprint for Better Business (where I am a trustee), Nava Ashraf of London School of Economics said companies could “make things worse” by talking about purpose but behaving at odds with their proclaimed ethos. Research shows staff “can’t get their work done, [if] they’re spending all their energy” dealing with such dissonance.

Blueprint for Better Business（我是这家机构的一名受托人）最近举行了一次会议，伦敦政治经济学院(London School of Economics)的纳瓦•阿什拉芙(Nava Ashraf)在会上表示，企业行为如果与其宣称的理念不一致，空谈目标可能会“让事情变得更糟”。研究表明企业员工“如果将全部精力都用于应付这类说一套做一套的风气，就无法好好完成工作”。

The meaning that Ms Vallabh or Mr Bertolini invest in their work is so rarefied it may seem out of reach. Wider Americanised rhetoric about bringing love into the office is so absurd in some other cultures that it is easier to stand aloof and mock it. No passion, please, we’re British.

瓦拉巴和贝托里尼赋予工作的意义实在太过崇高，看起来似乎遥不可及。在某些文化中，类似把爱带到办公室这种美国式的浮夸言辞又显得过于荒唐，很容易格格不入，受人嘲笑。拜托，请不要这么激情澎湃，我们是英国人。

Such cynicism is itself dangerous. Cynics presume any organisation that talks about purpose must be lying, or at least covering up a worse truth. It pushes companies back into the conventional, old-fashioned approach: do an unimpeachably good thing in one department, often called corporate social responsibility, while signalling to everyone in the rest of the group that they should get on with “real work”.

这类冷嘲热讽本身非常危险。愤世嫉俗者假定所有大谈目的的组织肯定都是在撒谎，或至少隐瞒了糟糕的真相。这会令企业退回到旧式的传统做法：在一个部门做一件无可挑剔的好事——通常称之为企业的社会责任——借此暗示公司其他部门所有人，他们应该干好“真正的工作”。

The wife of one blue-chip chairman once berated me at a dinner because her husband could not declare progress in his quest to meet strict social responsibility goals, for fear journalists would hunt down an ethical breach.

在一次晚宴上，一家蓝筹公司的董事长的妻子曾斥责我，她的丈夫一直致力于实现严格的社会责任目标，却不能公布自己取得的进展，就是因为担心记者会穷追不舍，试图找出一件违背道德伦理的事情。

I don’t buy that argument. Some scepticism is needed to stop companies themselves behaving cynically. If they set high goals and fall short — building “clean” cars and then cheating the system that measures how clean they are, for example — they make it harder to trust those who are just setting out on a more purposeful path.

我并不接受这样的指责。企业需要一些怀疑，以阻止它们做出见利忘义的行为。如果它们制定了远大的目标，却做不到——比如立志打造“清洁”汽车，却欺骗用来测量这些汽车有多清洁的系统——会令那些制定了明确目标的企业更难取信于人。

Outright cynicism can, though, deter companies from taking the first steps towards aligning profit and purpose. As Sacha Romanovitch, chief executive of Grant Thornton UK, told the Blueprint conference, leaders need permission to talk about what is not going well “without being knocked down for it”.

不过，全然的不信任会妨碍企业采取使利润与宗旨相一致的初步举措。正如Grant Thornton UK的首席执行官萨沙•罗曼诺维奇(Sacha Romanovitc)在Blueprint会议上所讲，应允许企业领导人谈论进展不顺利的地方，“而不会因此被击垮”。

Individuals have a role in advancing purpose. “We’re optimistic and hopeful that we’re moving the ball forward. We can put energy there instead of spinning wheels for things I can’t affect,” Ms Vallabh told the Harvard Gazette. Fear of suffering drives her and her husband’s search for a treatment for the brain disease whose traces she carries in her DNA.

个人力量在推动工作目的性方面发挥了一定作用。瓦拉巴对《哈佛公报》(Harvard Gazette)表示：“我们很乐观，而且充满希望，我们相信自己正在推动世界前进。我们可以将精力投入到这里，而不用去推动那些我不喜欢的事情。”母亲所罹患的大脑疾病就隐藏在她的DNA里，对病痛的恐惧驱使着她和丈夫去寻找这种疾病的治疗方法。

But not everybody needs such a dramatic spur to action. It is not necessary for most people to plough everything they stand for into their work. It may not even be desirable. Feeding yourself completely into your job can mean starving family or friends. The assumption that work has no meaning, though, is a prescription for drift, disillusion and, at worst, self-deception. People who could not care less about their work may behave differently — and even in the opposite way — from how they behave at home.

但并不是每个人都需要这样激烈的鞭策去采取行动。对于大多数人来说没必要怀着自己的全部理想投入到工作中去。这甚至并不可取。全情投入到工作中可能意味着亏欠家人朋友。但认定自己的工作毫无意义，则是丧失理想、浑噩度日、自欺欺人（这一点是最可怕的）的安慰剂。那些对工作毫不在意的人，可能在家的表现会有所不同，甚至是截然相反。

Just a tiny pipetteful of the purpose that drives Ms Vallabh or Mr Bertolini could make a job more fulfilling, a workplace more productive and, yes — idealistic though it may sound — business and society happier, more humane, and more prosperous.

只要在工作中加入一点儿目的性，那种驱动瓦拉巴和贝托里尼去工作的目的，就可以让工作更充实，上班效率更高，而且——听起来可能有些理想主义——还会让企业和整个社会变得更快乐、更人性化、更繁荣。

Cynicism about the idea that the best work should have meaning, or the best companies should have purpose, is itself like a disease, gnawing away at trust in business until it collapses entirely. It needs to be fought, because Mr Bertolini is right. Time is short.

对最好的工作应该有意义、或最好的企业应该有目的这样的想法冷嘲热讽，本身就像一种疾病，会蛀空对企业的信任，直到其彻底垮掉。人们应该与玩世不恭作斗争，因为贝托里尼说得对，生命短暂。