My first job was in sales.

我干的第一份工作是销售。

In a grim rented flat above a row of shops, I worked through a pile of leads.

在一排商铺上面一间租来的阴森森的公寓中，我仔细推敲着一堆线索。

I phoned people who had entered a competition and fixed meetings for prize reps whose real aim was to flog double glazing and fitted kitchens.

我打电话给那些参赛人员，并为获奖代表安排会议，他们的真正目的是推销双层玻璃和整体厨房。

Every time I reached my goal, our hyperactive team leader would ring a bell, heralding a later bonus if the meetings I had arranged resulted in a sale. (They never seemed to.)

每次我达到目标，我们极度活跃的团队领导人就会敲铃，宣告如果我安排的会议卖出了产品（这些会议似乎从未卖出去产品），就会有奖金。

In line with my then employer’s Hobbesian view of the greed of sellers and buyers, the job was nasty, brutish and — for me, a holiday temp — short.

这份工作难干、低俗而且短暂——对我来说，这是一份假期临时工作——符合我当时的雇主关于买卖双方均贪婪的霍布斯式观点。

But I doubt I would have got it done at all in the absence of any target.

但我怀疑，如果没有目标的话我根本干不了这份工作。

Goals and rewards are an important ingredient of sales motivation.

目标和奖励是销售激励的一个重要元素。

Pick virtually any recent scandal, though, and pressure to reach an ambitious goal is also a noxious part of the recipe for disaster.

然而，随便挑出最近发生的任何一起丑闻，就会发现实现宏大目标的压力也是导致灾难的因素中有毒的部分。

The current poisoner-in-chief is Wells Fargo, whose executives urged staff to aim for the Great Eight — cross-selling eight products to clients.

如今的首席投毒官是富国银行(Wells Fargo，见上图)，该行高管们敦促员工以八大为目标——向客户交叉销售8种产品。

Many created accounts without customers’ consent.

许多员工在未获客户许可的情况下开立了账户。

Some 5,300 staff have been sacked.

大约5300名员工被解雇。

Recent reports have singled out the mishandling of goal-setting as a factor in the failure of UK bank HBOS (aggressive growth targets), Barclays’ Libor manipulation and mis-selling of payment protection insurance (staff blamed a culture of fear), and even increased deaths in the 2000s at Stafford hospital in Britain, which suffered from a focus on reaching national access targets . . . at the cost of delivering acceptable standards of care.

最近的报道将目标设定不当列为英国苏格兰哈里法克斯银行(HBOS)破产（激进的增长目标）、巴克莱(Barclays)的伦敦银行间同业拆借利率(Libor)操纵案、违规销售支付保护险丑闻（员工指责存在一种恐惧文化），乃至本世纪头十年英国斯塔福德医院(Stafford)死亡人数增加的一大因素。英国斯塔福德医院的问题是着重于达标……却牺牲了令人可接受的护理标准。

Abolition of product sales goals — the radical action announced by Wells Fargo’s chief executive John Stumpf — seems the obvious solution.

废除产品销售目标——富国银行首席执行官约翰•斯顿夫(John Stumpf)宣布的激进举措——似乎是显而易见的解决办法。

As US senator Elizabeth Warren pointed out acidly in her excoriation of Mr Stumpf last week, Wells Fargo’s target was set not because you ran the numbers and found that the average customer needed eight banking accounts. It is because ‘Eight rhymes with great’.

正如美国参议员伊丽莎白•沃伦(Elizabeth Warren)上周在指责斯顿夫时尖刻地指出的那样，富国银行设定目标不是因为你经过计算发现普通客户需要8个银行账户，而是因为‘8念起来朗朗上口’。

A similar oversimplification led to the disastrous Ford Pinto project in the 1960s.

在上世纪60年代，福特(Ford)类似的过度简单化的做法导致了灾难性的平托(Pinto)项目。

Ford boss Lee Iacocca challenged his team to produce a car weighing under 2,000lb and costing less than $2,000.

福特老板李•艾柯卡(Lee Iacocca)让他的团队生产一款重量不足2000磅且成本低于2000美元的汽车。

Under pressure to meet these goals to a tight deadline, Ford managers pushed the car out with a flawed design, later blamed for a number of deaths and injuries.

由于时间紧和任务重，福特管理层推出了设计有缺陷的汽车，后来该款汽车被指造成许多人死亡和受伤。

Scrapping goals, though, can leave teams aimless.

然而，废除目标可能让团队没有方向。

Maurice Schweitzer, of University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton business school, is co-author of a 2009 paper, Goals Gone Wild, which included the Pinto case and warned about the dangers of overprescriptive goals.

宾夕法尼亚大学(University of Pennsylvania)沃顿商学院(Wharton School)的莫里斯•施魏策尔(Maurice Schweitzer)在2009年与他人合著了论文《疯狂的目标》(Goals Gone Wild)，文中提到了平托案例，并对硬性规定目标的风险提出了警告。

But he maintains they are an essential managerial tool.

但他坚称，目标是必不可少的管理工具。

He told me: If a manager hopes to motivate employees, goal setting has got to be part of that process.

他告诉我：如果一名管理者希望激励雇员，目标设定就必须是这个过程的一部分。

A second option then would be to adjust targets to avoid their sometimes lethal consequences.

那么第二个选项将是调整目标以避免它们有时产生致命的后果。

In the vexed area of executive pay, for instance, if boards spent less time focusing on the amount paid and more on the period over which managers were rewarded, they could encourage them to act for the longer-term success of the business.

例如，在棘手的高管薪酬领域，如果董事会少花些时间关注薪酬数额，而是更加关注经理人获得薪酬的期限，他们就能鼓励经理人致力于更长期的企业成功。

The ghost of targets past has a habit of haunting staff.

昔日目标的阴影往往还会困扰员工。

After investigating Barclays’ culture in 2012, lawyer Anthony Salz warned the bank not to replace individual sales goals with indirect targets such as branch league tables that may still encourage bad behaviour.

在2012年调查巴克莱文化之后，律师安东尼•萨尔斯(Anthony Salz)警告该行不要用分行排行榜等仍可能鼓励坏行为的间接目标代替个人销售目标。

At Wells Fargo, how teams hit targets should have been as important as whether it reached them.

在富国银行，团队如何实现目标本应与它是否实现目标一样重要。

A third way of improving goals is to augment them with conditions on, say, customer care or satisfaction.

改善目标的第三个方法是用比如说客户关怀或满意度等条件来作为补充。

New ways are emerging to measure goals such as these, which are harder to quantify, using surveys, social media and other information.

使用调查、社交媒体以及其他信息来衡量这些较难量化的目标的新方法正在出现。

But a strictly numerical approach requires caution, too.

但严格数字化的方法也需要谨慎。

With their false promise of clarity, data have a mesmerising effect on executives, even in areas that are harder to quantify than mere revenues.

数据可能会让人错误地觉得情况一清二楚，它令高管着迷，即便在比单纯收入更难量化的领域也是如此。

Goals are extraordinarily powerful.

目标效果非凡。

Abolishing them disarms a company’s sales team.

废除目标让公司的销售团队失去动力。

Adjusting or augmenting them can dilute or even pervert their impact.

调整或扩大目标可能稀释乃至败坏目标的效果。

But companies really court catastrophe when they set unrealistic goals and oblige staff to chase them.

但是当公司制定不切实际的目标并强迫员工为此努力的时候，它们真的是在自讨苦吃。

One brutal extreme of sales culture is summed up in a famous speech from Glengarry Glen Ross — the 1983 David Mamet play that budding salespeople still analyse for tips about the good and the bad of selling.

《拜金一族》(Glengarry Glen Ross)中的一篇著名演讲概述了一种残酷的极端销售文化——《拜金一族》是大卫•马梅(David Mamet)在1983年编写的剧本，讲述了刚入行的销售人员仍在分析销售利弊的技巧。

In it, a star salesman, played by Alec Baldwin in the 1992 film version, offers his charges expletive-laden advice and three prizes in a contest to determine who is best: a Cadillac Eldorado, a set of steak knives, and Third prize is you’re fired.

在1992年根据该剧本改编的影片中，由亚历克•鲍德温(Alec Baldwin)扮演的明星销售员向他的手下们发表了脏话连篇的建议，并决定为最佳销售员竞赛提供3项奖品：一辆凯迪拉克Eldorado、一套牛排刀具以及第三名的奖励是被解雇。

As in many scandals where hard goals trump softer but better priorities, the shame of the Wells Fargo case is that by urging staff to go for first prize, the bank forced many to act in ways that ensured they would come third.

在许多丑闻中，公司重视硬性目标、而非更温和但更好的优先事项。同样，富国银行事件的耻辱在于，通过敦促员工争抢头名奖励，该行迫使许多员工以让他们排名第三的方式做事。