首席执行官们表现出“一切尽在掌握”的样子，但实际上他们内心肯定时刻在犯嘀咕。为什么呢?来看看下面的双语新闻吧：

　　How do I know? First, very few of us go through a day without feeling bursts of anxiety about what we have done, are doing or will do. Second, it is the overriding message emerging from anonymous interviews with 152 chi executives for a study by Oxford’s Sa?d Business School and Heidrick & Struggles, the headhunter. Third, accepting that many situations have no dinitive solution — one of the characteristics of a paradox — could, paradoxically, be the surest way to handle them.我是怎么知道的?首先，我们当中很少有人每天不为已经做过的事、正在做的事和将要做的事感到阵阵焦虑。其次，这是牛津大学(Oxford)赛德商学院(Sa?d Business School)和猎头公司海德思哲(Heidrick & Struggles)对152名首席执行官做的匿名访谈调查得出的主要结论。第三，听起来有违直觉但实则正确的是，接受“很多问题没有确定的解决方案”(这是悖论的特点之一)或许是解决这些问题的最确定方法。

　　The CEO study, out on Wednesday, is cunningly timed for this week’s World Economic Forum in Davos. The forum is thought of as the acme of corporate self-confidence. It is in fact designed to exacerbate executive angst. Every participant is afflicted by Stardust Memories Syndrome. In the opening scene of the Woody Allen film, the director sits in a train with a bunch of depressed or dubious-looking passengers. A clock ticks menacingly in the background. Allen glances across the tracks to see another carriage in which beautiful and important people are whooping it up. He pleads with the guard but cannot change trains. Davos in a nutshell.这份首席执行官调查周三发布，本次达沃斯世界经济论坛(WEF)也刚好在这一天开幕，时机可以说恰到好处。世界经济论坛被认为代表着企业界自信心的巅峰。其实，这个论坛是为加剧首席执行官们的焦虑而设立的。与会的每个人都饱受“《星尘往事》(Stardust Memories)综合征”困扰。在伍迪?艾伦(Woody Allen)执导和主演的这部影片的开头，他坐在一辆火车里，车厢里满是郁闷或鬼祟的乘客。时钟指针走动的澳际声在背景音中不怀好意地响着。艾伦朝铁轨对面望去，看到另一节车厢里坐着许多体面、重要的人物，他们正在狂欢庆祝。他恳求列车长让他换到那辆车上去，但列车长不让。这就是达沃斯的缩影。

　　Worrying about whether they are at the right party is, however, only a subset of the wider concern afflicting Davos Man and Woman. They are also bound to wonder why they are in the Alps at all, wearing snow boots and talking about mindfulness or machine learning, rather than inspiring staff, doing deals and tackling crises. Not all can reconcile the two conflicting demands. Rupert Murdoch called off his trip in 2011 in order to deal with the UK phone-hacking scandal. A coven of bankers pulled out in 2009 as high finance melted down. Mario Draghi, head of the European Central Bank, has chosen to stay away this year as he prepares for a quantitative easing announcement on Thursday.不过，担心自己是否来对了派对，只是萦绕在达沃斯男男女女心头的忧虑的一部分。他们肯定也在问自己到底为什么会来到阿尔卑斯山、穿着雪地靴、谈论正念或机器学习，而不是在鼓舞员工、处理生意、解决危机。不是每个人都能调和这两种相互冲突的需求。2011年，鲁珀特?默多克(Rupert Murdoch)为处理英国电话窃听丑闻取消了达沃斯行程。2009年，一群银行家因“高级”金融(high finance)崩盘退出了达沃斯会议。欧洲央行(ECB)行长马里奥?德拉吉(Mario Draghi)今年选择不来达沃斯，因为他正在为周四宣布出台量化宽松做准备。

　　Leaders of large organisations must balance the internal tensions of a matrix structure — region versus function, local versus global — and the demands of external constituents such as politicians, the public and pressure groups, which they often used to be able to ignore.大型企业的领袖必须在一个矩阵式结构(地区对职能，本地对全球)的内部矛盾与政治人士、公众、压力团体等外部人士的需求(过去他们往往能够忽略这些需求)之间找到平衡。

　　At the same time, their own existence is rife with contradiction. One CEO tells the Oxford researchers: “You can’t wait for 100 per cent certainty?.?.?.?but you can’t just make a guess.” Another suggests: “The areas I’m strong in are also potentially my weakness.” It is “important to marry [my] gut feeling with the ability to be humble enough to ask”, says a third.与此同时，他们自身的存在也充满了矛盾。一名首席执行官对牛津大学的研究人员说：“你不能等到百分之百确定再行动……但你也不能只是瞎猜。”另一名首席执行官表示：“我擅长的领域也是我潜在的薄弱之处。”还有一名首席执行官说，“重要的是要将(我的)直觉与能够足够谦逊地请教别人结合在一起”。

　　Getting this balance right requires, another says, “an almost insane combination of extreme confidence, bordering on arrogance, combined with complete humility”. Insane, indeed. The tension helps explain the short tenure of many chi executives (or, they might argue, helps justify the Alpine size of their compensation).还有一名首席执行官说，把握好这种平衡需要“将堪称傲慢的极端自信与彻底的谦逊近乎变态地结合起来”。确实够变态。这种矛盾有助于解释为什么许多首席执行官的任期那么短暂(抑或，他们可能会说，他们的补偿金之所以像阿尔卑斯山那样高，原因就在这里)。

　　Inevitably, the temptation to take the easier path of command-and-control or micromanagement is strong. At the other extreme, a chi executive who disconnects entirely from operations risks turning into a 21st-century version of the discredited hero-leader. The boss who delegates day-to-day issues to his team so he can “get a bird’s-eye view, scanning the horizon for context without clutter”, sounds as though he suffers from a God complex.不可避免的是，选择更容易的命令-控制式管理(或曰微观管理(micromanagement)，指事无巨细的管理方式——译者注)是一种难以抵御的诱惑。首席执行官的另一种极端是，完全不过问日常事务——这类人有沦为21世纪版“英雄式领袖”的风险，“英雄式领袖”如今已是个贬义词。这类把日常事务交给自己团队打理、以便自己能“鸟瞰全局、毫无羁绊地检视地平线、判断局势”的首席执行官，听起来仿佛有种“上帝情结”。

　　But proposals for handling dilemmas are unnervingly vague: the study advises executives to develop “ripple intelligence” and “harness their doubts”, acts I put in the same category as herding cats or stapling jelly.但针对这些两难问题提出的解决方案含糊得令人沮丧：上述调查建议高管们培养“涟漪智慧”(ripple intelligence)和“利用自己的疑虑”，在我看来，这些行为无异于牧猫或把果冻钉住。

　　A drastic alternative would be to cut the complexity of the organisation itself. Jamie Dimon (a regular and outspoken Davos-goer) recently complained about the number of regulators pestering JPMorgan. Simplifying its structure would eliminate some of the intractable issues the chi executive has to confront.另一种激烈的做法是，降低企业自身的复杂性。(达沃斯论坛的常客、一向直言不讳的)杰米?戴蒙(Jamie Dimon)最近抱怨有太多的监管机构缠着摩根大通(JPMorgan)不放。简化该公司的结构可消灭掉一部分这位首席执行官不得不面对的棘手问题。

　　Even if break-up is a step too far, multinationals still have to re-educate would-be CEOs. Taught to spot a paradox, some senior leaders at GlaxoSmithKline realise “I’ve been trying to solve this as a problem — now I understand why it never leaves my desk”, says Kim Lafferty, the pharmaceutical group’s vice-president for global leadership development.就算分拆有些太过激烈，跨国公司也仍有必要对渴望成为首席执行官的人进行再教育。制药集团葛兰素史克(GSK)全球领导力发展副总裁基姆?拉弗蒂(Kim Lafferty)说，公司的一些高管曾被教导要发现悖论，如今他们意识到，“我一直在努力把这当作一个问题来解决——现在我明白它为什么一直不从我的案头消失了”。

　　In other words, for many of the most important issues chi executives now face, the traditional instruction “Bring me solutions, not problems” seems to have lost its potency.换句话说，对首席执行官如今面临的许多最重要的问题来说，“给我解决方案，别给我问题”这一传统指令似乎已失去了效力。

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