The business of doing good

strawberry · 发表于 2007-5-13 11:33:37

I saw the posting in Chinese in an NGO website for the first time and was thinking it might be good to read the lines in English. It's a well-written critic, though some words are a bit radical. How do you think of it?

By Sathnam Sanghera
Published by The Financial Times: May 25 2006 18:16 | Reproduced with permission

Unfortunately, it transpires that all those vacuous magazine articles banging on about the "quarter-life crisis", wherein people in their late twenties supposedly suffer crippling malaise, are not so vacuous after all. Almost everyone I know approaching 30 is suddenly behaving peculiarly, terminating a long-term relationship, announcing their engagement to an evident lunatic and making unrealistic threats to quit their lousy well-paid job in the City of London to do something less stressful and more meaningful instead.

In general, I do not mind listening to these disillusioned lawyers and financiers earning 10 times as much as me whining about office politics and the crushing nature of the rat race. But there are limits, and the precise point at which I lose patience is when they start trumpeting about leaving their jobs to "work for charity". This always irritates me because my brother works as a manager at a housing charity and over the years I have learnt that:

- Working for charity is more stressful than working in business
There seems to be a view among City types that switching to the voluntary sector is a form of downshifting. But this is not the case, not least because businesses have simpler aims than charities: making sure pre-tax profits increase by 7 per cent is easier than making poverty history, for instance.

Also, although it may not feel like it for the jaded young(ish) executive, the power structure of the typical company is pretty simple: the chief executive reports to the board and the staff report to the chief executive. At a charity a chief executive has multiple stakeholders to deal with, from the recipients of aid to donors, volunteers and a powerful board of trustees, who will not always do what they are told. It is hard work.

- Charities do not necessarily offer respite from office politics
Another common assumption is that because their minds are focused on saving the world, charity workers have no time for stabbing each other in the back. In reality, because they are all so passionate about what they do, they are more likely to do so. Sir Christopher Bland, the chairman of BT Group, put it well in a Financial Times interview when he explained that in his experience "the amount of backbiting, in-fighting and general skulduggery in an organisation is in direct proportion to the nobility of its goals". He added: "In seven years as a management consultant, the worst behaviour I found was in a home for handicapped children in north London, closely followed by a large teaching hospital. Compared with that British American Tobacco was relatively well behaved."

- Charities do not necessarily offer an escape from corporate culture
There is no better illustration of this than It's Tough at the Top, a new management guide by Debra Allcock Tyler, chief executive of the Directory of Social Change, a charity providing training for charities. It is aimed at the voluntary sector, but with its Venn diagrams and talk of "action-centred leadership", it is like most management books aimed at the private sector. There is a sound reason for this: charities in the UK alone have an annual income of

strawberry · 发表于 2007-5-13 11:35:52

Its Chinese counterpart as follows,

ZT投身慈善未必好玩
（《金融时报》Sathnam Sanghera）
非常不幸，我发现所有那些空洞的、描写“青年危机”（quarter-life crisis ）的杂志文章其实并不怎么空洞。这里说的青年危机，是指人们在接近30岁时可能出现的极度迷惑不安的情况。在我认识的人当中，几乎所有快30岁的人，都突然变得行为古怪：结束一段长期的恋爱关系；宣布与明明是个疯子的人订婚；不切实际地放出狠话，要辞掉他们在伦敦金融城污秽的高薪工作，转而去做一些压力较小但更有意义的事情。

这些幻想破灭了的律师和金融家们薪水是我10倍，一般而言我也并不介意倾听他们抱怨办公室权术和“你死我活的竞争”。但事情总要有个限度，当他们开始吹嘘要辞职去“为慈善事业效力”时，我就到达了丧失耐心的那临界点。这种事经常让我感到愤怒，因为我兄弟在一家房屋慈善机构任经理，多年来我知道了这样一些情况：

■与经商相比，为慈善机构工作的压力更大。在金融城当中似乎有这样一种观点，转向志愿服务行业是一种减压行为。但事实并非如此，最重要的原因在于：与慈善事业相比，商业的目标更简单。比如，确保税前利润增长7%要比消灭贫穷要容易得多。
还因为，尽管疲倦不堪的年轻高管人士可能不太喜欢典型的公司权力结构，但它却十分简单：首席执行官向董事会汇报，员工向首席执行官汇报。而一家慈善机构的首席执行官要应付多个利益相关人：从援助受赠人到捐赠人、志愿者以及权力颇大的受托人委员会，这些人往往不按照别人告诉的行事。那可是个费劲的工作。
■慈善机构未必不会出现办公室政治。另一个普遍假设是，由于慈善机构工作人员的精力，都集中在拯救世界上，他们没有时间互相在人背后捅人一刀。但事实上，正因为他们都对自己做的事情非常热心，他们就更可能这么做。在接受英国《金融时报》采访时，英国电信集团(BT Group)董事长克里斯托弗•布兰德爵士根据其经历很好地解释了这一点：“一个团体存在的诽谤、暗斗和欺诈的数量，与其目的的高尚程度成正比关系。”他补充称：“作为管理咨询顾问的7年中，我所发现的最为恶劣的行为发生在伦敦北部的一个残疾儿童收容所，因为一家大型医学院对其进行密切的医学追踪。与这相比，英美烟草(British American Tobacco)的行为相对好得多。
■慈善机构未必没有企业文化。《高处不胜寒》(It’s Tough at the Top)一书极好地阐释了这一点，该书是慈善机构Directory of Social Change的首席执行官黛布拉•阿尔科克•泰勒(Debra Allcock Tyler)新写的一本管理指南，这家慈善机构为其它慈善机构提供培训。这本书针对志愿服务行业，但从其维恩图解(Venn diagrams)和对“以行动为中心的领导”的讨论而言，它很像大多数针对私人行业的管理书籍。有充分的理由解释这一点：仅就英国的慈善机构而言，其年收入为263亿英镑(合492亿美元)，随着实现捐款价值的压力日益增大，它们的运作也越来越商业化。
■为慈善机构工作未必意味着每天给麻疯病患者洗澡。那些放出狠话要辞职从事慈善工作的人通常都以为：他们的新生活将需要亲自参与救援工作。他们忘记了慈善组织也像公司一样需要运营，如果他们在一家慈善机构担任律师或信息技术管理者，那么从事的很可能是法律或IT方面的日常事务，而不会成为救助全球不幸人群的特蕾莎修女(Mother Teresa)式人物。
■你为慈善机构工作，但这并不意味着雇用你的慈善机构会对你慷慨仁慈。尽管英国有超过 290家慈善机构的年收入逾1000万英镑，但56%的慈善机构年收入不足1万英镑，为维持生计，很多机构不得不牺牲对员工的投资，而且常常还会而裁员。 “担任慈善机构首席执行官的难处是，员工期望你对他们慷慨大方。”泰勒女士表示，“但筹集资金的残酷现实意味着你无力这样做。”

当然，我并不是在暗示人们不应考虑为慈善机构工作。这是一件很棒的事：我的兄弟热爱它。在最近的一次调查中，95%的英国慈善工作者表示，他们认为自己的工作很有价值。但该行业要应对的事情已经够多了，它并非职业理想破灭者的疗养院。

此外，我不禁怀疑，很多摇摆不定的年轻职业人士实际上将激情减弱和缺乏方向混为一谈了。当你到了30岁时——令人沮丧的是我已年近30——工作不再像过去那样令人振奋。但这也是自然规律。你不可能在你的整个职业生涯都像顽童般快乐呐喊，期盼着电话会议(wahey!)、培训日(wow!)和餐饮部的免费咖啡(woo!)。

此外，除了辞去工作、为挽救熊猫免于灭绝而奔走之外，还有相当多的方式可以为你的生命增添意义。你可以为慈善事业担任志愿者。你可以购买一辆阿斯顿•马丁(Aston Martin)赛车。你可以开着阿斯顿•马丁，带一只熊猫出去参加慈善巡游。或许，用老套的话来说，你可以提醒自己，企业同样也为社会做出了贡献，也创造了财富和机会。