原文标题Bartleby The bottleneck baneAn unlikely topic for a thriller is a timeless one for managers巴托比专栏瓶颈祸根一个不太惊悚的话题，对管理者来说却是一个永恒的主题"The Goal" is a 40-year-old book with a topical message《目标》是一本有40年历史的书，其中包含了热门信息[Paragraph 1]“THE GOAL” is a notable business book for two reasons. 《目标》是一本值得注意的商业书籍，原因有二。The first is its unusual genre. First published in 1984, it is a management tomedressed up in the clothes of a thriller. 第一是体裁新颖。该书首次出版于1984年，是一本披着惊悚小说外衣的管理巨著。The book, written by Eliyahu Goldratt and Jeff Cox, tells the story of Alex Rogo, a plant manager who has to overhaul his factory within three months or face closure.该书由埃利亚胡.戈德拉特和杰夫.考克斯编写，讲述了工厂经理亚历克斯.罗格的故事，他必须在3个月内对工厂进行全面整顿，否则将面临关闭。

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To the objection that this is not thrilling at all, consider that it could have been a lot worse (“Alan Key must format a slide deck by midnight or he won’t get enough sleep to function properly the next day”).

有人提出反对意见，说这本书一点都不惊悚，那请想想以下更糟糕的情景（"艾伦.基必须在午夜前整理好幻灯片，否则他会睡眠不足，第二天就无法正常工作"）。

And Rogo’s efforts to reduce excess inventory and win over Bill Peach, his hard-driving boss, are weirdly entertaining.

而罗格为减少过剩库存和赢得他强硬老板比尔.佩奇的认可所做的努力，这故事很有趣。

In any case readers lapped it up. “The Goal” sold millions. It has been reprinted several times. It even got turned into a graphic novel.无论如何，读者都对这本书赞不绝口。《目标 》卖出了数百万本，已重印多次，甚至改编成了漫画小说。

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Its second contribution was to popularise thinking about bottlenecks.

这本书的第二个贡献是普及了对瓶颈问题的思考。

The novel was written to get across Goldratt’s “theory of constraints”, a method for identifying those resources whose capacity does not match the demands placed on them.

戈尔德拉特写这部小说是为了传播他的 "约束理论"，这是一种识别那些与需求不符资源的方法。

(This definition comes from one of the book’s protagonists—Jonah, a brilliant, globe-trottingbusiness adviser whose resemblance to a real person seems unlikely to be coincidental.)

（这个定义出自书中主人公之一乔纳之口，他一个才华横溢的环球商业顾问，他与作者本人的相似之处不太像巧合）。

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Bottlenecks are often thought of as physical constraints.

瓶颈通常被认为是物理约束。

In Rogo’s factory, for example, the bottlenecks are two particular machines whose through-put must be increased in order to ship orders faster.

例如，在罗格的工厂里，瓶颈是两台特殊的机器，必须增加它们的吞吐量才能更快地运送订单。

In recent years the pandemic has increased awareness of such bottlenecks in the wider supply chain, whether because of the impact of semiconductor shortages or the effect of backlogs at congested ports. 近年来，无论是由于半导体短缺的影响还是拥挤港口积压的影响，疫情都提高了人们对更广泛的供应链中此类瓶颈问题的认识。

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Policies can be bottlenecks, too. The pandemic also forced vaccine manufacturers to ditch normal patterns of working.

政策也可能导致瓶颈问题。疫情还迫使疫苗制造商放弃正常的工作模式。

In “Vaxxers”, a book about their work to develop the Oxford-AstraZeneca covid-19 jab, Sarah Gilbert and Catherine Green describe how they did more “at risk” work, doing things in parallel that would usually have been done sequentially.

在《Vaxxers》一书中，作者莎拉.吉尔伯特和凯瑟琳.格林描述了原本按顺序就能进行的工作，现在得做更多的 "风险 "工作才达到相同的效果。

That would have meant wasted work if they had hit a problem, but also that scientists got stuff done much faster than usual. Bill Peach would have approved. 这意味着如果他们遇到问题，就得重做很浪费时间，也意味着科学家们要比平时更快才能完成工作。老板比尔.佩奇会同意的。

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People are also bottlenecks. Within organisations, managers themselves are frequently the points at which things get bunged up.

人也导致瓶颈问题。在组织内部，管理者本身经常是把事情搞砸的关键因素。

That might be because executives simply have too much to do.

这可能是因为高管们有太多的事情要处理。

Estimates vary on how many direct reports a manager should ideally have. But if they don’t all fit in a lift, you almost certainly have too many. 关于一个经理人最多该有多少个直接下属，人们的估计不尽相同。但是，如果人数多到一个电梯装不下，那就太多了。

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It might be their own fault—if they are micromanagers, say, offering up helpful opinions on everything from font sizes to office furniture.

这可能是他们自己的错--如果他们是事无巨细的管理者，比如对字体大小、办公室家具等一切事物提意见。

It might be because no one is comfortable making a decision for fear of beinghauled over the coals later by their own boss.

这可能是因为没有人愿意做出决定，因为他们害怕以后会被自己的老板斥责。

It might be because there is jockeyingand confusion over who has the right to make a call (an “upward status disagreement”, if you like jargon; a “pissing contest”, if you don’t).

也许是因为在决策方面存在争权夺利和混乱，不清楚谁有权做出最终决定（这种情况有时被形象地称为“内斗”或者“权力游戏”）。

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Bottlenecks can stem from good behaviour as well as bad.

瓶颈可能源于好的行为，也可能源于坏的行为。

Collaboration is normally celebrated, but it can easily result in more delays if people’s time is being soaked up on non-essential tasks.

协作通常是值得赞扬的，但如果人们的时间都花在了非必要的任务上，很容易造成更多工作延误。

Similarly, the person who responds to every message quickly and clears their inbox every night looks like the very opposite of a bottleneck, but that depends on two things: on what work they are not doing while they manically check their email, and on whether those messages are about trivialthings.

类似地，快速回复每条信息并每晚清理收件箱的人看起来与瓶颈截然相反，但这取决于两件事：一是他们在疯狂检查电子邮件时没做的其他工作，二是这些信息是否是关于琐碎的事情。

If people are responding at great speed on matters of zero importance—especially if they are high up the ladder and colleagues are therefore likely to respond to them in turn—they are probably creating trouble of some sort. 如果人们以极快的速度回复一些无关紧要的事情--特别是如果他们的职位很高，因此反过来同事们也很可能快速地回复他们--他们很可能陷入某种不良循环中。

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Whatever the causes of congestion, the costs can be material.

无论瓶颈原因是什么，其代价都是巨大的。

Daniel Ek, the boss of Spotify, attributed a recent restructuring at the music-streaming company to the need to make faster decisions.

Spotify的老板丹尼尔·埃克认为，该音乐流媒体公司最近的重组原因是为了能够更快地做决策。

Consultants at McKinsey have estimated that about 530,000 days of managers’ time each year may be wasted on broken decision-making processes at a typical Fortune 500 company. 麦肯锡的顾问估计，在一个典型的财富500强公司中，每年可能会有约53万天的管理时间因为决策制定流程失灵而被浪费。

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“The Goal” is not the greatest thriller ever. No one dies. The only real violence done is to the English language (“It’s not until I’m busy with my delicious vealparmesan that my thoughts start to crystallise”).

《目标 》不是史上最精彩的惊悚小说。没有人死亡。唯一真正被伤害的只是英语语言本身（"直到我吃美味的牛乳干酪时，我的思维才开始变得清晰起来"）。

But it is a lot more readable than most business books, and it makes you think about a subject that is relevant not only to supply-chain managers and operations managers but to bosses everywhere.

但它比大多数商业书籍更具可读性，这本书引发人们思考的话题不仅与供应链经理和运营经理有关，而且与所有领域的老板都有关。

Bottlenecks abound. They just need to be found. 瓶颈无处不在，只要找到它们就能找到方法。

（恭喜读完，本篇英语词汇量826左右）原文出自：2023年5月20日《The Economist》Business版块

精读笔记来源于：自由英语之路

本文翻译整理: Irene本文编辑校对: Irene仅供个人英语学习交流使用。

【补充资料】（来自于网络）《The Goal》，成书于1984年，作者是大名鼎鼎的TOC（Theory of Constraints）约束理论的提出者 —— 以色列物理学家、企业管理顾问戈德拉特博士。用小说的形式讲述一家工厂的厂长罗格（Rogo）如何在一位物理学家乔纳（Jonah）的指导下将其起死回生的过程。主人公罗格刚开始面临极大的挑战，如果在三个月之内不能将其持续亏损的工厂扭亏为盈，那么就会被他老板关闭。如何有效管理一家工厂的基本框架，以及基于TOC的持续改进方法，对管理者非常有启发意义。约束理论Theory of Constraints是企业识别并消除在实现目标过程中存在的制约因素（即约束）的管理理念和原则。以色列物理学家、企业管理顾问戈德拉特在其开创的最优生产技术基础上发展起来。认为在一条业务链中，瓶颈节点的节拍决定了整条链的节拍，即任何一个多阶段生产系统，如果其中一个阶段的产出取决于前面一个或几个阶段的产出，那么产出率最低的阶段决定着整个系统的生产能力。约束即阻碍企业有效扩大产出能力、降低库存和运行成本的环节。撒尿比赛Pissing contest（无意义的竞争，自我满足的竞争）是一个俚语，通常用于形容两个或更多的人之间的竞争，这种竞争是无意义的、愚蠢的和自我满足的，通常涉及到展示权力、地位或优越性等方面。这个词汇的字面意思是“撒尿比赛”，强调了某些竞争可能变得幼稚和可笑。【重点句子】（3个）Policies can be bottlenecks, too. The pandemic also forced vaccine manufacturers to ditch normal patterns of working.政策也可以导致瓶颈问题。疫情还迫使疫苗制造商放弃正常的工作模式。People are also bottlenecks. Within organisations, managers themselves are frequently the points at which things get bunged up.人也导致瓶颈问题。在组织内部，管理者本身经常是把事情搞砸的关键因素。Bottlenecks can stem from good behaviour as well as bad.瓶颈问题可能源于好的行为，也可能源于坏的行为。