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A  Organisation is big business. Whether it is of our lives - all those inboxes and calendars or how companies are structured, a multi-billion dollar industry helps to meet this need.

A  保持系统性是一项大业务。无论是保持生活的条理性--整理所有收件箱和日程表--还是维持公司结构的组织性，都需要数十亿美元才能满足这一需求。

We have more strategies for time management, project management and self-organisation than at any other time in human history. We are told that we ought to organise our company, our home life, our week, our day and even our sleep, all as a means to becoming more productive. Every week, countless seminars and workshops take place around the world to tell a paying public that they ought to structure their lives in order to achieve this,

我们比人类历史上任何时候都有更多的策略来进行时间管理、项目管理和自我管理。我们被告知，我们应该安排好我们每一周、每一天的公司.家庭生活，甚至是我们的睡眠，所有这些都是提高效率的一种方式。每周，世界各地都会举办无数的研讨会和讨论会，告诉付费参加的公众，他们应该调整自己的生活方式来实现这一目标。

This rhetoric has also crept into the thinking of business leaders and entrepreneurs, much to the delight of self-proclaimed perfectionists with the need to get everything right. The number of business schools and graduates has massively increased over the past 50 years, essentially teaching people how to organise well.

令那些自称是完美主义者、要把每件事做好的人感到高兴的是，商界领袖和企业家对这样的说辞也有所耳闻。商学院及其毕业生的数量在过去50年里大幅增加，从本质上来说，它们主要就是教人们如何更好地进行组织。

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B Ironically however, the number of businesses that fail has also steadily increased. Work-related stress has increased. A large proportion of workers from all demographics claim to be dissatisfied with the way their work is structured and the way they are managed.

B 然而，讽刺的是，破产企业的数量也在稳步增长。人们的工作压力增加了。人口统计数据中，有很大一部分人声称，他们对自己的工作组织结构和管理方式均感到不满。

This begs the question: what has gone wrong? Why is it that on paper the drive for organisation seems a sure shot for increasing productivity, but in reality falls well short of what is expected?

让人疑惑的是:究竟哪里出了问题?为什么从理论上来说，提升组织性似乎是提高生产率的必然选择，但实际上却远远达不到人们的预期?

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C This has been a problem for a while now. Frederick Taylor was one of the forefathers of scientific management. Writing in the first half of the 20th century, he designed a number of principles to improve the efficiency of the work process, which have since become widespread in modern companies. So the approach has been around for a while.

C 这个问题已经存在一段时间了。弗雷德里克·泰勒是科学管理的先驱之一。在20世纪上半叶，他设计了一系列提高工作效率的准则，这些准则后来在现代企业中得到了广泛应用。所以这种方法已经存在一段时间了。

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D New research suggests that this obsession with efficiency is misguided. The problem is not necessarily the management theories or strategies we use to organise our work; it's the basic assumptions we hold in approaching how we work. Here it's the assumption that order is a necessary condition for productivity. This assumption has also fostered the idea that disorder must be detrimental to organisational productivity. The result is that businesses and people spend time and money organising themselves for the sake of organising, rather than actually looking at the end goal and usefulness of such an effort.

D 新的研究表明，过分追求效率会适得其反。问题并不一定在于我们用来组织工作的管理理论或策略;而是在于我们来研究如何工作的基本假设。这里的假设是指有秩序是提高生产力的必要条件。这种假设还助长了这样一种观点: 无序必然会阻碍组织的生产力。其结果是，企业和人们耗费时间和金钱为了管理而管理，而不是真正着眼于努力后的最终目标和效用。

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E What's more, recent studies show that order actually has diminishing returns. Order does increase productivity to a certain extent, but eventually the usefulness of the process of organisation, and the benefit it yields, reduce until the point where any further increase in order reduces productivity. Some argue that in a business, if the cost of formally structuring something outweighs the benefit of doing it, then that thing ought not to be formally structured. Instead, the resources involved can be better used elsewhere.

E 更重要的是，最近的研究表明，实际上，秩序带来的回报是会递减的。秩序的确在一定程度上提高了生产力，但最终，组织过程的有用性及其带来的好处会降低，直到最后秩序会降低生产力。一些人认为，在一个企业中，如果正式组织某件事情的成本超过了做这件事情的收益，那么这件事情就不应该被正式组织起来。相反，所涉及的资源可以更好地用于其他地方。

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F In fact, research shows that, when innovating, the best approach is to create an environment devoid of structure and hierarchy and enable everyone involved to engage as one organic group. These environments can lead to new solutions that, under conventionally structured environments (filled with bottlenecks in terms of information flow, power structures, rules, and routines) would never be reached.

F 事实上，研究表明，在创新时，最好的方法是创造一个没有结构和层级的环境，使所有参与者能够作为一个有机整体共同参与。这样的环境可以催生出在传统结构化环境（充满信息流、权力结构、规则和惯例的瓶颈）下无法实现的新解决方案。

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G In recent times companies have slowly started to embrace this disorganisation. Many of them embrace it in terms of perception (embracing the idea of disorder, as opposed to fearing it) and in terms of process (putting mechanisms in place to reduce structure).For example, Oticon, a large Danish manufacturer of hearing aids, used what it called a. spaghetti structure in order to reduce the organisation's rigid hierarchies. This involved scrapping formal job titles and giving staff huge amounts of ownership over their own time and projects. This approach proved to be highly successful initially, with clear improvements in worker productivity in all facets of the business.

G 近年来，企业逐渐开始接受这种“去组织化”的理念。许多公司从观念上（接纳无序的概念，而非恐惧它）和流程上（通过机制减少结构）都进行了调整。例如，丹麦大型助听器制造商Oticon采用了一种被称为“意大利面条式结构”的模式，以减少组织内部的僵化层级。这一模式包括取消正式职位头衔，并赋予员工对自身时间和项目的高度自主权。事实证明，这种方法在初期非常成功，企业各个层面的员工生产效率都得到了显著提升。

In similar fashion, the former chairman of General Electric embraced disorganisation, putting forward the idea of the 'boundaryless' organisation. Again, it involves breaking down the barriers between different parts of a company and encouraging virtual collaboration and flexible working. Google and a number of other tech. companies have embraced (at least in part) these kinds of flexible structures, facilitated by technology and strong company values which glue people together.

类似地，通用电气（General Electric）的前任首席执行官也推崇“去组织化”，并提出了“无边界组织”的理念。这一理念同样强调打破公司内部不同部门之间的壁垒，鼓励虚拟协作和灵活工作方式。谷歌及其他许多科技公司（至少在某种程度上）也采用了这种灵活的组织结构，并通过技术和强大的企业文化将员工紧密联系在一起，从而推动了这种模式的发展。

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H A word of warning to others thinking of jumping on this bandwagon: the evidence so far suggests disorder, much like order, also seems to have diminishing utility, and can also have detrimental effects on performance if overused. Like order, disorder should be embraced only so far as it is useful. But we should not fear it - nor venerate one over the other. This research also shows that we should continually question whether or not our existing assumptions work.

H 对于那些考虑跟风采用这种模式的企业，这里需要提出一句警示：目前的证据表明，无序与有序一样，似乎也存在效用递减的规律，如果过度使用，也可能对绩效产生不利影响。与有序一样，无序只有在有用时才应被接纳。但我们不应恐惧它，也不应将其凌驾于有序之上。这项研究还表明，我们应不断质疑现有的假设是否仍然有效。