德鲁克日志读后感之二十三

评注：

“社会生态学家”对应的英文是“Social Ecologist”，生态学研究的是主体和周围环境的相互关系，生态学家一般都有敏锐的洞察力，一旦春江水暖，就立即形同身受。

终其一生，德鲁克都在观察、收集、整理和思考，他洞察到了管理、知识、知识工作者这些新春气象，洞察到了我们的社会正在进入“后资本主义时代”。

一个合格的生态学家总能观察到“变”，一个伟大的生态学家还能从“变”中寻找到“不变”。德鲁克认为社会和文明的关键，在于两种需求之间的张力，这一点本身并没有因为时代不同而改变。原文如下：

As it had been for Bagehot, for me too the tension between the need for continuity and the need for innovation and change was central to society and civilization.

此处的“tension”直译为“张力”，也许更容易让人理解。“创新和变革”和“持续性”是社会和文明的关键，也是企业发展的关键。

企业的“创新和变革”是近期热门话题，可惜纸上谈兵的文章太多，有指导意义的建议太少。究其原因，多半在于立论的虚浮。缺乏张力的理论，也就少了实践的价值。就像断线的风筝，一刹那看似飘得更高，但是很快就会坠落。企业的“持续性”，或者更物理地说，企业的“惯性”，就是那根连着风筝的线，需要企业家同样重视。

新的产品和模式，可能是创新，能带给企业光明的未来；也可能是陷阱，会把企业拖入无底深渊。而传统的业务，可能是累赘，不彻底割掉企业就不能新生；也可能是宝库，挖掘越深收获越多。

水上浮萍的东游西荡，和参天大树的根深叶茂，哪一个更有远见呢。对于局外人，这不过是有趣的智力测试；对于企业家，这却是痛心彻肺的抉择。既然无法躲避，那就勇敢地投身于张力之中，在新与旧之间取舍，在变与不变中图存。

此篇日志比较费解，看看德鲁克的原文：

A Social Ecologist

For me the tension between the need for continuity and the need for innovation and change was central to society and civilization.

Iconsider myself a “social ecologist,” concerned with man’s man-made environment the way the natural ecologist studies the biological environment.
The term “social ecology” is my own coinage. But the discipline itself boasts an old and distinguished lineage. Its greatest document is Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. But no one is as close to me
in temperament, concepts, and approach as the mid-Victorian Englishman Walter Bagehot. Living (as I have) in an age of great social change, Bagehot first saw the emergence of new institutions: civil service
and cabinet government, as cores of a functioning democracy, and banking as the center of a functioning economy.

A hundred years after Bagehot, I was first to identify management as the new social institution of the emerging society of organizations and, a little
later, to spot the emergence of knowledge as the new central resource, and knowledge workers as the new ruling class of a society that is not only
“postindustrial” but postsocialist and, increasingly, postcapitalist. As it had been for Bagehot, for me too the tension between the need for continuity
and the need for innovation and change was central to society and civilization.

Thus, I know what Bagehot meant when he said that he saw himself sometimes as a liberal Conservative and sometimes as a conservative Liberal
but never as a “conservative Conservative” or a “liberal Liberal.”

action point:

Are you and your organization change agents? What steps can you take to both change and balance change with stability?