《名人传记》之乔布斯遗失的访谈36:生意场上奇怪的现象

 　　er… you know, throughout the years in business, I found something,

　　在生意场多年，我发现一个现象

　　which was I always ask why we do things,

　　我做事前总问为什么

　　and the answers you inevitably¹ get are “oh that’s just the way it’s done”,

　　可得到答案永远是“我们向来这样做”

　　nobody knows why they do what they do, nobody thinks about things very deeply in business, that’s what I found.

　　没人反思为什么这么做

　　I’d like to give you an example.

　　我给你举个例子

　　When we were building our apple Is in the garage, we knew exactly what they cost.

　　我们在车库里组装Apple I时，成本算得清清楚楚

　　When we got into factory in the Apple II days, the accounting² had this notion of the standard cost,

　　可工厂生产Apple II时，财务部使用的是标准成本

　　where you kind of set a standard cost at the end of a quarter, and you adjust with the varies,

　　每个季度估算标准成本，然后根据实际情况调整

　　and I kept asking why do we do this?

　　于是我不断追问，为什么要这样做？

　　And the answer is “that’s just the way it’s done”,

　　得到的答复是，这是一贯的做法

　　and after about 6 months of digging into this, what I realized was the reason you do it is because you don’t really have good enough controls to know about how much cost, so you guess,

　　6个月后我发现其实是因为我们无法精确计算成本，所以只能先估算，然后进行修正

　　And the reason why you don’t know how much it cost is because your information systems aren’t good enough. So ...but nobody said it that way.

　　根本原因是信息管理系统不够完善，但没有人承认这一点

　　So later on when we design this automatic factory for Mackintosh,

　　后来我们为Mackintosh设计自动化工厂

　　we were able to get rid of a lot of these antiquated³ concepts,

　　抛开这些陋习

　　and know exactly what something costs to the second.

　　做到了精确控制所有成本

　　So in business, a lot of things are … I call it “folklore”, they are done because they were done yesterday, and the day before.

　　生意场上有很多约定俗成的规定，我称为陈规陋习，因为以前这样做，所以就一直这样做下去

　　And ...so what that means is that if you are willing to sort of ask a lot of questions, think about things and work really hard,

　　所以只要你多提问多思考，脚踏实地工作

　　you can learn business pretty fast, not the hardest thing in the world.

　　你很快就能的学会经商，这不是什么难事

1 inevitably   

adv.不可避免地；必然发生地

参考例句：

• In the way you go on,you are inevitably coming apart.照你们这样下去，毫无疑问是会散伙的。
• Technological changes will inevitably lead to unemployment.技术变革必然会导致失业。

2 accounting   

n.会计，会计学，借贷对照表

参考例句：

• A job fell vacant in the accounting department.财会部出现了一个空缺。
• There's an accounting error in this entry.这笔账目里有差错。

3 antiquated   

adj.陈旧的，过时的

参考例句：

• Many factories are so antiquated they are not worth saving.很多工厂过于陈旧落后，已不值得挽救。
• A train of antiquated coaches was waiting for us at the siding.一列陈旧的火车在侧线上等着我们。