我是如何提高关于工作质量以及细节的认知的？

How I Raised My Standards And Attention To Detail ?

如果人们对我和我的公司有所了解，我相信他们一定会联想到高效，优质等关键词。至少，我希望他们能这样感觉。但是，当我事业起步时，情况并不乐观。当时，我自身也没考虑过这些词，更不说将其落实到工作中。但幸运的是，我从我的高级主管身上认识到这些特质的重要作用。

For those who know me, I believe they would associate the words quality, excellence, and high standards to me and my company. At least, I hope they would. But early in my career, that wasn’t the case. In fact, I barely had an awareness of these words or applied them to the work I produced. But fortunately, I was able to learn their fundamental importance to achieving greater success from my early experience with a top executive.

读MBA的那个暑期，我在台北的强生公司实习，当时的顶头上司是强生台湾的市场总监，Angela Chang。Angela在公司和整个台湾的快速消费品行业都广受尊重。她聪明，敏捷，清楚自己想要什么。在我共事过的所有人中，她职业标准是最高的。

It occurred during my MBA summer internship with Johnson & Johnson in Taipei, while working for their Taiwan marketing director, named Angela Chang. Angela was someone who was highly respected within both the company and the consumer products marketing community in Taiwan. She was smart, quick, and had a very clear idea of what she wanted. Her standards were the highest of anyone that I had ever worked with before.

作为设计工程师的六年中，我的职业发展非常顺利。虽然表现不算格外耀眼，但也能实现两年一次的升职。那段时期，我自认为能力不错，能按时完成任务，并交出好成绩。至少，没人说过我哪里做得特别不好。但是，这种安全感在我遇见国际化水准的高级经理后彻底改变。

Actually, before the internship, I saw myself as a reasonably capable person who met deadlines on time and who delivered good work. At least, there was little indication from others that I was doing anything particularly wrong or poorly during my first six years as a design engineer. I wouldn’t call my performance back then spectacular, but it was good enough to get me promoted alongside my peers every two years or so. However, my somewhat secure sense of my professional competency would change dramatically with my first regular exposure to a world-class senior manager, like Angela.

整个暑期，我主要负责分析一个新上市的香波产品的市场研究数据。Angela相信该产品能有比目前更好的市场表现，而市场研究将为她提供采取措施的依据。实习第三周，她要求我把分析结果准备成幻灯片演讲（当时还不存在PPT），来展示给负责这一产品的广告公司。她觉得我作为一个美国顶尖学校的MBA，足以胜任这样一项简单明了的任务。

My main task that summer was to analyze the market research data for a new shampoo product that the company had just launched. Angela believed that the product could perform better than it had to date and that the market research could tell her how to make that happen. During my third week, she asked me to prepare an overhead presentation for her of my findings (this was in the pre-PowerPoint days) to be delivered to the advertising agency handling the product. As an MBA from a top U.S. program, she assumed that I was fully capable of taking care of this straightforward task.

我花了余下的一周时间准备这份幻灯片。在展示当天，我们一起坐出租车到广告公司。由于她之前一直都很忙，没有时间看我做好的幻灯片。在车里，她让我把幻灯片的文件夹给她看。在几秒中内，她的表情就变得非常严肃。“为什么这一页的文字这么挤？”她立即问我，“为什么你用了这么多不同的字体？为什么你没有用项目符号把重要的部分强调出来？”

I spent the following week preparing the overheads. On the day of the presentation, we took a taxi together to the ad agency. Having been extremely busy and unable to review my work until that moment, she asked me to pass her the folder of overheads, which she began to look through. Within seconds, her face turned deadly serious. “Why is the text on this page so crowded,” she asked me directly. “Why are you using so many different font sizes? Why aren’t you using bullet points to highlight these key findings?”

可以说，她对我做的排版和展示并不满意。在她看来，文字太多，太混乱，太难让人一眼抓住重点。在接下来的五分钟里，她用一支记号笔，在我面前把幻灯片的内容重新缩减，修改，排版。等她做完后，这份幻灯片变得更清楚明了、更切入主题。她完成这些事的速度和条理令我大开眼界。在短短五分钟内，她把我花了几天完成的幻灯片变成了好上十倍的演讲材料。自然，我非常沮丧。在最想讨好的上司面前，我的表现何止不佳。但回过头来看，那件事对我而言是一个重要的转折，它使我从此更加注重工作的标准和质量。此后，我开始注意并收集好的范例：报告、提案书、演讲稿、甚至是备忘录。我开始学习如何整理信息、传达信息。每次在完成任务前，我都会问自己：“这样的成果算杰出吗？”“还有什么方法能把它做得更好？”

Needless to say, I was devastated to have spectacularly under-performed for a person that I really wanted to impress. But in looking back, that incident was the turning point in my becoming much more aware of the standard and quality of work that I was producing. Afterwards, I began taking notice of and collecting good examples of reports, proposals, presentations, and even memos. I started paying particular attention to how to best organize and deliver information. Most importantly, whenever I was about to complete an assignment, I would ask myself, “Can this work be considered excellent,” or “What would make this better?”

我不再只关注自己的意见，而更注重直属上司的看法。无论什么任务，我会先预估上司的要求和期待，并努力达到，甚至超出预期。如果上司的标准无从知晓，那我就会问自己，Angela会有怎样的要求。因为有了与Angela Chang共事的经验，我下定决心，再也不会把未达高质量的东西交给别人。我认识到如果你想给他人留下深刻印象，你必须深入了解他的判断标准以及期望值。我不希望被别人告知，我的工作质量不够好。你不该等别人来告诉你，你应该比现在做得更好。因为这样对你个人及公司都会造成损失。

From that experience with Angela Chang, I was determined to never again hand something to someone else that I did not feel could be viewed as high quality work. I learned that having a strong awareness of the standards and expectations of those around you is essential if you want to impress others. I never wanted another person to point out to me again that the work I was producing was not good enough. For your own career, that’s not the way you want to find out that you should be doing something much better than how you are doing it. By that time, it can be quite a costly lesson for both you and your company.