TED Lesson / Why Work Doesn’t Happen at Work? Lesson3 (ジェイソン・フリード：なぜ職場で仕事ができないのか)

TED Jason Fried: Why work doesn't happen at work

 

Jason Fried has a radical theory of working: that the office isn't a good place to do it. At TEDxMidwest, he lays out the main problems (call them the M&Ms) and offers three suggestions to make work work.

*There is a word list below the script. The list includes blue colored words which are in the script.

*This is the third lesson of the Jason Fried speech. Lesson1 is here. Lesson2 is here.

この動画について

ジェイソン・フリードが、オフィスは仕事をするのに適していないという、仕事に関する抜本的な理論を語ります。TEDxMidwestでの講演で、フリードがＭ＆Ｍ‘ｓとよばれる主な問題を展開し、仕事をうまくいかせる3 つの提案を提示します。

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日本語訳はこの記事の最後にあります。また、日本語訳の下に単語帳(WORDS)があります。本文で青文字となっている単語がまとまっています。

※この記事はラングリッチのオンラインレッスン向けのテキストですが、会員でなくても利用出来ます。

※この教材はレッスン１の教材、レッスン2の教材の続きになります。

TEDを使った勉強法はこちらの記事、“世界最高峰の講演、TEDを使った英語学習方法の紹介”にまとめてありますので参考にしてください。そしてもし良かったらこの記事をきっかけにフィリピン人とのオンライン英会話に挑戦してみてください。ラングリッチの無料レッスンの申し込みはこちらです。

 

(10) The real problems are what I like to call the M&Ms, the Managers and the Meetings. Those are the real problems in the modern office today. And this is why things don't get done at work — it's because of the M&Ms. Now what's interesting is, if you listen to all the places that people talk about doing work — like at home, or in a car, or on a plane, or late at night, or early in the morning — you don't find managers and meetings. You find a lot of other distractions, but you don't find managers and meetings. So these are the things that you don't find elsewhere, but you do find at the office. And managers are basically people whose job it is to interrupt people. That's pretty much what managers are for. They're for interrupting people. They don't really do the work, so they have to make sure everyone else is doing the work, which is an interruption. And we have a lot of managers in the world now, and there's a lot of people in the world now, and there's a lot of interruptions in the world now because of these managers. They have to check in: “Hey, how's it going? Show me what's up,” and this sort of thing and they keep interrupting you at the wrong time, while you're actually trying to do something they're paying you to do, they tend to interrupt you.

(11) That's kind of bad. But what's even worse is the thing that managers do most of all, which is call meetings. And meetings are just toxic, terrible, poisonous things during the day at work. We all know this to be true, and you would never see a spontaneous meeting called by employees. It doesn't work that way. The manager calls the meeting so the employees can all come together, and it's an incredibly disruptive thing to do to people — is to say, “Hey look, we're going to bring 10 people together right now and have a meeting. I don't care what you're doing. Just, you've got to stop doing what you're doing, so you can have this meeting.” I mean, what are the chances that all 10 people are ready to stop? What if they're thinking about something important? What if they're doing important work? All of a sudden you're telling them that they have to stop doing that to do something else. So they go into a meeting room, they get together, and they talk about stuff that doesn't really matter usually. Because meetings aren't work. Meetings are places to go to talk about things you're supposed to be doing later.

(12) But meetings also procreate. So one meeting tends to lead to another meeting and tends to lead to another meeting. There's often too many people in the meetings, and they're very, very expensive to the organization. Companies often think of a one-hour meeting as a one-hour meeting, but that's not true, unless there's only one person in that meeting. If there are 10 people in the meeting, it's a 10-hour meeting; it's not a one-hour meeting. It's 10 hours of productivity taken from the rest of the organization to have this one one-hour meeting, which probably should have been handled by two or three people talking for a few minutes. But instead, there's a long scheduled meeting, because meetings are scheduled the way software works, which is in increments of 15 minutes, or 30 minutes, or an hour. You don't schedule an eight-hour meeting with Outlook. You can't. I don't even know if you can. You can go 15 minutes or 30 minutes or 45 minutes or an hour. And so we tend to fill these times up when things should really go really quickly.

(13) So meetings and managers are two major problems in businesses today, especially to offices. These things don't exist outside of the office. So I have some suggestions to remedy the situation. What can managers do — enlightened managers, hopefully — what can they do to make the office a better place for people to work, so it's not the last resort, but it's the first resort? It's that people start to say, “When I really want to get stuff done, I go to the office.” Because the offices are well equipped, everything should be there for them to do their work, but they don't want to go there right now, so how do we change that? I have three suggestions I'll share with you guys. I have about three minutes, so that'll fit perfectly.

to be continued to the lesson4.

 

Let’s talk about the article base on the questions below.

Viewpoints or discussion

1. What do you think about the M&M distraction?
2. How often do you have meetings in your workplace? How long do these last?
3. Are the meetings called by your managers effective?

 

WORDS

(10) check in /ˈtʃɛkˌɪn/ the act or an instance of inspecting, reporting or evaluating something or someone.

wrong time idioms, not in the correct or perfect timing

(11) most of all, to a greater extent than anything else

toxic /ˈtɑ:ksɪk/ adjective, containing poisonous substances

terrible /ˈterəbəl/ adjective, very shocking and upsetting; very bad or unpleasant

poisonous /ˈpᴐɪzənəs/ adj. 1. causing death or illness if swallowed or absorbed into the body. 3 extremely unpleasant or unfriendly:

spontaneous /spɑnˈteɪnijəs/ adjective, 1. done or said in an natural and often sudden way and without a lot of thought or planning 2. doing things that have not been planned but that seem enjoyable and worth doing at a particular time

disruptive /dɪsˈrʌptɪv/ adjective causing something to be unable to continue in the normal way: causing interruption to the normal progress or activity of something

all of a sudden idiom, very quickly and unexpectedly; suddenly

(12) procreate /ˈproʊkriˌeɪt/ verb, to produce children or offspring

productivity /ˌproʊdəkˈtɪvəti/ noun, the rate at which goods are produced or work is completed

increment /ˈɪŋkrəmənt/ noun, a usually small amount or degree by which something is made larger or greater

(13) remedy /rɛmədi/ noun, a way of solving or correcting a problem the last possible course of action open to one having sufficient equipment, supplies, or abilities

enlighten /ɪnˈlaɪtn̩/ verb, to give knowledge or understanding to (someone) : to explain something to (someone)

last resort idiom, the last possible course of action open to one

well-equipped idiom, having sufficient equipment, supplies, or abilities

 

日本語訳

(10) 本当の問題は わたしが M&M's と呼んでいる マネージャーとミーティングです 現在のオフィスにおける本当の問題です 職場で仕事が片づかない理由が この M&M's です 興味深いことに 仕事をする場所として挙げられた場所ー 家 車の中 飛行機 あるいは夜や早朝ー そこには上司や会議もありません 他の誘惑は山ほどありますが 上司や会議はありません 職場にあって他にはないもの それがこの二つです マネージャーとは基本的に 人の邪魔をすることが役なのです それが仕事なんですよ、人の邪魔をするのが 彼らはあまり仕事をしないので 他の仕事を確認しに来ます。これが妨害となります 世界中にはたくさんのマネージャーがいます そしてたくさんの人がいます 世界では毎日上司による邪魔が起こっています 「どうだ？どれくらい進んだ？」のような事をいって 見回りにやって来ます あなたが金をもらってやっている 仕事の最中に度悪いタイミングで訪れ 妨害するのです

(11) これは良くないですね それよりマネージャーが頻繁にやる事 それは会議を開く事です 職場での一日の中で 会議とは全く有害で毒々しい 悪質なものです みんな分かっているでしょう 従業員が開く会議を見た事ありますか？ そういう仕組みじゃないですよね マネージャーが会議を開き 従業員がみんな集まります とんでもなく邪魔な行為です 「みんな、ちょっと」 「ミーティングだ、１０人集まってくれ」 「今何をしているなんて関係ない」 「とにかく会議だ、今していることは止めて」 全員都合よく作業を中断できるのですか？ 大事な考え事も？ とても重要な仕事も？ 上司が突然、他の事のために 今している事をやめろと言う そうしてみんなが集まり会議が開かれ 大抵大した事でもない事を話し合うのです 会議は仕事ではありません 今後実行するべき事について話し合うものです

(12) しかし会議というものは増殖します つまり一つの会議が次の会議に繋がり そしてまた次の会議へと繋がっていきます 必要以上の人数が会議に参加する事が多いので 組織にとって非常にコストのかかります 1時間の会議は1時間分でしょうか？ 参加者が一人でない限り、それは違います 10名参加ならそれは10時間に及ぶ会議です 1時間の会議を一回開くために効率いい仕事を 10時間分奪った結果になるのです そしておそらく本来なら２～３人が 数分で片づけられたはずの会議でしょう なのに会議は長時間の予定で立てられます スケジュールソフトの通りに 15分 30分 1時間の間隔で時間が分けられます Outlookで8時間の会議を予定したりしません 元々可能なのかは分かりませんが 15分 30分 45分 1時間単位でスケジュールでき そして本当はそれより早く済むはずでも この時間単位で予定が決まっていきます

(13) 『会議と上司』が、特にオフィス環境において 今日のビジネスで起こる２大問題なのです。 オフィスの外ではこれらは存在しません そこで、この状況を是正するため いくつかの提案があります マネージャー　願わくば 過ちに気づいたマネージャーができる事 最後ではなく最初の選択肢としてオフィスが人々に 仕事をする場所として選ばれるには何をすべきか？ 人々が「仕事を片づけたいときは オフィスへ行きます」 と言うようにするという事です オフィスは設備が充実していますし 仕事をするのに必要なものは揃っているはずです それでも人々に選ばれない　　ではどうしたら？ ここで紹介したい提案が3つあります 残り時間も3分なのでちょうど良いですね

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