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Bartleby
巴托比专栏
Snake bites and lunar landings
毒蛇咬伤和登月任务
The problem of passing on tacit knowledge.
隐性知识的传递问题。
Last month Odysseus became the first American spacecraft to land on the surface of the Moon in more than 50 years.
上个月，“奥德修斯”成为50多年来第一个登陆月球表面的美国航天器。
The mission, a collaboration between NASA and a private firm called Intuitive Machines, can be counted a partial success: the craft did send back images even though its landing did not go to plan.
这次任务是美国航空航天局（NASA）和一家名为"直觉机器"的私人企业合作完成的，可以说取得了部分成功：虽然着陆没有按计划进行，但飞船确实发回了图像。
Things might have gone better still if it had not been so long since NASA last visited the Moon.
要不是距离NASA上次登月过去了那么长时间，这次情况可能会更好。
Experience usually makes things go more smoothly.
经验通常会使事情进展得更顺利。
NASA does have an archive of materials from the Apollo missions.
NASA确实有阿波罗登月任务的资料档案。
Sometimes, however, knowledge is lost for good.
然而，有时候，知识丢了就找不回来了。
Gino Cattani of NYU Stern School of Business and his co-authors have looked at the violin-making family dynasties of Antonio Stradivari and others in Cremona, in Italy, in the 17th and 18th centuries.
纽约大学斯特恩商学院的吉诺·卡塔尼及其合著者研究了17世纪和18世纪意大利克雷莫纳市的安东尼奥·斯特拉迪瓦里等小提琴制作世家。
Modern players still laud the sound of the instruments made by these craftsmen.
现代演奏者仍然称赞这些工匠制作的小提琴的音质。
But there was a gap of about a century between the heyday of these dynasties and the rise of the public performances that showcased the instruments’ qualities.
但是，从这些制琴世家的全盛时期，到这些小提琴在公开演出中展现其品质，之间已经相隔大约一个世纪之久。
In that time the techniques of the Cremonese luthiers were lost.
在相隔的时间里，克雷莫纳制琴师的技术失传了。
Most organisations do not routinely blast into orbit or wait a century for customer feedback.
大多数组织不是日常要发射进入轨道或等待客户的反馈需要等一个世纪。
But all organisations face the problem of storing and transferring knowledge so that newcomers know what’s what, lessons are learned from successes and failures, and wheels are not constantly being reinvented.
但所有的组织都面临着储存和转移知识的问题，以便新来者知道什么东西是什么，以便能从成功和失败中吸取教训，以便避免不断地重新发明车轮。（注：重新发明车轮表示做无用功。）
An ageing workforce adds to the urgency of training inexperienced hires before the old hands leave the building.
劳动力老龄化使得在熟手离开公司大楼之前培训经验不足的员工变得更加紧迫。
Some knowledge is easier to codify than other.
有些知识比其他知识更容易汇编起来。
In the 1960s Corning, a glassmaker, had developed a particularly strong glass that was christened Chemcor.
在20世纪60年代，玻璃制造商康宁研发了一种特别坚固的玻璃，并命名为Chemcor。
Plans to commercialise this material faltered—among other reasons, it turned out that this was not a great windscreen for motorists to hit at speed—and Chemcor was put on the shelf.
将这种玻璃商业化的计划失败了，原因之一是，事实证明这种玻璃不适合给高速行驶的汽车做挡风玻璃，于是Chemcor就被束之高阁。
There it remained until 2005, when the firm started to wonder whether mobile phones might provide a use for Chemcor, which was renamed Gorilla Glass.
直到2005年，该公司开始思考，手机是否可以为Chemcor提供用处，并将这种玻璃改名为“大猩猩玻璃”。
In 2007 the boss of Corning took a call from Steve Jobs, who was hunting for the right kind of glass for a new smartphone.
2007年，康宁的老板接到了史蒂夫·乔布斯的电话，当时乔布斯正在为新的智能手机寻找合适的玻璃。
You presume that no one at Corning has since questioned the value of keeping good records.
可以想见，从此在康宁没有人会质疑做好记录的巨大价值。
The tougher task is capturing “tacit knowledge”.
但更难的是捕捉“隐性知识”。
This is the know-how born of experience, which cannot easily be documented in the manuals and is not much thought about by those who have it.
这是从经验中产生的知识，很难在手册中记录下来，拥有这种知识的人也没怎么注意过它。
Working alongside experienced colleagues is the best way to transfer tacit knowledge but it is not always possible.
与经验丰富的同事一起工作是传递隐性知识的最佳方式，但这并不总是能实现。
Sometimes you only want your very best people working on something, especially if the stakes are high.
有时候，你只希望把某个工作交给能力最强的人，尤其是在风险很高的情况下。
The most valuable employees are usually the ones with the least time to mentor others.
最有价值的员工通常最没有时间去指导他人。
When NASA was working on a Mars rover programme in the 2010s, it gave younger engineers a smaller, parallel project: to build a rover for use in educational programmes on Earth.
当NASA在2010年代进行火星探测器项目时，它给了年轻工程师一个较小的平行项目：建造一个用于教育项目的地球探测器。
It wasn’t the real thing, but it was a way to give them some hands-on experience.
这个项目不是真的，但让他们有了一些动手实践的经验。
NASA also has an emeritus programme that gets retired veterans to mentor junior staff.
NASA也有一个荣誉退休项目，让退休的熟手来指导初级员工。
Technology is both an answer and a barrier to the transfer of tacit knowledge.
技术既是传递隐性知识的答案，也是其障碍。
It is easier than ever to record and disseminate the wisdom of older hands.
现在记录和传播老员工的智慧比以往任何时候都更容易。
Unfortunately, it is easier than ever to record and disseminate the wisdom of older hands: the podcast episodes proliferate, the hours of unwatched training videos pile up.
但不幸的也是记录和传播老员工的智慧比以往任何时候都更容易：播客节目激增，还没看的培训视频堆积如山。
Watching someone on a screen is often less stimulating than hearing from them face-to-face.
在屏幕上看某人往往不如面对面地听他们说话那么能激励人。
A recent study by Niina Nurmi and Satu Pakarinen, two Finnish researchers, found that participants in virtual meetings feel drowsier than those meeting in person, which is saying something.
两位芬兰研究人员尼娜·努尔米和萨图·帕卡里宁最近的一项研究发现，参加虚拟会议的人比参加面对面会议的人更感到昏昏欲睡，这说明了一些问题。
Christopher Myers of Johns Hopkins University is a fan of informal storytelling as a way of passing on tacit knowledge.
约翰·霍普金斯大学的克里斯托弗·迈尔斯推崇用非正式讲故事的方式传递隐形知识。
He spent time with the crews on an air medical transport team in America, whose jobs include flying patients by helicopter from the scene of an emergency to a hospital.
他在美国与一个空中医疗运输队一起度过了一段时间，运输队的工作包括用直升机将病人从紧急情况现场送到医院。
Crew members routinely shared stories—on shift changes, at mealtimes and at weekly meetings—in order to learn how to respond to unusual situations.
队员们经常在换班、用餐和每周会议上分享故事，从而学习如何应对不寻常的情况。
(Top tip: in the event of a poisonous-snake bite, the local zoo is a good bet to get antivenom.)
(小贴士：如果被毒蛇咬伤，在当地动物园很可能会找到蛇毒解药。)
Some stories are more gripping than others: people don’t sit round camp fires telling each other how to get the printer to work.
有些故事确实比其他故事更扣人心弦，人们当然不会围坐在篝火旁告诉对方如何用打印机。
But managers everywhere should think about how to capture tacit knowledge.
但世界各地的管理者都应该思考如何捕捉隐性知识。
That starts by recognising the importance of retaining workers.
要做到这一点，首先要认识到留住员工的重要性。
You can’t share experience if no one has any.
如果没有人有经验，自然就无从分享了。
