Aide Traduction

[iloveyoumom]

Bonjour,

j'ai un niveau très faible en anglais et du coup je ne comprend pas tres bien.

On me demande de faire un compte rendu en français d'environ 200 mots.

Voici ce que j'ai à peine compris du texte : Il s'agit d'un article publié le 14 novembre 2009 dans le magazine « the economist » qui déplore que dorénavant les grandes entreprises n'embauchent plus que des dirigeants transparents

The cult of the faceless boss

Too many chief executives are instantly forgettable. It's the flamboyant, visionary bosses who change the world

THE European Union is not the only institution that prefers faceless technocrats to people with star power. The corporate world is increasingly rejecting imperial chief executives in favour of anonymous managers—bland and boring men and women who can hardly get themselves noticed at cocktail parties, let alone stop the traffic in Moscow and Beijing.

The fashion for faceless chief executives is part of an understandable reaction against yesterday's imperial bosses, many of whom were vivid characters, capable of holding their own in a cocktail party with Tony Blair, but who collectively brought opprobrium on the system that let them shine. Some, such as Jeff Skilling of Enron and Tyco's Dennis Kozlowski, broke the law and helped inspire a dramatic tightening of government regulation, in the form of the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation. Others, such as Home Depot's Bob Nardelli and Hewlett-Packard's Carly Fiorina, paid themselves like superstars but delivered dismal results.

The turbulent business climate is another factor that encourages today's chief executives to keep their heads down. Their average tenure has declined from ten years in the 1970s to six years today, and boards are becoming ever more likely to sack bosses if they get out of line, particularly in Europe. The financial crisis has also produced a wave of popular fury about over-paid executives and their unaccountable ways. In this sort of climate it is not just the paranoid, but the faceless, who survive.

Facelessness—or at least humility—is also the height of fashion among management consultants and business gurus. Corporate headhunters are helping firms find "humble" bosses. Jim Collins, one of America's most popular gurus, argues that the best chief executives are not flamboyant visionaries but "humble, self-effacing, diligent and resolute souls". Business journalists have taken to producing glowing profiles of self-effacing and self-denying bosses such as Haruka Nishimatsu, the boss of Japan Airlines, who travels to work on the bus and pays himself less than his pilots, and Mike Eskew, the former boss of UPS, who flew coach and shares an administrative assistant with three other people. It can only be a matter of time before somebody writes "The Management Secrets of Uriah Heep": be 'umble, be ever so 'umble.

Yet there is surely a danger of taking all this too far. A low profile is no guarantee against corporate failure, as the former bosses of two companies lauded by Mr Collins, Fannie Mae and Circuit City, can tell you. In general, the corporate world needs its flamboyant visionaries and raging egomaniacs rather more than its humble leaders and corporate civil servants. Think of the people who have shaped the modern business landscape, and "faceless" and "humble" are not the first words that come to mind.

Be bold, not bland

Henry Ford was as close as you can get to being deranged without losing your liberty. John Patterson, the founder of National Cash Register and one of the greatest businessmen of the gilded age, once notified an employee that he was being sacked by setting fire to his desk. Thomas Watson, one of Patterson's protégés and the founder of IBM, turned his company into a cult and himself into the object of collective worship. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are both tightly wound empire-builders. Jack Welch and Lou Gerstner are anything but self-effacing. These are people who have created the future, rather than merely managing change, through the force of their personalities and the strength of their visions. George Bernard Shaw's adage about progress depending on "the unreasonable man" applies just as much to business as to every other area of life, if not more.

Merci d'avance