Hurrah for uncertainty! Three cheers for trepidation! As the world tiptoes gingerly into 2012, let’s celebrate the fallibility of forecasting and the perils of prediction.

为不确定性叫好！为恐慌欢呼三声！随着世界战战兢兢地迈入2012年，让我们赞美预测的不可靠性和预言的危害吧。

Why? First, because uncertainty will not dissipate soon, so businesses might as well try to make the best of what little they do know. Second, because an excess of certainty got us into this predicament. A little new year caution may be welcome.

为什么？首先，因为不确定性不会很快消失——所以企业最好还是尽量利用好它们知晓的那不多的事实。其次，因为正是过度的确信把我们带入眼下的困境。在新的一年里谨小慎微一些或许是件好事。

Some of the steps taken by managers to offset dangers ahead are worryingly circular, however. I was surprised, for example, at the number of top executives and directors who, in a recent survey for Lloyd’s, the London insurance market, said the most effective risk management action they had taken over the past three years was ... to put in place a risk management team.

然而，管理人员为消除未来风险而采取的某些措施，正在令人不安地流传开来。例如，近期为伦敦保险市场劳合社(Lloyd’s)所做的一项调查显示，不少高管和董事表示过去3年他们采取的最有效风险管理措施是设立一支风险管理团队——持此观点的高管和董事人数之多让我大吃一惊。

Other countermeasures can prove counterproductive. In June 2010, McKinsey consultant Lowell Bryan suggested companies should prepare for the “high probability of future financial shocks” by erring on the side of “being overcapitalised, overliquid, and overprepared”, while also engaging in “serious scenario planning” about “unthinkable” events. Sensible. But the effort of holding this brace position for the past 18 months, while some of those unthinkable events unfolded, would have induced paralysis in most business leaders by now.

另一些对策可能也是具有反效果的。2010年6月，麦肯锡(McKinsey)顾问洛威尔•布莱恩(Lowell Bryan)建议，企业应该竭力通过“超额资本、超额流动性、超额准备”来防范“未来发生金融冲击的高度可能性”，同时还要对“不可想象的”事件进行“严肃的情景规划”。这听起来很合理。但在过去18个月里，随着那些不可想象事件的展开，如果企业领导人要努力维持上述防御措施，那么现在他们大部分或许已经陷入绝境。

As Leif Johansson, chairman of Ericsson and current head of the European Round Table of Industrialists, told the Financial Times last month, on the eve of the European summit: “Uncertainty has that effect: on many, many individual accounts, customers are saying ‘Let’s wait a little’. And the trouble with that wait-and-see attitude ... is that it takes us into a recession, quicker and steeper than we would have expected.”

爱立信(Ericsson)董事长、欧洲企业家圆桌会议(European Round Table of Industrialists)现任主席雷夫•约翰森(Leif Johansson)上月在欧盟(EU)峰会前夕向英国《金融时报》表示：“不确定性具有这种影响：据许多人反映，客户们的心情是‘再观望一下’。这种观望态度的麻烦在于……它把我们带入了一场衰退。我们陷入衰退的速度之快、程度之深，超出了我们的预想。”

He knows from grim experience what he’s talking about. In his old job, as chief executive of Volvo, he witnessed the extraordinary period in late 2008 when more customers in Europe were cancelling orders for its trucks than placing them.

他是从残酷的经历中获得上述认知的。过去担任沃尔沃(Volvo)首席执行官时，他见证了2008年底的那段非常时期——当时，欧洲取消沃尔沃卡车订单的客户比下单的还多。

Even some of Mr Bryan’s sensible measures could inadvertently add to future uncertainty. Absolute Strategy Research, an independent group of macro analysts, points out that in the US and Europe, the corporate savings rate has increased to levels not seen for decades, as public sector deficits have ballooned. The hoarding could reflect justifiable caution but if it persists, ASR suggests, governments may start accusing large companies of “rent-seeking” behaviour and may even penalise those that are seen to have accumulated “excessive” cash.

布莱恩的一些合理措施甚至可能在无意间加剧未来的不确定性。独立宏观分析机构“绝对战略研究中心”（Absolute Strategy Research，简称ASR）指出，在美国和欧洲，随着公共部门赤字激增，企业储蓄率已升至数十年未见的水平。这种资金囤积可能反映出合理的谨慎，但ASR表示，如果这种现象持续下去，ZF可能会开始指责大企业的“寻租”行为，甚至会惩罚那些被认为积累了“过量”现金的企业。

As for scenario planning, it has its uses, but, as another chief executive of a large European industrial company told me recently in relation to the fate of the euro: “We have plan Bs [for potential break-up of the currency], but there are only so many plan Bs you can make.”

至于情景规划，确有它的用途，但正如一家大型欧洲工业公司的首席执行官最近就欧元前途对我说的：“我们（为欧元可能出现的瓦解）准备了备用计划，但你能设计的备用计划也就只有那么多。”

As executives’ reluctance to commit themselves grows, so the appetite of outsiders to know about their future plans increases. Investors are now far more interested in the “outlook” section of the company report than in the backward-looking summary of the historic results. But in their public statements, most chief executives hide behind a “lack of visibility”, adding to the general nervousness.

随着高管越来越不愿做出承诺，外部人士对于他们对未来的规划日益感到好奇。现在，投资者对公司报告中“展望”部分的兴趣，远远超过了对历史业绩的回顾性总结。但在公开声明中，大部分首席执行官都躲在“形势不明朗”的借口背后，从而加剧了大众的紧张情绪。

Let them instead embrace uncertainty and accept that it is unrealistic to expect all clouds to lift and the way ahead to become clear. Business leaders need to count on their ability to be the one-eyed man in the land of the blind – a proverb recast by Richard Rumelt in his book Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: “If you can peer into the fog of change and see 10 per cent more clearly than others see, then you may gain an edge.”

还是让他们接受不确定性、承认指望阴云全部散去、前路一片明朗是不现实的吧。企业领导人需要依靠的是“众人皆醉我独醒”的能力，理查德•鲁梅尔特(Richard Rumelt)在他的《好策略，坏策略》(Good Strategy/Bad Strategy)一书中，对这一点进行了重新描述：“如果你能看透变化的迷雾、比其他人多看清10%，你或许就获得了制胜的优势。”

Merely peering is not enough, though, if you do not move forward. So, in the spirit of circularity, let me offer the mini-roundabout, that peculiarly British innovation in traffic management, as my metaphor for sensible strategy in times of peril. The mini-roundabout instils just enough uncertainty in drivers to encourage them to reduce speed at junctions, but not so much doubt as to cause gridlock. When it comes to assessing future risks, it may not have the romantic appeal of certain rare waterfowl popularised by Nassim Nicholas Taleb but, as a reminder neither to accelerate blindly into the unknown, nor to stall for fear of collisions, it could prove more useful.

但只是看透还不够，你还得向前走。因此，本着“循环”的精神，让我用英国在交通管理中的独特创新——“迷你环形交叉路”——来比喻危机时期的合理战略。迷你环形交叉路给司机制造了恰到好处的不确定性，促使他们在交叉口减速，但又不会使他们犹疑不决到造成交通阻塞。对于评估未来风险，它或许不具有像纳西姆•尼古拉斯•塔勒布(Nassim Nicholas Taleb)那只家喻户晓的黑天鹅那样的浪漫气息，但作为一种对既不要盲目加速驶入未知领域、又不要因害怕碰撞而止步不前的提醒，它或许更加有效。

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