BBC 6分钟英语学习 关于等级制度，鸡能教会我们什么

English, from BBC, learning English. Hello, and welcome to Six Minute English.

I'm Neil, and I'm Catherine. Catherine, what's the connection between hierarchies, managers and chickens?

Well, I don't know, neil, but I'm sure you're gonna tell me.

1st of all, could you explain for our listeners what a hierarchy

is? Of course. A hierarchy is a way of organizing people, e.g.

in a company where there are people working at different levels, you've got bosses, managers and workers.

The workers do the work, and the managers have meetings that stop the workers during the work.

But where do the chickens come in?

We'll find out shortly. But 1st here is today s question, and it is surprise, surprise about chickens.

What is the record number of eggs laid by one chicken in a year?

Is it A 253? B 371 or C 426?

which think? Catherine Well, I think most chickens lay an egg once a day, so I think it's 371.

Well, we will have an answer later in the program.

Now, for hierarchies and chickens, in the radio program, the Joy of nine to five Produced by something else For the BBC, entrepreneur Margaret Hefmann described an experiment.

In this experiment, researchers compared the egg production of a group of average chickens to a group of super chickens.

That's chickens with an above average egg production, which was the most successful.

Here's Margaret heffenon and by the way, the noun for a group of chickens is a flock.

He compares the two flocks over six generations, the average flock just gets better and better and better.

Egg production increases dramatically. The super flock of super chickens, at the end of six generations, all but three are dead because the three have killed the rest.

They've achieved their individual productivity by suppressing the productivity of the rest.

And that's what we do at work.

Which flock was most successful? Well, the super flock actually killed each other.

So it turned out that the average flock laid more eggs in total and was more successful, yes, but why was that?

Well, the super chickens must have seen their other flock members not as colleagues, but as competitors.

Now, to understand this, we have to start with the word productivity.

This now refers to the amount of work that's done.

So on an individual level, the super chickens achieved productivity because they suppressed the productivity of their flock members.

Suppressed here means they stopped the other chickens from being productive by killing them.

So what do we learn from this experiment?

Well, margaret Hephanon suggests that we see this kind of behavior in the human workplace, when everyone's equal productivity is high.

But as soon as as a hierarchy, as soon as there are managers, things can go wrong.

Because not all managers see their role as making life easier for the workers.

They demonstrate their productivity as managers by interfering with the productivity of the workers.

But there are other experiments which show that chickens are productive in a hierarchy.

How are those hierarchies different, though?

Here's Margaret Heiferman again. So chickens have an inbuilt, or, if you like, an inherited hierarchy, that's where we get the term pecking order from.

But it's one that they create among themselves, rather than one that's imposed upon them.

So which hierarchy works, at least for chickens?

Well, the best hierarchy is one that isn't imposed.

That means a good hierarchy isn't forced on the chickens.

They do well when they create the hierarchy themselves.

Naturally, they work out the pecking order themselves.

Ah, pecking order is a great phrase.

We use it to describe levels of importance in an organization.

The more important you are, the higher in the pecking order you are.

Where does this phrase originate? Well, pecking describes what chickens do with their beaks.

They hit or bite other chickens with them.

And the most important, or dominant chickens peck all the others.

The top chicken does all the pecking.

Middle level chickens get pecked and do some pecking themselves.

And some chickens are only pecked by other chickens, so there's a definite pecking order in chickens.

Right? Time to review this week's vocabulary.

But before that, let's have the answer to the quiz.

I asked what the record number of eggs laid by a single chicken in a year was?

The options were A 253, B 371 or C 426.

What did you say, catherine? I said, 371.

Well, lucky you, your definitely is offered a packing order on you, because you are right.

That's a lot of eggs, indeed.

Now, the vocabulary we are talking about hierarchies, a way to organize a society or workplace with different levels of importance.

An expression with a similar meaning is pecking order, which relates to how important someone or a chicken is within a hierarchy.

A group of chickens is a flock.

It's also

the general collective now for birds as well, not just chickens.

Another of our words was the noun productivity, which refers to the amount of work that is done.

And if you suppress someone's productivity, you stop them from being as productive as they could be.

And finally, there was a verb to impose.

If you impose something, you force it on people.

E.g., the government imposed new taxes on fuel.

Well, that is the end of the program.

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BBC learning english dot com. See you soon.

Bye, bye.

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