In Oxford in the 1950s, there was a fantastic doctor, who was very unusual, named Alice Stewart. And Alice was unusual partly because, of course, she was a woman, which was pretty rare in the 1950s. And she was brilliant, she was one of the, at the time, the youngest Fellow to be elected to the Royal College of Physicians. She was unusual too because she continued to work after she got married, after she had kids, and even after she got divorced and was a single parent, she continued her medical work.
Di Oxford pada 1950-an ada seorang doktor yang hebat, agak luar biasa bernama Alice Stewart. Alice dikatakan luar biasa kerana jarang terdapat doktor wanita ketika itu. Beliau seorang yang bijak, salah seorang daripada Felo termuda yang dipilih oleh Royal College of Physicians, ketika itu. Beliau juga dianggap luar biasa kerana meneruskan kerjayanya selepas berkahwin dan selepas mendapat anak. Malah, selepas bercerai dan menjadi ibu tunggal, beliau masih meneruskan kerjaya medisnya. Beliau
And she was unusual because she was really interested in a new science, the emerging field of epidemiology, the study of patterns in disease. But like every scientist, she appreciated that to make her mark, what she needed to do was find a hard problem and solve it. The hard problem that Alice chose was the rising incidence of childhood cancers. Most disease is correlated with poverty, but in the case of childhood cancers, the children who were dying seemed mostly to come from affluent families. So, what, she wanted to know, could explain this anomaly?
luar biasa kerana sangat berminat dalam bidang sains yang baru muncul dan sedang berkembang iaitu epidemiologi, kajian tentang pola penyakit. Tetapi, seperti saintis lain, beliau tahu bahawa untuk mencipta nama, apa yang perlu dilakukan adalah mencari permasalahan yang sukar dan menyelesaikannya. Permasalahan yang dipilih Alice adalah peningkatan insiden kanser kanak-kanak. Kebanyakan penyakit berkait dengan kemiskinan tetapi dalam kes kanser kanak-kanak, mereka yang tenat kebanyakannya datang daripada keluarga yang berada. Maka, beliau ingin tahu apakah sebab berlakunya anomali ini?
Now, Alice had trouble getting funding for her research. In the end, she got just 1,000 pounds from the Lady Tata Memorial prize. And that meant she knew she only had one shot at collecting her data. Now, she had no idea what to look for. This really was a needle in a haystack sort of search, so she asked everything she could think of. Had the children eaten boiled sweets? Had they consumed colored drinks? Did they eat fish and chips? Did they have indoor or outdoor plumbing? What time of life had they started school?
Alice menghadapi masalah mendapatkan biayaan untuk kajiannya. Akhirnya, beliau cuma mendapat 1,000 pound sahaja, daripada anugerah Memorial Lady Tata. Dan beliau sedar, beliau hanya ada satu peluang sahaja untuk mengumpul datanya. Beliau tidak tahu apa yang hendak dicarinya. Ia seperti mencari getah di dalam semak, sangat sukar sekali. Jadi, beliau bertanyakan apa sahaja yang mampu difikirkannya. Pernahkah kanak-kanak itu makan gula-gula? Pernahkah mereka minum air yang berwarna? Adakah mereka makan ikan dan kerepek? Adakah mereka mempunyai sistem paip di dalam atau di luar rumah? Bilakah mereka mula bersekolah?
And when her carbon copied questionnaire started to come back, one thing and one thing only jumped out with the statistical clarity of a kind that most scientists can only dream of. By a rate of two to one, the children who had died had had mothers who had been X-rayed when pregnant. Now that finding flew in the face of conventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom held that everything was safe up to a point, a threshold. It flew in the face of conventional wisdom, which was huge enthusiasm for the cool new technology of that age, which was the X-ray machine. And it flew in the face of doctors' idea of themselves, which was as people who helped patients, they didn't harm them.
Dan apabila, salinan karbon soalselidik beliau mendapat jawapan, satu pekara dan hanya satu perkara sahaja yang timbul dengan kejelasan statistik yang kebanyakan saintis impikan. Dengan kadar satu daripada dua, kanak-kanak yang telah meninggal dunia , mempunyai ibu yang pernah melalui sinaran X ketika mengandung. Hasil pencarian itu mencabar kebijaksanaan konvensional. Kebijaksaan konvesional menyatakan sesuatu itu selamat sehingga di ambang batasannya. Ini mencabar kebijaksanaan konvensional, iaitu keghairahan terhadap teknologi baru pada zaman itu, iaitu mesin sinaran X. Ini mencabar pandangan para doktor terdapat diri mereka sendiri, sebagai golongan yang membantu pesakit, bukan memudaratkan mereka.
Nevertheless, Alice Stewart rushed to publish her preliminary findings in The Lancet in 1956. People got very excited, there was talk of the Nobel Prize, and Alice really was in a big hurry to try to study all the cases of childhood cancer she could find before they disappeared. In fact, she need not have hurried. It was fully 25 years before the British and medical -- British and American medical establishments abandoned the practice of X-raying pregnant women. The data was out there, it was open, it was freely available, but nobody wanted to know. A child a week was dying, but nothing changed. Openness alone can't drive change.
Walaubagaimanapun, Alice Stewart bergegas menerbitkan hasil kajian awalnya itu, di The Lancet pada 1956. Ramai yang teruja, sehinggakan ada ura-ura mengenai Hadiah Nobel, tetapi Alice mahu secepat mungkin, cuba mengkaji kesemua kes kanser kanak-kanak yang mampu dicarinya, sebelum ia hilang. Hakikatnya, beliau tidak perlu tergesa-gesa kerana hanya selepas 25 tahun, pertubuhan perubatan British -- British dan Amerika, meninggalkan amalan sinaran X bagi wanita mengandung. Data ini ada di luar sana, terbuka dan boleh didapati dengan mudah, tetapi tiada siapa yang ambil peduli. Setiap minggu seorang kanak-kanak berada di ambang maut, namun tiada apa-apa perubahan. Keterbukaan sahaja tidak mampu membawa pada perubahan. Jadi, selama 25 tahun,
So for 25 years Alice Stewart had a very big fight on her hands. So, how did she know that she was right? Well, she had a fantastic model for thinking. She worked with a statistician named George Kneale, and George was pretty much everything that Alice wasn't. So, Alice was very outgoing and sociable, and George was a recluse. Alice was very warm, very empathetic with her patients. George frankly preferred numbers to people. But he said this fantastic thing about their working relationship. He said, "My job is to prove Dr. Stewart wrong." He actively sought disconfirmation. Different ways of looking at her models, at her statistics, different ways of crunching the data in order to disprove her. He saw his job as creating conflict around her theories. Because it was only by not being able to prove that she was wrong, that George could give Alice the confidence she needed to know that she was right.
Alice Stewart menghadapi pertarungan yang hebat. Bagaimana beliau tahu bahawa pendapat dan kajiannya betul? Beliau memiliki satu model pemikiran yang sangat hebat. Beliau bekerja dengan seorang ahli statistik bernama George Kneale, dan George merupakan seorang yang amat berbeza daripada beliau. Alice seorang yang ceria dan sosial, tetapi George merupakan seorang yang suka menyendiri. Alice merupakan seorang yang mesra, empatetik terhadap pesakitnya. George pula lebih senang dengan angka-angka daripada orang. Tetapi George menyatakan perkara hebat ini, tentang hubungan pekerjaan mereka. Kata George, "Tugas saya adalah untuk membuktikan bahawa Dr. Stewart salah" Secara aktifnya dia sentiasa menafikan pendapat Alice. Melihat dari sudut yang berbeza terhadap model-model Alice, statistiknya, cara yang berbeza memproses data, dalam usaha untuk menafikan beliau. Pada George, tugasnya adalah mencipta konflik pada teori-teori Alice. Kerana dengan ketidakmampuannya membuktikan bahawa kajian Alice salah, George akan memberi Alice keyakinan yang diperlukannya untuk mengetahui bahawa beliau betul.
It's a fantastic model of collaboration -- thinking partners who aren't echo chambers. I wonder how many of us have, or dare to have, such collaborators. Alice and George were very good at conflict. They saw it as thinking.
Ia merupakan satu model kolaborasi yang hebat -- rakan kongsi yang tidak berpemikiran seperti kebuk gema. Saya tertanya-tanya, berapa ramai di kalangan kita yang mempunyai ataupun berani memiliki kolaborasi seperti ini. Alice dan George sangat bijak menghadapi konflik. Mereka melihatnya sebagai peluang untuk berfikir.
So what does that kind of constructive conflict require? Well, first of all, it requires that we find people who are very different from ourselves. That means we have to resist the neurobiological drive, which means that we really prefer people mostly like ourselves, and it means we have to seek out people with different backgrounds, different disciplines, different ways of thinking and different experience, and find ways to engage with them. That requires a lot of patience and a lot of energy.
Jadi, apakah yang diperlukan oleh konflik konstruktif seperti ini? Pertama sekali, kita perlu mencari seseorang yang berbeza daripada diri kita. Ini bermakna kita perlu menolak kehendak neurobiologi kita, maksudnya, kita lebih suka kepada orang yang seperti diri kita juga, dan ini bermakna kita perlu mencari seseorang yang mempunyai latarbelakang yang berbeza, disiplin yang berbeza pemikiran yang berbeza dan pengalaman yang berbeza, dan mencari cara untuk bekerjasama dengan mereka. Ia memerlukan tahap kesabaran dan tenaga yang tinggi.
And the more I've thought about this, the more I think, really, that that's a kind of love. Because you simply won't commit that kind of energy and time if you don't really care. And it also means that we have to be prepared to change our minds. Alice's daughter told me that every time Alice went head-to-head with a fellow scientist, they made her think and think and think again. "My mother," she said, "My mother didn't enjoy a fight, but she was really good at them."
Dan semakin lama saya renung hal ini, saya semakin yakin bahawa itu ialah satu bentuk percintaan. Anda tidak akan meluangkan masa dan tenaga sebegitu, dengan semudah itu, jika anda tidak benar-benar mengambilberat. Dan ini juga bermakna, kita perlu bersedia untuk mengubah fikiran kita. Anak perempuan Alice memberitahu saya bahawa setiap kali Alice bersemuka dengan felo saintis, mereka akan membuatkan Alice berfikir, berfikir dan berfikir kembali. "Emak saya," katanya, "Emak saya tidak gemarkan pertengkaran, tetapi dia sangat bijak dalam melakukannya."
So it's one thing to do that in a one-to-one relationship. But it strikes me that the biggest problems we face, many of the biggest disasters that we've experienced, mostly haven't come from individuals, they've come from organizations, some of them bigger than countries, many of them capable of affecting hundreds, thousands, even millions of lives. So how do organizations think? Well, for the most part, they don't. And that isn't because they don't want to, it's really because they can't. And they can't because the people inside of them are too afraid of conflict.
Ini mungkin boleh dilakukan dalam hubungan satu lawan satu, Tetapi sekilas di fikiran saya, masalah terbesar yang kita hadapi, kebanyakan kegagalan yang pernah kita hadapi, tidak semua datangnya daripada individu, tetapi daripada organisasi, sesetengahnya lebih besar daripada sebuah negara, dan kebanyakannya mampu menjejas beratus-ratus, ribuan, malahan jutaan nyawa. Maka, bagaimana organisasi-organisasi itu berfikir? Sebahagian besar daripada mereka tidak melakukannya. Dan itu bukan kerana mereka tidak mahu berbuat sedemikian, tetapi kerana mereka betul-betul tidak mampu melakukannya. Dan mereka tidak mampu kerana orang yang berada di dalam organisasi itu, terlalu takut untuk menghadapi konflik.
In surveys of European and American executives, fully 85 percent of them acknowledged that they had issues or concerns at work that they were afraid to raise. Afraid of the conflict that that would provoke, afraid to get embroiled in arguments that they did not know how to manage, and felt that they were bound to lose. Eighty-five percent is a really big number. It means that organizations mostly can't do what George and Alice so triumphantly did. They can't think together. And it means that people like many of us, who have run organizations, and gone out of our way to try to find the very best people we can, mostly fail to get the best out of them.
Dalam tinjauan tentang eksekutif-eksekutif daripada Eropah dan Amerika, 85 peratus daripada mereka mengaku bahawa mereka mempunyai isu-isu perihal kerja, yang mereka takut bangkitkan. Bimbang akan konflik yang mungkin tercetus, takut terbabit dalam pertengkaran yang mereka tidak tahu bagaimana menguruskannya, dan merasakan bahawa mereka pasti akan kalah. 85 peratus merupakan satu nombor yang besar. Ini bermakna kebanyakan organisasi tidak mampu melakukan apa yang dilakukan oleh George dan Alice, dengan jayanya. Mereka tidak mampu berfikir bersama-sama. Dan ini bermakna, kebanyakan orang seperti kita, yang mengurus organisasi cuba sedaya upaya mencari pekerja yang terbaik, dan kebanyakannya gagal mendapatkan hasil terbaik daripada mereka.
So how do we develop the skills that we need? Because it does take skill and practice, too. If we aren't going to be afraid of conflict, we have to see it as thinking, and then we have to get really good at it. So, recently, I worked with an executive named Joe, and Joe worked for a medical device company. And Joe was very worried about the device that he was working on. He thought that it was too complicated and he thought that its complexity created margins of error that could really hurt people. He was afraid of doing damage to the patients he was trying to help. But when he looked around his organization, nobody else seemed to be at all worried. So, he didn't really want to say anything. After all, maybe they knew something he didn't. Maybe he'd look stupid. But he kept worrying about it, and he worried about it so much that he got to the point where he thought the only thing he could do was leave a job he loved.
Jadi, bagaimanakah cara kita membina kemahiran yang diperlukan? Kerana ia memerlukan kemahiran dan praktis, juga. Jika kita tidak mahu merasa takut kepada konflik, kita perlu melihatnya sebagai satu medium berfikir, dan kemudian, kita perlu mahir dalam melakukannya. Baru-baru ini, saya bekerja dengan seorang eksekutif bernama Joe dan Joe bekerja di sebuah syarikat peralatan perubatan. Dan Joe sangat bimbang tentang peralatan yang sedang dikendalikannya. Dia rasakan ia terlalu rumit dan berpendapat bahawa kerumitan itu akan mencipta ruang kesilapan yang mampu mencederakan pengguna. Dia bimbang akan musibah yang bakal menimba pesakit yang cuba dibantunya. Tetapi apabila dia melihat sekeliling organisasinya, tiada seorang pun yang kelihatan risau, Jadi, dia tidak mahu berkata apa-apa. Mungkin mereka tahu sesuatu yang dia tidak tahu. Mungkin dia akan kelihatan bodoh. Tetapi dia terus mengkhuatiri hal itu, sehingga ke satu tahap di mana dia berfikir, satu-satunya perkara yang boleh dilakukannya adalah meninggalkan kerja yang dia suka ini.
In the end, Joe and I found a way for him to raise his concerns. And what happened then is what almost always happens in this situation. It turned out everybody had exactly the same questions and doubts. So now Joe had allies. They could think together. And yes, there was a lot of conflict and debate and argument, but that allowed everyone around the table to be creative, to solve the problem, and to change the device.
Akhirnya, Joe dan saya, menemui satu jalan untuk dia meluahkan kebimbangannya. Dan apa yang berlaku ketika itu adalah perkara yang lazimnya berlaku di dalam situasi sebegini. Rupa-rupanya semua orang mempunyai persoalan dan keraguan yang sama sepertinya. Sekarang, Joe mempunyai teman. Mereka mampu berfikir bersama-sama. Dan ya, berlaku banyak konflik dan perdebatan, dan penghujahan, tetapi itu membenarkan semua orang di sekeliling menjadi kreatif, menyelesaikan masalah, dan mengubah peralatan tersebut.
Joe was what a lot of people might think of as a whistle-blower, except that like almost all whistle-blowers, he wasn't a crank at all, he was passionately devoted to the organization and the higher purposes that that organization served. But he had been so afraid of conflict, until finally he became more afraid of the silence. And when he dared to speak, he discovered much more inside himself and much more give in the system than he had ever imagined. And his colleagues don't think of him as a crank. They think of him as a leader.
Joe dianggap, oleh kebanyakan orang, sebagai pemberi maklumat, cumanya dalam kebanyakan pemberi maklumat, Joe bukan seorang yang eksentrik, dia terlalu ghairah mengabadikan dirinya kepada organisasi dan tujuan utama organisasi itu. Dia terlalu takut menghadapi konflik, tetapi akhirnya, dia menjadi lebih takut kepada keheningan itu. Apabila dia berani bersuara, dia menemui pelbagai perkara tentang dirinya, dan pelbagai lagi yang diterimanya daripada sistem, yang tidak pernah dibayangkannya. Dan rakan sekerja tidak menganggapnya sebagai seorang eksentrik. Mereka menganggapnya sebagai seorang pemimpin.
So, how do we have these conversations more easily and more often? Well, the University of Delft requires that its PhD students have to submit five statements that they're prepared to defend. It doesn't really matter what the statements are about, what matters is that the candidates are willing and able to stand up to authority. I think it's a fantastic system, but I think leaving it to PhD candidates is far too few people, and way too late in life. I think we need to be teaching these skills to kids and adults at every stage of their development, if we want to have thinking organizations and a thinking society.
Jadi, bagaimanakah kita menjadikan perbualan seperti ini, lebih mudah dan lebih kerap? Begini, Universiti Delft memerlukan pelajar PhD mereka mengemukakan lima kenyataan yang mereka bersedia pertahankan. Tidak kisah kenyataan tersebut mengenai apa, apa yang penting adalah calon sanggup dan mampu melawan pihak berkuasa. Saya rasa ini merupakan satu sistem yang hebat, tetapi pada saya, menyerahkannya kepada calon PhD sahaja, tidak memadai, dan terlalu suntuk dalam kehidupan. Pada saya, kita perlu mengajar kemahiran ini kepada kanak-kanak dan golongan dewasa di setiap tahap perkembangan mereka, jika kita mahu memiliki organisasi yang berfikir, dan masyarakat yang berfikir.
The fact is that most of the biggest catastrophes that we've witnessed rarely come from information that is secret or hidden. It comes from information that is freely available and out there, but that we are willfully blind to, because we can't handle, don't want to handle, the conflict that it provokes. But when we dare to break that silence, or when we dare to see, and we create conflict, we enable ourselves and the people around us to do our very best thinking.
Hakikatnya, bencana terbesar yang pernah kita saksikan, jarang-jarang disebabkan oleh maklumat yang terahsia atau tersembunyi. Masalah ia datang daripada maklumat yang mudah didapati dan ada di luar sana, tetapi kita sengaja tidak mahu melihatnya, kerana kita tidak mampu dan tidak mahu berdepan dengan konflik yang bakal tercetus. Namun, apabila kita berani untuk memecah keheningan itu, ataupun apabila kita berani untuk melihat dan mencipta konflik, kita memungkinkan diri kita dan orang di sekeliling kita berfikir dengan cara terbaik.
Open information is fantastic, open networks are essential. But the truth won't set us free until we develop the skills and the habit and the talent and the moral courage to use it. Openness isn't the end. It's the beginning.
Maklumat terbuka sangat hebat, rangkaian terbuka sangat diperlukan. Tetapi kebenaran tidak akan membebaskan kita, sehingga kita membina kemahiran dan tabiat dan bakat dan keberanian moral untuk menggunanya. Keterbukaan bukanlah pengakhir. Ia adalah permulaan.
(Applause)
(Tepukan tangan)