On Mondays and Thursdays, I learn how to die. I call them my terminal days. My wife Fernanda doesn't like the term, but a lot of people in my family died of melanoma cancer and my parents and grandparents had it. And I kept thinking, one day I could be sitting in front of a doctor who looks at my exams and says, "Ricardo, things don't look very good. You have six months or a year to live."
每個星期一及星期四, 我學習如何死亡。 我稱這兩天為我的臨終日。 我的妻子費南妲不喜歡這個字眼, 但是我的家族裡 有很多人死於黑色素癌, 我的雙親及祖父母也患有此病。 我一直想有一天 我也可能會坐在醫師前面, 他看著我的檢查報告,然後說: 「李卡多,情況不太妙。 你只能再活六個月到一年。」
And you start thinking about what you would do with this time. And you say, "I'm going to spend more time with the kids. I'm going to visit these places, I'm going to go up and down mountains and places and I'm going to do all the things I didn't do when I had the time." But of course, we all know these are very bittersweet memories we're going to have. It's very difficult to do. You spend a good part of the time crying, probably. So I said, I'm going to do something else.
然後你開始思索 要怎麼度過這段時間。 你說:「我要花更多時間陪小孩。 我要遊覽這些那些地方, 我要上山下海, 我要去做我有時間卻沒做的事。」 但是我們想也知道, 這些都將是苦樂參半的回憶。 這是很煎熬的事。 你大概還會花好大一段時間哭泣。 所以我說,我要做點不一樣的事。
Every Monday and Thursday, I'm going use my terminal days. And I will do, during those days, whatever it is I was going to do if I had received that piece of news. (Laughter)
每個星期一及星期四, 我要充分利用我的臨終日。 我要在這些日子 做所有我想做的事, 好像我真的接到這樣的噩耗一般。 (笑聲)
When you think about -- (Applause) when you think about the opposite of work, we, many times, think it's leisure. And you say, ah, I need some leisure time, and so forth. But the fact is that, leisure is a very busy thing. You go play golf and tennis, and you meet people, and you're going for lunch, and you're late for the movies. It's a very crowded thing that we do. The opposite of work is idleness. But very few of us know what to do with idleness. When you look at the way that we distribute our lives in general, you realize that in the periods in which we have a lot of money, we have very little time. And then when we finally have time, we have neither the money nor the health.
當你想到── (掌聲) 當你想到工作的相反詞, 我們常常認為是休閒。 你說,啊!我需要 一些休閒的時間,諸如此類。 但其實休閒是很忙的一件事。 你打高爾夫、網球, 你要見朋友, 你跟別人約吃午餐, 看電影要遲到了。 我們把時間塞得滿滿的。 工作的相對是什麼事都不做。 但是很少有人知道要怎麼 度過什麼都不做的時光。 當你看我們分配生活的方式, 你就會明白 我們很有錢的時候, 我們的時間卻很少。 當我們終於有時間了, 卻沒有錢或健康。
So we started thinking about that as a company for the last 30 years. This is a complicated company with thousands of employees, hundreds of millions of dollars of business that makes rocket fuel propellent systems, runs 4,000 ATMs in Brazil, does income tax preparation for dozens of thousands. So this is not a simple business.
所以過去 30 年我們 以公司的角度在思考這件事。 這是個很複雜的公司, 有數千名員工, 億萬美元的業務, 製造火箭推進劑系統, 在巴西營運四千台自動櫃員機, 幫成千上萬人報稅。 所以這不是個簡單的公司。
We looked at it and we said, let's devolve to these people, let's give these people a company where we take away all the boarding school aspects of, this is when you arrive, this is how you dress, this is how you go to meetings, this is what you say, this is what you don't say, and let's see what's left. So we started this about 30 years ago, and we started dealing with this very issue. And so we said, look, the retirement, the whole issue of how we distribute our graph of life. Instead of going mountain climbing when you're 82, why don't you do it next week? And we'll do it like this, we'll sell you back your Wednesdays for 10 percent of your salary. So now, if you were going to be a violinist, which you probably weren't, you go and do this on Wednesday.
我們看看它然後說, 讓我們把重心轉向這些人, 讓我們給這些人一間公司, 把所有寄宿學校的規矩都拿掉, 像是你該幾點到、你該怎麼穿、 你該怎麼開會、你該說什麼、 你不該說什麼, 然後來看會是怎樣的情況。 我們大約在 30 年前 開始做這件事, 我們開始面對這項問題。 所以我們說,你看,退休, 我們要如何分配生活這項議題。 與其在你 82 歲時才去爬山, 你為什麼不下星期就去呢? 我們要這樣做, 我們把你的星期三賣回給你, 用你 10% 的薪水來買。 所以現在, 假設你想當小提琴家, 你大概不想啦, 你就在星期三做這件事。
And what we found -- we thought, these are the older people who are going to be really interested in this program. And the average age of the first people who adhered were 29, of course. And so we started looking, and we said, we have to do things in a different way. So we started saying things like, why do we want to know what time you came to work, what time you left, etc.? Can't we exchange this for a contract for buying something from you, some kind of work? Why are we building these headquarters? Is it not an ego issue that we want to look solid and big and important? But we're dragging you two hours across town because of it?
我們發現── 我們以為只有老一點的人 才會真的對這個計畫有興趣。 然而第一批來參與這個計畫的人 平均年齡為 29 歲,想當然爾! 所以我們又開始看, 然後我們說, 我們得用不同的方法做事。 所以我們開始說像是 為什麼我們想知道你幾點來上班, 幾點下班等等的問題? 難道我們不能以此交換一項契約, 從你身上買些東西,某些工作? 為什麼我們要蓋這些總部大樓? 難道這不是一種自我意識, 我們想要看起來很穩固牢靠, 又大又重要? 但是我們要你在路上 塞兩個小時就為了這個?
So we started asking questions one by one. We'd say it like this: One: How do we find people? We'd go out and try and recruit people and we'd say, look, when you come to us, we're not going to have two or three interviews and then you're going to be married to us for life. That's not how we do the rest of our lives. So, come have your interviews. Anyone who's interested in interviewing, you will show up. And then we'll see what happens out of the intuition that rises from that, instead of just filling out the little items of whether you're the right person. And then, come back. Spend an afternoon, spend a whole day, talk to anybody you want. Make sure we are the bride you thought we were and not all the bullshit we put into our own ads. (Laughter)
所以我們開始問問題, 一個接著一個問。 我們問像這樣的問題: 一、我們怎麼找人? 我們就去外面試了一下, 招人的時候我們說, 聽好,如果你到我們這邊來, 我們不會安排二三回面試, 然後要你一輩子嫁給我們。 那不是我們度過餘生的方式。 所以,就來面試吧。 任何有興趣面試的人都可以來。 然後我們要看這種 憑直覺的面試會有什麼結果, 而不是填寫你是否為 正確人選的那些小項目。 然後,再回來看看。 來這裡過一個下午、過一天, 去跟你想談的人對話。 確定我們的確是 你心目中合適的新娘, 而不是徵婚廣告上 誇張不實的鬼扯。 (笑聲)
Slowly we went to a process where we'd say things like, we don't want anyone to be a leader in the company if they haven't been interviewed and approved by their future subordinates. Every six months, everyone gets evaluated, anonymously, as a leader. And this determines whether they should continue in that leadership position, which is many times situational, as you know. And so if they don't have 70, 80 percent of a grade, they don't stay, which is probably the reason why I haven't been CEO for more than 10 years. And over time, we started asking other questions.
慢慢地我們找到一種方式, 我們會這樣說, 我們不要任何人 在這間公司裡當領導人, 如果他們還沒被他們未來的下屬 面試及認可,就不可以當。 每六個月,每位領導人 都要接受無記名評估。 這決定他們是否能繼續 他們領導階層的位置, 這個位置常常很情境式,你知道的。 所以如果他們不能拿個七八十分, 他們就不能待下去。 這大概就是為什麼我已經 超過十年沒當執行長的原因。 隨著時間推移, 我們開始問其他問題。
We said things like, why can't people set their own salaries? What do they need to know? There's only three things you need to know: how much people make inside the company, how much people make somewhere else in a similar business and how much we make in general to see whether we can afford it. So let's give people these three pieces of information. So we started having, in the cafeteria, a computer where you could go in and you could ask what someone spent, how much someone makes, what they make in benefits, what the company makes, what the margins are, and so forth. And this is 25 years ago.
我們問問題像是, 為什麼大家不能自訂薪水? 他們需要知道什麼? 你只需要知道三件事: 公司內的人薪資多少? 在業界薪資行情又是多少? 公司通常要賺多少才付的起? 所以我們給大家這三項資料。 後來我們開始在員工餐廳 放一台電腦,你可以進去問 某人花多少、某人賺多少、 他們有什麼福利、公司又賺多少、 利潤是多少等等。 這還是 25 年前。
As this information started coming to people, we said things like, we don't want to see your expense report, we don't want to know how many holidays you're taking, we don't want to know where you work. We had, at one point, 14 different offices around town, and we'd say, go to the one that's closest to your house, to the customer that you're going to visit today. Don't tell us where you are. And more, even when we had thousands of people, 5,000 people, we had two people in the H.R. department, and thankfully one of them has retired. (Laughter)
當這樣的情報開始流傳出去, 我們會說, 我們不想知道你的開支表, 我們不想知道你要放多少天假, 我們不想知道你在哪裡辦公。 我們曾經一度在城裡 14 個不同的地方設辦公室, 我們說,去離你家最近的那個上班, 去你今天要去拜訪的客戶那邊。 不要告訴我們你在那。 更扯的是,即使在我們有 數千員工,五千名員工的時代, 我們只有兩個人在人資部門, 而且謝天謝地其中一個已經退休了。 (笑聲)
And so, the question we were asking was, how can we be taking care of people? People are the only thing we have. We can't have a department that runs after people and looks after people. So as we started finding that this worked, and we'd say, we're looking for -- and this is, I think, the main thing I was looking for in the terminal days and in the company, which is, how do you set up for wisdom? We've come from an age of revolution, industrial revolution, an age of information, an age of knowledge, but we're not any closer to the age of wisdom. How we design, how do we organize, for more wisdom? So for example, many times, what's the smartest or the intelligent decision doesn't jive. So we'd say things like, let's agree that you're going to sell 57 widgets per week. If you sell them by Wednesday, please go to the beach. Don't create a problem for us, for manufacturing, for application, then we have to buy new companies, we have to buy our competitors, we have to do all kinds of things because you sold too many widgets. So go to the beach and start again on Monday. (Laughter) (Applause)
所以,我們那時問的問題是, 我們要怎麼照顧員工? 員工是我們唯一擁有的。 我們不可能搞一個部門 天天追著員工跑、盯著員工看。 所以當我們開始發現這方法有用, 我們就說我們要找── 我想這也是我在臨終日 及在這間公司所尋找的主要東西── 就是,你要如何建立智慧? 我們是革命時代的產物,工業革命、 資訊時代、知識時代, 卻離智慧時代還很遠。 我們如何設計,如何組織 以得到更多智慧? 舉個例子,有好多次, 什麼是最聰明最明智, 又不會被笑的決定? 所以我們會說像這樣的事, 就說你同意一星期要賣 57 個界面小工具好了。 如果你在星期三前賣完, 請去海邊玩。 不要給我們、給製造商、 給小程式製造問題, 不然我們就得買新的公司, 我們就得買下對手, 我們要做一大堆事, 因為你賣了太多界面小工具。 所以就去海邊玩吧, 星期一再重新開始。 (笑聲)(掌聲)
So the process is looking for wisdom. And in the process, of course, we wanted people to know everything, and we wanted to be truly democratic about the way we ran things. So our board had two seats open with the same voting rights, for the first two people who showed up. (Laughter) And so we had cleaning ladies voting on a board meeting, which had a lot of other very important people in suits and ties. And the fact is that they kept us honest.
所以這整個過程是想尋求智慧。 當然在過程中, 我們要大家知道每件事, 我們想在我們經營方法上 有真正的民主。 所以我們的董事會有兩個空的席次, 跟其他董事有同等的投票權, 要給最先來公司上班的兩個人。 (笑聲) 所以我們有公司清潔婦 在董事會裡, 在這個其他重要人物 都西裝筆挺的會議裡投票。 事實是他們讓我們誠實。
This process, as we started looking at the people who came to us, we'd say, now wait a second, people come to us and they say, where am I supposed to sit? How am I supposed to work? Where am I going to be in 5 years' time? And we looked at that and we said, we have to start much earlier. Where do we start? We said, oh, kindergarten seems like a good place.
這個過程,就在我們開始 看著大家爭相進入我們公司, 我們說,等一下, 他們進了公司,他們問, 我應該坐哪裡? 我要怎麼開始? 五年後我在哪裡? 我們看著這情況我們說, 我們得早點開始。 我們從哪裡開始? 我們說,喔, 從幼兒園開始好像不錯。
So we set up a foundation, which now has, for 11 years, three schools, where we started asking the same questions, how do you redesign school for wisdom? It is one thing to say, we need to recycle the teachers, we need the directors to do more. But the fact is that what we do with education is entirely obsolete. The teacher's role is entirely obsolete. Going from a math class, to biology, to 14th-century France is very silly. (Applause) So we started thinking, what could it look like? And we put together people, including people who like education, people like Paulo Freire, and two ministers of education in Brazil and we said, if we were to design a school from scratch, what would it look like?
所以我們設立了一個基金會, 11 年來已經有三所學校, 我們在這些學校問同樣的問題, 我們要怎麼為智慧重新設計學校? 一方面我們需要再利用老師, 我們需要主管做更多事。 但事實是我們辦教育的方式 早已完全過時。 老師的角色完全過時。 從數學課教到生物課, 教到 14 世紀法國史真的很笨。 (掌聲) 所以我們開始思考, 那到底應該是什麼樣子? 我們把大家聚在一起, 包括喜歡教育的人, 像保羅.弗雷勒, 及巴西兩位教育部長, 我們說,如果我們要重頭設計學校, 會是甚麼樣子?
And so we created this school, which is called Lumiar, and Lumiar, one of them is a public school, and Lumiar says the following: Let's divide this role of the teacher into two. One guy, we'll call a tutor. A tutor, in the old sense of the Greek "paideia": Look after the kid. What's happening at home, what's their moment in life, etc.. But please don't teach, because the little you know compared to Google, we don't want to know. Keep that to yourself. (Laughter) Now, we'll bring in people who have two things: passion and expertise, and it could be their profession or not. And we use the senior citizens, who are 25 percent of the population with wisdom that nobody wants anymore. So we bring them to school and we say, teach these kids whatever you really believe in. So we have violinists teaching math. We have all kinds of things where we say, don't worry about the course material anymore. We have approximately 10 great threads that go from 2 to 17. Things like, how do we measure ourselves as humans? So there's a place for math and physics and all that there. How do we express ourselves? So there's a place for music and literature, etc., but also for grammar.
所以我們設計了這所學校, 稱為慧光, 慧光有一間是公立學校。 慧光的宗旨是: 讓我們把老師的角色一分為二。 一個我們稱之為導師。 導師在古希臘字義為: 照顧孩子。 問問孩子家裡發生什麼事、 照顧他們生命中重要的時刻…等等。 但是請不要教書, 因為你的實力有多接近 Google 搜尋, 我們不想知道。 你自己藏拙就好。 (笑聲) 我們要請有兩種特質的人: 熱情及專長,是不是本科都行。 我們也請耆老, 耆老佔了人口數的 25%, 擁有沒人要的智慧。 所以我們請他們到學校,我們說, 教這些孩子你由衷相信的東西。 所以我們有小提琴家教數學。 我們有各式各樣的東西,我們說 不要再擔心教材。 我們有大約十種很棒的主題 給 2 歲到 17 歲的孩子上。 像是,身為人類, 我們怎麼測量自己? 所以這結合了數學與物理 還有其他東西。 我們怎麼表達自己? 所以這結合了音樂與文學…等等, 同時還有文法。
And then we have things that everyone has forgotten, which are probably the most important things in life. The very important things in life, we know nothing about. We know nothing about love, we know nothing about death, we know nothing about why we're here. So we need a thread in school that talks about everything we don't know. So that's a big part of what we do. (Applause) So over the years, we started going into other things. We'd say, why do we have to scold the kids and say, sit down and come here and do that, and so forth. We said, let's get the kids to do something we call a circle, which meets once a week. And we'd say, you put the rules together and then you decide what you want to do with it. So can you all hit yourself on the head? Sure, for a week, try. They came up with the very same rules that we had, except they're theirs. And then, they have the power, which means, they can and do suspend and expel kids so that we're not playing school, they really decide.
我們還教每個人都已經忘記, 卻可能是人生最重要的東西。 人生中非常重要的東西, 我們卻一無所知。 我們對愛一無所知、 我們對死一無所知、 我們對我們為什麼存在一無所知。 所以我們在學校要教 所有我們不知道的事情這個主題。 這佔了我們的教學很大一部分。 (掌聲) 這幾年,我們開始探索其他東西。 我們說,為什麼我們要責罵孩子, 要說,坐下、到這裡來、 做這個做那個,等等。 我們說,讓孩子來做 我們稱為「循環」的課, 一週上一次。 我們說, 你們把規則通通看一下, 然後決定你要怎麼做。 所以你們都想撞頭嗎? 好啊!做一個星期,試試看。 結果他們得出 跟我們一模一樣的規則, 只是現在這些規則是他們定的了。 這樣,他們就有權限, 也就是說,他們的確可以 讓孩子停學並趕出學校, 我們不是在玩扮學校的遊戲, 他們真的能做決定。
And then, in this same vein, we keep a digital mosaic, because this is not constructivist or Montessori or something. It's something where we keep the Brazilian curriculum with 600 tiles of a mosaic, which we want to expose these kids to by the time they're 17. And follow this all the time and we know how they're doing and we say, you're not interested in this now, let's wait a year. And the kids are in groups that don't have an age category, so the six-year-old kid who is ready for that with an 11-year-old, that eliminates all of the gangs and the groups and this stuff that we have in the schools, in general. And they have a zero to 100 percent grading, which they do themselves with an app every couple of hours. Until we know they're 37 percent of the way we'd like them to be on this issue, so that we can send them out in the world with them knowing enough about it. And so the courses are World Cup Soccer, or building a bicycle. And people will sign up for a 45-day course on building a bicycle. Now, try to build a bicycle without knowing that pi is 3.1416. You can't. And try, any one of you, using 3.1416 for something. You don't know anymore. So this is lost and that's what we try to do there, which is looking for wisdom in that school.
然後,本著同樣的精神, 我們還有所謂數位鑲嵌, 因為這不是建構式教學, 也不是蒙特梭利或什麼, 這是我們把巴西的課程, 六百種不同的課程鑲嵌在一起, 讓孩子在 17 歲前能接觸到。 一路都這麼做, 我們就會知道他們的表現, 我們會說,你現在 對這個沒興趣,再等一年。 這些孩子分成幾組, 不是按年齡分, 所以程度夠的六歲孩子 可以與十一歲的孩子一起上課。 這樣可以排除成群結黨的小團體, 這些現象在學校還蠻常見。 而且他們還有 0 到 100 分的評分法, 他們每隔幾個小時 就用小程式自己評分。 我們要他們繼續上同樣的課程, 直到他們拿到 37 分為止。 所以出社會時他們起碼在 這些議題上知道點什麼。 所以這些課程包括 世界盃足球,或造腳踏車。 大家都來登記 上一期 45 天的造腳踏車課。 那,試試看在不知道圓周率為 3.1416 的情況下造一輛腳踏車。 不可能。 你們任何人試試 用 3.1416 做點什麼。 你不知道能做什麼了吧。 所以這是損失, 這也就是為什麼我們試著做這個, 就是在那所學校裡尋找智慧。
And that brings us back to this graph and this distribution of our life. I accumulated a lot of money when I think about it. When you think and you say, now is the time to give back -- well, if you're giving back, you took too much. (Laughter) (Applause) I keep thinking of Warren Buffet waking up one day and finding out he has 30 billion dollars more than he thought he had. And he looks and he says, what am I going to do with this? And he says, I'll give it to someone who really needs this. I'll give it to Bill Gates. (Laughter) And my guy, who's my financial advisor in New York, he says, look, you're a silly guy because you would have 4.1 times more money today if you had made money with money instead of sharing as you go. But I like sharing as you go better. (Applause)
而那也讓我們回過頭來看看 這張生命的分配圖。 當我想到的時候我已經賺了很多錢。 你想一想然後你說, 現在是回饋的時候了, 如果你現在要回饋, 那是你之前拿太多了。 (笑聲)(掌聲) 我一直想到 華倫·巴菲特有一天醒來 發現他的錢比他想的 還多三百億美金。 他看看然後說, 我要拿這些錢做什麼? 然後他說,我要送給真正需要的人。 我要給比爾·蓋茲。(笑聲) 我在紐約的理財專員 他說,聽好,你是個笨蛋, 因為你今天大可擁有 比現在還多 4.1 倍的錢, 如果一路走來你願意錢滾錢, 而不是分給別人。 但是我喜歡分給別人, 因為這樣走的更好。 (掌聲)
I taught MBAs at MIT for a time and I ended up, one day, at the Mount Auburn Cemetery. It is a beautiful cemetery in Cambridge. And I was walking around. It was my birthday and I was thinking. And the first time around, I saw these tombstones and these wonderful people who'd done great things and I thought, what do I want to be remembered for? And I did another stroll around, and the second time, another question came to me, which did me better, which was, why do I want to be remembered at all? (Laughter) And that, I think, took me different places. When I was 50, my wife Fernanda and I sat for a whole afternoon, we had a big pit with fire, and I threw everything I had ever done into that fire. This is a book in 38 languages, hundreds and hundreds of articles and DVDs, everything there was. And that did two things. One, it freed our five kids from following in our steps, our shadow -- They don't know what I do. (Laughter) Which is good. And I'm not going to take them somewhere and say, one day all of this will be yours. (Laughter) The five kids know nothing, which is good.
我曾在麻省理工 教過工商管理一段時間, 有一天,我發現我在奧本山墓園。 那是座美麗的墓園,在劍橋。 我在那裡四處走走, 那天是我的生日,我在想事情。 我第一次繞的時候 看到這些墓碑, 這些很棒的人,做了很多好事, 我就想,我要人家懷念我什麼? 我又走了一圈; 第二次,另一個問題跑出來, 這次問的比較好了,就是 到底為什麼我想被人懷念? (笑聲) 我想就是那個想法, 帶我到了不同的境界。 我 50 歲時,我的太太 費南妲和我坐了一整個下午, 我們搭了個大營火, 我把過去所有的成就 都丟進火堆裡。 翻成 38 種語言的書, 成千上萬的文章和 DVD, 每樣東西都丟進去。 這個舉動有兩個意義。 一、這解放了我的五個孩子, 不用追隨我們的腳步, 活在我們的陰影下, 他們不知道我做過什麼。 (笑聲) 這很好。 我不想帶他們到某處, 然後說,有一天, 這一切都是你們的。 (笑聲) 這五個孩子什麼都不知道,這很好。
And the second thing is, I freed myself from this anchor of past achievement or whatever. I'm free to start something new every time and to decide things from scratch in part of those terminal days. And some people would say, oh, so now you have this time, these terminal days, and so you go out and do everything. No, we've been to the beaches, so we've been to Samoa and Maldives and Mozambique, so that's done. I've climbed mountains in the Himalayas. I've gone down 60 meters to see hammerhead sharks. I've spent 59 days on the back of a camel from Chad to Timbuktu. I've gone to the magnetic North Pole on a dog sled. So, we've been busy. It's what I'd like to call my empty bucket list. (Laughter)
第二個意義是, 我自己也從過去的成就 或管它是什麼解放。 我每次都可以隨心所欲重新開始, 在臨終日隨心所欲決定從頭開始。 有些人可能會說, 喔,所以現在你有這段時間, 這些臨終日, 所以你能去做每一件事。 不,我們已經去過海邊, 所以我們已經去過薩摩亞、 馬爾地夫、莫三比克。 這件事已經完成。 我已經爬過喜馬拉雅山脈。 我已經潛水 60 公尺看過雙髻鯊。 我也在駱駝背上度過 59 天, 從查德走到廷巴克圖。 我也坐過狗拉雪橇到磁北極。 所以,我們很忙。 我想叫這個為「掛點前無事可做」。 (笑聲)
And with this rationale, I look at these days and I think, I'm not retired. I don't feel retired at all. And so I'm writing a new book. We started three new companies in the last two years. I'm now working on getting this school system for free out into the world, and I've found, very interestingly enough, that nobody wants it for free. And so I've been trying for 10 years to get the public system to take over this school rationale, much as the public schools we have, which has instead of 43 out of 100, as their rating, as their grades, has 91 out of 100. But for free, nobody wants it. So maybe we'll start charging for it and then it will go somewhere. But getting this out is one of the things we want to do.
帶著這個意念, 我看著我的臨終日然後想, 我還沒退休,我也不想退休。 所以我要寫本新書。 我們在過去兩年成立了三家新公司。 我現在要致力於這個學校系統, 並免費讓全世界學習。 但我發現,夠有意思了, 沒有人想要免費的。 所以我已經試了 10 年, 想讓公立學校系統能接管 這個學校的基本概念, 就像我們自己的公立學校, 他們的評分, 他們的成績只有 43 分, 我們卻得到 91 分。 但是沒有人要免費的東西。 所以我們大概要開始收費, 這個概念才會傳開來。 但想讓這個觀念傳播出去 是我們很想做的事。
And I think what this leaves us as a message for all of you, I think is a little bit like this: We've all learned how to go on Sunday night to email and work from home. But very few of us have learned how to go to the movies on Monday afternoon. And if we're looking for wisdom, we need to learn to do that as well. And so, what we've done all of these years is very simple, is use the little tool, which is ask three whys in a row. Because the first why you always have a good answer for. The second why, it starts getting difficult. By the third why, you don't really know why you're doing what you're doing. What I want to leave you with is the seed and the thought that maybe if you do this, you will come to the question, what for? What am I doing this for? And hopefully, as a result of that, and over time, I hope that with this, and that's what I'm wishing you, you'll have a much wiser future. Thank you very much. (Applause)
我想這也留給在座各位一個課題, 我想有點像這樣: 我們都學到怎麼在星期天晚上 在家裡看電郵工作。 但很少有人學到 怎麼在星期一下午去看電影。 如果我們要尋求智慧, 我們也必須知道怎麼做那個。 所以,我們這幾年做的 其實非常簡單, 就是用個小工具, 連續問三次為什麼。 因為第一個為什麼 你總是有個很好的答案。 第二個為什麼就開始有點難了。 到了第三個為什麼, 你已經搞不清楚到底所做為何了。 我想留給大家的是種子也是想法, 也許如果你做了這個, 你也會有這樣的疑問,為什麼? 我為什麼要做這件事? 但願,因為那個的結果, 隨著時間, 我希望,藉著這件事, 我祝福你們 都有更明智的未來。 謝謝。 (掌聲)
Chris Anderson: So Ricardo, you're kind of crazy. (Laughter) To many people, this seems crazy. And yet so deeply wise, also. The pieces I'm trying to put together are this: Your ideas are so radical. How, in business, for example, these ideas have been out for a while, probably the percentage of businesses that have taken some of them is still quite low. Are there any times you've seen some big company take on one of your ideas and you've gone, "Yes!"?
克里斯·安德森: 所以李卡多,你有點怪吧? (笑聲) 對許多人而言,這似乎很怪。 卻有著深刻的智慧。 我試著整理出這樣的結論: 你的想法非常激進。 舉例來說,為何在商業界, 這些想法已經出現一陣子了, 但是願意多少採用一些的公司 百分比仍然很低。 你是否曾經看過某些大公司 採用你的某些想法, 然後你很開心說太棒了?
Ricardo Semler: It happens. It happened about two weeks ago with Richard Branson, with his people saying, oh, I don't want to control your holidays anymore, or Netflix does a little bit of this and that, but I don't think it's very important. I'd like to see it happen maybe a little bit in a bit of a missionary zeal, but that's a very personal one. But the fact is that it takes a leap of faith about losing control. And almost nobody who is in control is ready to take leaps of faith. It will have to come from kids and other people who are starting companies in a different way.
李卡多·賽姆勒: 有,大約兩星期前才發生。 理察·布蘭森和他的員工 兩星期前對我說過, 喔,我不想再管你們 什麼時候放假了, 網路串流媒體播放公司 Netflix 可能這裡學一點那裡學一點, 但我不認為那舉足輕重。 我想看到它像傳教般的熱情展現, 但傳教是非常個人的決定。 但其實放棄控制權 需要很大的信心。 幾乎沒有任何有控制權的人 已經準備好要跨出這信心的一步。 這需要從小孩 及用不同方法創業開公司的人開始。
CA: So that's the key thing? From your point of view the evidence is there, in the business point of view this works, but people just don't have the courage to -- (Whoosh)
克:所以那是關鍵? 從你的觀點來看證據很明顯, 從商業觀點看這也能用, 但是大家就是沒有勇氣去… (咻)
RS: They don't even have the incentive. You're running a company with a 90-day mandate. It's a quarterly report. If you're not good in 90 days, you're out. So you say, "Here's a great program that, in less than one generation --" And the guy says, "Get out of here." So this is the problem. (Laughter)
李:他們甚至沒有動機。 你經營公司有 90 天的強制要求, 就是季度報告。 如果 90 天你還賺不了,就出局了。 所以你說,「這有個很好的方案, 在不到一代的時間就……」 然後這傢伙說,「滾蛋!」 所以這就是問題所在。 (笑聲)
CA: What you're trying to do in education seems to me incredibly profound. Everyone is bothered about their country's education system. No one thinks that we've caught up yet to a world where there's Google and all these technological options. So you've got actual evidence now that the kids so far going through your system, there's a dramatic increase in performance. How do we help you move these ideas forward?
克:你在教育方面的嘗試 對我來說似乎很深奧。 每個人都對自己 國家的教育體系憂心。 還沒有人想到我們已經跟不上 有 Google 及所有科技方法的世界。 所以你現在有確切的證據, 到目前為止在你系統裡的孩子 表現有極大的進步。 我們要如何幫你推行這些理念?
RS: I think it's that problem of ideas whose time has come. And I've never been very evangelical about these things. We put it out there. Suddenly, you find people -- there's a group in Japan, which scares me very much, which is called the Semlerists, and they have 120 companies. They've invited me. I've always been scared to go. And there is a group in Holland that has 600 small, Dutch companies. It's something that will flourish on its own. Part of it will be wrong, and it doesn't matter. This will find its own place. And I'm afraid of the other one, which says, this is so good you've got to do this. Let's set up a system and put lots of money into it and then people will do it no matter what.
李:我想這只是時間的問題。 我從不曾非常狂熱地 宣傳這些理念。 東西就在那裡。 突然你發現大家── 在日本有個團體把我嚇壞了, 叫做塞姆勒主義者, 他們有 120 家公司。 他們邀請我。 我一直好害怕去那裡。 還有一個集團在荷蘭 有 600 間荷蘭小公司。 這是會自己成長茁壯的東西。 有一部分可能會長錯, 但那無關緊要。 它會找到屬於自己的地方。 我倒是很怕另一個想法,就是, 這太棒了你一定要做這個。 建立一套系統把錢投進去, 然後大家無論如何都要做它。
CA: So you have asked extraordinary questions your whole life. It seems to me that's the fuel that's driven a lot of this. Do you have any other questions for us, for TED, for this group here?
克:所以你一生都在問非凡的問題。 在我看來那就是推動這些的動力。 你有其他的問題要問 我們在 TED 的這群人嗎?
RS: I always come back to variations of the question that my son asked me when he was three. We were sitting in a jacuzzi, and he said, "Dad, why do we exist?" There is no other question. Nobody has any other question. We have variations of this one question, from three onwards. So when you spend time in a company, in a bureaucracy, in an organization and you're saying, boy -- how many people do you know who on their death beds said, boy, I wish I had spent more time at the office? So there's a whole thing of having the courage now -- not in a week, not in two months, not when you find out you have something -- to say, no, what am I doing this for? Stop everything. Let me do something else. And it will be okay, it will be much better than what you're doing, if you're stuck in a process.
李:我一直在想 同一個問題的不同版本。 那是我兒子在三歲時問我的。 我們那時坐在按摩浴缸裡, 他說:「爸爸,我們為什麼存在?」 沒有別的問題了。 沒有人有任何其他問題。 我們從三歲起就對這個問題 有各種不同的問法, 所以當你在某間公司、 在某個官僚機構、某個組織, 你說,唉! 你認識多少人在臨終前說, 我真希望我在辦公室多待點時間? 所以整件事就是當下就要有勇氣, 不是下星期,也不是兩個月後, 不是在你發現你生了什麼病之後, 才說,我到底在這裡做什麼? 現在就停止一切。 讓我做點別的事。 沒關係的。 就算你卡住了, 還是會比你現在手邊做的更好。 克:我真的覺得 以這樣結束 TED 倒數第二天
CA: So that strikes me as a profound and quite beautiful way to end this penultimate day of TED. Ricardo Semler, thank you so much. RS: Thank you so much.
真是深奧又美好。 李卡多·賽姆勒,謝謝! 李:謝謝! (掌聲)
(Applause)