In Oxford in the 1950s, there was a fantastic doctor, who was very unusual, named Alice Stewart.
在20世纪50年代的牛津，有一位很优秀、不寻常的医生，她叫Alice Stewart。
And Alice was unusual partly because, of course, she was a woman, which was pretty rare in the 1950s.
Alice很不寻常，因为她是个女的医生，这在20世纪50年代很罕见。
And she was brilliant, she was one of the, at the time, the youngest Fellow to be elected to the Royal College of Physicians.
她非常厉害，是当时“皇家医师学院”最年轻的学员之一。
She was unusual too because she continued to work after she got married, after she had kids,
她的不寻常还在于她在结婚生子后还继续工作，
and even after she got divorced and was a single parent, she continued her medical work.
甚至当她离婚成为单亲妈妈之后，她仍继续做她的医学工作。
And she was unusual because she was really interested in a new science,
她的不寻常还因为她对一门新科学十分感兴趣，
the emerging field of epidemiology, the study of patterns in disease.
也就是新兴的流行病学，专门研究疾病的型态。
But like every scientist, she appreciated that to make her mark, what she needed to do was find a hard problem and solve it.
但跟每个科学家一样，她了解若要出名，她需要找到难题然后解决它。
The hard problem that Alice chose was the rising incidence of childhood cancers.
Alice当时选择的难题是增加的儿童癌症发生率。
Most disease is correlated with poverty, but in the case of childhood cancers,
大多数疾病都跟贫穷有关，不过就儿童癌症的例子来说，
the children who were dying seemed mostly to come from affluent families.
这些垂死的孩子似乎大多数来自富裕家庭。
So, what, she wanted to know, could explain this anomaly?
所以她想知道怎么才能解释这个异常现象？
Now, Alice had trouble getting funding for her research.
当时，Alice很难为她的研究筹备到资金。
In the end, she got just 1,000 pounds from the Lady Tata Memorial prize.
最后，她只从Lady Tata纪念奖得到1000英镑。
And that meant she knew she only had one shot at collecting her data.
她知道她只有一次机会可以搜集资料。
Now, she had no idea what to look for.
但她完全不知道该寻找什么。
This really was a needle in a haystack sort of search, so she asked everything she could think of.
这研究就像大海捞针一样，因此她问了所有她能想到的问题。
Had the children eaten boiled sweets? Had they consumed colored drinks? Did they eat fish and chips?
这些孩子有没有吃煮沸的甜食？他们有没有喝有颜色饮料？他们是不是吃了炸鱼和薯条了？
Did they have indoor or outdoor plumbing? What time of life had they started school?
他们生活环境中是否有户内或者户外的管线装置？他们什么时候开始上学的？
And when her carbon copied questionnaire started to come back,
而当她开始收回用碳粉印制成的问卷时，
one thing and one thing only jumped out with the statistical clarity of a kind that most scientists can only dream of.
一个，只有一个明确的统计数据显现出来，这是大多数科学家只能幻想的。
By a rate of two to one, the children who had died had had mothers who had been X-rayed when pregnant.
这些死亡的孩子中，他们的母亲在怀孕的时候做过X光检查的人数是没做过的两倍。
Now that finding flew in the face of conventional wisdom.
这个发现挑战了传统看法。
Conventional wisdom held that everything was safe up to a point, a threshold.
传统看法是，任何事情在一种程度上都是安全的，有一个门槛。
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.
这对于传统看法是很大的冲击，你要知道当代的酷炫新科技，也就是X光机器，可是非常热门的。
And it flew in the face of doctors' idea of themselves, which was as people who helped patients, they didn't harm them.
而这也挑战医生对自己的想法，因为他们是要帮助病人，而不是伤害他们。
Nevertheless, Alice Stewart rushed to publish her preliminary findings in The Lancet in 1956.
尽管如此，Alice Stewart急切地在1956年的《柳叶刀》杂志中发表了她的初步发现。
People got very excited, there was talk of the Nobel Prize,
人们都很兴奋，还有提到得诺贝尔奖的可能性，
and Alice really was in a big hurry to try to study all the cases of childhood cancer she could find before they disappeared.
Alice也很着急，试着在案例消失之前，研究所有她能找到的儿童癌症病例。
In fact, she need not have hurried. It was fully 25 years before the British and medical
事实上，她不需要着急。过了整整25年之后，
British and American medical establishments abandoned the practice of X-raying pregnant women.
英国和美国的医疗机构，禁止让怀孕女人照X光。
The data was out there, it was open, it was freely available, but nobody wanted to know.
数据都存在，开放且唾手可得，但是没人想知道。
A child a week was dying, but nothing changed. Openness alone can't drive change.
每周都有一个小孩要死掉，但什么都没发生。单单的开放性是无法带来改变的。
So for 25 years Alice Stewart had a very big fight on her hands.
25年来，Alice Stewart一直在奋斗。
So, how did she know that she was right? Well, she had a fantastic model for thinking.
所以她怎么知道她当时是对的？她有一个极佳的思考模式。
She worked with a statistician named George Kneale, and George was pretty much everything that Alice wasn't.
她当时与一位名叫George Kneale的统计学家合作，而George刚好与Alice互补。
So, Alice was very outgoing and sociable, and George was a recluse.
Alice非常和善且擅交际，而George是个隐居者。
Alice was very warm, very empathetic with her patients. George frankly preferred numbers to people.
Alice很热情，用同理心和她的病人互动。而George则比起人类更喜欢数字。
But he said this fantastic thing about their working relationship.
不过他提到了这件有关他们工作关系最棒的事。
He said, "My job is to prove Dr. Stewart wrong." He actively sought disconfirmation.
他说：“我的工作就是证明Stewart博士是错的。”他积极地寻找错误的证明。
Different ways of looking at her models, at her statistics, different ways of crunching the data in order to disprove her.
以不同方式研究她的模型、她的数据以及不同方式分析数据，来证明她是错的。
He saw his job as creating conflict around her theories.
他把他自己的工作当作为Alice的理论创造矛盾。
Because it was only by not being able to prove that she was wrong,
因为只有当他无法证明Alice是错的时候，
that George could give Alice the confidence she needed to know that she was right.
George就可以给Alice所需要的自信，让她知道她是正确的。
It's a fantastic model of collaboration -- thinking partners who aren't echo chambers.
这是完美的合作的模式--思考伙伴不当你的回声虫。
I wonder how many of us have, or dare to have, such collaborators.
我想知道有多少人有过，或者敢有这样的合作伙伴。
Alice and George were very good at conflict. They saw it as thinking.
Alice和George擅长处理矛盾。他们认为这就是思考。
So what does that kind of constructive conflict require?
那么这种建设性的矛盾需要什么呢？
Well, first of all, it requires that we find people who are very different from ourselves.
首先，它需要我们去找到与我们大不相同的人们。
That means we have to resist the neurobiological drive, which means that we really prefer people mostly like ourselves,
这意味着我们必须抗拒神经生物学的驱使，也就是我们喜欢像我们的人们，
and it means we have to seek out people with different backgrounds, different disciplines,
而我们必须寻找有不同背景，不同教养，
different ways of thinking and different experience, and find ways to engage with them.
不同思考方法和不同经验的人们，而且去想办法与他们交流。

That requires a lot of patience and a lot of energy.
这需要很多耐心和精力。
And the more I've thought about this, the more I think, really, that that's a kind of love.
当我思考得更深层，我更认为这真的是一种爱。
Because you simply won't commit that kind of energy and time if you don't really care.
因为如果你不在乎的话，你不可能付出这般的能量。
And it also means that we have to be prepared to change our minds.
这也意味着我们必须准备去改变我们的想法。
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.
Alice的女儿告诉我，每次Alice和一个同事科学家正面交锋时，他们让她一次又一次的思考。
"My mother," she said, "My mother didn't enjoy a fight, but she was really good at them."
“我的母亲，”她说，“我的母亲不喜欢争吵，但是她很擅长。”
So it's one thing to do that in a one-to-one relationship.
所以这是在一对一的关系中要做的事。
But it strikes me that the biggest problems we face, many of the biggest disasters that we've experienced,
但这使我想到那些我们面对的最大难题，很多我们经历过的最严重灾难，
mostly haven't come from individuals, they've come from organizations, some of them bigger than countries,
大多都不是由个人引起的，而是从组织中来的，当中有些还比国家还大，
many of them capable of affecting hundreds, thousands, even millions of lives.
大多数都有影响上百人，上千人，甚至上百万人生命的能力。
So how do organizations think? Well, for the most part, they don't.
那么这些组织是怎么想的呢？大多数情况下，他们不思考。
And that isn't because they don't want to, it's really because they can't.
这不是因为他们不想，而是因为他们不能。
And they can't because the people inside of them are too afraid of conflict.
他们不能是因为在组织里的人太害怕冲突。
In surveys of European and American executives,
在对欧洲和美国经理人所作的调查中，
fully 85 percent of them acknowledged that they had issues or concerns at work that they were afraid to raise.
当中有85%的人承认他们害怕提出一些工作上的话题和担忧。
Afraid of the conflict that that would provoke,
对可能挑起的冲突有恐惧，
afraid to get embroiled in arguments that they did not know how to manage, and felt that they were bound to lose.
害怕被卷入他们不知道该怎么处理的争论中，而且感到他们肯定会输。
Eighty-five percent is a really big number.
85%可是很大的数字。
It means that organizations mostly can't do what George and Alice so triumphantly did.
这意味着大多数组织没法做George和Alice成功做到的事情。
They can't think together. And it means that people like many of us, who have run organizations,
他们不能一起思考。而这代表着许多跟我们一样带领组织的人，
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.
都尽我们能力找寻最好的人，但大多数无法获得他们最好的一面。
So how do we develop the skills that we need? Because it does take skill and practice, too.
那么我们要如何培养所需要的技巧呢？因为这的确需要技巧和练习。
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.
如果我们要不惧怕冲突的话，我们必须把它视为思考，然后我们必须对此非常擅长。
So, recently, I worked with an executive named Joe, and Joe worked for a medical device company.
因此，最近我在和一个叫Joe的管理者合作，Joe在一家医疗设备公司工作。
And Joe was very worried about the device that he was working on.
Joe非常担心他正在操作的这台设备。
He thought that it was too complicated and he thought that its complexity created margins of error that could really hurt people.
他觉得这机器实在太复杂了，以至于它可能会产生一些错误去伤害人们。
He was afraid of doing damage to the patients he was trying to help.
他很害怕去伤害那些他想帮助的病人。
But when he looked around his organization, nobody else seemed to be at all worried.
但当他看了组织周遭的人，似乎没有人会担心。
So, he didn't really want to say anything. After all, maybe they knew something he didn't.
所以他不想把自己的想法说出来。毕竟其他人可能知道他不知道的东西。
Maybe he'd look stupid. But he kept worrying about it
或许他会看起来很愚蠢。但是他一直在担心，
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.
他非常担心，他觉得唯一可以做的事情就是辞掉他热爱的工作。
In the end, Joe and I found a way for him to raise his concerns.
最后，Joe和我找到一个提出他担忧的方法。
And what happened then is what almost always happens in this situation.
接着发生的是这种情况中总是在发生的事。
It turned out everybody had exactly the same questions and doubts.
结果是所有人都有着相同的问题和怀疑。
So now Joe had allies. They could think together.
所以现在Joe有了伙伴，他们可以一起思考。
And yes, there was a lot of conflict and debate and argument,
是的，这其中有很多的冲突、辩论和争执，
but that allowed everyone around the table to be creative, to solve the problem, and to change the device.
不过这使得所有相关的人有创造力，能解决问题并改变这台设备。
Joe was what a lot of people might think of as a whistle-blower, except that like almost all whistle-blowers,
Joe有点像是大多数人认为的告密者，但不像大多数的告密者，
he wasn't a crank at all, he was passionately devoted to the organization and the higher purposes that that organization served.
他不是在异想天开，他激情地为组织付出，并为组织的目标所努力。
But he had been so afraid of conflict, until finally he became more afraid of the silence.
不过他太过于惧怕冲突，直到最后他对沉默更为害怕。
And when he dared to speak, he discovered much more inside himself and much more give in the system than he had ever imagined.
当他敢说出口的时候，他发现更深层的自己，以及他付出比想象中更多的贡献到系统中。
And his colleagues don't think of him as a crank. They think of him as a leader.
而且他的同事不认为他的想法是天方夜谭。他们视他为领导者。
So, how do we have these conversations more easily and more often?
所以我们要如何简单且经常地进行这些对话呢？
Well, the University of Delft requires that its PhD students have to submit five statements that they're prepared to defend.
代尔夫特大学要求所有的博士班学生提交他们已经准备好可以辩护的五个陈述。
It doesn't really matter what the statements are about,
这些陈述的内容是什么无所谓，
what matters is that the candidates are willing and able to stand up to authority.
重要的是这些候选人愿意而且有能力挑战权威。
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.
我认为这是一个绝佳的系统，不过我觉得留给博士候选人来做，人实在太少了，而且时机太晚了。
I think we need to be teaching these skills to kids and adults at every stage of their development,
我认为我们应该在小孩和大人成长的每个阶段都教授这些技巧，
if we want to have thinking organizations and a thinking society.
如果我们想要拥有能够思考的组织和能思考的社会。
The fact is that most of the biggest catastrophes that we've witnessed rarely come from information that is secret or hidden.
事实是多数我们曾经见证过的最大的灾难，很少是从一些秘密或者隐藏的信息中产生。
It comes from information that is freely available and out there, but that we are willfully blind to,
都是从那些公开可取得的信息中而来的，不过我们蓄意忽略了，
because we can't handle, don't want to handle, the conflict that it provokes.
因为我们不能也不想去处理，会挑起的各种冲突。
But when we dare to break that silence, or when we dare to see, and we create conflict,
但是当我们敢打破沉默，或者我们敢于看见并且制造冲突，
we enable ourselves and the people around us to do our very best thinking.
我们就能让自己和周围的人进行最有效的思考。
Open information is fantastic, open networks are essential.
公开信息是很棒的，公开的网络很关键。
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.
但是直到我们发挥技能、习惯、天赋以及道德上的勇气去利用它，事实才会让我们自由。
Openness isn't the end. It's the beginning.
公开并不是结束。它只是开始。