这个视频发布于2014年，我今天才看到。我曾一直问自己活着的意义到底是什么，在看到这个标题时我毫不犹豫的点了进去。然而看完之后我才发现，与其向他人寻求答案，不如坚持自己的信仰走下去，哪怕你理念前卫而不被世人接受，你也要坚持自己想做的。
课程简介：Ricardo Semler是一位非常成功,又很激进企业家。他这次在TED演讲中和大家分享他是如何以一种看似无序的方式管理自己的公司，他是如何看待人生，以及他又是如何推进一项新的教育改革的。其实这所有一切都仅是为了回答一个问题：我们活着的意义是什么？
每周一和周四，我都要学习如何死去，我把它们称作我的终结日。我妻子费尔南达不喜欢这个词，但是我的家族中很多人都死于黑色素瘤癌，我的父母和祖父母也都患有这种病。我不由得想，总有一天我会去见医生，他/她看着我的检验结果说：“里卡多，情况看起来不太好。你的生命只剩下半年到一年的时间了。”
如果是你就会开始思考要如何利用这余下的时间。你通常会说：“我得花更多的时间在孩子身上。我要去这些地方，我要翻山越岭，走南闯北，我要完成之前一直没做成的事。”不过当然，我们都知道这些都会成为苦乐参半的回忆。这很难做到。你可能会把大量的时间拿来痛哭一场。于是我决定，要做点别的事。
每个周一和周四，我会好好利用我的终结日。如果我得到了这个（不幸的）消息，我就会在那些天里去完成我想做的事。当你想到工作的反义词，我们在很多时候会想到“休闲”。你会说，噢，我需要一些闲暇时间，等等。不过实际上，休闲是个非常累人的过程。你要去玩高尔夫球和网球，约见朋友，要去吃午饭，赶着去看电影。我们要做的事多得让人应接不暇。其实工作的反义词是“无所事事”。不过很少有人知道要怎么才能做到无所事事。你可以大致看一下我们是如何分配这一生的，你会发现存在一些周期，当我们有很多钱的时候，我们没有什么时间。当我们有时间的时候，却没什么钱，身体也出了状况。
于是在过去的三十年中，我们一直在以运营公司的方式思考这个问题。这是个结构复杂的公司，拥有几千名雇员，几亿美元的火箭燃料推进系统的生意，在巴西运营着4000台ATM机，为几万人准备收入税材料。所以这不是一个简单的生意。
我们看着这一切说，我们不如把业务下放给这些员工吧，让他们自己运营一个公司，我们把董事会所有那些条条框框的部分去掉，比如你要什么时间来，你要如何打扮，你要如何参加会议，你要说些什么，你不能说什么，再看看接下来会如何。我们30年前就开始这样做了，开始着手处理这个事情。于是我们说，看吧，退休，这就是我们如何分配生命的问题。与其等到82岁的时候再去登山，你为什么不下周就动身呢？我们一般会这样做，我们会以你工资10%的价格把你的周三返卖给你。这样一来，如果你想要成为一个小提琴家，但这个愿望还没有实现，你就可以在周三去做。
我们认为，真正对这个项目感兴趣的都会是些资历更老的人。当然，第一批参与这个项目的人的平均年龄是29岁。我们开始了观察，我们决定，要以一种不同的方式来运作。于是我们开始这样说，为什么我们想要知道你什么时间去工作，什么时间下班之类的信息？我们难道不能以此为交换签署一个合同，从你那里购买点什么，比如一些工作？我们为什么要建立这么多总部？这不是一个关于我们要显摆，看上去高大上？但我们是因为这个才让你们花2个小时从城那头跑过来干活儿的吗？
于是我们开始一个接一个的提问。我们会这样描述它：一：我们怎样招聘？我们会出去尝试招募人们，跟他们说，看，当你来找我们，我们并不是进行几次面试，然后你就需要一辈子为我们效力。这不是我们利用余下生命的方式。那么，来参加面试吧。任何对面试感兴趣的人，都会出现。然后我们会看到从由此产生的直觉之外能获得什么，而不只是通过填写表格来判断你是不是最佳人选。然后再让你回来。花一个下午，一整天，跟任何你想找的人谈话。确定我们是你想找的对象，别被我们广告里的写的破玩意儿忽悠了。
慢慢的我们进入了一个过程，我们会这样说，我们不想让任何还没有被未来的下属面试和肯定的人成为公司的领导。每半年，每个人都要以领导的身份接受匿名评估。这决定了他们是否应该继续在领导层任职，多数情况下都是场景面试，这个你们应该了解。如果他们得不到百分之七八十的肯定，他们就得走人，这可能就是我已经从CEO的位子上下来了10多年的原因。过了一段时间，我们开始问其他的问题。
我们会说，为什么员工不能自己定薪水？他们需要知道什么？你只需要知道3件事：员工在公司内部创造了多少价值，员工在别的地方的类似公司创造了多少价值，以及整体上我们付出了多少努力才能负担得起这些薪水？那么我们提供给人们这三样信息。于是在公司的就餐区，我们设立了一台计算机，你可以进去查询什么人花了多少钱，有了多少收入，他们创造了多少利润，公司盈利了多少，还有多少利润，等等。这是在25年以前。
当人们开始接触这些信息，我们会说，我们对你们的花费报告没有兴趣，不想知道你们花了多少天休假，也不想知道你们在哪工作。我们在某个时期在一个城镇有14个不同的办公室，我们会说，去那个离你家最近，离你今天要见的客户最近的地方上班。不要告诉我们你在哪。还有，即便我们有几千个雇员，5000人左右，我们的HR部门只有2个人，谢天谢地其中一个已经退休了。
那么我们问的问题就是，我们要怎么关心员工呢？员工是我们拥有的一切。我们无法设立一个部门专门照顾员工们的日常事务。于是当我们开始发现这种方式能够奏效，我们就开始寻找——我觉得这是我在公司时的终结日里重点要探索的东西，就是说，我们要怎样让公司以更睿智的方式运作？我们已经走过了革命时代，工业革命，信息时代，知识时代，但是我们从未走近过睿智时代。我们要如何更智慧的进行设计和组织活动？比方说，有很多次，最聪明或者最明智的决定并不奏效。我们就会说，我们来做这样一个约定：你每周要售出57个器件。如果你在周三前卖完，就赶紧去休假吧。不要给我们制造问题，不管是在制造上还是应用上，否则我们就得买新的公司，我们就得把我们的竞争对手买下来，就因为你卖了太多器件，我们就得忙到不可开交。所以赶紧去休假吧，周一再回来继续干活儿。
所以这个过程就是寻找智慧。在这个过程中，我们当然想让员工了解每件事，我们想要在一切行动中都做到真正的民主。所以我们的董事会还有2个具有相同选举权的空位，先过来应征的2个人就能得到。于是我们的董事会上出现了清洁工大妈在投票，其他的都是西装革履的权高位重之人。事实就是他们让我们始终保持坦诚。
这个过程，当我们开始关注来应聘的人，我们会说，等一下，来找我们的人会说，我要坐在哪儿等呢？我要怎么工作？工作5年之后我的职业发展是什么样子？我们看着这种情况说，我们得早点行动。我们要从哪儿开始呢？我们说，哦，幼儿园看起来是个不错的地儿。
于是我们设立了一个基金，到目前为止，在11年内已经开设了3所学校，在那里我们开始问同样的问题，你们要如何重新设计出更睿智的学校？总结一下可以这么说，我们需要更新师资队伍，我们需要校长做更多的事情。但事实是我们在教育上做的事情已经完全过时了。教师的角色也已经完全过时了。上完数学课，去上生物课，再了解下14世纪的法国，这简直太傻了。于是我们开始想，新式的学校应该是什么样子呢？我们把大家聚在一起，他们当中包括热爱教育的人们，像保罗弗雷勒（巴西教育家，哲学家）这样的人，还有巴西的教育部长们，我们问，如果我们要彻底重新建立一所学校，应该是一所什么样的学校呢？
于是我们创立了这么一类学校，叫做Lumiar，其中一所是公立学校，Lumiar的口号是这样的：我们要把教师的角色分成两部分。其中一部分我们叫他家庭教师。一个家庭教师，古希腊语称作"paideia“：也就是照看孩子的人。主要负责家里杂事，他们生命中的重要时刻，等等。但是不要教课，因为你知道的那点儿东西跟谷歌比起来根本不算什么，我们也不想知道。你自己留着就好了。
现在，我们主要招募的是具备如下两个条件的人：有热情，并且具备专业能力，不过未必要跟他们从事的职业相关。我们雇佣年长一些的公民，他们占据了25%的人口，具备其他人不具备的智慧。于是我们邀请他们来到学校，跟他们说，教会这些孩子你们所信仰的东西。于是我们的小提琴家在教授数学。在很多事情上我们都会说，不要再担心教学材料了。我们大概有针对2-17岁年龄的10种绝佳的设想。例如，作为人类，我们要如何定位自己？于是就有了一个教授数学和物理等学科的地方。我们要如何表达自己的想法和感受？于是就有了一个教授音乐和文学的地方，等等，还有语法。
我们还做了一些几乎所有人都忘记了的事，这些可能是生命中最重要的事。生命中最重要的一些事，我们却一无所知。我们完全不了解爱，完全不了解死亡，我们完全不知道自己为什么会在这里。所以我们需要学校提供一些思路告诉我们每一件我们不知道的事。那就是我们工作的主要部分。
过去的这些年，我们开始涉足其他领域。我们会问，为什么我们需要斥责孩子们，告诉他们坐下，过来，做那个，等等。我们决定让孩子们做一件我们称之为周期的事，也就是每周会面一次。我们对他们说，你们自己制定规则，然后自己来决定你们要怎么做。那么你们能每周想出一个点子吗？当然，花一周的时间试试看。他们想到了跟我们制定的规则一样的规矩，只不过这是他们自己的点子。然后他们就有权力了，也就是说他们能够让孩子们停课甚至把他们开除，这样一来就不是我们在运营学校，他们才是真正做决定的人。
然后，用同样的方式，我们保留了一个数码马赛克，因为这不是构成论法或者蒙特梭利（意大利女医师及教育家）之类的教育法。我们的做法能够以600块马赛克的形式保留巴西的教育课程，希望这些孩子在17岁前都能够接触到。我们一直在追踪他们的进度，我们知道他们表现的如何，我们会说，你现在对这个不太感兴趣，再等一年看看。这些孩子被划分成了很多组，但是并不以年龄为划分标准，于是6岁的孩子可以跟一个11岁的孩子上同样的课，这就消除了所有的帮派和团体，通常这些现象在普通的学校都很常见。我们有0到100%的评分制度，每隔几个小时他们自己就用应用软件给自己打分。直到我们认为他们已经掌握了我们所要求的37%左右的技能，我们就会把他们推到社会上去，因为他们已经掌握了足够的知识技能。我们提供的的课程就是看世界杯足球赛，或者拼装一辆自行车。学生们一般都会注册一个45天的自行车组装课。尝试在不知道pi的值是3.1416的情况下组装一辆自行车。你们做不到吧。你们都试一下用3.1416做点什么。你们应该都想不出来了。也就是说这种能力已经丧失了，这也正是我们在学校里教的，也就说在我们的学校里寻找智慧。
这就把我们带回了这幅蓝图，以及我们生活的这种分布状态。当我想到这个问题，我募集了很多钱。你们仔细想想之后就会说，现在是时候回馈社会了——不过，如果你想要回馈，那就说明你已经拿的太多了。我总是会想到沃伦·巴菲特（美国投资家，“股神”）某天醒来，发现他拥有的资产比之前想象的还要多300亿美元。他看着这个数字说道，我要拿这些钱干点什么呢？他说，我得把它给真正需要的人。我要把它给比尔·盖茨。我在纽约的财务顾问，他说，看，你太傻了，如果你用钱生钱，而不是把它们捐出去，你现在就会拥有相当于之前4.1倍的资产了。不过我还是更喜欢把它们捐出去。
我以前在麻省理工给MBA学生们上过课，有一天我路过Mount Auburn公墓。这片坐落在剑桥镇的公墓很漂亮。我在公墓里走来走去。那天是我的生日，我在思考。第一次，我看到了这些墓碑，还有这些建立了丰功伟绩的出色的人们，我就在想，我想要别人因为什么记住我呢？我又在墓地里绕了一圈，第二次，我又想到了一个问题，对我更有帮助，为什么我要让人们记住我呢？我觉得是这种想法把我带去了不同的地方。在我50岁的时候，我和妻子费尔南德花了一个下午，我们有一个大火坑，我把自己过去的所有成就全都付之一炬了。有一本被译成了38种语言的书，成百上千的文章和DVD，几乎所有手边的东西。这就产生了两个结果。一个是解放了我们的5个孩子，他们不需要继承我们的家业，生活在我们的阴影中——他们不会知道我做了什么。这很好。我也不会把他们带去什么地方，跟他们说，有一天这一切都会是你们的。这五个孩子一无所知，这很好。
第二个就是，我把自己从过去的成就之类的东西中解放了出来。我可以自由的利用那些终结日做些新鲜事儿，从零开始做决定。一些人会说，噢，现在你有了这些终结日里的时间，可以走出去做任何事。不是的，我们去过了海滩，我们去了萨摩亚群岛，马尔代夫，和莫桑比克，这些都做过了。我爬过了喜马拉雅的山峰。我也下潜到过60米的深海，见到了锤头鲨。我花了59天的时间骑着骆驼从乍得（中非国家）到了延巴克图（西非马里共和国城市）。我坐着雪橇犬拉的爬犁到过北磁极。我们一直很忙。我把这叫做空清单。
带着这种逻辑，我回顾这些日子，我就想，我还没退休呢。我一点也没觉得自己已经退休了。于是我又开始写一本新书。我们在过去的两年里又开设了3个新公司。我现在正在努力让这种教育系统面向全世界免费开放，我还发现一个非常有趣的现象，没有人希望免费的接受这种教育。我已经尝试了10年,想让公共系统接受这种教育理念，比如让我们目前的公立学校，不再使用43/100的评分制度，而是使用91/100的制度。但是如果免费，没有人想要。所以可能我们要开始收点钱，慢慢的人们就会接受它。但是让这个办法奏效是我们的目的之一。
我觉得这就给我们所有人留下了一个信息，我觉得可以这样理解：我们都知道如何在周日晚上在家里收发邮件和工作。但是我们当中很少有人知道如何在周一下午去看电影。如果我们在寻找智慧，我们就也需要知道如何做到这一点。所以我们这些年做的事情其实很简单，比如利用一些小技巧，也就是同时问三个为什么。因为第一个问题你总是有一个很好的答案。第二个问题，就有点难了。到了第三个问题，你根本不知道为何你要做现在正在做的事。我想让这种想法在你们的头脑中扎根，可能如果你们这么做了，会遇到一个问题，为什么要做这个呢？我现在做的事是为了什么呢？希望随着时间过去，可以得到这样的结果，我希望，也是对你们的期待，你们会有一个更睿智的未来。谢谢大家。
Chris Anderson（以下称CA）:那么里卡多，您还真是疯狂啊。对于很多人来说，这看起来很疯狂。不过也蕴藏了很深的智慧。我想试着总结一下：您的理念非常的前卫。比如说，在商业中，这些理念一直被排斥在外，可能采用这些理念的公司比例还是非常低的。有没有哪次你见到某个大公司采纳了您的某个理念，而您也接受了呢？
Ricardo Semier（以下称RS）：这种情况发生过，大概两周前吧，理查德·布兰森（英国维珍集团执行长）的人说，哦，我再也不想过问你的假期了，或者Netflix（美国最大的在线DVD租赁商）也做了一些类似的事情，不过我不觉得这很重要。我希望看到它以类似传教的形式被传播，不过这只是我个人的观点。不过事实是它很快就会成为带有失控风险的一种信念飞跃。几乎没有哪个有控制力的人会接受信念的飞跃。它会首先在孩子，或者以不同方式在创业者身上发生。
CA：所以这就是关键所在吗？依据您的观点，证据就在那里，从一个商业的观点来看这是可行的，不过人们就是没有勇气去——闪电般的立刻行动。
RS：他们根本就没有动机。你正在运作一个有90天授权的公司。这是个季度报告。如果你在90天内没有好的表现，你就得出局。如果你说，”这里有个很不错的项目，只用不到一代人的时间——“对方就会说，你可以离开这儿了。”这就是问题。
CA：您在教育领域尝试做的事情在我看来具有极其深刻的意义。每个人对自己国家的教育系统都颇有微词。没人觉得我们已经步入了一个可以自由使用谷歌和各种技术的世界。您现在已经有了确切的证据，从您的教育系统中走出来的孩子们，都在能力上有了飞跃性的进步。那么我们要如何帮助您推广这种理念呢？
RS：我认为理念问题的时代已经来临了。我从来就没有觉得这些是需要传播的福音。我们就把它放在那儿。突然，你就发现人们——在日本有一群人，让我感到很不安，他们被称作塞姆勒主义者，他们拥有120所公司。他们邀请过我。我总是觉得很恐慌，不太想去。在荷兰有一个组织，有600个小型荷兰公司。它们能够自己蓬勃发展。其中一部分会出现问题，但是没关系。这一部分会自己找到立足之地。让我感到害怕的是另一部分，他们会说，这个很不错，你应该去做一下。我们来建立一个系统，投一些钱进去，然后人们无论如何都会做下去。
CA：那么您这一生已经问了很多卓越的问题。在我看来这些都是这一切发生的动力。您还有什么其他问题要问我们，或者TED，或者在座的观众吗？
RS：我总是会回想我儿子在三岁的时候问过的各种各样的问题。我们坐在按摩浴缸里，他说，”爸爸，我们为什么会存在？“没有别的问题了。也没人问过其他的问题。从三岁以后，我们就有了很多基于这同一个问题的千变万化的问题。当你花时间在公司，在政府，在某个组织，你会说，孩子——你认识多少人临终前会说，孩子，我希望把更多的时间花在办公室？所以现在有件需要你拿出勇气的事——不是一个星期，不是2个月，也不是当你突然有了什么想法——你要说，不，我做这个是为了什么呢？先停下。做点别的事情吧。一切都会好的，会比你现在做的事情要好得多，如果你在某件事情中困住了。
CA：这就让我能够以一种深刻和美妙的方式结束倒数第二天的TED讲座。里卡多·塞姆勒，非常感谢！
RS：谢谢大家。
On Mondays and Thursdays, I learn how to die. I call them my terminal days. My wife Fernandadoesn't like the term, but a lot of people in my family died of melanoma cancer and my parentsand grandparents had it. And I kept thinking, one day I could be sitting in front of a doctor wholooks at my exams and says, "Ricardo, things don't look very good. You have six months or ayear to live."
And you start thinking about what you would do with this time. And you say, "I'm going to spendmore time with the kids. I'm going to visit these places, I'm going to go up and down mountainsand places and I'm going to do all the things I didn't do when I had the time." But of course, we allknow these are very bittersweet memories we're going to have. It's very difficult to do. You spenda good part of the time crying, probably. So I said, I'm going to do something else.
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. 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, leisureis a very busy thing. You go play golf and tennis, and you meet people, and you're going forlunch, and you're late for the movies. It's a very crowded thing that we do. The opposite of workis idleness. But very few of us know what to do with idleness. When you look at the way that wedistribute our lives in general, you realize that in the periods in which we have a lot of money, wehave very little time. And then when we finally have time, we have neither the money nor thehealth.
So we started thinking about that as a company for the last 30 years. This is a complicatedcompany with thousands of employees, hundreds of millions of dollars of business that makesrocket fuel propellent systems, runs 4,000 ATMs in Brazil, does income tax preparation for dozensof thousands. So this is not a simple business.
We looked at it and we said, let's devolve to these people, let's give these people a company wherewe take away all the boarding school aspects of, this is when you arrive, this is how you dress, thisis how you go to meetings, this is what you say, this is what you don't say, and let's see what'sleft. So we started this about 30 years ago, and we started dealing with this very issue. And so wesaid, look, the retirement, the whole issue of how we distribute our graph of life. Instead of goingmountain climbing when you're 82, why don't you do it next week? And we'll do it like this, we'll sellyou back your Wednesdays for 10 percent of your salary. So now, if you were going to be aviolinist, which you probably weren't, you go and do this on Wednesday.
We thought, these are the older people who are going to be really interestedin this program. And the average age of the first people who adhered were 29, of course. And sowe started looking, and we said, we have to do things in a different way. So we started sayingthings like, why do we want to know what time you came to work, what time you left, etc.? Can'twe exchange this for a contract for buying something from you, some kind of work? Why are webuilding these headquarters? Is it not an ego issue that we want to look solid and big andimportant? But we're dragging you two hours across town because of it?
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 goingto have two or three interviews and then you're going to be married to us for life. That's not howwe do the rest of our lives. So, come have your interviews. Anyone who's interested ininterviewing, you will show up. And then we'll see what happens out of the intuition that rises fromthat, instead of just filling out the little items of whether you're the right person. And then, comeback. Spend an afternoon, spend a whole day, talk to anybody you want. Make sure we are thebride you thought we were and not all the bullshit we put into our own ads.
Slowly we went to a process where we'd say things like, we don't want anyone to be a leader in thecompany if they haven't been interviewed and approved by their future subordinates. Every sixmonths, everyone gets evaluated, anonymously, as a leader. And this determines whether theyshould continue in that leadership position, which is many times situational, as you know. And so ifthey don't have 70, 80 percent of a grade, they don't stay, which is probably the reason why Ihaven't been CEO for more than 10 years. And over time, we started asking other questions.
We said things like, why can't people set their own salaries? What do they need to know? There'sonly three things you need to know: how much people make inside the company, how muchpeople make somewhere else in a similar business and how much we make in general to seewhether we can afford it. So let's give people these three pieces of information. So we startedhaving, in the cafeteria, a computer where you could go in and you could ask what someonespent, how much someone makes, what they make in benefits, what the company makes, whatthe margins are, and so forth. And this is 25 years ago.
As this information started coming to people, we said things like, we don't want to see yourexpense report, we don't want to know how many holidays you're taking, we don't want to knowwhere you work. We had, at one point, 14 different offices around town, and we'd say, go to theone that's closest to your house, to the customer that you're going to visit today. Don't tell uswhere you are. And more, even when we had thousands of people, 5,000 people, we had twopeople in the H.R. department, and thankfully one of them has retired.
And so, the question we were asking was, how can we be taking care of people? People are theonly thing we have. We can't have a department that runs after people and looks after people. Soas we started finding that this worked, and we'd say, we're looking for -- and this is, I think, themain thing I was looking for in the terminal days and in the company, which is, how do you set upfor wisdom? We've come from an age of revolution, industrial revolution, an age of information, anage of knowledge, but we're not any closer to the age of wisdom. How we design, how do weorganize, for more wisdom? So for example, many times, what's the smartest or the intelligentdecision doesn't jive. So we'd say things like, let's agree that you're going to sell 57 widgets perweek. If you sell them by Wednesday, please go to the beach. Don't create a problem for us, formanufacturing, for application, then we have to buy new companies, we have to buy ourcompetitors, we have to do all kinds of things because you sold too many widgets. So go to thebeach and start again on Monday.
So the process is looking for wisdom. And in the process, of course, we wanted people to knoweverything, and we wanted to be truly democratic about the way we ran things. So our board hadtwo 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 importantpeople in suits and ties. And the fact is that they kept us honest.
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 startmuch earlier. Where do we start? We said, oh, kindergarten seems like a good place.
So we set up a foundation, which now has, for 11 years, three schools, where we started askingthe same questions, how do you redesign school for wisdom? It is one thing to say, we need torecycle the teachers, we need the directors to do more. But the fact is that what we do witheducation is entirely obsolete. The teacher's role is entirely obsolete. Going from a math class, tobiology, to 14th-century France is very silly. So we started thinking, what could it looklike? And we put together people, including people who like education, people like Paulo Freire, andtwo ministers of education in Brazil and we said, if we were to design a school from scratch, whatwould it look like?
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 atutor. A tutor, in the old sense of the Greek "paideia": Look after the kid. What's happening athome, what's their moment in life, etc.. But please don't teach, because the little you knowcompared to Google, we don't want to know. Keep that to yourself.Now, we'll bring inpeople who have two things: passion and expertise, and it could be their profession or not. And weuse the senior citizens, who are 25 percent of the population with wisdom that nobody wantsanymore. 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 aboutthe 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 andall that there. How do we express ourselves? So there's a place for music and literature, etc., butalso for grammar.
And then we have things that everyone has forgotten, which are probably the most importantthings in life. The very important things in life, we know nothing about. We know nothing aboutlove, we know nothing about death, we know nothing about why we're here. So we need a threadin 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 toscold the kids and say, sit down and come here and do that, and so forth. We said, let's get thekids to do something we call a circle, which meets once a week. And we'd say, you put the rulestogether and then you decide what you want to do with it. So can you all hit yourself on thehead? Sure, for a week, try. They came up with the very same rules that we had, except they'retheirs. And then, they have the power, which means, they can and do suspend and expel kids sothat we're not playing school, they really decide.
And then, in this same vein, we keep a digital mosaic, because this is not constructivist orMontessori or something. It's something where we keep the Brazilian curriculum with 600 tiles of amosaic, which we want to expose these kids to by the time they're 17. And follow this all the timeand 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 readyfor that with an 11-year-old, that eliminates all of the gangs and the groups and this stuff that wehave in the schools, in general. And they have a zero to 100 percent grading, which they dothemselves with an app every couple of hours. Until we know they're 37 percent of the way we'dlike them to be on this issue, so that we can send them out in the world with them knowingenough about it. And so the courses are World Cup Soccer, or building a bicycle. And people willsign up for a 45-day course on building a bicycle. Now, try to build a bicycle without knowing thatpi is 3.1416. You can't. And try, any one of you, using 3.1416 for something. You don't knowanymore. So this is lost and that's what we try to do there, which is looking for wisdom in thatschool.
And that brings us back to this graph and this distribution of our life. I accumulated a lot of moneywhen I think about it. When you think and you say, now is the time to give back -- well, if you'regiving back, you took too much. I keep thinking of Warren Buffet waking upone day and finding out he has 30 billion dollars more than he thought he had. And he looks andhe 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. 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 mademoney with money instead of sharing as you go. But I like sharing as you go better.
I taught MBAs at MIT for a time and I ended up, one day, at the Mount Auburn Cemetery. It is abeautiful 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 greatthings and I thought, what do I want to be remembered for? And I did another stroll around, andthe second time, another question came to me, which did me better, which was, why do I want tobe remembered at all?
And that, I think, took me different places. When I was 50, mywife Fernanda and I sat for a whole afternoon, we had a big pit with fire, and I threw everything Ihad ever done into that fire. This is a book in 38 languages, hundreds and hundreds of articles andDVDs, everything there was. And that did two things. One, it freed our five kids from following inour steps, our shadow -- They don't know what I do. Which is good. And I'm not going to take them somewhere and say, one day all of this will be yours. The five kids know nothing, which is good.
And the second thing is, I freed myself from this anchor of past achievement or whatever. I'm freeto start something new every time and to decide things from scratch in part of those terminaldays. And some people would say, oh, so now you have this time, these terminal days, and so yougo out and do everything. No, we've been to the beaches, so we've been to Samoa and Maldivesand Mozambique, so that's done. I've climbed mountains in the Himalayas. I've gone down 60meters to see hammerhead sharks. I've spent 59 days on the back of a camel from Chad toTimbuktu. I've gone to the magnetic North Pole on a dog sled. So, we've been busy. It's what I'dlike to call my empty bucket list.
And with this rationale, I look at these days and I think, I'm not retired. I don't feel retired at all. Andso I'm writing a new book. We started three new companies in the last two years. I'm now workingon getting this school system for free out into the world, and I've found, very interestinglyenough, that nobody wants it for free. And so I've been trying for 10 years to get the publicsystem to take over this school rationale, much as the public schools we have, which has insteadof 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 thethings we want to do.
And I think what this leaves us as a message for all of you, I think is a little bit like this: We've alllearned how to go on Sunday night to email and work from home. But very few of us have learnedhow to go to the movies on Monday afternoon. And if we're looking for wisdom, we need to learnto 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. Thesecond why, it starts getting difficult. By the third why, you don't really know why you're doingwhat you're doing. What I want to leave you with is the seed and the thought that maybe if youdo this, you will come to the question, what for? What am I doing this for? And hopefully, as aresult of that, and over time, I hope that with this, and that's what I'm wishing you, you'll have amuch wiser future. Thank you very much.
Chris Anderson: So Ricardo, you're kind of crazy.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 soradical. How, in business, for example, these ideas have been out for a while, probably thepercentage of businesses that have taken some of them is still quite low. Are there any timesyou've seen some big company take on one of your ideas and you've gone, "Yes!"?
Ricardo Semler: It happens. It happened about two weeks ago with Richard Branson, with hispeople saying, oh, I don't want to control your holidays anymore, or Netflix does a little bit of thisand 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 amissionary zeal, but that's a very personal one. But the fact is that it takes a leap of faith aboutlosing control. And almost nobody who is in control is ready to take leaps of faith. It will have tocome from kids and other people who are starting companies in a different way.
CA: So that's the key thing? From your point of view the evidence is there, in the business point ofview this works, but people just don't have the courage to -- (Whoosh)
RS: They don't even have the incentive. You're running a company with a 90-day mandate. It's aquarterly report. If you're not good in 90 days, you're out. So you say, "Here's a great programthat, in less than one generation --" And the guy says, " Get out of here." So this is the problem.
CA: What you're trying to do in education seems to me incredibly profound. Everyone is botheredabout their country's education system. No one thinks that we've caught up yet to a world wherethere's Google and all these technological options. So you've got actual evidence now that the kidsso far going through your system, there's a dramatic increase in performance. How do we helpyou move these ideas forward?
RS: I think it's that problem of ideas whose time has come. And I've never been very evangelicalabout 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'veinvited 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'tmatter. This will find its own place. And I'm afraid of the other one, which says, this is so goodyou've got to do this. Let's set up a system and put lots of money into it and then people will do itno matter what.
CA: So you have asked extraordinary questions your whole life. It seems to me that's the fuelthat's driven a lot of this. Do you have any other questions for us, for TED, for this group here?
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. Sowhen 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 atthe office? So there's a whole thing of having the courage now -- not in a week, not in twomonths, not when you find out you have something -- to say, no, what am I doing this for? Stopeverything. Let me do something else. And it will be okay, it will be much better than what you'redoing, if you're stuck in a process.
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.
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