My brother shared with me an interview contained in SPIEGEL with Tomas Sedlacek:-

“Greed is the Beginning of Everything”

Czech economist Tomas Sedlacek discusses morality in the current crisis and why he believes an economic policy that only pursues growth will always lead to debt. Those who don’t know how to handle it, he argues, end up in a medieval debtor’s prison, as the Greeks and others are experiencing today.

For the first time I have read a paper which intuitively I feel highlights my views. I hope you enjoy…!

To view the article in PDF, please click here:- SPIEGEL Interview with Tomas Sedlacek

Source: http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,822981,00.html

Maybe I am “old fashioned”. But I have always been brought up on a “diet” that you reap your rewards from making the investment through one of the following:

• Cost savings achieved
• Increase your customer base
• Benefits to customers that you can enhance your revenues

So what are the consequences of this revolutionary investment strategy?

1. Effectively, the investing company does not have to be creative in developing their product or service offering to achieve enhanced returns.

2. Since their capital investment is already funded by the customers, there is likely to be less due diligence or creativity around ensuring that the capital costs are optimized or managed effectively, for either benefit to the customer or the shareholder!

3. Once the investment has been made there is likely to be less commitment and scrutiny to ensure that the revenues or cost savings are accruing in accordance with the business case, as it simply just too easy.

It is absolutely critical that the regulators ensure that these businesses and operators are not able to operate in this manner! Or am I delusional…?

Many of the key sessions are filmed and on the SWF website www.skollworldforum.org

1. Deep Leadership (Video available) – a great session with number of interesting perspectives including those of Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Upon reflection, my own believe after some further thought and analysis is a hypothesis utilising the Heroes Journey. Each time you go through the “storm” within the journey you gain an understanding of your own humanity. By repeatedly going through and coming out of the storm successfully, you increase and enhance your own personal well of “deep leadership”.

Furthermore there is definitely a clear correlation between deep leadership and spirituality however we seem too shy to make the connection!!!!!!!

2. Markets – Reform or Rebuild (Video available).

Personal View – It is clear that for certain markets, the ability of certain players to dominate can mean that reform is the preferable way forward. However, wherever possible “rebuilding” the market provides for enhanced access, performance, and transparency and therefore should be encouraged as the preferred methodology.

3. Risks and Opportunities in the MENA Region

This session was a missed opportunity. With both historic and current political issues dominating the debate, the core issue of what market reforms are required to enable social and business entrepreneurs to grow and prosper being overlooked.

4. Skoll Awards Ceremony (Video available)

One of the highlights for me of the forum was learning of all the different activities being undertaken by social entrepreneurs in delivering a better society for all stakeholders. The 2011 winners were no exception

• Rebecca Onie, Health Leads – ability to get health resources to impoverished minorities
• Madhav Chavan, Pratham – evaluation of the output from education in the villages
• Ellen Moir, New Teacher Centre – provide mentoring to new teachers to enhance retention
• Ned Breslin, Water for People – provision of water to all
• Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Global Treasure Award – for his services to humanity
• Peter Gabriel and Baaba Maal – Singing on the death of Stephen Biko. Very poignant with the individuals who have stood up in Tunisia, Egypt and in other countries in the Middle East very recently.

5. BBC Forum – Is Heroism Obsolete? (Video available). This in conjunction with “Deep Leadership” provided very useful insights into the driving forces of entrepreneurs and how we create heroes whether they are acclaimed or not.

6. Social Entrepreneurs – Navigating Unchartered Waters – For Profit Companies with Social DNA. This session was totally inspiring, to hear the stories for three social entrepreneurs:-

• Thorkil Sonne, Specialist People Foundation – creating employment for autism sufferers
• Kresse Wesling, Elvis & Kress – Handbags and Belts. Recycles fire hose into luxury products handbags and belts and gives 50% of the profits to the Fire Association.
• Gobion Rowlands, Red Redemption Ltd – Creates games on social issues such as climate change through the game “Fate of the earth”.

7. Some interesting expressions
• “Behind every great man is a surprised women”
• “Be brief but brilliant”
• “Being inspirational through humanity”

And many others but did not capture them!

8. Interesting facts
Within the MENA region 70% of the employed population produce on 28% of the GDP.
A true hero must have something to loose
The internet, the first physical manifestation of God

Conclusion
The forum centred around celebrating social entrepreneurship and “learning” which was magnificent. The networking was good, based upon shared learnings rather than for promoting activities.

A very worthwhile and enjoyable three days…

On the 29th March 2011, Martin Carver and I will be presenting the Keynote speech considering Mentoring in Critical Times at the 5th Annual Mentoring and Coaching Conference being hosted by the European Mentoring and Coaching Council. The two day conference, will be held at the Holiday Inn, Kensington in London (UK). In addition; Simon Edwards, past CEO of the Mowgli Foundation, will be presenting a master class entitled “Your Mentoring Story”.

Both of these events will provide a challenging look at how mentoring can be used effectively within organisations and business, especially when we find ourselves in times of such massive change.

We are particularly interested in the question ‘Why are entrepreneurs so important to our communities and society?’. We will consider my journey as a serial entrepreneur through the establishment of various start-ups coupled with the personal challenges that arise from life.

Our presentation will focus in particular on the following areas:

• When does the intervention of a mentor provide maximum value to an entrepreneur?
• What are the critical stages for mentoring in the life of entrepreneur?
• What mentoring lessons can be learnt from such an entrepreneur’s journey?

To find out more about this exciting event, please visit the EMCC UK Conference Website at: http://ukconference.org/ for more information.

I had the opportunity to read a great article in the Harvard Business Review that I thoroughly recommend to you. Creating Shared Value by Michael Porter and Mark Kramer with the following link:-http://hbr.org/2011/01/the-big-idea-creating-shared-value/ar/1

During the last two decades, banks lent imprudently creating economic bubbles, and were able to ratchet up their profitability and bonus’s. Furthermore they found ways to repackage debt into various instruments to further enhance their profits and bonus’s. We know today that much of this lending was suspect at best and reckless at worst yet bonus’s were due. The financial markets collapsed in 2007/2008. If banks wish to be treated as operating in free and competitive manner, then they do not deserve to be completely bailed out by governments. They were bailed out. Without the bail out to the banking industry, no single bank in the world would have survived the contagion effect and chaos would have reigned.

The financial collapse ensured that the economies of the majority of the world collapsed as banks withdrew their support for their economies and in particular withdrew lending from those countries which had the worst problems and from economies that were unlikely to have significant growth and focused upon developing lending in emerging economies.

Today, many SME businesses in the UK are both going under and cannot obtain the necessary credit to support their growth. This has caused a severe credit crunch which further allows the banks to “manage” the market by borrowing at extremely low interest rates, whilst charging their borrowing customers extremely high rates, claiming that they need to rebuild their balance sheets (whose fault was that) and that their talented personnel deserve significant bonus’s for achieving mega profits.

Furthermore, within investment banking their business model is not aligned to the needs of the customer. They simply charge their customer a fixed fee on funds invested and in some cases a bonus for stellar performance ensuring that they gain their income whether they perform well or not. By the entire industry following the same principle, customers cannot find alternatives. Through this magical structuring of their business model, they are able to “guarantee” profitability and significant bonus’s.

However, bankers do deserve their bonus’s providing they are able to satisfy the following KPI’s.
a) Provide a safe and reliable institution for customers to maintain their cash deposits.
b) Provide financial support so that the economies are able to develop in a prudent manner.
c) Provide aligned, valuable and reliable customer service to their myriad of customers.

I am sorry to say, that bankers have not delivered, they are not especially talented over and above the rest of society and do not deserve mega bonus’s. Finally, it has been proven, that the payment of bonus’s for professional work, the type that bankers undertake does not provide the motivation claimed (http://comment.rsablogs.org.uk/2010/04/08/rsa-animate-drive/)

Whenever one approaches a major opportunity such as the World Cup, the decision-making process comprises three elements: – technical, commercial and political. The 2018 decision was no different. From the outset, I wonder if England had evaluated correctly the likely weighting of these three elements that would take place when the final decision was being made in Zurich. Many capital projects, have a decision-making balance where the technical and commercial components represent >90% of the decision with politics <10%. I should point out that politics can cover both legitimate and illegitimate (i.e. corruption) aspects.

However, based upon what has been reported, the England bid was both technically and commercially superior to the Russian bid. It can therefore only be assumed that the weighting in terms of the decision-making was that political considerations would provide greater than 50% towards the decision. This is perfectly legitimate, in the event FIFA had made this known to the bidders. Alternatively, England should have ensured before they committed themselves to bidding (or their bid costs) of the evaluation criteria in terms of weighting. Was this done?

So, what was the potential strategy that FIFA adopted in not being clear to the bidders as to the weighting? In the event that the FIFA strategy was purely to decide on the location of the 2018 World Cup, based upon political considerations, which could be that they wished emerging and new countries to be awarded the location as turned out in Russia being selected. Naturally, the quality of the bids by emerging countries will not only carry a higher risk profile but would not offer the same “quality” of technical and commercial proposals as the more developed countries. So it is in FIFA’s interest to have the developed countries develop their technical and commercial proposals and have the emerging countries attempt to minimize the gap to ensure that they are “competitive” and offer FIFA a worthwhile proposition whilst achieving their political ambitions.

So what should England have done? Identify the weighting of the decision-making elements and ensure that FIFA are contractually committed to delivering against these before they commit to make the effort and cost of a bid.

What should FIFA do to ensure that their decision-making process is seen by all parties as being fair and transparent? They would need to develop an evaluation criteria comprising the three elements: – technical, commercial and political, quantifying the various elements, they would be measuring each proposal against and making one tabulation that is clear for all.

We commenced in 2009 sowing seeds by launching our pilot programme in Jordan/Palestine, culminating to date in our supporting 28 entrepreneurs in this country, and then programmes in Lebanon (16 entrepreneurs) and Syria (14 entrepreneurs). Whilst awareness of the importance of entrepreneurship was heightened by the financial crisis of 2008/2009, still the level of apathy towards taking action and forming collaborative efforts to meet this huge challenge were muted. Mowgli continued to try and find people, organisations who shared our vision. Through a cold call to Abraaj Capital (www.abraaj.com) some six months ago, it was clear that we had met an organisation that shared our vision – our “oasis”. Over the subsequent months, we have engaged in such positive discussions on how various stakeholders can form partnerships and develop the capability to support structure entrepreneurship in the Middle East. When Abraaj Capital first shared their concept of an event to launch their Riyada Enterprise Development Fund and an ecosystem to support this ultimately called Wamda (www.wamda.com), we realised that this was going to be special, but we had no idea how special.

The event that was planned was initially pitching for some 500 attendees, when it was finally held, just under 2,500 attendees were present with a considerable number turned away. What did Abraaj achieve through a most wonderful event? I find great difficulty putting it into appropriate words due to the energy, enthusiasm, excitement and emotion exhibited over these two days.

The organisers focused the event around three main themes:

• Inspire. The number and variety of quality speakers sharing their entrepreneurial journeys, going against the norms of society and soothsayers of gloom to create new enterprises was magnificent for any young entrepreneur to hear. These were organised in what they called “Passion Corners”.
• Empower. A considerable number of workshops were organised to achieve this. Mowgli had the pleasure of conducting a workshop, in which 95 individuals were able to be mentored and act as mentors within an hour. The buzz was incredible. The outcomes that all had benefited and would find a mentor. Separately some 60 mentors conducted some 500 mentoring sessions with aspiring entrepreneurs. Really powerful!!!!
• The event was organised to connect, casual dress code, no stoppage for coffee, lunch or dinner, entertainment, SpotMe and a relaxed environment with all participants “giving” of themselves was palpable.

We were delighted to announce ground breaking alliances with:

• Abraaj Capital to build Mentor Match, a powerful new online platform to match the regions entrepreneurship mentors and mentees, in what is a key area that helps businesses develop and flourish at all stages of their growth.
• Riyada Enterprise Development to ensure that regional early stage businesses will receive the invaluable benefit of business leaders’ experience and institutional support. http://www.zawya.com/story.cfm/sidZAWYA20101109112352/Riyada%20Enterprise%20Development%20and%20Mowgli%20Foundation%20launch%20pilot%20mentorship%20program

As highlighted by an article written by Sultan Sooud Al Qassem, Nov. 14th 2010, ” A consensus was reached at the conference: the fragmented approach that Arab governments have taken will not be achieved”
http://www.thenational.ae/the-national-conversation/news/comment/entrepreneurial-arabs-will-make-it-better-for-the-next-generation

The conclusion of the event was that a “think tank” on Entrepreneurship in the region was funded and formed. The challenge is immense, but at least the appetite has been whetted by this ground-breaking occasion.

Please click here to continue reading, and be sure to update your bookmarks.

Thanks,

Tony Bury