SELF Reliance is Your Birthright

Recently I was invited to attend the Board of Directors Dinner of the Grameen Foundation.  I was thrilled to be there.  Grameen’s Founder, Muhammad Yunus, has done more to lift people out of poverty than any human in history.  Grameen, which means village, began in the 1970s as a bank making microloans to the deeply and chronically poor of Bangladesh.  Since then Grameen has loaned 8 million women entrepreneurs money to start or expand their tiny enterprises which has triggered massive declines in poverty and huge improvement in self-reliance, literacy and quality of life.  Since then Grameen has expanded to nearly 20 social businesses offering ways for the poor to build a new economy by improving everything from health care to solar energy.  Most of Grameen’s businesses are owned by the poor they serve.  For the past 15 years they’ve been teaching others their secrets and today microcredit has helped 133 million families.  Their goal is to reach 500 million by 2015.  It’s a great business.  Loan repayment rates exceed 98%.

One country that has gotten Grameen’s attention is ours.  They founded Grameen America to help the persistent poor of our country.  Yea, I know.  From Bangladesh to the USA.  Who would have thought?  Of course a microloan in the US ranges from $3000 to $10,000, a far cry from the typical $50-$150 microloan of developing country borrowers, but the purpose of loans is the same, to achieve economic self-reliance.

You see Yunus, an economist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, is a huge proponent of SELF-employment.  He considers working for a paycheck to achieve someone else’s goals a road fraught with uncertainty and too frequently little security or satisfaction.  As a practical evangelist for universal entrepreneurship, he claims that financial self-reliance is a core human drive.  He also maintains that the entrepreneurial instinct is a part of basic human nature.  He makes this claim based on over 30 years of experience encouraging impoverished illiterate women to start micro-businesses that most often flourish into enterprises that lift entire families out of poverty.  He even has a loan program for beggars.  It turns out that beggars are frequently good sales people.  When they have stuff to sell, they sell all of it.  He calls entrepreneurship passion plus common sense.

We don’t have to be dirt-poor villagers to understand that many of the 5 million jobs that were evaporated in this Great Recession will never, ever return.  We don’t have to be psychics to foretell that the employment market will probably never return to the steady growth and security it offered in decades past.  And finally we must ask ourselves, why work for the “man”?  Anyone who hires you is making money on your talent, presumably money you could be making for yourself.  Are you living your American Dream?

Many experts say that recessions are great times to start new businesses or become an independent consultant. This is because competition during recessions tends to be weak and uninspired.  Also 80 % of new businesses are self-financed, and Internet based businesses can be started with micro amounts of money. Consulting also can be a boom area since many companies lay off too many people. If you make yourself an expert in an area that fascinates you, you will be in demand. And the best marketing for consultants is word of mouth. So if you’re willing to open your mouth and tell the world how you can make things better, you may be surprised at all the opportunity you uncover. If the poor and uneducated can become self sufficient with almost no resources, we can too.

The Economics of Economists

A paradigm is a mental framework.  It’s a set of mostly unexamined assumptions that create a story of why things are the way they are and the causes and effects of life.  A powerful paradigm in medicine was broken only a few hundred years ago when doctors began to understand that invisible agents called germs spread disease.  Before “germ theory” was accepted doctors thought washing their hands between treating patients was a royal waste of time.  People died of infections faster than a forest fire in August burns down trees.  All paradigms, such as the earth is at the center of the universe or that the rich make investments that create jobs, die hard because the status quo is a force of gravity that sucks new challenging ideas into a black hole of opposition.

So let’s look at the paradigm of GDP, our gross domestic product.  This is a measure of all the financial transactions in our economy.  One way economists decide we’re in a massive recession is that our GDP (about $12 trillion a year) has stopped growing.  Maybe it’s even shrinking.   But few people are asking, so what?  Or even more importantly, is the GDP a measure of economic health at all?  Herman Daly, an economist of the University of Maryland has been questioning this paradigm for two decades.  You see, our GDP increases based on any financial transaction.  So legal fees for lawsuits and divorce count as much as fees to file patents.  Money spent buying cigarettes counts as much as money invested searching for a cure for lung cancer.  And as the cost of school tuition and health care soar, it’s adding to our GDP.  Our GDP ironically does not count saving as a positive economic decision, only spending.  Spending on anything from pornography to gambling.  So, I wonder, how do you build the best society we can imagine with this as our primary economic paradigm?  You’re right, we can’t.  But the reason we try to may be both deep and invisible…kind of like germs we cannot see.

Last week I was speaking to a group of European business leaders.  My remarks were followed by David Frost and then John Cleese.  (They were both far more funny than me.)  John Cleese is of course most famous for Monty Python and A Fish Called Wanda.  He also attended Cambridge and has a very big brain to go with his comic genius.  Giving Cleese an opportunity to speak to business leaders was like giving a 12 year old water balloons on a hot day.  He started hurling research data concerning the current economic free fall spatting the audience with comic criticism that left them both laughing and pondering their responsibility in all this.

One of his most insightful observations is research conducted comparing graduate economic students with graduate students studying a wide variety of other subjects.  This Cornell University research ran the students through various assessments, scenario games and interviews of personal habits and attitudes.  Here is what they found.  Students training to be economists tend to be lower on empathy (the ability to understand others) more money motivated, more self-interested, less generous (giving smaller amounts to charity) and less self-reflective than the general population.   These are the same people who either run or advise our financial institutions, our government and our major corporations.  It’s no wonder they measure things like the GDP as a measure of our economic health as if all spending were morally neutral.  Yet these economists control our underlying assumptions of how to run nearly everything.  It’s no wonder few of them could predict our recent meltdown.

Economists generally believe in the magic of competing self-interest creating the greatest good perhaps because they are preoccupied with their own self-interest.  As Oscar Wilde famously commented they seem to know “the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

What all this adds up to is that we most likely have the wrong people telling us what to do while they advise our political and business leaders.  Over centuries we have adapted a faulty paradigm of men being in the center of the universe armed with their self-interest and competitive drives to accumulate at all costs.  The idea that there could be “moral economics” that differentiated between spending that benefits humanity and spending that threatens our well-being is dismissed as unscientific and even dangerous.  Given the mental and emotional make up of economists this should not surprise us.  But isn’t it time for a revolution of new thinking and new leadership of this entire profession?

So what’s the best thing we can do? Don’t allow an economic paradigm of spend and accumulate dominate your life.  Use your financial life to act as a moral agent.  And remember, economists know less about the real world than you do.

So what do you think?  Do you believe faulty economic thinking and value-less leadership have got us stuck?

CSR Will Still Survive the Economy

This past February in my post, CSR Will Survive the Economy, I make a case for CSR initiatives still having a bright future despite the economic downturn.  But as the recession continues and companies struggle through recovery, it makes me wonder…Just how long will the triple bottom line prevail when profit is at the front of everybody’s mind?

In Bonus Rage and its Pitfalls John Robertson discusses how new restrictions for top executives has a downside, social responsibility initiatives in particular taking a big hit.  He contends that in order for companies to operate under the triple bottom line of people, planet, profit, executives need the freedom to exercise judgment.  He states, “If companies were to be more than simply cash registers, executives had to be empowered to make choices. Directors needed to decide how the value being created should be divided up: how much to employees, how much to suppliers, how much to shareholders, how much to deserving community organizations and at what cost to the physical environments in which the company operates.”  He continues, “Unfortunately, this is precisely the discretion being stripped from the repertoire of the modern corporate executive as he is forced to make an unequivocal commitment to financial success.”

Robertson also contends that this won’t get better any time soon with governments looking to maximize the financial returns from their recent equity purchases, executives trying to repay loans as quickly as possible, and employees too scared of losing their job to demand better from their employer.

While Robertson makes a convincing argument, I believe that it’s only an excuse, a reason for leadership to free themselves of any obligation to humanity and the environment.  You see, this viewpoint stems from the idea of corporate social responsibility being solely a cost, rather than an integral, revenue building part of the business model.  Companies and leaders alike that still hold to the belief that CSR is merely writing a check will most likely cut back or quit their CSR practices altogether in the name of financial strife.

On the other hand, however, there are others who will strongly embrace the great opportunities social responsibility presents and come out stronger on the other side of this recession. Will Marré, CEO of REALeadership Alliance, states, “When times are tough it’s hard not to be hijacked by fear. Thinking about how much good we can do becomes downright unnatural when we’re genuinely afraid we won’t have what we need.  But what if we turn that fear upside down?  Imagine that the key to security, prosperity, and happiness comes from doing good.  As much good as possible.”  According to Marré, now is the time to invest in social responsibility.  In fact, he contends that saving the world is the greatest economic opportunity of our time.

I do indeed stand by my original posting…CSR will survive the economy.  We cannot allow our values to be turned on and off depending on the weather of the current situation.  The triple bottom line is a way of doing business, not a fad that has run its course.

Let Destiny Catch You

*******CLICK HERE FOR A FREE DOWNLOAD from Will Marre’s Save the World and Still Be Home for Dinner book, being published in September 2009*******

After living nearly six decades on our planet I’ve observed that the bounds of human arrogance are nearly limitless. One way this troublesome truth shows itself is the all too frequent smugness of the extraordinarily successful. These are folks who say they don’t believe in luck. Last year I watched none other than Oprah Winfrey extol the virtues of wish fulfillment as presented in the pesky book titled The Secret. She said simply, “I don’t believe in luck.” Really?

Well believing in focusing one’s intention on all the good things we want cannot be the whole story. If it were true, the collective knowledge of our thousands of years of human experience would have trained all of us in the secret of being healthy, beautiful, rich and content. If intense intention were the answer, we would have learned to intend away our job losses, foreclosure, cancers, relationship problems, struggles with children and every other condition we intensely don’t want. And yes, if the answer was simply wishing with the strength of a personal emotion-mental-spiritual atomic-powered will for all good things—health, love, wealth and happiness. If that was the real secret…well that’s what we’d all have. Intense desire is not hard for humans to master after all. But we don’t have those things. Instead we have a smorgasbord of good things and rough things, or struggles and successes of satisfactions and longing. All of us. Even Oprah.

I am thinking about this because recently I was helping a group of executives from a big brand name company re-commit to their “noble cause.” We were talking about corporate social responsibility and how they could use their immense wealth, talent and global reach to create a sustainable future. Awesome stuff. And an inspiring conversation. Part of the discussion than turned to life balance. As leaders of a global enterprise, few of them had much daily contentment with their lives. They feel constantly torn between their worthwhile and very demanding work and their families and personal interests. One of them said that when you’re engaged in a great purpose, that purpose must come first because if you don’t make it happen, who will?

I called time out. I said that although that kind of thinking is very seductive, it’s wrongheaded. It feels noble. Even self-sacrificing. But it’s infected with self-inflation. As a wise counselor once said to me in a time of my personal soul searching, “The world doesn’t need another savior, and if it did, it wouldn’t be you!” The clarity of that idea hit me like being whacked in the face with a big wet fish. I got it.

From that day forward I learned that what life is calling me to do is to simply show up and make by best contribution to what is at hand. To act on what pulls my attention, gets my blood hot and sustains my interest. One thing I’ve leaned is not to over try. To try so hard to be important or to make my difference that it hurts the ones I love the most. What I’ve come to believe is that all of us should strive to become the best all-around person we can imagine being. And that process never stops. Never. If destiny or luck or whatever gives us a temporary leading roll in the drama of human history than the director will call our name. We don’t have to bully our way to fame; we just need to know our lines.

Most people who become publicly extraordinary seem to be chosen by extraordinary good fortune. But the size of our good influence is trivial compared to the quality of it. Over my lifetime I’ve seen too many people with mediocre talent become wealthy and famous, while I observed many bright, well-educated, hard working people struggle. I’ve seen the good suffer and bad prosper. I’ve seen stupid ideas adapted while brilliant ones were discarded. To think that people get what they deserve is a comforting illusion, and I say that with the full understanding that out of the billions who have walked this earth I am among the most fortunate.

But whatever we get should not be a source of frustration because if there is anything the collective wisdom of the ages teaches it’s that the whole point of life is not what we get but what we give. And that we have total control over.

So what do you think about luck? About what we should sacrifice and what we should not? What about the obvious inequities of life?

Socially Responsible Leadership

It takes strong leaders to transform business and change the world.  But it can be done…and must.

In Five Features of Great Socially Responsible Leadership Mallen Baker gives a great list of strong socially responsible leadership qualities.
1) Being prepared to challenge the logic of your industry.
2) Doing something because it is the right thing to do, and then working out how to make it pay.
3) Understanding that the leaders sets incentives - and sometimes the bottom line is the wrong incentive.
4) Understanding when to follow the rules, and when to use common sense in the face of unintended outcomes.
5) Knowing that just because people around you see you as a leader, it doesn’t mean you’re a good one.

Will Marré also asserts a socially responsible leadership model in his recent article, CSR and the Four Ideals of Socially Responsible Leadership, he calls REALeadership.  The model is based on four principles:
R—Relevant.   A leader’s impact is long.  Their decisions weigh more than others.  So they must be wise enough to constantly see the big picture, to carefully consider the impact of their decisions on employees, customers, suppliers, the environment, the community, and the generations of unborn.
E—Ethical.  To be ethical is to be moral.  The moral standard is do as much good as you can.  Create the Greatest Total Value you can.  For everyone, all the time.  Why else lead?
A—Abundance. Sustainable Abundance requires more than innovation.  It demands invention.  It requires creating something with unique value that genuinely benefits humanity and heals the environment.
L—Legacy. A leader’s legacy is his or her impact on the future.  The world needs saving.  We need new solutions we can implement as fast as possible.

Leadership, especially in today’s world climate, is indeed a great responsibility, but it’s also a great opportunity to do something really amazing.  I think Marré says it best in the conclusion of his article, “If you aren’t going to save the world then get out of the way and make room for someone who is.” Are you up to the challenge?

Don’t Be Scared

It’s time to fully embrace the opportunities and risks of life.  It’s not as easy as it sounds.  We all swim in a sea of media that is desperate for our attention.  Our attention, you see, is precious.  The media sells our attention to advertisers who tell us we can’t be happy without their product.  But today the media’s quest for our attention is getting more and more difficult.  Technology has defused the market place and created a global attention deficit disorder.  So what does the media do to get our attention?

Try to scare the hell out of us!

The reason is simple.  Our brains are wired to be far more sensitive to threats than opportunities.  Since threats are potentially life threatening and opportunities are only life enhancing we are hard wired to react to threats.  It’s a fact our brain wiring has extra voltage to jolt our attention to scare us to respond to anything potentially ominous.  When our threat-meter goes off…bam here comes the stress chemicals cortisol and adrenaline that gets us riled up and agitated.

The Swine Flu story is just the ammo our media’s heavy artillery needs to get our attention.  Human beings are notorious for misjudging real threats from sensational ones or novel ones.  Forget the fact that the CDC reports that over 33,000 at risk people die from the seasonal flus that come every single year.  Forget the fact that everyday 5000 American drivers are involved in car accidents that require medical treatment. (About 100 of us die in car crashes every single day.)  Forget the fact that over 100 non-smokers die of lung cancer everyday due to second hand smoke or air pollution.  (Over 1000 smokers die every day due to lung cancer.)  Forget the fact that people living in cooler and 4 season climates have generally stronger immune systems that make them stronger against flu viruses.  No, forget all that and close our schools, stop traveling, buy a surgical mask, stay home and watch the 24 hour news channels so the media can press our buttons to flood us with toxic messages about the Swine Flu.  This is no way to live.

As my father used to say, “Life is risk, and in the end we all die.  So make sure to really live while you’re still breathing!”  My dad was not a big risk taker.  But he was a life-long rancher, and we all lived close enough to real nature to see plenty of accidents, unexpected disappointments and unimagined out-of-the-blue good fortune.  He taught me to turn up the volume on the inner voice of common sense, keep your eyes peeled and go for what you want.  Above all he taught me not to be scared of every day life.

Mom taught me to wash my hands, go to bed on time and eat good food.  Fifty years later it’s still good advice.

Getting out of bed every day is the greatest risk we take each day.  As soon as we open ourselves to the uncertainties of our fragile existence, we are vulnerable.  But it’s that vulnerability that also opens the door to opportunities to learn, grow, love and enjoy life.

So what’s the best thing we can do?  First, develop a strong media filter.  They just want to frighten us.  Most scares are nothing more than the latest Y2K.  (Remember Y2K?  January 1, 2000 was supposed to crash all the global computer systems.  Business and government spent billions “fixing” the supposed problem.  Of course small business and two-thirds of the world didn’t even address the problem.  Guess what?  Nothing happened.  Nothing.  No, there was no collapse of computer systems of companies or countries that couldn’t afford the fix.  Consulting firms made billions.) Second, take time every morning to contemplate one thing your most grateful for.  Think of something new each day.  Focus on your gratitude until you actually smile.  Until you feel the feeling.  Third, decide what the most important opportunity is for you to pursue each day.  Make that your priority.  Over-invest your time and talent pursuing that opportunity.  And above all—don’t be scared of anything.  Not anything.  I’ve lived through so many disappointments I thought I couldn’t bear.  But guess what?  I did and so have you.  Remember the worst thing is not dying; it’s not living when we had the chance.
Will Marre, Author of Save the World and Still Be Home for Dinner (Published in September 2009)
So what do you think?  Is the media over the top in their attempts to grab our attention?  How do you measure risk?  Make choices?