Management is about following systems and processes and proceedures. Leadership is about changing them to achieve greater impact.
In a crisis, many weak leaders abdicate responsibility and behave like managers. Keeping their heads down, doing the minimum to stay out of trouble and blaming those above them for lack of direction, guidance and resources. Trouble is that crisis demands decisive, courageous leadership.
One of the first things that is needed in a crisis is to throw out or suspend beaurocratic management tools that may actually kill the organisation if religiously followed. You just don't have time for all that detail when big picture decisions are needed as a matter of great urgency eg a sweeping cut of 25% of the labour force.
It is absolutely vital to encourage each executive to rise above the chaos, keep engaged with the big picture, communicate closely with those above and below, make clear decisions in a transparent way with more regular meetings etc.
For more on practical steps to lead out of crisis back into growth see my article written yesterday on this: Article on main site
Future of your Business, Family and Wider World by Dr Patrick Dixon, Futurist Speaker, Keynotes on Growth Strategies and Leadership, Lecture Slides, Articles and Videos from Conferences - 15 million unique visitors to MAIN Futurist site (articles / keynotes / videos) - link on right to www.globalchange.com
Showing posts with label business. Show all posts
Showing posts with label business. Show all posts
April 03, 2009
August 13, 2008
Future of conferences, workshops and seminars - keynote for 4,500 people (MPI)
Outline of opening keynote to 4,500 people at MPI conference in Las Vegas by Dr Patrick Dixon.
Slides of MPI keynote and video
Future of corporate events, conferences, workshops and seminars. How the conference world will change. Impact of new technologies, increasing globalization, economic instability and growing concerns about carbon footprints / climate change.
Corporate event management is about to experience a revolution which presents exciting opportunities but also many significant dangers. Event organizers will be at the cutting edge of corporate transformation – and the faster things change, the more central your role will become. So when we look back in 2020, who turned out to be the bright stars of the future, who re-invented the industry, and why?
One of the greatest risks in any organization is institutional blindness – when we lose perspective about things which are obvious to those outside our team, corporation or industry. Risk of institutional blindness amongst professional event organizers, at a time of rapid global transformation. Correcting institutional blindness, giving a wider picture, is a vital part of every corporate gathering.
Meeting professionals and learning departments – opportunities for closer collaboration or even fusion into one-stop shops for ultimate learning experiences. How greatest opportunities in future will often come by far closer creative partnerships. Opportunties for outsourcing – but dangers also in outsourcing corporate thinking and strategy development – because so influenced by forum / event management / intellectual capital.
Why most conference formats are still stuck in a late-twentieth century time-warp. What has really changed in the last 15 years apart from Powerpoint replacing 35mm slides - and a few more videos? Corporate events can be the most powerful and time-effective drivers of business success - but can also be the greatest wasters of time and energy. So what does a third millennial corporate conferencing industry look like, in a world increasingly driven by time-pressures, online communities and networks, where attentions span is measured in seconds and multi-tasking in meetings is normal.
Why corporations are going to be far more sensitive about the “total opportunity cost” of meetings than in the past. Growing need to prove tangible value, measurable benefits to individual executives and the whole organization. Need for sharper definition of meeting purpose, clearer aims and objectives, and why organizations will be under pressure to achieve multiple objectives during the same time-frame eg client events scheduled alongside internal meetings.
Why audience experience is even more critical in an increasingly virtual world where delegates really want to breath the same air, feel, touch, engage and be changed. We should be thinking about “theatre”, while most conferences have more in common with classroom, lecture or (badly made) TV program. (More on this later).
Life’s too short to waste on things that don’t matter, that we are not passionate about. Why the future of conferencing is about emotion: engaging with issues that are of immense significance to participants, things they really care about.
Ideas can be read about, researched, Googled and the rest – but we are about changing people’s minds and how they feel – which is entirely different. Gather people together for a life-changing experience, not to force-feed their minds with data sheets and graphs.
Does it really matter to me? Simple test for every speaker and every part of every presentation. Am I really passionate about this? If not, dump the slide and move on. Don’t expect the audience to care either and why waste their time, they can get it all online.
Why tribalism is vital to business success and every event builds a tribe: every brand is a tribe, every team creates a new tribe, every customer group is a tribe and every corporation is a tribe of tribes. The reason most mergers destroy shareholder value is that the Excell spreadsheet numbers stacked up fine but the tribes did not. The stronger your tribe, the stronger your business will be – customer loyalty, staff loyalty, war for talent. Conferences are one of the most effective strategies for building tribal identity, and tribal gatherings will be vitally important in future. Five ways to turn your events into more effective tribe builders.
Using virtual teams and websites to prepare participants for an event, shape future events with participant input, and deliver stronger results.
Key question: who is making the decisions about who attends your meetings? If people were given a totally free choice, would they chose to attend at all, and if so, for how long? Are they attending entirely as a free choice or to be seen, to get on, to play their cards right?
Work-life balance impact on conference planning. How career objectives are changing and why work-life balance is now number one or two career priority. How conference organizers have often failed to keep pace with growing angst over time away from home. What it all means for program design, location, length, timing of start and weekend travel.
Third millennial clients events – new shapes and strategies for new situations. Expect growing demand for premium client events, positioning corporation as thought-leader rather than merely as a smart organization with great products or services. Ever greater search for out-of-conference client experiences – risks and opportunities. Culture – but whose culture? One person’s heavenly experience is another person’s discomfort – or even embarrassment. Challenges with after dinner speakers, comedians (big risks), and conflict with other needs – enough time to talk at dinner to other guests. Opportunities for community experiences – eg table magic, busking musicians, roving entertainers…. May be great venue but 25 minutes each way in a coach?? Beautiful setting but pity the weather was so cold for outdoors reception – backup plan?
Difference between excellent event and truly world class is the elusive 0.5%. Expect huge efforts to discover a new formula – which will be difficult since part of the secret is constant innovation, creativity, the elusive element of surprise, the ability to outshine an audience’s expectations.
Why the details really matter: eg name badges too small or too low to be read from two metres away, hotel check-in with room details already printed and keys in envelopes, enough serving points for rapid coffee breaks to actually happen, free internet high speed wireless networking for all participants in all areas including hotel rooms (life’s too short), dinner tables that are not too large and round (ever tried talking to someone other than on immediate left or right – long thin tables win every time), name boards in front of participants on tables that are large enough to be read from a long distance away, very brief pre-reading – who really bothers when faced with going to bed at 3am on last night at home for a week?
From Lecture to theatre: why performance will be everything. Lectures are about imparting data but computers do that faster at home. Theatre is about engaging in a community experience, about changing how people feel as well as how they think. Lectures can be watched at home, TV programmes on a mobile on a train, but theatre requires total presence and demands audience commitment. People don’t drift into a performance late, nor rush out to take a call, nor do e-mails at the same time.
So what does it mean to create theatre out of a lecture? Lessons from theatre are many – but almost totally ignored by event organizers and presenters.
Seating is critical. Just think how much people will pay to be 5 rows nearer the action. Round tables are great for group work but almost useless for theatre. Raised seating can work wonders, theatre in the round or why not use a real theatre rather than try to create one in an old aircraft hanger or exhibition hall. Lighting is everything. Poor lighting means a disastrous show. Brilliant lighting engages and holds attention. Lighting creates atmosphere, tension, expectation, mood and focuses where the audience looks. Most hotel ballrooms are entirely unsuited to third millennial events – lighting is just one of their drawbacks. Movement creates an irresistible force – it is almost impossible to keep looking at a performer who is motionless, if another performer is moving rapidly across the stage. Staging – just look at the trouble rock concert organizers go to with stage extensions, and creative postioning, to allow performers to move right into an audience. Intimacy is created when a performer turns to address the audience directly – seen most powerfully in solo stage performances of plays.
All of these things can be developed at relatively low cost in medium and large sized venues. Turning lectures into theatre enhances the power of every idea, increases speed of understanding, assists memory, is interesting and entertaining. It requires joint planning by event creators, event designers, the performer (presenter) and the entire technical team.
The most important thing of all: informal networking. Then there is the most important part of conferencing which is not what goes on in sessions, but in informal meetings during every unstructured moment. How do we push this kind of activity up a level? Importance of virtual or physical message boards. Opportunities to integrate with what people already use eg SMS and mobile phones. Match-making with table or seat pre-allocations – when and where to do this.
Culture, language and jet lag. Radical approaches needed to biggest unsolved challenge for global teams: daylight. Issues in video conferencing, and short conference meetings. Need for creative timing of sessions – for example starting afternoon and ending at night if fits better with most body clocks. Form of torture is sleep deprivation in a prison cell. Variation on this is sleep deprivation in an important meeting. What language are you using, English? International English or American or British or Australian English (it really matters). What speed? Who is really going to take the translation (pride issues). How many languages are we using for the slides on screen?
Virtual conferences – how to make them happen better. Despite premium for breathing same air, expect more events to have virtual audiences grouped around a physical event. How to make video work for you. The most important rule is audience engagement and
The greatest tool is….. eye contact. 20 second demo in meetings – get everyone to turn to neighbor and talk about what they usually eat for breakfast – with no eye contact – look only at hair line…. Or eyebrows. It is a disturbing and strange experience. Welcome to video conferencing – screen in one place, camera above, no true eye contact in most cases. Same in video links with corporate events – watch audience light up when the speaker for a few moments turns direct to camera and talks to a remote site directly, returning to do the same regularly. (demonstrate this in my presentation – few seconds to do)
Second rule: pay attention to audience and speaker dynamics. If a speaker would usually pace the stage, don’t videolink them in sitting at a table in front of a microphone. Even better, display behind them an identical set to the one we would see on a huge screen if they were standing in front of us in the flesh right now. (demonstrate this in my presentation – few seconds to do).
Economic and environmental worries - impact on conferencing: Impact of economic instability – more short-termism in conference cycle management. Oil prices, dollar – euro and other issues likely to impact global conference planning. Why environmental decisions about your next events will be driven by emotion rather than science (which only gives us a range of guesses about life in 50 years time). Working out carbon-impact of your next event and why it really matters. How to future-proof your events from environmental critics. How some corporations will significantly alter pattern of corporate travel with new restrictions which will impact events. Carbon trading and offsetting – how it works, why it will be increasingly controversial (because of some rogue schemes) and why despite this it will become a key part of conference planning.
Emerging markets – the next big think in conferencing – obsessions by many corporate, opportunities for interesting and exotic new conference locations. Discovery programmes – total immersion in new experiences, kinds of organization, culture as tools for new learning and insight.
And finally – winning the war for talent – attracting next generation of high-flying, radical, creative thinkers with passion for excellence and world-class ability to make great things happen. The secret is purpose and the hunger to find it at work (surveys). It is not enough to pay more. Offering a better work-life balance is also not enough (though without it the best talent will often walk away). When people see that you are making a difference, that the world changes because of what you do, that lives are touched, careers energized, life-ambitions fulfilled, that organizations are transformed for the better and that people are empowered to take hold of their own future… then you will find you have the pick of the talent.
Take hold of your future events- or the events will take hold of you.
This is an extraordinary time to be alive – and through our events we are privileged to be guides to those who attend, as they seek answers for their own futures.
Slides of MPI keynote and video
Future of corporate events, conferences, workshops and seminars. How the conference world will change. Impact of new technologies, increasing globalization, economic instability and growing concerns about carbon footprints / climate change.
Corporate event management is about to experience a revolution which presents exciting opportunities but also many significant dangers. Event organizers will be at the cutting edge of corporate transformation – and the faster things change, the more central your role will become. So when we look back in 2020, who turned out to be the bright stars of the future, who re-invented the industry, and why?
One of the greatest risks in any organization is institutional blindness – when we lose perspective about things which are obvious to those outside our team, corporation or industry. Risk of institutional blindness amongst professional event organizers, at a time of rapid global transformation. Correcting institutional blindness, giving a wider picture, is a vital part of every corporate gathering.
Meeting professionals and learning departments – opportunities for closer collaboration or even fusion into one-stop shops for ultimate learning experiences. How greatest opportunities in future will often come by far closer creative partnerships. Opportunties for outsourcing – but dangers also in outsourcing corporate thinking and strategy development – because so influenced by forum / event management / intellectual capital.
Why most conference formats are still stuck in a late-twentieth century time-warp. What has really changed in the last 15 years apart from Powerpoint replacing 35mm slides - and a few more videos? Corporate events can be the most powerful and time-effective drivers of business success - but can also be the greatest wasters of time and energy. So what does a third millennial corporate conferencing industry look like, in a world increasingly driven by time-pressures, online communities and networks, where attentions span is measured in seconds and multi-tasking in meetings is normal.
Why corporations are going to be far more sensitive about the “total opportunity cost” of meetings than in the past. Growing need to prove tangible value, measurable benefits to individual executives and the whole organization. Need for sharper definition of meeting purpose, clearer aims and objectives, and why organizations will be under pressure to achieve multiple objectives during the same time-frame eg client events scheduled alongside internal meetings.
Why audience experience is even more critical in an increasingly virtual world where delegates really want to breath the same air, feel, touch, engage and be changed. We should be thinking about “theatre”, while most conferences have more in common with classroom, lecture or (badly made) TV program. (More on this later).
Life’s too short to waste on things that don’t matter, that we are not passionate about. Why the future of conferencing is about emotion: engaging with issues that are of immense significance to participants, things they really care about.
Ideas can be read about, researched, Googled and the rest – but we are about changing people’s minds and how they feel – which is entirely different. Gather people together for a life-changing experience, not to force-feed their minds with data sheets and graphs.
Does it really matter to me? Simple test for every speaker and every part of every presentation. Am I really passionate about this? If not, dump the slide and move on. Don’t expect the audience to care either and why waste their time, they can get it all online.
Why tribalism is vital to business success and every event builds a tribe: every brand is a tribe, every team creates a new tribe, every customer group is a tribe and every corporation is a tribe of tribes. The reason most mergers destroy shareholder value is that the Excell spreadsheet numbers stacked up fine but the tribes did not. The stronger your tribe, the stronger your business will be – customer loyalty, staff loyalty, war for talent. Conferences are one of the most effective strategies for building tribal identity, and tribal gatherings will be vitally important in future. Five ways to turn your events into more effective tribe builders.
Using virtual teams and websites to prepare participants for an event, shape future events with participant input, and deliver stronger results.
Key question: who is making the decisions about who attends your meetings? If people were given a totally free choice, would they chose to attend at all, and if so, for how long? Are they attending entirely as a free choice or to be seen, to get on, to play their cards right?
Work-life balance impact on conference planning. How career objectives are changing and why work-life balance is now number one or two career priority. How conference organizers have often failed to keep pace with growing angst over time away from home. What it all means for program design, location, length, timing of start and weekend travel.
Third millennial clients events – new shapes and strategies for new situations. Expect growing demand for premium client events, positioning corporation as thought-leader rather than merely as a smart organization with great products or services. Ever greater search for out-of-conference client experiences – risks and opportunities. Culture – but whose culture? One person’s heavenly experience is another person’s discomfort – or even embarrassment. Challenges with after dinner speakers, comedians (big risks), and conflict with other needs – enough time to talk at dinner to other guests. Opportunities for community experiences – eg table magic, busking musicians, roving entertainers…. May be great venue but 25 minutes each way in a coach?? Beautiful setting but pity the weather was so cold for outdoors reception – backup plan?
Difference between excellent event and truly world class is the elusive 0.5%. Expect huge efforts to discover a new formula – which will be difficult since part of the secret is constant innovation, creativity, the elusive element of surprise, the ability to outshine an audience’s expectations.
Why the details really matter: eg name badges too small or too low to be read from two metres away, hotel check-in with room details already printed and keys in envelopes, enough serving points for rapid coffee breaks to actually happen, free internet high speed wireless networking for all participants in all areas including hotel rooms (life’s too short), dinner tables that are not too large and round (ever tried talking to someone other than on immediate left or right – long thin tables win every time), name boards in front of participants on tables that are large enough to be read from a long distance away, very brief pre-reading – who really bothers when faced with going to bed at 3am on last night at home for a week?
From Lecture to theatre: why performance will be everything. Lectures are about imparting data but computers do that faster at home. Theatre is about engaging in a community experience, about changing how people feel as well as how they think. Lectures can be watched at home, TV programmes on a mobile on a train, but theatre requires total presence and demands audience commitment. People don’t drift into a performance late, nor rush out to take a call, nor do e-mails at the same time.
So what does it mean to create theatre out of a lecture? Lessons from theatre are many – but almost totally ignored by event organizers and presenters.
Seating is critical. Just think how much people will pay to be 5 rows nearer the action. Round tables are great for group work but almost useless for theatre. Raised seating can work wonders, theatre in the round or why not use a real theatre rather than try to create one in an old aircraft hanger or exhibition hall. Lighting is everything. Poor lighting means a disastrous show. Brilliant lighting engages and holds attention. Lighting creates atmosphere, tension, expectation, mood and focuses where the audience looks. Most hotel ballrooms are entirely unsuited to third millennial events – lighting is just one of their drawbacks. Movement creates an irresistible force – it is almost impossible to keep looking at a performer who is motionless, if another performer is moving rapidly across the stage. Staging – just look at the trouble rock concert organizers go to with stage extensions, and creative postioning, to allow performers to move right into an audience. Intimacy is created when a performer turns to address the audience directly – seen most powerfully in solo stage performances of plays.
All of these things can be developed at relatively low cost in medium and large sized venues. Turning lectures into theatre enhances the power of every idea, increases speed of understanding, assists memory, is interesting and entertaining. It requires joint planning by event creators, event designers, the performer (presenter) and the entire technical team.
The most important thing of all: informal networking. Then there is the most important part of conferencing which is not what goes on in sessions, but in informal meetings during every unstructured moment. How do we push this kind of activity up a level? Importance of virtual or physical message boards. Opportunities to integrate with what people already use eg SMS and mobile phones. Match-making with table or seat pre-allocations – when and where to do this.
Culture, language and jet lag. Radical approaches needed to biggest unsolved challenge for global teams: daylight. Issues in video conferencing, and short conference meetings. Need for creative timing of sessions – for example starting afternoon and ending at night if fits better with most body clocks. Form of torture is sleep deprivation in a prison cell. Variation on this is sleep deprivation in an important meeting. What language are you using, English? International English or American or British or Australian English (it really matters). What speed? Who is really going to take the translation (pride issues). How many languages are we using for the slides on screen?
Virtual conferences – how to make them happen better. Despite premium for breathing same air, expect more events to have virtual audiences grouped around a physical event. How to make video work for you. The most important rule is audience engagement and
The greatest tool is….. eye contact. 20 second demo in meetings – get everyone to turn to neighbor and talk about what they usually eat for breakfast – with no eye contact – look only at hair line…. Or eyebrows. It is a disturbing and strange experience. Welcome to video conferencing – screen in one place, camera above, no true eye contact in most cases. Same in video links with corporate events – watch audience light up when the speaker for a few moments turns direct to camera and talks to a remote site directly, returning to do the same regularly. (demonstrate this in my presentation – few seconds to do)
Second rule: pay attention to audience and speaker dynamics. If a speaker would usually pace the stage, don’t videolink them in sitting at a table in front of a microphone. Even better, display behind them an identical set to the one we would see on a huge screen if they were standing in front of us in the flesh right now. (demonstrate this in my presentation – few seconds to do).
Economic and environmental worries - impact on conferencing: Impact of economic instability – more short-termism in conference cycle management. Oil prices, dollar – euro and other issues likely to impact global conference planning. Why environmental decisions about your next events will be driven by emotion rather than science (which only gives us a range of guesses about life in 50 years time). Working out carbon-impact of your next event and why it really matters. How to future-proof your events from environmental critics. How some corporations will significantly alter pattern of corporate travel with new restrictions which will impact events. Carbon trading and offsetting – how it works, why it will be increasingly controversial (because of some rogue schemes) and why despite this it will become a key part of conference planning.
Emerging markets – the next big think in conferencing – obsessions by many corporate, opportunities for interesting and exotic new conference locations. Discovery programmes – total immersion in new experiences, kinds of organization, culture as tools for new learning and insight.
And finally – winning the war for talent – attracting next generation of high-flying, radical, creative thinkers with passion for excellence and world-class ability to make great things happen. The secret is purpose and the hunger to find it at work (surveys). It is not enough to pay more. Offering a better work-life balance is also not enough (though without it the best talent will often walk away). When people see that you are making a difference, that the world changes because of what you do, that lives are touched, careers energized, life-ambitions fulfilled, that organizations are transformed for the better and that people are empowered to take hold of their own future… then you will find you have the pick of the talent.
Take hold of your future events- or the events will take hold of you.
This is an extraordinary time to be alive – and through our events we are privileged to be guides to those who attend, as they seek answers for their own futures.
June 22, 2008
Future of oil prices - oil price rises - oil industry trends
Rational pricing of oil -- recent $15 a barrel rising to $120 a barrel for oil. Potential peak of $250 a barrel. Petrochemical industry future. Future of oil prices. Rising and falling oil prices. Peak demand. OPEC output capacity. Instability and national oil producers. Economic impact of high oil prices. Oil industry trends. Energy industry outlook. Forecasting future oil prices. Economy, global warming, energy conservation and real estate industry. Environment, environmental change, climate change. Risks in real estate development. Operational and management risks and role of a Futurist. What is a Futurist? Identifying new opportunities in buildings control, environmental regulation. Keeping pace with change in real estate planning and corporate real estate demands. Impact on corporate real estate of mergers and acquisitions. How world getting faster, client demands growing faster. How clients behave illogically in longer term real estate planning. Buildings controls, heating and cooling, retrofitting high rise, office blocks and factories. Building regulations and government action. Longer term real estate planning. Market research limitations and customer expectations, client demands. Architects and buildings design, living space, partitions, ventilation systems, balancing and rebalancing air conditioning. ARBS.. Business management video by Dr Patrick Dixon, conference keynote speaker lecture, author of Futurewise and Building a Better Business. Global warming impact from offices and commercial buildings, skyscrapers, tower blocks and corporate real estate. Energy efficiency and energy consumption of commercial buildings and office blocks. Balancing air conditioning systems with better building control systems (integrated temperature monitoring) can save over 30% of energy costs each year. Johnson Controls and other companies provide specialist technical advice on heat loss reduction and air conditioning management systems. Issues of ventilation, fresh air, "tight" buildings, carbon dioxide levels, heat exchangers and air ducting. Electricity use and power generation on buildings. Green roofs, open spaces, shade, natural light. Impact of global warming and CO2 reduction on building design, architecture, building regulations and government standards. Special tax relief and concessions, reductions in stamp duty for energy compliant 5* and 6* commercial properties. Activist campaigns to reduce carbon emissions. Carbon trading and offsets. Energy in construction and demolition as proportion of life-time energy use. Future of corporate real estate and corporate real estate management companies. Outsourcing buildings management.
Energy saving, corporate, real estate, property, cost, management, electricity, power, consumption, air conditioning, buildings controls, heat, cooling, light, air circulation, warming, carbon dioxide, gas emissions, reduction, green roofs
May 30, 2008
Global warming and construction industry / real estate
Global Warming Threat: Construction industry in Australia is wasteful and needs to change radically
Despite efforts to be more efficient, Australia’s emissions of carbon dioxide have risen at almost twice the world average rate over the last 20 years - to more than 100 million tons a year. That’s 5 tons for every person. With only 0.32% of world population, Australia produces 1.43% of global emissions.
While huge savings can be made by generating electricity from carbon more efficiently, or by using alternative power sources, there is also urgent need to cut energy use – and to reduce peak demand.
A key target for energy saving has to be the construction industry. 40% of Australia’s energy is used to heat, light or cool buildings, build them or knock them down. Most buildings in Australia were designed for a different era where electricity, coal, oil and water were cheap, and the greatest challenge is going to be refitting them for the third millennium.
Many of the most inefficient buildings are offices and factories. The lazy option is to pull them down and start again but this is really costly for the environment. If a building only survives 30 years before demolition, up to 40% of all the energy used in its lifetime will be spent building it, destroying it and carrying away the rubble.
That’s why we can expect huge efforts to retrofit older buildings - but we need to take great care to get it right, or more refits will be needed every decade as regulations and needs change. Compliance with today’s standards is a fast way to waste billions of dollars. You’ll have to upgrade again tomorrow, and the week after.
That’s why we need bold, radical, long term vision. We need to get ready for a future where energy is twice as expensive as today when carbon taxes are added. A world where energy saving has become a global obsession.
Retrofitting old commercial buildings can be an expensive nightmare – particularly as many of them are near the end of their original design life. It is a wasteful scandal that most office blocks built in the last 30 years were only intended to be lived in for three decades.
We need a radical change in mindset of architects, planners, developers, builders and property investors. New commercial buildings should be designed with at least 50 years in mind. That will require government action: big changes in building regulations and far stricter planning standards. Without these things there will always be a temptation to cut building costs and go for the short term.
You cannot imagine such short-sightedness when building private homes. Who wants to buy a new family house that is almost guaranteed to auto-destruct by 2040? Developers who try to build such trash for the domestic market will land up in prison – but in the commercial sector they are regarded as heroes: fast build, low cost and who cares about the future.
We have a moral duty to build for the longer term. Not just to save carbon emissions. There are huge numbers of other environmental benefits in terms of reduced demand for steel, copper, wood, reduced landfill and many manufactured items that can be conserved.
This is not just about more efficient air conditioning, better insulation, saving water or making buildings more intelligent. Such steps are only a small part of the answer. Expect nothing less than a total rethink about the kind of world we want future people to live in.
We are literally building the future: of communities, neighbourhoods, working places, leisure and home environments, places of learning and of healing. Great buildings pass on a legacy for many generations, and should last hundreds of years.
Building long term means it really matters what the construction looks like. Tomorrow’s world will expect many more landmarks of quality, which endure not only in their materials, but in the affections of those who use them. The Sydney Opera House is a wonderful example of design, harmony in location, and emotional attachment. We don’t build Opera Houses to knock them down a couple of decades later – so why do we tolerate such short-termism and poor quality elsewhere?
The technologies we need are already available for next generation buildings. Take geothermal heating and cooling. These systems use up to 50% less energy than alternative systems. 45% of new homes in New Zealand have them, 70% in Sweden and 30% in Switzerland. They work like refrigerator pumps, heating or cooling pipes laid a metre below ground. Systems pay for themselves in 15 years. The global market for geothermal installations could be more than US $40bn a year.
The gold standard will be zero emission buildings: where on-site power generation from solar, wind or other sources is more than enough to meet all heat, light and cooling needs. We are already seeing demands in Europe by governments that builders create carbon-neutral homes. It’s just the beginning. We can expect zero-emission new buildings to be forced on the industry in many parts of the world over the next decade. And as that happens, the gap will grow even wider between new and old building efficiencies.
Government regulations and subsidies can set up national industries to seize these new markets. Look what’s happened in Germany where government action has resulted in the country buying 70% of all solar cells made in the world every month – and German solar cell manufacturers are dominating globally.
So we can expect aggressive and radical changes in the way buildings run. But we can also expect a major rethink about how much energy is used in actually building them in the first place.
A key target for attack will be the concrete industry which is responsible for 5-7% of all global carbon emissions. Concrete is a bulky, low value, two-thousand-year-old commodity which uses massive amounts of energy in a wasteful way. We urgently need an alternative – and there is one.
Expect widespread use in future of geoplymers such as E-crete, a product using power station waste, developed by Jannie Van Deventer, a chemical engineer at the University of Melbourne, and founder of Zeobond. If we replaced half the world’s concrete production with e-crete it would save a billion tons of carbon dioxide in the next decade alone.
E-crete is just one of thousands of examples of new innovation we can expect over the next five to ten years.... representing tens of thousands of new business opportunities, and billions of dollars of new revenues.
But the transformations we need will only happen as the construction industry pulls in a younger generation of highly talented, innovative and creative business leaders, designers, architects, engineers, surveyors and developers. It is often hard for these sectors to compete with more glamorous and well paid careers in industries such as banking, marketing, computing or telecommunications. So how will it happen?
The best talent will only be drawn into the construction industry when a younger generation see huge, exciting opportunities for new highly-profitable business innovation and creative action, and a chance quite literally to help build a better future, driven not just by commercial pressures but also a mission to help save the world.
* Dr Patrick Dixon is a leading authority on global trends, author of 12 books including Futurewise and Building a Better Business. He works with many of the world’s largest multinationals. Over 10 million different people have used his website or watched his videos on the future. www.globalchange.com
Despite efforts to be more efficient, Australia’s emissions of carbon dioxide have risen at almost twice the world average rate over the last 20 years - to more than 100 million tons a year. That’s 5 tons for every person. With only 0.32% of world population, Australia produces 1.43% of global emissions.
While huge savings can be made by generating electricity from carbon more efficiently, or by using alternative power sources, there is also urgent need to cut energy use – and to reduce peak demand.
A key target for energy saving has to be the construction industry. 40% of Australia’s energy is used to heat, light or cool buildings, build them or knock them down. Most buildings in Australia were designed for a different era where electricity, coal, oil and water were cheap, and the greatest challenge is going to be refitting them for the third millennium.
Many of the most inefficient buildings are offices and factories. The lazy option is to pull them down and start again but this is really costly for the environment. If a building only survives 30 years before demolition, up to 40% of all the energy used in its lifetime will be spent building it, destroying it and carrying away the rubble.
That’s why we can expect huge efforts to retrofit older buildings - but we need to take great care to get it right, or more refits will be needed every decade as regulations and needs change. Compliance with today’s standards is a fast way to waste billions of dollars. You’ll have to upgrade again tomorrow, and the week after.
That’s why we need bold, radical, long term vision. We need to get ready for a future where energy is twice as expensive as today when carbon taxes are added. A world where energy saving has become a global obsession.
Retrofitting old commercial buildings can be an expensive nightmare – particularly as many of them are near the end of their original design life. It is a wasteful scandal that most office blocks built in the last 30 years were only intended to be lived in for three decades.
We need a radical change in mindset of architects, planners, developers, builders and property investors. New commercial buildings should be designed with at least 50 years in mind. That will require government action: big changes in building regulations and far stricter planning standards. Without these things there will always be a temptation to cut building costs and go for the short term.
You cannot imagine such short-sightedness when building private homes. Who wants to buy a new family house that is almost guaranteed to auto-destruct by 2040? Developers who try to build such trash for the domestic market will land up in prison – but in the commercial sector they are regarded as heroes: fast build, low cost and who cares about the future.
We have a moral duty to build for the longer term. Not just to save carbon emissions. There are huge numbers of other environmental benefits in terms of reduced demand for steel, copper, wood, reduced landfill and many manufactured items that can be conserved.
This is not just about more efficient air conditioning, better insulation, saving water or making buildings more intelligent. Such steps are only a small part of the answer. Expect nothing less than a total rethink about the kind of world we want future people to live in.
We are literally building the future: of communities, neighbourhoods, working places, leisure and home environments, places of learning and of healing. Great buildings pass on a legacy for many generations, and should last hundreds of years.
Building long term means it really matters what the construction looks like. Tomorrow’s world will expect many more landmarks of quality, which endure not only in their materials, but in the affections of those who use them. The Sydney Opera House is a wonderful example of design, harmony in location, and emotional attachment. We don’t build Opera Houses to knock them down a couple of decades later – so why do we tolerate such short-termism and poor quality elsewhere?
The technologies we need are already available for next generation buildings. Take geothermal heating and cooling. These systems use up to 50% less energy than alternative systems. 45% of new homes in New Zealand have them, 70% in Sweden and 30% in Switzerland. They work like refrigerator pumps, heating or cooling pipes laid a metre below ground. Systems pay for themselves in 15 years. The global market for geothermal installations could be more than US $40bn a year.
The gold standard will be zero emission buildings: where on-site power generation from solar, wind or other sources is more than enough to meet all heat, light and cooling needs. We are already seeing demands in Europe by governments that builders create carbon-neutral homes. It’s just the beginning. We can expect zero-emission new buildings to be forced on the industry in many parts of the world over the next decade. And as that happens, the gap will grow even wider between new and old building efficiencies.
Government regulations and subsidies can set up national industries to seize these new markets. Look what’s happened in Germany where government action has resulted in the country buying 70% of all solar cells made in the world every month – and German solar cell manufacturers are dominating globally.
So we can expect aggressive and radical changes in the way buildings run. But we can also expect a major rethink about how much energy is used in actually building them in the first place.
A key target for attack will be the concrete industry which is responsible for 5-7% of all global carbon emissions. Concrete is a bulky, low value, two-thousand-year-old commodity which uses massive amounts of energy in a wasteful way. We urgently need an alternative – and there is one.
Expect widespread use in future of geoplymers such as E-crete, a product using power station waste, developed by Jannie Van Deventer, a chemical engineer at the University of Melbourne, and founder of Zeobond. If we replaced half the world’s concrete production with e-crete it would save a billion tons of carbon dioxide in the next decade alone.
E-crete is just one of thousands of examples of new innovation we can expect over the next five to ten years.... representing tens of thousands of new business opportunities, and billions of dollars of new revenues.
But the transformations we need will only happen as the construction industry pulls in a younger generation of highly talented, innovative and creative business leaders, designers, architects, engineers, surveyors and developers. It is often hard for these sectors to compete with more glamorous and well paid careers in industries such as banking, marketing, computing or telecommunications. So how will it happen?
The best talent will only be drawn into the construction industry when a younger generation see huge, exciting opportunities for new highly-profitable business innovation and creative action, and a chance quite literally to help build a better future, driven not just by commercial pressures but also a mission to help save the world.
* Dr Patrick Dixon is a leading authority on global trends, author of 12 books including Futurewise and Building a Better Business. He works with many of the world’s largest multinationals. Over 10 million different people have used his website or watched his videos on the future. www.globalchange.com
Business Values - Corporate Ethics and Motivation at Work
Business Values: Ultimate Test
“A well run business must have high and consistent standards of ethics”
Richard Branson Virgin Airways
“Defining the purpose of the corporation as exclusively economic is a deadly oversimplification, which allows overemphasis on self-interest at the expense of consideration of others.” Originally published in 1989 – former editor of Harvard Business Review and Professor at Harvard Business School.
The purpose of business is a better world
The promise to customers is a better life
Corporations that are passionate about purpose, deliver on promise, and focus on process (provision of proven products and services for profit), are likely to be rewarded with long-term success - so long as they also pay attention to one other factor.
One vital element is still missing, hence all the attention given recently to single issue activism, consumer campaigns, corporate values, social responsibility, corporate governance and mission statements. We have already touched on many of these things in earlier chapters on leadership, marketing, advertising, change management, war for talent, motivation and strategy.
“Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wicked of people will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone” Milton Keynes
Keynes was making a joke in this famous quote, but at the same time was making a serious point which is that capitalism does not always deliver on the business promise of a better future.
History shows that “market forces” are often unstable, erratic, violent, dispassionate, blind to human suffering, insensitive to tragedy and deaf to cries of injustice, tyranny and environmental destruction.
In growing recognition of this problem, business ethics is now attracting huge media attention, which in the current climate can be far more damaging to profits and customer relationships than winning or losing a legal battle. Public opinion often changes long before regulations and the legal process, and can be a powerful warning to corporations to clean up their act.
People talk about ethics in business but the real issue is ethics in life. Bill Pollard
70% of chief executives say that Corporate and Social Responsibility is (now) an essential issue to their business. The reason is that they know the world has changed and companies run on a narrowly defined shareholder-value philosophy are likely to hit a crisis. 89% of marketing directors say that business should be involved in addressing social issues of the day – because they can’t sell otherwise.
But what should those business ethics be based on, and how should that be expressed in community action?
I believe business has a social responsibility. In the communities where you work you ought to help create an environment where you can develop and attract the kind of people you need.” Lawrence Weinbach, Unisys
Many organisations have tried to define their own Codes of Conduct. Huge efforts have been spent spelling out what should or should not be done, how people should behave, what their wider responsibilities should be. At the same time, business schools have made attempts to adjust old-style MBA programs and executive training.
So where do we draw the line between right and wrong, ethical and immoral? The lazy response is to hide behind the law – deferring all ethical questions to politicians. “If it’s legal, it must be alright”. But laws vary between countries which is very confusing for a law-obsessed global corporation. Are we saying that a particular action is morally right in Poland but not in Spain? Getting corporations to obey laws is certainly a major challenege: two thirds of 500 largest US corporations have acted illegally in the last decade.
“Managers would be mistaken to regard legal compliance as an adequate means for addressing the full range of ethical issues that arise every day. “If it’s legal it’s ethical” is a frequently heard slogan. But conduct that is lawful may be highly problematic from an ethical point of view”. Paine. Ethics HBR
If strict legal compliance cannot keep a corporation ethically sound, what then?
Many organisations talk about bench-marking against so-called best-practice, but best-practice is not enough either: it merely implies conformity with informal guidelines, or accepted ways of doing things.
“Best-practice” is usually associated with “operational excellence” more than morality – and the two can be in direct conflict, for example in a manufacturing facility that copies “best-practice” to reduce costs, but also poisons the water-supply.
“Living well and beautifully and justly are all one thing” Socrates
“Bench-marking” is completely useless from the ethical point of view, because all it does is encourage corporations to copy each other’s “bench-mark” or ways of working – a foolish and hazardous course, unless we are sure that example is ethical in the first place.
Corporations often hide behind “bench-marking”, by arguing that they followed “widely accepted practice”, but this is cowardly and demonstrates total abdication of moral responsibility. There are too many examples in history of collective madness or moral blindness.
“Morality transcends not only markets but also cultural boundaries” Robert Soloman
We can see from all this that we urgently need a simple ethical test for all corporate activity, which works in every culture and every time-zone, and will continue to provide safe guidance for executives in future. We need a widely-applicable moral value, against which all decisions can be measured: an easy-to-grasp, universal principle of business action, which provides an practical reference point for those faced by ethical dilemmas.
“Cultural relativism is morally blind. For relativists, nothing is sacred and nothing is wrong. For absolutists, many things that are different are wrong. Neither extreme illuminates the real world of business decision making. The answer lies somewhere between.” Ethics HBR Donaldson
“People want their company to be a good citizen. They want it to show true concern for the world, for the environment. They want it to have a social conscience.” Jorma Ollila, CEO of Nokia
Donaldson proposes three principles:
1. Respect for core human values which determine the absolute moral threshold for all business activities eg right to health, economic advancement and improved standard of living.
2. Golden Rule recognised in all major religions and ethical traditions – treat others as you would like to be treated yourself
3. Respect for local traditions: the belief that context matters when deciding what is right and what is wrong.
But his three principles can be reduced almost entirely into a central core ethic for all business decisions – his Golden Rule in fact summarises most things, once one spells out what it actually means:
Treat others as you would like to be treated
Or put another way perhaps more relevant to corporate activity:
Behave as you would like others to behave
Treat other customers, workers, shareholders, communities, nations, competitors, business partners as you would hope to be treated if you were in their place. We should also extend this with the importance of example, which is closely related.
Universal Code of Business Practice
• Serve as you would be served
o principle of reciprocity
• Set good examples in all you do
o Principle of reproduceability
Serve as you would be served
This principle of reciprocity is based on timeless truths expressed by Confucius, Jesus Christ and many others, and rephrased in a thousand ways:
• Do as you would be done by
• Do unto others as you wish them to do to you
• What you do not wish done to you, do not do to others
Some further questions:
• Is this how I would like to be treated?
• Is this how I would like my own family to be treated?
The Principle of Reciprocity applies in practical ways to all we do:
• Lead as you would like to be led
• Advertise as you would like others to advertise
• Honour commitments as you would like others to honour theirs
• Do business as we hope all business will be done
• Trade as you wish others would trade
• Buy as you would wish others to buy
• Sell as you would wish others to sell
• Work as you would wish others to work
• Pay bills as you would wish to be paid
Set good examples in all you do
The Principle of Reproduceability is this: is this a sustainable pattern of business assuming that many others will act the same way? If everyone else acted in a similar way, would it be a good thing?
• Is this how you would like others to behave?
• Does this set an example worth following?
• Is this a great example for others?
• What would happen if many other corporations behaved like this?
• Are we setting an example in cultural sensitivity?
• Is our example sustainable in the long term?
These two principles together form a Rule of Business against which all activity can be measured.
Run your business as others should be run, setting a good example in all things
When we serve as we would be served and set good examples in all we do, we not only act in ways that all regard ethical, but also enhance corporate reputation, brand image, customer relationships, workplace morale and strengthen the fundamentals of the business.
Unchanging values in a changing world
“Morality transcends not only markets but cultural boundaries too” Robert Soloman
But do these two principles of “doing as we would be done by”, and “being a good example”, really work in all cultures? Standards and expectations vary, and the yardstick needs to be applied with care.
Take for example the stresses and strains arising from the growing inequality between wealthiest and poorest nations, perhaps the greatest moral challenge of our generation. If the poorest and most marginalised three hundred million people in Africa were already as politicised as many Islamic groups in the Middle East, there is little doubt that we would now be experiencing a very turbulent new chapter in human history.
How can we create a better world without tackling evils such as hunger and violence first? Eckhart Tolle - The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
For many hundreds of millions of people, daily life has got worse over the last twenty years, despite huge earnings in some countries from oil or minerals, plus large amounts of development assistance. Two factors in this are AIDS and civil wars.
The combined assets of the world’s top three billionaires exceed the combined GDP of all the least developed countries, where over 600 million people live. One in five of those alive today consume 86% of the world’s good’s and services – hardly surprising when you realise that 66% of the world’s population lives on less than $2,000 a year, and most Africans earn less than $1 a day.
DeBeers, the diamond mining corporation, told a London gathering of executives that it costs around $1bn to create a new mine. Based on the daily wages of workers in the area, for the same cost you could employ 100,000 local workers for 30 years. That’s People Power Parity: measuring costs not in $ but in multiples of a daily wage.
The growth machine rolls on. The combined assets of the world’s top three billionaires exceed the combined GDP of all the least developed countries, where over 600 million people live. One in five of those alive today consume 86% of the world’s good’s and services.
Expect mood and fashion swings in wealthy nations to clash with the aspirations of poorer nations, resulting in resentment, conflict and added pressures for mass migration.
We need to be careful not to impose a set of current Western values which are the product of 150 years of industrialisation, on nations which are just emerging from rural subsistence living.
Oil and mineral mining – huge ethical challenges
If fundamental problems of injustice and corruption are not sorted, extraction of oil or minerals could become almost impossible due to terrorist targeting of uniquely vulnerable and costly infrastructure. Quite simply, some of these companies will be out of business.
10% of all Shell profits come from Nigeria, the 6th largest crude oil producer in world. A single barrel of oil buys a local labourer for more than a month. Mineral resources are 25-90% of exports in Botswana, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Senegal, Mauritania, Namibia, Niger, Central Africa Republic, Sierra Leone, Congo, Zambia, Zimbabwe. In theory the economies of these countries should be roaring ahead, but the reverse is largely true.
A 2003 World Bank study shows the curse of extraction wealth on the poorest nations: countries with greatest income from mining / extraction usually see lower economic growth, more corrupt and oppressive regimes and greater contrasts between wealthy and poor. They are also more likely to suffer from wars and ethnic violence. There is often a coalition of interests between a wealthy and well-armed ruling elite and a multinational looking for stable conditions for long-term extraction.
Mineral wealth means the currency becomes valuable, so small business exporters can’t sell what they grow or make and go out of business, making the country as a whole even more dependent on extraction.
Answer: Identify multinational profits by nation, so that it is easier to justify ploughing back some profits into the relevant communities. Make sure that such community funding is totally transparent at every level, with community involvement, health and education infrastructure, encouragement of small enterprises, encouragement for human rights and no forced resettlement without proper compensation.
The age of the very special child
Child labour is an example of a very controversial issue where some in poor nations are being severely judged for acting in a way that would have been completely legal in developed nations at a similar stage in their economic development.
Child labour was only abolished in countries like Britain around 150 years ago. Developed nations now live in an acutely child-sensitive age. It’s partly because many parents in these countries are having fewer children and often later in life. Children have become a symbol of innocence and purity in a worrying world.
It’s all part of a natural desire to create the best kind of life for children, without pain, suffering, unhappiness, violence, emotional abuse, seduction or rape.
At least that’s the idea…..
Every time a young child is discovered in India working in a factory making products for Western markets the same thing happens. The company gets into big trouble, and the children get into mortal danger.
Over 50 million children in India depend for their daily existence on whatever they can get by begging, selling or working. If you don’t work in some way you starve, and if you starve you’re soon dead.
So every child in India is a working chid, unless completely supported by parents. But over a hundred million families in India are so poor that a child has to earn his or her own food. Everyone from the age of five has to help – whether harvesting crops, carrying water, making a fire, or sitting on the pavement selling flour.
And then there are the runaways. And the orphans. And the outcasts.
My wife and I have visited a railway station in Mumbai which is home to hundreds of children, aged three to fifteen. Twenty to thirty new children arrive every day, each a runaway from home. One girl has given birth three times alone on the roof of one of the platforms – aged thirteen , fourteen and fifteen..
Girls of ten to twelve get picked up on the streets within hours by older boys, who offer affection and a meal. Wthin a week, many of these vulnerable young girls are on a one-way ticket to almost certain death. Recruited as commercial sex workers, they are forced to have unprotected sex up to ten times a night. It’s only a matter of time before they get HIV.
Building a better world for children is a noble ideal but if we are not careful, we can find that blind pursuit of Western ideology can kill the very children we want to protect.
So how do we apply our universal code in such a situation?
Treat others as we would like to be treated – may lead us to place ourselves in the shoes of destitute, orphaned children who beg at the factory gates. At the very least it leads us to find small ways to make a big difference, even something as little as feeding those who come, for a handful of dollars a day, right through to setting up some kind of a work-skills programme with food and shelter at night.
Setting an example worth following – leads us to be very sensitive to local situations, resistant to knee-jerk moralism and misplaced charity, but actively investing back into the impoverished communities from which our workers and customers come.
Quite often there is a disconnection for historic reasons between where the business operates, and where community donations land up. So for example, a large US multinational may have offices in most of the poorest nations, and major revenue from some of them, yet the entire donations policy may be to support community projects in American cities.
Community development develops markets
66% of the world’s population lives on less than $6 a day. It is easy to write off such a vast number of people from the commercial point of view, but it is a large market with significant collective buying power. That is one reason why revenue growth for multinationals with the right products for poorer nations is often so rapid eg Avon Cosmetics in Russia with annual growth rates of up to 70%.
Another example is Hindustan Unilever which introduced candy made from fruit juice and sugar for a penny in India. The new candy became the fastest growing item in their product range – with estimated sales potential of $200m a year. They have seen similar results with low-priced detergent and iodized salt.
Slum-dwellers pay larger proportions of income on basics like food and phone. Water can cost up to 100 times more than elsewhere, food 20-30% extra. Local moneychangers may be charging 10-15% per day or as much as 2000% a year.
As a result, non-profit micro-banking has flourished, offering small loans to groups of around 14 women who act as security for each other. Typical repayment rates are around 99.5% within 12 months and defaults almost unknown.
Investing in microbanking, education, health and infrastructure is a sound policy from the corporate point of view, as the result in general terms is development of future markets.
Why Milton Friedman’s views look so out-dated
Friedman argued that business should only spend money to make owners wealthy, and anything else was wrong. But as we have seen, this approach can actually damage the very wealth one seeks to protect.
Well-directed community support can improve corporate image, consumer loyalty, product attractiveness, morale, workplace productivity and the size of local markets. Indeed, strategic philanthropy can provide such strong business advantages that some argue that it hardly deserves to be called philanthropy.
Friedman’s second assumption is that giving is no more effective when done corporately, than by people, so there is no moral logic to it: reward your shareholders and let them decide themselves how much to donate. But Friedman failed to see that corporate donations can have far greater impact than large number of acts of individual generosity, grouped together in a donation of identical size.
Larger corporations can encourage changes in law, local practices and government action – for example by offering conditional support for national programmes. Business can also encourage staff largesse with donation-matching schemes, or volunteer release programmes or with gifts in kind of services or products.
This multiplying effect has been created by Pfizer over the last few years. The corporation has an excellent treatment for trachoma – a common cause of blindness in the poorest parts of the world. They made a decision to attack the problem on a massive scale. They not only donated drugs, but also worked in close partnership with Edna McConnell Clark Foundation and the World Health Organisation to distribute therapy and set up clinics.
In 12 months alone the incidence of trachoma fell 50% in target populations of Morocco and Tanzania. The programme has grown with support from Bill and Belinda Gates and the British government, aiming to treat more than 30 million people.
Cisco knows the power of developing your own markets and workforce with strategic philanthropy. Cisco created Networking Academies: training centres and virtual training environments designed to produce a rapid increase in the number of people who can set up and repair computer networks – vital to a corporation who sells them.
When it comes to social engagement, more than 50% of Americans prefer companies to be active on a local (59%) rather than national (26%) or global (9%) basis, with priority on quality of public schools, youth programs and environment. People prefer specific programmes with tangible results. 56% of global companies have not reduced their social responsibility programme spending in the recession – 4% have actually increased spending.
"A civilization flourishes when people plant trees under which they will never sit" Greek Proverb
YPO stories – Alex Cappello
Competitive advantage of corporate philanthropy
Michael Porter is perhaps the world’s leading authority on competitive advantage. With Mark Kramer he has argued that corporate philanthropy can create competitive advantage.
5 steps to identify context-focussed philanthropy investments
• Examine competitive context in each territory
• Review existing donations pattern
• Assess existing and potential giving in light of advantage
• Seek possible collective action / clustering
• Evaluate results eg sponsorship of sports event in brand awareness, using mailing list of organiser / club and so on
Porter dislikes the term “Strategic Philanthropy” – often loosely used. He feels that cause-related marketing is not really philanthropy at all, because of the obvious commercial benefits. But this is hair-splitting: the end result is still a very different relationship between community and corporation than Friedman ever approved of.
Foundations may not be the answer
Many large corporations have set up charitable foundations, but donor benefits have often been disappointing – they would be like to fail the strategic philanthropy test. These charitable bodies are usually independent, and strongly resist pressure from founding companies to make donations that could help their business. It is unfortunate that corporations can find they are attacked for lack of philanthropy, despite generous gifts of capital or shares in the past.
For example, the Wellcome Foundation was endowed by the Burroughs Wellcome drug company, for medical research. The corporation was later swallowed up into GlaxoSmithKline, who has been attacked for high-priced anti-AIDS therapies, despite the fact that the Wellcome Foundation continues to make huge donations to AIDS research, but under the old name.
Motorola code of conduct - bribery
Motorola code of conduct: “We will always act with constant respect for people and uncompromising integrity”. Bribery: “funds and assets of Motorola shall not be used directly or indirectly for illegal payments of any kind” and spells out “the payment of a bribe to a public official or the kick-back of funds to an employee of a customer…” Codes of conduct need to be specific eg.. “Employees of Motorola will respect the laws, customs and traditions of each country in which they operate, but will at the same time engage in no course of conduct which, even if legal, could be deemed to be in violation of the accepted business ethics of Motorola or the laws of the United States relating to business ethics.”…
Bribes as an example of varying culture and standards
Whose ethics and whose values? Until recently bribes were tax deductible in Germany, encouraged actively therefore by Inland Revenue. Some differences in culture have been described as Conflicts of Relative Development: situations where it is helpful to ask what kind of decisions we would have made in our own country at a similar stage of economic development. Examples include wage levels, safety standards – and bribery. Is it right for a large ship, contaminated with asbestos, to be stripped and refitted in a developing country using dangerous processes which would be widely condemned if carried out in a European or American port? Is it right to pay these workers less than 10% of what Europeans would be paid? And is it right if the contract was only won after providing a generous holiday in the Bahamas to an official and his family?
Bribes or other irregular financial inducements were until recently tax-deductible expenses. The definition of corruption used to be : “Use of public profit for private gain” , but many have broadened the definition to “use of entrusted powers for private benefit”.
Embezzlement, nepotism, bribery, extortion, interest peddling, fraud and other irregular benefits – these things challenge development, undermine democracy and government, distort the legal process and weaken leadership (because a bribe wins power). In corrupt countries people get promoted by who they know rather than by what they know.
Corruption destroys rules of competition, since only the most corrupt get the best deals, rather than those with the best products and services.
“A well run business must have high and consistent standards of ethics”
Richard Branson Virgin Airways
“Defining the purpose of the corporation as exclusively economic is a deadly oversimplification, which allows overemphasis on self-interest at the expense of consideration of others.” Originally published in 1989 – former editor of Harvard Business Review and Professor at Harvard Business School.
The purpose of business is a better world
The promise to customers is a better life
Corporations that are passionate about purpose, deliver on promise, and focus on process (provision of proven products and services for profit), are likely to be rewarded with long-term success - so long as they also pay attention to one other factor.
One vital element is still missing, hence all the attention given recently to single issue activism, consumer campaigns, corporate values, social responsibility, corporate governance and mission statements. We have already touched on many of these things in earlier chapters on leadership, marketing, advertising, change management, war for talent, motivation and strategy.
“Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wicked of people will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone” Milton Keynes
Keynes was making a joke in this famous quote, but at the same time was making a serious point which is that capitalism does not always deliver on the business promise of a better future.
History shows that “market forces” are often unstable, erratic, violent, dispassionate, blind to human suffering, insensitive to tragedy and deaf to cries of injustice, tyranny and environmental destruction.
In growing recognition of this problem, business ethics is now attracting huge media attention, which in the current climate can be far more damaging to profits and customer relationships than winning or losing a legal battle. Public opinion often changes long before regulations and the legal process, and can be a powerful warning to corporations to clean up their act.
People talk about ethics in business but the real issue is ethics in life. Bill Pollard
70% of chief executives say that Corporate and Social Responsibility is (now) an essential issue to their business. The reason is that they know the world has changed and companies run on a narrowly defined shareholder-value philosophy are likely to hit a crisis. 89% of marketing directors say that business should be involved in addressing social issues of the day – because they can’t sell otherwise.
But what should those business ethics be based on, and how should that be expressed in community action?
I believe business has a social responsibility. In the communities where you work you ought to help create an environment where you can develop and attract the kind of people you need.” Lawrence Weinbach, Unisys
Many organisations have tried to define their own Codes of Conduct. Huge efforts have been spent spelling out what should or should not be done, how people should behave, what their wider responsibilities should be. At the same time, business schools have made attempts to adjust old-style MBA programs and executive training.
So where do we draw the line between right and wrong, ethical and immoral? The lazy response is to hide behind the law – deferring all ethical questions to politicians. “If it’s legal, it must be alright”. But laws vary between countries which is very confusing for a law-obsessed global corporation. Are we saying that a particular action is morally right in Poland but not in Spain? Getting corporations to obey laws is certainly a major challenege: two thirds of 500 largest US corporations have acted illegally in the last decade.
“Managers would be mistaken to regard legal compliance as an adequate means for addressing the full range of ethical issues that arise every day. “If it’s legal it’s ethical” is a frequently heard slogan. But conduct that is lawful may be highly problematic from an ethical point of view”. Paine. Ethics HBR
If strict legal compliance cannot keep a corporation ethically sound, what then?
Many organisations talk about bench-marking against so-called best-practice, but best-practice is not enough either: it merely implies conformity with informal guidelines, or accepted ways of doing things.
“Best-practice” is usually associated with “operational excellence” more than morality – and the two can be in direct conflict, for example in a manufacturing facility that copies “best-practice” to reduce costs, but also poisons the water-supply.
“Living well and beautifully and justly are all one thing” Socrates
“Bench-marking” is completely useless from the ethical point of view, because all it does is encourage corporations to copy each other’s “bench-mark” or ways of working – a foolish and hazardous course, unless we are sure that example is ethical in the first place.
Corporations often hide behind “bench-marking”, by arguing that they followed “widely accepted practice”, but this is cowardly and demonstrates total abdication of moral responsibility. There are too many examples in history of collective madness or moral blindness.
“Morality transcends not only markets but also cultural boundaries” Robert Soloman
We can see from all this that we urgently need a simple ethical test for all corporate activity, which works in every culture and every time-zone, and will continue to provide safe guidance for executives in future. We need a widely-applicable moral value, against which all decisions can be measured: an easy-to-grasp, universal principle of business action, which provides an practical reference point for those faced by ethical dilemmas.
“Cultural relativism is morally blind. For relativists, nothing is sacred and nothing is wrong. For absolutists, many things that are different are wrong. Neither extreme illuminates the real world of business decision making. The answer lies somewhere between.” Ethics HBR Donaldson
“People want their company to be a good citizen. They want it to show true concern for the world, for the environment. They want it to have a social conscience.” Jorma Ollila, CEO of Nokia
Donaldson proposes three principles:
1. Respect for core human values which determine the absolute moral threshold for all business activities eg right to health, economic advancement and improved standard of living.
2. Golden Rule recognised in all major religions and ethical traditions – treat others as you would like to be treated yourself
3. Respect for local traditions: the belief that context matters when deciding what is right and what is wrong.
But his three principles can be reduced almost entirely into a central core ethic for all business decisions – his Golden Rule in fact summarises most things, once one spells out what it actually means:
Treat others as you would like to be treated
Or put another way perhaps more relevant to corporate activity:
Behave as you would like others to behave
Treat other customers, workers, shareholders, communities, nations, competitors, business partners as you would hope to be treated if you were in their place. We should also extend this with the importance of example, which is closely related.
Universal Code of Business Practice
• Serve as you would be served
o principle of reciprocity
• Set good examples in all you do
o Principle of reproduceability
Serve as you would be served
This principle of reciprocity is based on timeless truths expressed by Confucius, Jesus Christ and many others, and rephrased in a thousand ways:
• Do as you would be done by
• Do unto others as you wish them to do to you
• What you do not wish done to you, do not do to others
Some further questions:
• Is this how I would like to be treated?
• Is this how I would like my own family to be treated?
The Principle of Reciprocity applies in practical ways to all we do:
• Lead as you would like to be led
• Advertise as you would like others to advertise
• Honour commitments as you would like others to honour theirs
• Do business as we hope all business will be done
• Trade as you wish others would trade
• Buy as you would wish others to buy
• Sell as you would wish others to sell
• Work as you would wish others to work
• Pay bills as you would wish to be paid
Set good examples in all you do
The Principle of Reproduceability is this: is this a sustainable pattern of business assuming that many others will act the same way? If everyone else acted in a similar way, would it be a good thing?
• Is this how you would like others to behave?
• Does this set an example worth following?
• Is this a great example for others?
• What would happen if many other corporations behaved like this?
• Are we setting an example in cultural sensitivity?
• Is our example sustainable in the long term?
These two principles together form a Rule of Business against which all activity can be measured.
Run your business as others should be run, setting a good example in all things
When we serve as we would be served and set good examples in all we do, we not only act in ways that all regard ethical, but also enhance corporate reputation, brand image, customer relationships, workplace morale and strengthen the fundamentals of the business.
Unchanging values in a changing world
“Morality transcends not only markets but cultural boundaries too” Robert Soloman
But do these two principles of “doing as we would be done by”, and “being a good example”, really work in all cultures? Standards and expectations vary, and the yardstick needs to be applied with care.
Take for example the stresses and strains arising from the growing inequality between wealthiest and poorest nations, perhaps the greatest moral challenge of our generation. If the poorest and most marginalised three hundred million people in Africa were already as politicised as many Islamic groups in the Middle East, there is little doubt that we would now be experiencing a very turbulent new chapter in human history.
How can we create a better world without tackling evils such as hunger and violence first? Eckhart Tolle - The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
For many hundreds of millions of people, daily life has got worse over the last twenty years, despite huge earnings in some countries from oil or minerals, plus large amounts of development assistance. Two factors in this are AIDS and civil wars.
The combined assets of the world’s top three billionaires exceed the combined GDP of all the least developed countries, where over 600 million people live. One in five of those alive today consume 86% of the world’s good’s and services – hardly surprising when you realise that 66% of the world’s population lives on less than $2,000 a year, and most Africans earn less than $1 a day.
DeBeers, the diamond mining corporation, told a London gathering of executives that it costs around $1bn to create a new mine. Based on the daily wages of workers in the area, for the same cost you could employ 100,000 local workers for 30 years. That’s People Power Parity: measuring costs not in $ but in multiples of a daily wage.
The growth machine rolls on. The combined assets of the world’s top three billionaires exceed the combined GDP of all the least developed countries, where over 600 million people live. One in five of those alive today consume 86% of the world’s good’s and services.
Expect mood and fashion swings in wealthy nations to clash with the aspirations of poorer nations, resulting in resentment, conflict and added pressures for mass migration.
We need to be careful not to impose a set of current Western values which are the product of 150 years of industrialisation, on nations which are just emerging from rural subsistence living.
Oil and mineral mining – huge ethical challenges
If fundamental problems of injustice and corruption are not sorted, extraction of oil or minerals could become almost impossible due to terrorist targeting of uniquely vulnerable and costly infrastructure. Quite simply, some of these companies will be out of business.
10% of all Shell profits come from Nigeria, the 6th largest crude oil producer in world. A single barrel of oil buys a local labourer for more than a month. Mineral resources are 25-90% of exports in Botswana, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Senegal, Mauritania, Namibia, Niger, Central Africa Republic, Sierra Leone, Congo, Zambia, Zimbabwe. In theory the economies of these countries should be roaring ahead, but the reverse is largely true.
A 2003 World Bank study shows the curse of extraction wealth on the poorest nations: countries with greatest income from mining / extraction usually see lower economic growth, more corrupt and oppressive regimes and greater contrasts between wealthy and poor. They are also more likely to suffer from wars and ethnic violence. There is often a coalition of interests between a wealthy and well-armed ruling elite and a multinational looking for stable conditions for long-term extraction.
Mineral wealth means the currency becomes valuable, so small business exporters can’t sell what they grow or make and go out of business, making the country as a whole even more dependent on extraction.
Answer: Identify multinational profits by nation, so that it is easier to justify ploughing back some profits into the relevant communities. Make sure that such community funding is totally transparent at every level, with community involvement, health and education infrastructure, encouragement of small enterprises, encouragement for human rights and no forced resettlement without proper compensation.
The age of the very special child
Child labour is an example of a very controversial issue where some in poor nations are being severely judged for acting in a way that would have been completely legal in developed nations at a similar stage in their economic development.
Child labour was only abolished in countries like Britain around 150 years ago. Developed nations now live in an acutely child-sensitive age. It’s partly because many parents in these countries are having fewer children and often later in life. Children have become a symbol of innocence and purity in a worrying world.
It’s all part of a natural desire to create the best kind of life for children, without pain, suffering, unhappiness, violence, emotional abuse, seduction or rape.
At least that’s the idea…..
Every time a young child is discovered in India working in a factory making products for Western markets the same thing happens. The company gets into big trouble, and the children get into mortal danger.
Over 50 million children in India depend for their daily existence on whatever they can get by begging, selling or working. If you don’t work in some way you starve, and if you starve you’re soon dead.
So every child in India is a working chid, unless completely supported by parents. But over a hundred million families in India are so poor that a child has to earn his or her own food. Everyone from the age of five has to help – whether harvesting crops, carrying water, making a fire, or sitting on the pavement selling flour.
And then there are the runaways. And the orphans. And the outcasts.
My wife and I have visited a railway station in Mumbai which is home to hundreds of children, aged three to fifteen. Twenty to thirty new children arrive every day, each a runaway from home. One girl has given birth three times alone on the roof of one of the platforms – aged thirteen , fourteen and fifteen..
Girls of ten to twelve get picked up on the streets within hours by older boys, who offer affection and a meal. Wthin a week, many of these vulnerable young girls are on a one-way ticket to almost certain death. Recruited as commercial sex workers, they are forced to have unprotected sex up to ten times a night. It’s only a matter of time before they get HIV.
Building a better world for children is a noble ideal but if we are not careful, we can find that blind pursuit of Western ideology can kill the very children we want to protect.
So how do we apply our universal code in such a situation?
Treat others as we would like to be treated – may lead us to place ourselves in the shoes of destitute, orphaned children who beg at the factory gates. At the very least it leads us to find small ways to make a big difference, even something as little as feeding those who come, for a handful of dollars a day, right through to setting up some kind of a work-skills programme with food and shelter at night.
Setting an example worth following – leads us to be very sensitive to local situations, resistant to knee-jerk moralism and misplaced charity, but actively investing back into the impoverished communities from which our workers and customers come.
Quite often there is a disconnection for historic reasons between where the business operates, and where community donations land up. So for example, a large US multinational may have offices in most of the poorest nations, and major revenue from some of them, yet the entire donations policy may be to support community projects in American cities.
Community development develops markets
66% of the world’s population lives on less than $6 a day. It is easy to write off such a vast number of people from the commercial point of view, but it is a large market with significant collective buying power. That is one reason why revenue growth for multinationals with the right products for poorer nations is often so rapid eg Avon Cosmetics in Russia with annual growth rates of up to 70%.
Another example is Hindustan Unilever which introduced candy made from fruit juice and sugar for a penny in India. The new candy became the fastest growing item in their product range – with estimated sales potential of $200m a year. They have seen similar results with low-priced detergent and iodized salt.
Slum-dwellers pay larger proportions of income on basics like food and phone. Water can cost up to 100 times more than elsewhere, food 20-30% extra. Local moneychangers may be charging 10-15% per day or as much as 2000% a year.
As a result, non-profit micro-banking has flourished, offering small loans to groups of around 14 women who act as security for each other. Typical repayment rates are around 99.5% within 12 months and defaults almost unknown.
Investing in microbanking, education, health and infrastructure is a sound policy from the corporate point of view, as the result in general terms is development of future markets.
Why Milton Friedman’s views look so out-dated
Friedman argued that business should only spend money to make owners wealthy, and anything else was wrong. But as we have seen, this approach can actually damage the very wealth one seeks to protect.
Well-directed community support can improve corporate image, consumer loyalty, product attractiveness, morale, workplace productivity and the size of local markets. Indeed, strategic philanthropy can provide such strong business advantages that some argue that it hardly deserves to be called philanthropy.
Friedman’s second assumption is that giving is no more effective when done corporately, than by people, so there is no moral logic to it: reward your shareholders and let them decide themselves how much to donate. But Friedman failed to see that corporate donations can have far greater impact than large number of acts of individual generosity, grouped together in a donation of identical size.
Larger corporations can encourage changes in law, local practices and government action – for example by offering conditional support for national programmes. Business can also encourage staff largesse with donation-matching schemes, or volunteer release programmes or with gifts in kind of services or products.
This multiplying effect has been created by Pfizer over the last few years. The corporation has an excellent treatment for trachoma – a common cause of blindness in the poorest parts of the world. They made a decision to attack the problem on a massive scale. They not only donated drugs, but also worked in close partnership with Edna McConnell Clark Foundation and the World Health Organisation to distribute therapy and set up clinics.
In 12 months alone the incidence of trachoma fell 50% in target populations of Morocco and Tanzania. The programme has grown with support from Bill and Belinda Gates and the British government, aiming to treat more than 30 million people.
Cisco knows the power of developing your own markets and workforce with strategic philanthropy. Cisco created Networking Academies: training centres and virtual training environments designed to produce a rapid increase in the number of people who can set up and repair computer networks – vital to a corporation who sells them.
When it comes to social engagement, more than 50% of Americans prefer companies to be active on a local (59%) rather than national (26%) or global (9%) basis, with priority on quality of public schools, youth programs and environment. People prefer specific programmes with tangible results. 56% of global companies have not reduced their social responsibility programme spending in the recession – 4% have actually increased spending.
"A civilization flourishes when people plant trees under which they will never sit" Greek Proverb
YPO stories – Alex Cappello
Competitive advantage of corporate philanthropy
Michael Porter is perhaps the world’s leading authority on competitive advantage. With Mark Kramer he has argued that corporate philanthropy can create competitive advantage.
5 steps to identify context-focussed philanthropy investments
• Examine competitive context in each territory
• Review existing donations pattern
• Assess existing and potential giving in light of advantage
• Seek possible collective action / clustering
• Evaluate results eg sponsorship of sports event in brand awareness, using mailing list of organiser / club and so on
Porter dislikes the term “Strategic Philanthropy” – often loosely used. He feels that cause-related marketing is not really philanthropy at all, because of the obvious commercial benefits. But this is hair-splitting: the end result is still a very different relationship between community and corporation than Friedman ever approved of.
Foundations may not be the answer
Many large corporations have set up charitable foundations, but donor benefits have often been disappointing – they would be like to fail the strategic philanthropy test. These charitable bodies are usually independent, and strongly resist pressure from founding companies to make donations that could help their business. It is unfortunate that corporations can find they are attacked for lack of philanthropy, despite generous gifts of capital or shares in the past.
For example, the Wellcome Foundation was endowed by the Burroughs Wellcome drug company, for medical research. The corporation was later swallowed up into GlaxoSmithKline, who has been attacked for high-priced anti-AIDS therapies, despite the fact that the Wellcome Foundation continues to make huge donations to AIDS research, but under the old name.
Motorola code of conduct - bribery
Motorola code of conduct: “We will always act with constant respect for people and uncompromising integrity”. Bribery: “funds and assets of Motorola shall not be used directly or indirectly for illegal payments of any kind” and spells out “the payment of a bribe to a public official or the kick-back of funds to an employee of a customer…” Codes of conduct need to be specific eg.. “Employees of Motorola will respect the laws, customs and traditions of each country in which they operate, but will at the same time engage in no course of conduct which, even if legal, could be deemed to be in violation of the accepted business ethics of Motorola or the laws of the United States relating to business ethics.”…
Bribes as an example of varying culture and standards
Whose ethics and whose values? Until recently bribes were tax deductible in Germany, encouraged actively therefore by Inland Revenue. Some differences in culture have been described as Conflicts of Relative Development: situations where it is helpful to ask what kind of decisions we would have made in our own country at a similar stage of economic development. Examples include wage levels, safety standards – and bribery. Is it right for a large ship, contaminated with asbestos, to be stripped and refitted in a developing country using dangerous processes which would be widely condemned if carried out in a European or American port? Is it right to pay these workers less than 10% of what Europeans would be paid? And is it right if the contract was only won after providing a generous holiday in the Bahamas to an official and his family?
Bribes or other irregular financial inducements were until recently tax-deductible expenses. The definition of corruption used to be : “Use of public profit for private gain” , but many have broadened the definition to “use of entrusted powers for private benefit”.
Embezzlement, nepotism, bribery, extortion, interest peddling, fraud and other irregular benefits – these things challenge development, undermine democracy and government, distort the legal process and weaken leadership (because a bribe wins power). In corrupt countries people get promoted by who they know rather than by what they know.
Corruption destroys rules of competition, since only the most corrupt get the best deals, rather than those with the best products and services.
May 23, 2008
Women consumers rule - female customer trends
Most older consumers are women and most online sales are to women. Female consumers as pressure group and major economic force. Women and online banking. Why women own most of America and most of the UK -- living longer than men and wealth in pension funds and property. Feminisation of society, culture and business, workplace, work-life balance and emotional intelligence. Winning the war for female talent. Feminization of products and services. Niche marketing and advertising campaigns targeting women. Conference keynote speaker and Futurist Dr Patrick Dixon.
May 22, 2008
Outsourcing - EU, US, India, China and Central Europe
Impact of low cost workers arriving in places like UK, France, Germany, Italy driving down labour charges and altering costs of manufacturing and services in Western Europe. Impact on economics of outsourcing and offshoring. Conference keynote speaker and Futurist Dr Patrick Dixon.Huge salary inflation impact for senior executives in India and China make outsourcing economics harder. Up to 100% wage inflation in China and 40% in india for experienced business leaders. Reverse outsoursing. Business efficiency and strategy needs review. Operating costs of managing outsourced operations. Why outsourcing operations can fail.
May 20, 2008
Power of Tribes - Clash of Cultures - Consumer Groups
Clash of cultures, religious tribes, brands create tribes, every corporation is many tribes. Tribal inequality of wealth risks global instability, protest movements and new terrorist groups. Tribes give music, language, poetry, literature, teams, friends, neighbourhood, family, teams, communities and nations. Most businesses are tribes of tribes. Niche markets and tribalism. Tribal leadership -- leading thousands of people, motivation, inspired workers, higher productivity, people movements. Clients and customer segmentation. Political tribes, campaigns and protest groups, activists. Conference keynote speaker and Futurist Dr Patrick Dixon
May 13, 2008
Too late for outsourcing?
Huge salary inflation impact for senior executives in India and China make outsourcing economics harder. Up to 100% wage inflation in China and 40% in india for experienced business leaders. Reverse outsourcing. Business efficiency and strategy needs review. Operating costs of managing outsourced operations. Why outsourcing operations can fail. Conference keynote speaker and Futurist Dr Patrick Dixon.
May 03, 2008
Water wars - global warming and water shortages - crisis
Huge water shortages in future with climate change. Water wars. Global warming, drought and changing patterns of rainfall. Rivers and reservoirs drying up. Water use restrictions. Political action and infrastructure investment. Impact of water shortage on business and farming / agriculture. Conference keynote speaker and Futurist Dr Patrick Dixon.
May 01, 2008
US Immigration and War Against Terror - border security ...
US immigration challenges for travellers and US home security teams. Identity confusion, identity theft, database inaccuracies, terrorist information system complexities, biometrics, passports, visas and other issues. Travel documents can be forged or stolen. Challenges for national security. Cost of border control. New technology for managing "aliens" or foreign citizens. American isolationism and risks of alienation of business travellers. Visa requirements. Advice for travellers and national government. Recent travel experience on entering US. Video by keynote conference speaker Dr Patrick Dixon, Futurist and author of 12 books on global trends including Futurewise and Building a Better Business.
Immigration, passport control, border control, homeland security, US borders, travellers, business, leisure, tourism industry, biometrics, national security, prevention terrorism
April 30, 2008
Oil prices and aviation industry trends
Future of aviation industry with higher oil prices. Operational efficiency and budget airlines, capacity, turnaround time, cost reduction, seat occupancy, load factor increase, fuel efficiency with new planes. Future of airline travel for business, leisure and tourism. Transport competition from road and rail. Total fuel element of travel cost small. Discounted air fares. Aviation industry profitability, crisis, mergers and acquisitions. Long haul flights and short haul flights. Carbon offset travel carbon dioxide emissions -- airlines. Air freight carbon offset for DHL, UPS and Fedex. Average cost per passenger seat. Dollar price of oil. Future oil price trends. Impact of higher oil prices on aviation. Use of biofuel and alternative fuels. Business class tickets, image and public relations. Alternatives to commercial travel for meetings.Video by keynote conference speaker Dr Patrick Dixon, Futurist and author of 12 books on global trends including Futurewise and Building a Better Business.
April 26, 2008
Carbon offset trading fraud -- huge criminal activity
Carbon offsets and carbon offsetting fraud. Lack of carbon market regulation, verification and independent audit of carbon saving schemes. Need to prove genuine carbon reduction, proof of additionality. Government exaggeration of carbon use, false carbon credits. Kyoto compliance and global warming action, reducing emissions of carbon dioxide. Carbon capture, carbon sequestration, underground storage of carbon dioxide. Double counting. Subsidies and grants for no added value. False accounting for emissions and carbon saving. Inconsistent measures and public standards. Global carbon trading and caps on carbon emissions. Carbon swops between industries, corporations and governments. International standards for carbon trading. Profits from carbon markets and CO2 trades. Emission reduction and energy savings. Video by keynote conference speaker Dr Patrick Dixon, Futurist and author of 12 books on global trends including Futurewise and Building a Better Business. Carbon trading, caps, emissions, carbon dioxide, offset, offsetting, fraud, accounting, regulation, market, trade, marketing, capure, sequestration, storage, energy savings, government, global warming
Carbon trading, caps, emissions, carbon dioxide, offset, offsetting, fraud, accounting, regulation, market, trade, marketing, capure, sequestration, storage, energy savings, government, global warming
April 24, 2008
Spying at Work -- espionage, who, how, why, how to stop it
Spying at work, industrial espionage, how data is stolen, data leakage, discovery before patent protection, intellectual capital theft, client data losses, blackmail of banks after penetration of data security systems, databases and confidential information. Why attacks are common. Methods used to attack corporations. Why greatest security risks are your own employees: own staff leaving or leaking information while still in your corporation. Bugging devices detection, remote listening devices. Big Brother is watching you. MI5, CIA, KGB have powers to intercept phone calls, e-mail, video, fax and data transmissions to prevent crime, terrorism and subversive activity, and similar technology can be used to target legitimate business. Data protection and confidentiality. Steps business leaders need to take to improve own security and manage risk. Rule Number 1 is be aware that greatest risks are usually internal. Video by keynote conference speaker Dr Patrick Dixon, Futurist and author of 12 books on global trends including Futurewise and Building a Better Business.
Security, data loss, intellectual capital, patents, theft, industrial espionage, threat, risk, corporations, databases,, intercept, listening devices, bugging detection, spying corporations, protection information
April 07, 2008
How should global business reduce global poverty and ...
Example of social impact of AIDS foundation ACET. But business generates economic growth which can also have huge impact on poverty in poorest nations. Value of assets such as property grows. International trade benefit to emerging economies. Skills transfer and skills training. Positive impact of outsourcing in global well-being. Every job lost in America or Europe creates many new jobs directly and indirectly in Asia or Africa. Some of the wealth comes back to developed nations in demand for products and services. Globalisation can bring problems but also many benefits. But non-profit organisations and foundations also have vital role. Conference keynote speaker and Futurist Dr Patrick Dixon.
April 02, 2008
Work-life balance or life-life balance? -- conference ...
Work - life balance now priority for majority of executives in many nations. How to get better balance in personal and family life. Children and parents. Friends and career direction. Job choices, workplace motivation and winning war for talent. Attracting and keeping best people. Part-time working and gender equality. Feminisation of workplace. Women outperforming men and business school, college and junior management. Macho office culture. Human resources and personnel issues. Employment law and legislation. Insensitivity and lack of emotional intelligence. Promotion of incompetent male workers.
March 30, 2008
What is a futurist - by Patrick Dixon, conference speaker
Video: All of us are genetically programmed to think about tomorrow, plan, develop strategies for survival of ourselves and our families. Futurist role to advise on corporate strategy, risk management and identifying new market opportunity. Risk of institutional blindness, need for external view on trends and future issues. Identifying trends, analyst research, scenario building, competitor analysis, listening to consumers, working with those at cutting edge of innovation.
February 04, 2008
Managing speed of change - risk management - leadership
Speed of change. Change management. Leadership styles and decisions. Web marketing. Online sales. Impatient consumers and consumer choices. Rapid innovation. Business profit. Agility in teams. Contingencies. Managing uncertainty and risk management. Conference keynote speaker and Futurist Dr Patrick Dixon.
February 02, 2008
Can you see the future? Institutional Blindness
Future trends analysis. Risk management. Institutional blindness in corporations and business strategy. Innovation and business opportunity needs out of the box thinking. Future trends methods. Methodology or system for global trends analysis. Research into future. How to understand trends. Conference keynote speaker and Futurist Dr Patrick Dixon.
January 02, 2008
Motivation at Work - how to increase workplace motivation
Motivation at work. People don't get passionate about shareholder value or business profits or excel spreadsheets. They get passionate and motivated about challenge, great teams, vision, important goals, having fun, about family and friends, about the community and world they live in. Connect with passion and you will motivate teams to change organisation, business and world. Work-life balance, family, children. Conference keynote speaker and Futurist Dr Patrick Dixon. Business productivity and motivating teams. Team leadership, targets, bottom line profit, increasing shareholder value. CEO speeches, annual general meetings. Publicly listed corporations. Attracting talent, retaining talent, winning the war for talent. Human resources and making a difference. Why workplace motivation depends on corporate vision, workplace passion and clear purpose. Connectedness and engagement at work. Business priorities, strategy and objectives must connect with individual passion - key to business success.
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