Video: Conference speaker - audience interaction - Patrick Dixon

Conference speakers need audience interaction. Engaging with audience with participation, questions, straw polls, discussion, walking into the audience, using volunteers - all important. Audience experience, performance and theatre rather than a lecture or cold presentation of ideas. All great keynote speakers know how to connect with an audience, how to build rapport, relationship, chemistry, emotional bond. Humour, funny stories about real life business issues. Entertaining and motivational conference keynote speakers all know how to connect with passion, provocative, thought-provoking.

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.

Future of education -- instant knowledge in an online ...

Old style education focus on memory and knowledge. New style education needs to focus on how to find immediate answers to complex problems from a starting point of ignorance, using new technology. How education promotes useless skills and neglects primary requirements eg instant summary of state of knowledge, fine to draw heavily on existing material. But in education such a summary could be rejected as plagiarism. But in business originality is often less important than a superb summary. Radical changes needed in examinations, assessments. Future of examinations -- online, using keyboard to prepare answers, assistance is allowed, using existing sources is encouraged. Impact of Google on education. Impact on Universities. Need to teach evaluation methods to assess authority of online sources. References. Video on future of education, high schools, colleges, universities, curriculum, trends, syllabus, exams, assessments, business schools, MBAs, degree courses - by Dr Patrick Dixon, Futurist conference keynote speaker for NAIS.

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.

Why business has to make life better - values matter

Values really matter. People want to make a difference and feel proud of who they work for. Aditya Birla example of corporate responsibility and community involvement. Increasing motivation, winning war for talent, staff and customer retention and stronger brand and corporate image. Work of AIDS charity ACET as expression of corporate responsibility. Conference keynote speaker and Futurist Dr Patrick Dixon.

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.

Get passion in your business - motivation at work

Motivation at work. Leadership. Leadership purpose, aims, strategy and objectives. Profits and profitability. Motivation to succeed and secrets of business success. Productivity and efficiency key. Workplace morale. Team dynamics and leadership styles. Business mission and vision. Business values and office culture. Conference keynote speaker and Futurist Dr Patrick Dixon.

Toxic Testosterone Culture - Why women leave business -

Toxic testosterone culture. Glass ceiling, career promotion and career blockage. Gender inequality, gender discrimination and improving workplace diversity. College performance, employers, recruitment. War for talent. Why women are most of best talent at junior management, but poor representation at senior management. Incompetent men eliminate women from workplace -- male culture, macho, sexist humour, non flexible working, no career breaks, no flexitime, no child care, no understanding of work-life balance and family issues including caring for elderly relatives as well as young children at home. Steps corporations can take to improve diversity, win war for talent, become employer of choice, improve staff morale, staff retention, motivation and workplace productivity. Female talent losses reduce competitive advantage in long term. Stress at work. Changing working practices, innovation and use of virtual working, virtual teams and creation of virtual organisations. Promotion of part-time work and flexible working hours. Career break allowances and gap years. Parenting leave. Video by keynote conference speaker Dr Patrick Dixon, Futurist and author of 12 books on global trends including Futurewise and Building a Better Business. Women, female, workplace, diversity, gender inequality, glass ceiling, career, war for talent, leadership, motivation, career planning, virtual working, retention, productivity, flexible, work, business, male, culture
Women, female, workplace, diversity, gender inequality, glass ceiling, career, war for talent, leadership, motivation, career planning, virtual working, retention, productivity, flexible, work, business, male, culture

Why teaching is such an important calling

All education has values. But often those values are hidden. Preparing students for future life. Motivation, leadership, purpose, meaning, spirituality, what people want out of life, personal fulfilment and happiness. Definition of real success. How do we measure student success. More than wealth and "achievement". Success in private life -- family, marriage, children, friendship, inner contentment. Helping students connect with their own passion to make a difference. Why young adults are rejecting work patterns of older generation. Rise of concern about getting a life, work-life balance. Career ambitions and life goals changing -- impact on education. Volunteering is booming, why volunteer work is sign of future. Why teaching is a noble calling. Importance of teaching. Video on future of education, high schools, colleges, universities, curriculum, trends, syllabus, exams, assessments, business schools, MBAs, degree courses - by Dr Patrick Dixon, Futurist conference keynote speaker for NAIS.

Globalisation -- educating students for a global future

Most colleges and high schools teach a narrow view of world. Globalisation of economy, job market, outsourcing, impact of mobility of workforce. Preparing students for virtual offices, teams and corporations. Pressures on personal lives and work life balance from international travel. Teaching third millennial skills for virtual communication and virtual team leadership, motivation and winning the war for talent. Increasing productivity. Video on future of education, high schools, colleges, universities, curriculum, trends, syllabus, exams, assessments, business schools, MBAs, degree courses - by Dr Patrick Dixon, Futurist conference keynote speaker for NAIS.

Work - life balance in emerging economies v America and EU

How work-life balance issue is changing as workers become wealthier through more than one generation. What people want from workplace. Soft issues and emotional intelligence. Purpose, meaning and motivation at work. Connecting with corporate vision and mission. Conference keynote speaker and Futurist Dr Patrick Dixon.

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.

How do you become a futurist? -- conference speaker

Book writing, research, website, lecturing and consulting to smaller and then larger corporations, becoming an authority in international media. The more you work with different corporations and the more countries you work in, the deeper your insights are likely to become. Break out of traditional thinking, take a fresh view on the world, watch people, learn all the time, be hungry to understand what does not at first make sense. You will be judged by your own track record of correctly anticipating important new trends. Can the future be predicted? Telling difference between high probability trends, likely, possible and unlikely -- plus the wild cards, areas of huge uncertainty. Patrick Dixon, conference keynote speaker and futurist.

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.

Motivation, leadership business change management business

Enjoy more than 100 of my videos. Over 60,000 views already on my video about how to make things happen. Connect with passion. Managing uncertainty with rapid change. Leadership styles. Why people get out of bed in the morning. How to motivate teams at work to do great things. Business management. Secret of leadership and ultimate leadership speech. Business ethics and values in corporations. Secrets of business success and increased productivity. Cutting costs. Increasing output. Adding shareholder value. Sustainable business success. Work life balance and lessons from non profits / volunteering. Why building a better world is such a powerful motivation. Lecture by Dr Patrick Dixon for MTN, author of Building a Better Business, Futurewise and conference speaker.Motivation at work. Leadership. Leadership purpose, aims, strategy and objectives. Profits and profitability. Motivation to succeed and secrets of business success. Productivity and efficiency key. Workplace morale. Team dynamics and leadership styles. Business mission and vision. Business values and office culture.

Warren Buffett gives $37bn to Bill Gates' Foundation and Gates to leave Microsoft to run it all

The decision by Bill Gates to give all his time in future to his foundation, and then by Warren Buffett to add $37bn to the fund, will together trigger a series of events of truly lasting significance.

Firstly we can expect many more ultra-high net worth individuals to make similar decisions, giving both time and money to help change the future of our world for the better - albeit on a smaller scale, but the cumulative impact could well be even greater.

Building a better world is a powerful driving motivation behind the fact that almost all ultra-high net worth families have their own charitable foundations.

Warren Buffett is unusual in that he has left it comparatively late in wealth-making to begin his large-scale philanthropic activity.

It is easy to be cynical about such motivation but the fact is that 60% of all US citizens regularly give time to things they believe in and the average gift of time is 200 hours a year. Costed at the average hourly rate for earnings, this is a total gift worth the equivalent of 4.5% of US GDP. Similar proportions of the population give time in the UK and many other EU countries. People give time or money because they feel that in doing so they are able to make a positive difference in some small way to others.

Large-scale philanthropy is just an extension of this normal pattern of community involvement.

This whole area is much misunderstood by many corporations, who tend to regard corporate and social responsibility as a minor addition to the doctrine that companies exist only to make money for shareholders. The trouble is that it is very rare to meet anyone who gets out of bed in the morning passionate about making more shareholder value. Numbers-based leadership is a powerful turn-off to most executives - as I have seen in speaking with senior audiences in many different countries and corporations over the last decade.

It should be no surprise therefore that a recent UK survey showed that 90% of 35-45 year olds in business jobs want to leave, while 60% of 25-35 year olds cannot see any purpose in what they do, working each day for a corporation. Numbers cannot produce passion nor purpose, unless people see what the numbers actually mean in terms of making a difference in ways that they feel are important.

Thus we have a serious mismatch between the passions people have for what they do outside of formal employment - where they gladly work for nothing, and their almost complete lack of interest by contrast in what they are actually paid to do.

If corporations could tap into even 1% of the energy which people enthusiastically devote to "good causes" or which causes Bill Gates and Warren Buffet to give away tens of billions each, we would have a completely different situation in the workplace today.

This is one reason why so-called cause-related marketing has taken off so fast, linking products to things people feel passionate about. In an age where products and services tend to converge in price and quality, values are what makes all the difference.

The second thing we can expect from the Gates and Buffet decisions is that many more business leaders who also feel the same kinds of desires to make the world a better place, are going to feel added courage to use the business itself as a positive driver of change. Why wait until they leave?

And they will know that the majority of their shareholders, staff and customers who also give time and money to things they feel passionate about, are likely to react positively to their leadership, with added commitment and loyalty, so long as the business is well run in every respect.

The third impact of the new Gates - Buffet alliance will be a gathering momentum for radical improvements in Africa, India and other such parts of the world. It will not be easy, but the pressure will grow further to find practical ways to make a difference.

Because of the way the markets devalue currencies of failing nations, as I have discovered in my own AIDS foundation ACET, a single dollar is enough to pay the school fees for an orphan for three weeks in a country like Zimbabwe. A million dollars is enough to hire 5,000 men or women for 3 months. It is hard to grasp the scale of opportunity when many billions of dollars can be converted into currency in some of the poorest nations (sensitively or else it will distort the local economy), in order to invest in a wide range of community-based, sustainable development projects.

And of course health is a basic requirement. The poorest nations continue to suffer needlessly from easily preventable illnesses and terrible handicaps like the loss of site at early ages.

The Bill Gates Foundation has already had significant impact on a wide range of such conditions and we can look forward to far more in the future.

Future of Management - business success, marketing, leadership, change management and motivation - by Dr Patrick Dixon

I have just created a new collection of articles on management, marketing and motivation - plus more links to presentations and videos.

Media coverage - Dr Patrick Dixon's Futurewise, The Truth about Drugs and other books / issues relating to the future: "Recent coverage: Daily Telegraph - increasing profits by 10% by connecting with passion - and the $20,000 challenge, Financial Times - Push for Coffee Bean Levy - following speech at the World Coffee Organization: Daily Post (Liverpool) - 5 steps to a better business, TImes of India - the Spirit of Success, Borsen (Denmark equivalent of Financial Times) - how to create a better business, Lisbon press - the need for innovation in marketing, Vida Economica - Portugal, Times of Malta - marketing trends, Borsen - the need for innovation in industrial design, The Herald - handwriting demise in a techno-age, press in Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Portugal on a range of issues, El Cronista Commercial (Spain) - the top 50 most influential business thinkers, Diario Economico, Portugal - innovation in marketing, ABA Banking Journal - Working for nothing - lessons for corporates from non-profits, Talk Radio on stem cell research, Daily Telegraph, Moral Maze (BBC Radio 4) - should politicians have to resign over personal indiscretions? Channel 4 News - next generation mobile phones. Daily Mail - human / animal hybrids. Daily Mail - salmon that spawn trout. Guardian - future of CDs and music downloading, MP3 and file-sharing. On cloning: Sunday Times (Perth), Irish Times, Daily Mail, Courier-Mail, The Sun, Western Daily Press, The Herald, The Scotsman, The Times, Scottish Daily Record, The Mirror, Times of Zambia. "

Real Success - Future values, marketing, leadership, motivation and and corporate governance- Dr Patrick Dixon

Real Success - Future values, marketing, leadership, motivation and and corporate governance- Dr Patrick Dixon


Changing values affecting marketing, motivation, management, leadership and corporate governance. Find the ultimate generic slogan and mission statement and why hundreds of multinationals are using it.