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.

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.

Bill Gates to leave Microsoft - to run his foundation, and gets gift of $37bn from Warren Buffett

Billionaire Buffett to give away $37bn

· Largest donation in US history goes to Gates fund
· Charity giveaway is 85% of 75-year-old's fortune

Source: The Guardian

“It is a gift of unprecedented proportions and will send shockwaves through the world of super-rich philanthropy. The world's second richest man, Warren Buffett, is to give the world's richest man, Bill Gates, the largest charitable gift in history - an estimated $37bn (£20bn). The 75-year-old doyen of the global investment community has pledged to give 85% of his stock in the investment company Berkshire Hathaway to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation started by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.”

Major news that will have a huge impact on global philanthropy. Expect many billions more to be released as others follow their example in a great effort to shape future history in the poorest nations and to help build a better world.

Almost every high net worth person I know has their own personal foundation or is about to set one up… all part of this same intense desire to make a difference in lasting ways.

60% want to work after retirement age

I am interested by an HSBC survey of 20,000 adults around the world,
published in April 2006, which shows that 60% of all adults intend to work
after they have "retired", although many are hoping to work part-time. Most
people who retire say they are as busy after retirement than before. While
this may not be accurate, the fact is that total leisure becomes boring to
many people after a while. The majority of retired people in many countries
give time to organisations or others in the community, and when finances
are tight, they may look for modest financial reward to help things along.
20 of the survey said that they intended to carry on working in a paid
capacity to give them something meaningful to do. The survey shows that
people want to have a free choice about whether to work or not after a
certain age.

In any case "retirement age" is a last-century idea. In future in many
nations it will be a crime to discriminate on the basis of age, to force
someone out of a job simply because they are "too old", when they are fit
and able to do the job as well as anyone else.

We also need to face the fact that people are ageing less slowly than in
previous generations and may feel far more energetic at the age of 75 than
their parents were at 60.

Expect more people like my grandmother who worked part-time as a doctor
until she was 83 - not for money, but because she enjoyed it along with the
golf and bridge games she played most days.

ARK - Absolute Return for Kids

ARK - Absolute Return for Kids

Interesting sign of the times - new organisation backed by money from hedge funds and others. Every day I am hearing about major new philanthropic initiatives being started by people who have made a lot of money in business.

Part of the same trend that has seen over 500,000 people in Britain buy white wrist bands in just 6 weeks, in support of the "Make Poverty History" campaign.

Working for Nothing
Corporate Lessons from Nonprofits

“I don’t understand it. We’ve offered him a bonus of half a million dollars to stay on – and he’s still set on leaving.” The key was what he wanted to do instead – without being paid a single cent.

(A shortened version of this article appeared as a Unisys advertorial in the Economist on 13th September 2003.)

Ask your colleagues about the work they do for nothing and you may be shocked. You could learn more about them in three minutes than in the last three years working together. At most executive conferences I ask the audience the same question: how many people have given time to work for nothing in the last year for a cause you really believe in? And almost without exception, in every nation, there’s a forest of hands. Volunteering is a rapidly growing phenomenon, a common passion even amongst the busiest executives, and a vital issue for corporations to understand.

And what is even more interesting than to find out “what” is to ask “why”? Time and again you will hear moving accounts of people on a journey: a family tragedy, a friendship with someone who started a new community programme, meeting someone in desperate need, wanting to participate in activities that support the children – and so on.

Conference halls light up as people begin telling their own stories: real heart-filled accounts of time and energy poured out into situations that need help. I have never ever witnessed anything remotely like it, in any discussion of marketing campaigns, business challenges, management successes, product failures, financial objectives, operational plans or strategic targets. Actually, there is just one exception: you can often find the same in non-profits, where a high percentage of workers are unpaid, or working for very little financial reward, with a sense of personal vocation, on a mission to make someone’s world somewhere a better place.

There’s a crisis of motivation at work, as shown by a fortune spent every year on the latest management fad, books, videos, conferences and internal programmes. At the same time, many people have this intense drive, when touched in the right way, to work for absolutely nothing,

These community involvements by executives in corporations are often private, usually result from a personal story, and can be hard to talk about, but lessons from non-profit activity should be on the agenda of every executive board, not least because it means far more to many directors than the profit-focussed businesses they run.

Around six out of ten adults in the US now work without pay in any year for causes they believe in. The average volunteer gives 200 hours annually, contributing the equivalent of 4.5% of American GDP. In Europe the figures are lower but still substantial. Take the UK for example where 43% of adults give time each year, worth £40bn or 4% of GDP.

But there’s a problem with paid work. I have rarely met a Chairman or CEO of a publicly listed corporation who is truly passionate about shareholder value, bottom-line profit or return on equity – compared to the passion they express about their children, or community causes they are involved in, or whatever else they give energy to outside of the business. Strange then that that board members should think that anyone else will be deeply inspired by a vision of making their numbers every quarter.

Who cares?

You cannot expect a CEO to have true passion about a corporation when the average length of service before being sacked or pushed out is little more than three years in the UK and similarly short elsewhere. If you don’t make your numbers for three successive quarters you could be on the way out. The corporation has almost zero commitment to the individual, so it is unrealistic to expect the individual to lay down his or her life for the corporation.

This volunteering desire is all part of the same radical rethink about life that has also focussed on work-life balance, corporate ethics, corporate governance and social responsibility, and reflects the spirit of a new age, a spirit that will become essential for future business survival.

Last-century success meant making big profits for shareholders, with few questions asked. Real success in future will be far more difficult to define. It will mean demonstrating how your corporation makes a real difference for everyone: for shareholders of course, but also for your customers, and your workers, for the wider community, and in some small way for the whole of humanity – for example by protecting the environment.

Many corporations are still driving their strategies by profit considerations alone, with minor concessions to what they see as necessary requirements such as corporate governance, environmental protection or social responsibility. This narrow philosophy can be disastrous, as Nestle found recently when they tried to recover a few million dollars of old debt from a nation of starving Ethiopians, or embarrassing and damaging, as the pharmaceutical industry discovered, when they were forced by public outrage to permit “illegal” manufacturing of low-cost life-saving generic drugs by the poorest nations.

So what of the future? Expect more corporations to start adopting some of the language, culture and characteristics of nonprofits, while nonprofits will continue to make huge efforts to become more business-like. Between these two the public sector will struggle to compete with either the passion found in single-issue nonprofits, or the efficiency of corporations. Expect well-run nonprofits, led by spiritual refugees from corporate life, to seize a growing share of government contracts, especially in health care and education, and to attract huge talent.

Non-profits are a growing part of the UK and US economies and can have significant advantages because their mission is pure and simple: “We exist only to help those in need of our services. We do not exist to make profits for shareholders and all the surplus we make is ploughed back into developing even better services in the future.” However, the down-side is a reputation outside of the commercial environment for inefficiency, sloppy management, restrictive practices and resistance to change.

Connect with all the passions people have and they will follow you to the ends of the earth, they will buy your products and services with pride and often work for next to nothing. That is the secret of the voluntary sector. Business has a lot to learn. But so do non-profits and public sector groups – about being more focussed, efficient and future-orientated.

ACTION STEPS FOR PUBLIC SECTOR and NON-PROFITS:

• Make sure your mission is clear and attractive
• Communicate with passion and integrity
• Show how your organisation builds a better world for everyone
• Prove that you are as well managed as the best businesses
Benchmark against best-practice in commercial organisations
o Implement radical changes where needed to reach commercial levels of efficiency
• Explain how your non-profit motivation makes you different
o No shareholders to satisfy
o Total focus on those who need your help
• Make sure your people are proud of the work you all do
• Help your teams see how they make a real difference to people’s lives
o Get people close to where the action is
o Regular exposure to what the organisation is all about
? Eg Private hospital administrators spend time with patients
• Live your message and your mission!

LESSONS FOR CORPORATES:

• Take personal passion seriously
• Make sure you understand what your staff and customers feel most strongly about – outside of your business, and harness that energy - for change and productivity
• Show how you make a real difference because of what you do
• Show how your business builds a better world for everyone - Customers, Shareholders, Workers and their familie, Community, Wider humanity
• Encourage volunteering and community involvement
• Make sure your people are proud of the corporation - What you do, How you do it
• Turn your mission statement into a daily reality

Working for nothing: corporate lesson from nonprofits Article text appeared as an advertorial in the Economist sponsored by Unisys - looks at reasons why corporations are failing to understand changes in values and motivation.