A Personal Philosophy – Standing Tall instead of Activism

Over the last few years, I have realised that it is important to have a personal Code of Honour. Part of a Code of Honour means having goals & objectives and being 100% committed to them. From this, mindful action follows and the desired results automatically occur. 

Creating lasting wealth for all, that is people-planet-prosperity is now a central theme to my beliefs, values and identity. This is a HARD subject as it is about playing BIG and creating tangible lasting wealth, in fact a legacy for everyone’s grandchildren … and they will be proud!

BuckMinster Fuller the legendary visionary, social master planner and architect talked about precession. If we fulfill our true being, just like all of nature does, then the universe and nature rewards us with abundance.

Fulfilling our nature is about standing tall and walk-the-talk. Greatness comes for action @work @home @leisure.

Activism implies there is a fight between two opposing views. Views are often historic and frozen. In any fight there is chaos and destruction. Activism was a an appropriate action in the past. I no longer believe activism is valid today.

Standing tall simply means you hold a current view and are willing to share that view with others, yet honouring and respecting alternative views. A wise coach and mentor is always open to new ideas and revising beliefs and views, and they grow wiser. Standing tall needs as much courage, in fact more than being an activist.  The source of energy for standing tall is love and compassion. The source of energy for an activist is anger and injustice.

Change comes about when there is tension. Tension is the creative energy of change. Passion is the energy of change in human beings. Be passionate about the things you love. Be willing to take mindful actions. Be willing to help others. The picture shows a volunteering trip to Cusco, The Sacred Valley in Peru giving mountain children new sandals during a a feliz navidad celebration party.

and for more about actioning your natural talents and your brilliance visit http://www.EarthGateGlobal.com

Whistle Blowing!

Corporate Governance – Whistle Blowing

Increasingly there is the need for a Director or employee to blow the whistle on suspected illegal activity and undesired ethical and moral conduct. Whistle blowing protection law exists in many countries. Paul Zaman discusses “ how do people react” and when is whistle blowing a rightful action.

Whistle-blowing – a. a person who informs on someone engaged in an illicit activity (Oxford Dictionary) b. (origins) Sir Robert Peel, “Peelers Or Bobbys” police force in 1829 issued with a truncheon and a whistle to summon help to apprehend a criminal c. (film) The Whistle Blower starring Micheal Cain, 1987.

Good corporate governance involves making great decisions and choices that create long term value for the shareholders, society and the environment and choices that you are pleased to live with. Increasingly this means that each Board of Directors must consult their ethical compass. Likewise, each individual in any choice they make in the life towards achieving their life goals must consult their ethical and moral compass and be able to sleep at nights with that choice.  Sometimes as an individual we become aware of a transgression of law of the land or a major conflict to your ethical and moral compass. This often results in a dilemma – staying true to your compass and what you know is right or compromising.

In business today, as a result of incredible telecommunication advancements such as the Internet, email and mobile phones, very few places of the world are not connected in seconds. This creates great opportunities and challenges. No longer can we hide behind the tyranny of time and space, and hope that out of sight means the issue goes away or that by the time it is known, you will be long gone or at least out of the firing line.

Therefore good governance today is about changing culture to reflect the higher levels of good corporate citizenship that many people across the Earth are expecting.

Whistle blowing has become very popular in recent years with Government agencies providing more than protection with actual payouts in cases of recovered fraud money.   If you wish to be a whistle-blower each time your morality is offended, you will never hold a job or a relationship. The moral and ethic aberration should be huge so know what sort of aberrations are out there so you can calibrate your own ethical and moral compass. Most of our affronts are not extreme and should be dealt with through normal complaint process. The majority of cases are low profile and receive no media attention.

Some people see whistleblowers as martyrs to the cause and others view them as glory seekers.

Although most countries have had laws protecting whistle blowers for many years, these were often a patchwork of law. Perhaps part of a new environmental law protecting employees whom reported environmental pollution breaches to a government agency or a law which enables government officials to report upon senior officials or government department mal-practice. In recent years arising from major whistle blowing events such as Frank Serpico the first USA police officer to testifying against fellow police officers on corruption; Sherron Watkins in Enron; Harry Templeton challenging Robert Maxwell in plundering the company pension fund, Dr Jiang Yanyong forcing Chinese government to reveal details about SARS. Andrew Wilkie, an Australia intelligence officer whom asserted in the run-up to the 2003 Gulf war that their internal reports do not support the claims of weapons of mass destruction. There is now a lot of protection for individuals to take action and be assured that there is some level of protection. The UK’s Public Interest Disclosure Act 1999 is internationally recognized as a benchmark in public interest whistle blowing.

The Board of Directors often creates a whistle blowing policy and passes it to internal audit for the role of running the whistle blower hot-line dealing with concerns.  Mr Idris Jala, the new managing director of Malaysia Airlines (MAS), announced in 2006 that it had drawn up a whistle-blower policy. The policy is aimed at creating a safe way for employees to register knowledge of fraud and other illicit acts. MAS’s policy and the Whistle-Blowers Independent Committee were a first for any Malaysian company.

Internal and external audit of a company’s financial accounts is also a form of legitimized and process driven whistle blowing. The audit purpose is to ensure many things, including integrity of the information and highlighting internal process and control weaknesses for correction before an event occurs. Therefore the need for whistle blowing only occurs when the internal processes and control mechanism do not work or are out of date or the values and culture of the company is out of touch with modern expected values and codes of conduct. Often, the Chairman, CEO or a responsible individual will say, when the disaster surfaces “ why did not anyone tell us”. Use the internal processes and ensure that decision makers are in the know.

Whistle blowing is also suited today to a campaign to change values and beliefs and make a huge difference to the world such as global warming, genetically modified items, renewable energy, abuse of labour in sweat shops, systemic pollution, protecting the ocean and the rainforest.

Whistle blowing dos include:

• keep calm, stand back and review the broader picture, issues and outcome before you act;
• remember you are a witness supporting informed decision making, not a antagonist and not a judge;
• and remember there may be an innocent or good explanation for the event and outcome witnessed;
• use help lines & hot lines, and join a co-ordinated group and campaign.

Whistle blower do nots:

• become a private detective or vigilante;
• use whistle blowing as a way of venting a personal grievance;
• bear in mind that the situation will be uncovered at some stage and then you will have to account for your in-action.

Paul A Zaman is the CEO of Qualvin Advisory, would you like to know how to create sustainable wealth and become a good corporate citizens  email: pzaman@qualvin.com or visit http://www.qualvin.com

Many ways to create lasting wealth!

Many ways to create lasting wealth!

Who else wants to make a positive social impact?

Who else wants to make a positive environmental impact?

Now you can feel good as the company you invest in, contributes and makes great profits!

Some of you may be feeling that these are mutually exclusive themes. I intuitively know that these are mutually inclusive.  Buckminster Fuller, the renowned social engineer talked and lived his life applying the universale laws of the universe, including the law of precession. The gyroscope and how it can balance on a needle’s point and seemingly defy gravity is the law of precession in action.  In the same way if we have you or your company with a code of honour focussed upon making a positive social and environmental impact. The energy of your motion and the energy of the universe work together. Which do you prefer, using your own energy to achieve a big goal or allowing the energy of the universe to work for you?

In late July 2008, people gathered in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to discuss Corporate Social Responsibility.  The distinction at this conference was the strong focus on investing for good returns finance rather than philanthropy, NGOs, activism and rhetoric.

The sustainable wealth of a company is going to be determined by how well social and environmental trends are captured as opportunities. Whether the company is small or big and private or publicly listed. That means allowing these trends  to drive goals, form strategies and direct actions.  Why would a person claim that?

The United Nations has sister initiatives to the familiar Millennium Development Goals (MDG), UN Global Compact www.unglobalcompact.org and the Global reporting Initiative (GRI).  A lesser-known initiative is the UN Principals for Responsible investors www.unpri.org, based in London.  Their research shows that there are over 180 Socially Responsible investment funds in Asia with US$34billion of assets under management.  James Gifford, Executive Director of UN-PRI shared the principles, which included: use environmental, ethical, social and governance issues in investment analysis, active equity ownership and encourage corporate disclosure.  UN-PRI has over 170 financial services sector sponsors and a mandate to promote the principles in the financial sector, corporate and governments.

The World Resource Institute www.wri.org based in Washington, researches social and environmental issues.  They have a Capital Markets Research arm.  They provide complimentary research to security houses like GoldmanSachs. The objective being to provide institutional investors with insights in how social, ethical and environmental trends affect the quality of future cash flows and hence valuations of listed companies. GoldmanSachs was reported as having 12 fulltime research analysts in London researching social and environmental issues and valuation impact analysis.

Social and environmental trends are drivers affecting sales, costs and risk to cash flow. Ms Hiranya Fernando, WRI demonstrated how these trends could be used sector-by-sector and even better at a specific company level to identify opportunities and threats.

Another two groups are the World Business Council for Sustainable Development www.wbcsd.org centred in Washington and the UNEP Finance Initiative www.unepfi.org for innovative financing for sustainability, based in Switzerland.  Talking with Cheryl Hicks a manager at WBCSD, she said they found that sustainability reports are not generally valuable for the investment community. Investors want to hear only sustainability performance material about the core business and in investor friendly language.  Investors also want to have a management discussion and analysis on core business issues on the same quarterly reporting basis as financials.  Which investors  had these views?  Goliath investors like Hermes, Calpers, Innovest, Allianz, Pictet and HSBC investments.

The overall perspective at the conference was optimistic and win-win. Social and environmental issues are opportunities not threats. They create innovation and new products and services. They create the tension for re-engineering the processes and substituting resources to ameliorate the issue and at the same time reduce costs.

The training given by myself, Paul Anthony Zaman, focused upon Qualvin Advisory’s research findings from CEOs of Singapore and Malaysian listed companies. The research findings show that the Board of Directors are aware of social and environmental issues.  Yet they had to deal with these as operational cost centre issues. They lack corporate goals and strategies that have social and environmental goals built in. They also therefore do not have a corporate wide investment decision-making framework and the necessary justification of achieving corporate goals.

Cheryl Hicks also suggests that, capital markets will fully reflect sustainability issues when a significant number of investors deem it financially relevant, and the information is fed to the investment community in a timely, consistent and meaningful manner.  Currently there is a lack of common templates and techniques for valuation analysis.

The content conclusion drawn is that an increasing number of long-term institutional investors are aware of and are using social, environment land governance analysis in their ongoing investment decisions.  Listed companies have yet to adapt to being able to make corporate wide investment decision-making.  Listed corporate are generally therefore unable to do quarterly reporting on social and environmental goals, strategies and investments.  These issues are operational and not yet corporate wide strategic issues.

The context conclusion drawn is that the universal law of precession is not fully being used in business. Corporates are focussed upon old-fashioned goals for financial and physical capital based upon the industrial era’s philosophy of a shortage of capital and resources. Corporate goals need to include managing capital of human resource, society and reputation.

Lets now bring this down to the individual level and the small enterprise.  Action you can take today.

• As an owner of a company let decision-making include social, environmental and governance issues.
• As an investor, choose your investments wisely and ensure they create social and environmental wealth.
• As an employee ensure that you approve of their social, environmental and governance policy and track record.
• As a consumer, be more sophisticated. Understand the social and environmental track record of the company you will support by buying their products.

Be wise, lever the energy of the universe to create wealth for you and leave a great legacy for your children.

Paul A Zaman is the CEO of Qualvin Advisory, we provide “smart support for busy executives” to Want to have help creating a Grey2Green2Gold action plan? then email: pzaman@qualvin.com. www.qualvin.com.

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Social artistry, unleashing the power of your archetypes!

Social artistry, unleashing the power of your archetypes!

Dr. Jean Houston is a scholar, philosopher and researcher in human capacities.  She is long regarded as one of the principal founders of the Human Potential Movement.  To me, Jean Houston, is a luminaire of solar brilliance. She is a mentor of the contemporary leaders for our society.  The leaders the world needs today to bring us into living our glorious future.  This new style of leadership and living she describes as social artistry.  They care about prosperity, society and the environment.

In Los Angeles, in June 2008, I was fortunate enough, due to stepping up and taking action, to be at the Humanitarian Unite Brilliance conference called Igniting your Brilliance.  With around 500 like-minded and hearted people, focussed upon stepping up and making a difference the event was electric.  Ask yourself this question – Where were you?

Humanity Unites Brilliance is a new social enterprise designed to have a major social and environmental impact whilst being sustainable by having a profitable business engine to create income.

Research shows that many people are disappointed with traditional charities due to factors such as the lack of accountability, transparency and inefficiency. Emergency relief is always critical and fortunately always widely and quickly supported. However other charity themes are focussed upon giving aid rather than teaching someone how to fish and regain their dignity and responsibility for their own life. Charities also spend money and time competing with each other for funds rather than their vocation of providing assistance.

Humanity Unites Brilliance is a social enterprise. It generates its own income, distributes 40% of subscription income to grass root causes, and provide transparency, connection and accountability for money spent.  Its income is generated from self-development programmes and live trainings, such as Igniting your Brilliance. XL Results Foundation was a founding sponsor of Humanity Unites Brilliance in 2007.

Jean Houston is a young lady of 70 and yet her energy and presence is that of some half that age. She has a very interesting background.  She was taught by Buckminster Fuller, worked with Joseph Campbell and had as a frequent house guest Margaret Mead. Buckminster Fuller and Margaret Mead are perhaps two of the greatest thinkers of the 20th Century.  With these mentors it is of little surprise that Jean Houston is an incredible transformational mentor in her own awesome capacity.

Buckminster Fuller was a recognised author, architect, designer and futurist. He was keenly interested in sustainability and believed human societies would soon rely mainly on renewable sources of energy, including solar and wind.  He taught that competing for scarce resources, which drove the industrial revolution, must give way to co-operation.  He explored principles of energy and material efficiency in his specialist fields of architecture, engineering and design and coined the phrase “Spaceship earth” and invented the geodesic domes.

Jean works the stage with a friend Peggy. I say works, because both Jean and Peggy are thespians, lovers and actors of the stage and also the theatre of life. The wonderful pleasure of experiencing Jean and Peggy present Shakespeare and dramatic prose live and impromptu on stage is unimaginable. Jean and Peggy are epic performers. Why is this important? Simply because they use their artistic talents to lead and pace us through archetypal stories that dissolve our limiting values and beliefs in moments of theatrical time.  Even more powerful than the dissolution of your un-serving memes, virus of the mind, is that the archetypal stories resonant with your ancient reptilian brain and unleashes new capabilities in you. These are the capabilities of social artistry.  No wonder that Jean Houston has held a mandate from the UNDP, since 1994, to train thousands of social artistry leaders world-around.

Jean Houston also asserts that the chunking down of language into sound bites means that the rich language of our forebears has been denatured. The tonal and vocal quality has disappeared. This speech quality conveyed the emotional content and it triggered our emotional brains, the ancient reptilian brain into action. Our ability to sense and feel connections to each other, ideas and our environment has disappeared. We are lost and disconnected more than we have ever been and our ability to take wise mindful action has also been diminished. There is a real dramatic need, survival of the homo sapiens species, that depends on the reinstatement of poetic and dramatic language to convey messages more fully.

Some of the social artistry capabilities are: the ability to connect people and ideas together effortless and spontaneously; the ability to listen and hear the full rich and deeper meanings of what is said and unsaid; the ability to dig deep inside of yourself and facilitate the same in others to unearth talents, truth and motivation. This style of leadership is about being connected to people and the planet and about moving beyond narrow self centred agendas to serve the global agenda; it is about knowing when to step up and take mindful action.

Ask yourself this question – Where were you?

Find out about HUB at http://paulanthony.hubhub.org/ .

Paul A Zaman is the CEO of Qualvin Advisory. What to know more. Embarrassed by your limp share performance, wake up to the maestro IR share system, and get firm shares and a corporate reputation that investors, customers and suppliers want. Email: pzaman@qualvin.com. www.qualvin.com.

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Sustainability the view from the top!

Sustainability the view from the top !

Recently, we got around twenty senior executives of listed companies in S.E.Asia to give us their views on sustainability and corporate social responsibility. The senior executives were Executive Directors, CEOs and CFOs of both small market capitalisation, that is under US$300m and large market capitalised companies over US$300m.  The insights into sustainability are surprising. We get a powerful inside view on their thinking and the challenges facing them and their corporations.  Individuals often blame corporations for woes of the world, this shows that reality is different. A key component for improving our world is to have more sophisticated citizens and consumers, particularly in the west.

A definition of Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility was deliberately not prescribed for the senior executives.  It is a new concept and it means different things to different people. We consider sustainability to be a useful umbrella term, with corporate good citizenship, corporate social and environmental responsibility and triple bottom line planing and reporting – all being under that term.

Surprisingly around two-thirds of the senior executives informed us that their investors knew about and were interested in their sustainability performance.  Also the companies’ Board of Directors saw a link between sustainability performance and share performance.  These findings are remarkable because it means that the Board of Directors and the senior executives of those companies have sustainability as an important topic on their agenda.  Awareness and motivation in sustainability is therefore high.  The number of companies that have processes for planning, monitoring and reporting sustainability is much smaller.  Therefore there is a disconnect between intention and actual execution.

Investors and smart Directors know that the value of a business is created by good corporate governance focussed upon setting smart goals, well-formed strategies to achieve those goals and a monitoring and reporting system. Another aspect of good governance is in managing risks that could upset the strategy and achieving the goals. The long-term equity market value of a business is based upon the expectation by investors of the Board of Directors and management team actually delivering the promised business value in the future.

Long-term investors therefore are keenly interested in the performance of the ongoing business. Today social, environmental, ethical and political issues influence the risk profile of every company, big or small, private or public listed. The companies goals and strategies for prosperity-people-planet are important.

Around two-thirds of senior executives reported that sustainability issues were used to inform the strategy formulation and the business planning so the issues are being surfaced and used.  They intuitively know that sustainability is important and try to act upon it.

The problem facing the senior executives is the lack of investment justification, that is the lack of robust quantitative information for decision-support and ultimately decision-making.  When we asked senior executives if they received robust justifications for investment in sustainability only around one third said yes.  Therefore there is a lack of capability in creating the justification for the corporate sustainability plan and also individual projects.  This is reflected in the major business schools of the world are now running MBA programmes in sustainability and CSR.  They are also undertaking research into new management tools and techniques.  There are several prestigious Sustainability and CSR related MBA competitions.

We also asked the senior executives if they got quality intelligence from key external stakeholders on sustainability issues. CSR reporting has been focussed upon stakeholder engagement triggered by issues and activists, this occurs when social capital is under attack.  The key stakeholders for reputation capital and corporate decision-making are customers, suppliers, investors and government regulatory bodies.  These all have contractual agreements with a business and if any one of these relationships is eroded it has an adverse effect on the business.  Therefore by considering the effect of these key stakeholder relationships on the business will provide senior executives a robust way of justifying at the board level and with equity investors, massive expenditure on sustainability.

Essentially if social and reputation capitals are eroded then it translates to worse business risk, inferior operational performance and lower earnings.  For example if customers find out that the company does not walk-the-talk on its social and environmental marketing statement the customers can quickly move from being loyal advocates to activists. If a company is found to be lying and dishonest, the social and reputation capital can be destroyed resulting in greatly weakened relationships with customers, suppliers, investors and government licensing bodies.

Corporate brand equity and product brand equity is built with a good corporate communications programme and celebrity sponsorship, it is as good as your current market campaign.

Social and reputation capital is built over years of actual engagement with stakeholders and it can leave a physical footprint.  A huge positive contribution is when a company supports volunteering and social projects.  The Timberland company is a great example. Timberland has a mission  ‘to equip people to make a difference in their world.  to make it better’ and have expansive projects in environmental stewardship and community engagement.  Social and reputation capital like this can be analysed and used as the basis for senior executive investment decision-making.

An interesting finding from the senior executives was that smaller market capitalised companies actually had better results than large.  We think that small companies have senior executives who are hands-on and are in touch with customers, suppliers and government agencies. They are more connected with the real stakeholders and so more able to understand the issues and build social and reputation capital.  Large corporations have professionals in head office with little connection to these stakeholders.

The biggest leverage point towards sustainability of prosperity-planet-people is the company-customer relationship. If customers become more sophisticated, that is demanding to understand the holistic life cycle impacts of the products they consume, then they also provide powerful feedback to the firm. This intelligence can be used by senior executives to make better decisions. The lack of sophistication, particularly of western consumers, means that corporates get the message that low price, low cost products which may have unhealthy footprints for individuals and society are preferred and in demand.

Paul A Zaman is the CEO of Qualvin Advisory, we provide “smart support for busy executives” to listed and unlisted companies. Wanting to know how to vision and action a core going grey2green2gold plan?  then email: pzaman@qualvin.com. www.qualvin.com.

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