The Vision Pioneers Blog

by Josef Garvi

Recently, somebody asked me for advice on how to improve the productivity of run-down cocoa plantations on the Gold Coast. My contact displayed a lot of good intentions, laudable and politically correct in our times: fair trade, biological farming, enhanced agricultural output. His concern was how to make sustainable cultivation systems that would solve a global supply problem and benefit the Africans in the process. The group he represented was foreseeing a sharp rise in cocoa demand on the world markets in the coming years. Yet if production levels did not follow suit, this would set off a price hike, making chocolate delicacies less accessible to common people in the rich world. Whilst the systems for upscaling production were at hand, the main problem faced by this group was how to build the necessary motivation amongst the people in Ghana.

This motivational concern highlights a question that is so easily taken for granted: is such a business ultimately in the best interest of the Ghanaian people themselves? Or is it simply projecting the wishes of a «developed» world looking for the necessary input to sustain its high-consumption lifestyle?

Cocoa, like most widely exploited crops in sub-Saharan Africa, is not originally native. In the early 20th century, large cocoa plantations were set up on the Gold Coast by the British as a means to cash in on their colony, and an export crop it has remained ever since. As with most Third World exports, its price on world markets has been unstable, and its cultivation for a long time unprofitable. When Ghanaians grow such crops, be it biologically and under fairer trade agreements, they are subject to the whims of the world economy and forced to import that other, life-sustaining commodity: food, which price is volatile as well. They are not trading from a surplus, but using their best lands that could otherwise provide for the fundamental needs of their people. Thus they are ensuring that richer people throughout the world can buy a luxury at a decent price - not that their own children and brothers eat well.

Ever since the Portuguese fathomed the immensity of the riches of the Congo, and the Arabs set up their trading cities along Africa’s East coast, the outside world’s view of Africa can be summed up in a single, enthralling word: resources. Be it human beings, precious minerals or agricultural output, focus has been on what those outside can obtain from her.

Today, the world’s approach towards Africa may be less brutal, but the fact that a politer tone is being used has not erased its fundamental aim. It is still about what the world can obtain from the continent, not about what is best for the Africans themselves. In the eyes of the world, Africa’s primordial duty remains to supply the outside world with resources, instead of ensuring that her own children may enjoy the benefits of their birthright.

As Henning Melber put it: «The plundering continues».

by Miriam Garvi

This week-end saw the completion of the 2009 World Economic Forum in Davos. Since the forum launched its «Davos Question» last year, asking people to name one thing that would make the world a better place, future prospects have plunged into darkness. With jobs, homes, savings and pensions being threatened, who is thinking of making the world a better place?

The world’s elite of financiers, politicians and business people, anxious to restore confidence in a global financial and economic system, are calling for swift and decisive action. According to Tony Blair and others at the WEF, it seems that what we need is an enterprise system that is free but less greedy. So much for the professed virtue of selfishness.

Not so very long ago, a voice in the wilderness was calling for the kind of leadership that paired outlook and foresight with a concern for the well-being of coming generations. The voice was that of Georges Doriot, Harvard professor and father of venture capital; his vision that of an «Institute of Man»:

I have thought that we should have an Institute of Man.

This would be a group of outstanding individuals who could evaluate the progress which Man has made.

In light of this progress and the background of this progress this group could give some attention to the problems facing man today.

From these people the country and its leaders could seek advice.

But so far, no one has liked my idea and perhaps our leaders would not listen to such scholars even if the Institute existed.

Doriot’s idea was not about change, nor about remedying a system running wild. He was talking about the kind of constant visionary outlook that will view the world in terms of purposes, needs and implications, a goalistic dialogue not bound by any political or economic agenda.

Today, so many resources are poured into taming the monster we created. Let those with passion and integrity rise and show the good that can be done amidst the darkness.

by Miriam Garvi

The other night I watched a disturbing documentary by French freelance journalist Marie-Monique Robin on the Monsanto corporation, one of the global leaders in plant biotechnology: Le Monde selon Monsanto, or in English The World according to Monsanto.

This documentary invites us into the the world of genetically modified organisms, where the agricultural technology corporation able to lobby its patented products out onto the market is building a solid and prosperous basis for controlling world agriculture. It is a world where the treasures of nature are being crowded out by a small kernel of patented seed varieties designed for large-scale monoculture.

Now, a visit to Monsanto’s web site should quench whatever fears we might have that this corporation would abuse its dominant position. This, so Monsanto claims, is a corporation that cares, that pledges to make the world a better place for future generations. That values civilized ideals of health and safety, honesty and integrity, respect and transparency.

Incidentally, these professed values do not tally with the corporation’s strategy of growth and control, which is securing lucrative royalty revenues at the expense of biodiversity and of the autonomy of farmers-turned-stewards bound to their supplier of seeds and fertilizers by strict legal agreements.

The world according to Monsanto and its likes is a streamlined society where people are made dependent for their living on the access to patent-controlled resources. In their battle for ownership and rights to the life-giving seeds that control world food production, such corporations make the gorilla game look like the amateur league.

Is this the future we want for our children?

by Miriam Garvi

The other day, I had a refreshing meeting with a senior executive of an international supplier of patient handling solutions.

Our conversation was not about market positions or impressive margins. Instead, this senior executive talked about the difference it makes when handling equipment is designed so as not only to simplify the work process of the caretaker, but also to improve the quality of life of the patient.

It was an uplifting conversation with a man with a passion for helpfulness.

Roughly 50 years ago, Harvard professor Doriot was teaching his manufacturing philosophy to future American senior executives. «… if you have these qualities and the determination to do well… then you will have the privilege of the greatest profession I know: converting plain material into useful, beautiful, helpful products. This takes some of the greatest qualities man possesses, but it also pays high returns in creative satisfaction.»

The senior executive I met was no Doriot alumni. Yet he knew that manufacturing a product was not the real challenge - it was imitable enough by any competitor who would put its mind to it. But it was the thinking behind their product line that made them unique, that which would keep them pushing to fulfill useful, beautiful, helpful qualities.

Such uniqueness comes from the inside.

by Miriam Garvi

In my line of work, I have the privilege of collecting stories.

Some of these stories are distressing, even painful. Others tell of integrity, courage and compassion. They bring to surface that one, familiar question:

“What would I have done if it were me?”

Sometimes life seems to be wrapped in fog. But then a humbling story reaches through the haze of uneasiness, taking us through time and place right to the core of what life is all about.

Humbling stories are not tales about heroes and villains. They are stories from real life that remind us of what might happen if we are guided by our hearts.

by Miriam Garvi

For the inquisitive soul who seeks to understand what leads people to make fatal choices, Swedish writer and historian Bengt Liljegren’s recent biography comes as a most welcome surprise.

Wondering what another book might add to the by now extensive list of Hitler biographies, I needed to read no further than the prologue for my interest to be awakened:

«My interest was triggered during the summer holidays in 1974. I had just finished sixth grade and rode my bicycle down to Gleerup’s bookstore in Lund and invested … in Mark-Arnold Forster’s The World at War 1939-1945. The book made a deep impression on me. I was even more taken by the British television series The World at War… (…). Adolf Hitler obviously played a big role in the book and the series, yet he remained strangely diffuse, it was as if there were no real person behind the figure of terror who started WWII and murdered Jews. As a thirteen year old I was given the impression that Hitler was a monster - not a human being. (…) I hope to make Hitler more understandable, to generate a truer image of his personality and private life as the background for his evil deeds… It is about time Adolf Hitler is undemonized. Knowledge about him as a person is an effective vaccine against his sick ideology.» (Liljegren 2008, pp. 8-11; own translation).

Bengt Liljegren (2008) Adolf Hitler, Historiska Media.

However comforting it may be to look back on people as monsters or idols, we need the human stories that make us reflect on the consequences of what may at first seem to be harmless actions and choices. The uncanny truth is that anyone can become a Hitler at heart, but not everyone is endowed with his kind of charisma and brilliance that will charm a nation.

Only by seeing people as the you and mes that we really are can we truly learn from history.

…

“The leader sees work as part of a larger mission - make a better society for all (institution builder).”

- Georges F. Doriot

(find book here)

by Miriam Garvi

I once read an article by professor Peter Pruzan where he makes this reflection:

“With the aid of our time’s alchemists - economists - money has been transmuted from a means to the end.”

Let me give you a little illustration of this point. As I was interviewing various people for my dissertation, I sat down with an investment manager at the Skandia Group, an international savings company. When asked what his team were all about, the answer was plain and simple; “We’re small and square - money for our pension beneficiaries, money for our pension beneficiaries, money for our pension beneficiaries…”. Small and square? Now there’s an answer that’ll fit right into a business growth matrix or a market plan!

It is amazing how the «language of money» narrows down possible options to one single end, namely maximizing profit - or to be more up-to-date these days, increasing shareholder value. This language makes no room for any reflections on whether +5% is the kind of fulfilment we’re looking for or if it is in fact merely a means for developing and sustaining what we are doing. If it is the latter, then the language of money is doing us the disservice of diverting focus away from the fundamental things in business and life alike, by reducing what we talk about and what we think counts to the measurable and simplistic.

A man with a vision once said: “Business is not about dollars and cents so much as about building for the future.” That future calls us to go beyond the measurable and simplistic and start thinking about the bigger picture.

…

“Profit is the metaphorical equivalent of the oxygen, food, and water that the body requires. They are not the point in life, but without them there is no life.”

- Mark Lipton

(find article here)

by Miriam Garvi

Earlier this week I was in Norway doing research for a book project I’ve been working on. Among the people I met was an elderly couple who had spent most of their working lives pioneering hospital care in the mountain areas of Taiwan.

They told me the story of how what is today a modern teaching hospital started with one man who took it upon himself to set up a small ‘treatment center’ of bamboo huts even though he had no other resources than his own drive and determination to do what was needed.

Today taking a professional stance often translates into arm’s length involvement. But then we forget something fundamental: one person’s dedication may be all it takes to set something in motion that can have a strong impact once it comes to fruition.