Maya Angelou: Some great words of wisdom.

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE …
enough money within her control to move out
and rent a place of her own,
even if she never wants to or needs to…
something perfect to wear if the employer,
or date of her dreams wants to see her in an hour…

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ..
a youth she’s content to leave behind….
a past juicy enough that she’s looking forward to
retelling it in her old age….
a set of screwdrivers, a cordless drill, and a black lace bra…
one friend who always makes her laugh… and one who lets her cry…

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE …….
a good piece of furniture not previously owned by anyone else in her family…
eight matching plates, wine glasses with stems,
and a recipe for a meal,
that will make her guests feel honored…

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ..
a feeling of control over her destiny…..
how to fall in love without losing herself..

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW…
how to quit a job,
break up with a lover,
and confront a friend without;
ruining the friendship….

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW….
when to try harder… and WHEN TO WALK AWAY…

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW…
that she can’t change the length of her calves,
the width of her hips, or the nature of her parents..
that her childhood may not have been perfect…but it’s over…

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW…
what she would and wouldn’t do for love or more…..
how to live alone… even if she doesn’t like it…

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW.. .
whom she can trust,
whom she can’t,
and why she shouldn’t take it personally…

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW…
where to go…
be it to her best friend’s kitchen table..
or a charming Inn in the woods…
when her soul needs soothing…

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW…
What she can and can’t accomplish in a day…
a month…and a year…

Peter Schwarts - Futurist

In no particular order I present quotes from the event which either made me reflect, ponder, question or dream. (I have only added links for the people who were speakers at the event – the other quotes were part of either the work book or presentations)

1. “Every morning is the beginning of a brand new day. You have been given this new day to use it as you want. You can waste it, or use it for good. What you choose is important, because you are exchanging a day of your life for it! When tomorrow comes, this day will be gone forever. In its place is something that you have left behind. Let it be worth it!

2. “If there is a hole in the boat – it does not matter if you have the cabin on it.” Mr Kofi Annan

3. “Again some questions to answer. The first answer that comes to mind will be interesting; the second that comes to mind will be very smart. The third answer that comes to mind might well be the truth. Find your third answer.”

4. “The problem is not how to get new thoughts into your head – but how to get the old one’s out.”

5. “To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself.”

6. “We live in a time of profound turbulence” Peter Schwartz – Futurist and world wide web user #70

7. “By 2030 70% of the worlds population will live in cities and the most likely source of conflict in the future is over water.” Peter Schwartz – childhood friend to Steven Spielberg and adviser to movies such as the Minority Report.

8. “Prosperity – Peace – Sustainability must go hand in hand – it is not one at the expense of another – we only have one planet.”

9. When asked, “What should we teach our children?” Kofi Annan answered “Give them the right set of values, and start early. Character is everything. It is extremely important. Teach your children to be true to themselves.”

10. “It is necessary to the happiness of a man that he be mentally faithful to himself.” Kofi Annan.

11. When asked about what it was like to sit and negotiate with dictators he responded “when the man sitting across from you is a murderer, a person who kills people and the only tool I had was persuasion – you do it because you know that you will leave a better human being – and maybe have made a difference.”

12. In 1974 as an experimental atomic physicist at the University of Oxford, Joshua Silver asked himself the question “Why are there 3 billion people on the planet who need glasses and they can’t get them?” So began his life journey to develop cheap, self-adjusting glasses that could be manufactured for a dollar and distributed through existing world health organizations. So far he has 40,000 self-adjusting glasses in the field being tested – but they still cost around $19 to produce. Here is a man who is asking the big question. (see TED talk inserted below)

13. “At the end, entrepreneurship is not about wearing expensive suits and earning a lot of money. It is all about being true to yourself, to your values in life. Your dreams.” Richard Branson

14. “ To be an entrepreneur is the degree to which you can handle uncertainty.” Peter Sage.15. “The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need women and men who can dream of things that never were.” JFK

16. “Our legacy is to teach our children to move their value set from individual/greed to collective/generosity. There is only one people, there is only one planet”

17. “Who dares to get lost discovers new roads.”

18. “There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.” Morpheus – The Matrix movie

19. “Even the wisest mind has something yet to learn.” George Santayana

20. “Possibilities do not add up they multiply.”

21. “We don’t do this because it is easy we do this because it is hard.” JFK

22. Entrepreneurs don’t wait – they shape their own world – the bigger the challenge the greater the opportunity.

23. “To dream anything that you want to dream, that’s the beauty of the human mind. To do anything that you want to do, that is the strength of the entrepreneurial spirit.”

24. “Surround yourself with people who are only going to lift you higher.” Oprah Winfrey.

25. “I learned the power of conviction, the potential of community, and the imperative of action.” Chris Turner springwise.com

My 'Change the World' workbook from the EO University in Amsterdam

Some days I pinch myself and wonder how I got to be where I am… really it is very amazing.

I find myself sitting in Amsterdam in a room with 500 other entrepreneurs (I’d never been to Holland before). The energy in the room is effervescent.  Suddenly the group is hushed as if we are ‘one being’. There is a Nobel Peace Prize winner on the stage. All of us are instantly humbled. Over 4 days we will have access to some of the most amazing minds on the planet. From Nobel Peace Prize winners Kofi Annan and Muhammad Yunis; to Juliann Assange – Wikileaks (via link from house arrest) and Peter Bakker former global leader of TNT now President World Business Council Sustainability Development. Inventor of the year; Joshua Silver and futurist Peter Schwartz.  As well as business people such as CEO of Zappos Jenn Lim and Ricardo Semler. This event was special; short, sharp ideas creating bigger conversations…

My challenge now of course is how to share this great number of ideas in bite sized pieces. Perhaps one speaker at a time – or maybe one theme at a time. The one thing that was paramount from every speaker is; that there has never been a time in history where the need for leadership in our economy, energy management,  food production and climate has been greater… and maybe it is up to the entrepreneurs to do something about these things – because clearly governments are so focused on being reelected that they don’t have ‘time’ to act on the longer term issues.

Muhammad Yunis – Explained to us that two thirds of the worlds population is denied banking services. Yet in 1974 as a young professor of economics he could not understand why thousands of people in his home country of Bangladesh where dieing from malnutrition. He went to the village outside the university where he taught and discovered that people were being held as relative ‘slaves’ to loan sharks. He asked 42 people how much they owed; and in total it was $27. He paid the money to those 42 people so they could repay their debts and could be free of the loan sharks. But he asked the question why, for so little could he make such a big difference to 42 families? The reality is that without personal assets a regular bank is unlikely to give an individual living in poverty a loan. This was when he invented the concept of micro loans. “The poorer the better” he says. Now the bank he established (which is owned by it’s customers – he has not a single share) has 8.5 million customers, effecting 45 million people, which is a third of the Bangladeshi population. They lend 1.5 billion a year – 97% of which is to women and 99% of which gets repaid. – The bank has 2600 branches, which takes deposits and lends funds like any other bank. It is a social business – no dividend will ever be paid to the shareholders.

Since then Mr Yuris has created many businesses – not one of which he has a share in – but all solving a problem. “I create companies to solve a problem – not to make a profit.” He explained. “We have to change the way we view our systems – our economic theories are built on selfishness – whilst we need to use selflessness to solve the problems of the world. If you cannot share – you cannot multiply either.”

“These things are not easy. If it is easy – who cares? Ask yourself tough questions that really take something to answer.  When you focus on making money you cannot focus on solving problems – yet we are happy when we solve problems.”

“Trust breeds trust. Yet most institutions are built on distrust – with contracts and lawyers.”

“A social business is not a charity nor is it about fundraising (which is very expensive to do) it is about being self sustaining.”

He left us with the idea that “Life is about being more – not having more.”

Mr Yunis – seems a humble man – quiet in speech, but big in asking hard questions. We know the planet is a far better place because he asks those questions. But there was a clear and loud message for each of the entrepreneurs in the room. “Do we ask big enough questions?” And that starts with our own world, our families, businesses and communities. What is there right in front of us that we ‘put up with’ when we could challenge the status quo to make such a difference. Mr Yunis was an academic who looked out his window to his community and started asking questions to challenge the notion that things don’t have to stay the same.

It has been fun to work with Lucy (as a participant of her program) but also to talk about her business. She has a clear vision of what she wants to do, and why.

She outlined that if you ask a group of people to identify who are the world’s great speakers, usually Mandela, Gandhi, Churchill, Luther King and Obama make the list. It is very rare that an Australian comes top of mind.

Fascinating to explore what makes a great leader…. Is it the ability to be an inspirational speaker? Apple produced an ad years ago – “Thanks to the Crazy One’s.” which was produced in the few years after Steve Jobs returned to Apple.

There are many great leaders who are not necessarily great orators. Leadership is the ability to align people to a single purpose – a ’cause’ if you like. This is the same for business leaders. The question is how united is an organizations people to it’s sense of purpose.

Lucy with her team at Voicecoach are ‘changing the world with inspired speaking.’ – What a wonderful idea. Imagine if we never again had to sit through a boring power point or someone reading from their notes. 

I enjoyed the Chaser’s satire of comparing President Obama and Prime Minster Rudd…. Which was at the launch to demonstrate how important using simple language is….

A bit of a giggle.

Well done Lucy and the team at VoiceCoach

According to Hewitt 70% of Australian companies currently have head count freezes… makes you think you best make the most of the ones you have.

"In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the fainthearted — for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things — some celebrated, but more often men and women obscure in their labor — who have carried us up the long, rugged path toward prosperity and freedom."
President Obama

Let me re word it for business purposes:

To be a great business – it does not come easily. It has to be worked at. There is no easy way or cutting corners. It takes people who will ‘give it a go’ and who work hard to make a difference to others over personal wealth. It is the people who make things happen, whether we know about them or not who create great things – these people build great companies and everyone benefits.

Often people have asked me “tell me the one thing that has made RedBalloon successful.” My answer is not what people want to hear. They ‘hope’ for a quick fix, easy riches. But if building a successful business was easy – everybody would do it.

The answer is simple “It takes a lot of hard work – by a lot of people. People all committed to one thing and all pulling in the same direction and are prepared to take a risk”.

When I read this – I started looking at some of the massive projects I have on my plate a different way. Problems are also oportunities. Making tough decisions even if they are not the easiest – in the long term will deliver the best result. There is no power in Hope. Hope is not a strategy.

"Recognition helps people to be resilient. Businesses right now… they’re trying to survive. And to survive you’ve got to have some psychological resilience. You’ve got to have employees who are positive despite the negative situations around them…. I would argue that recognition is even more important in times like this."
Jim Harter Gallup, October 2008.