The Manager myth.

We were a motley group if ever there was one – the class of ’83 that made up the Senior Management Development programme at the Oxford Centre for Management studies. It was later renamed Templeton College, and despite losing its more elitist nomenclature, it has remained one of the world’s leading “management schools”.

The thirty or so of us came from all parts of the world and were all senior employees of various organisations – some at executive level. The fellow student who stood out most for me was Jannie the Bulgarian mainly because no-one really knew what he did for a living or what position he held. At the time things at home were at a political knife’s edge, and I vaguely suspected that Jannie may have been on a secret mission to do me harm. So I started watching him closely to ensure that he did not carry an umbrella . Instinctively he started watching me back and the time spent in each other’s company was with increasingly uncomfortable and furtive vigilance.

Then there were the two Koreans, whose names escape me so I’ll call them Park Won and Park Tu. They did not understand a word of English and recorded every lecture to review each word and phrase with a Korean dictionary at night. At one time, Park Tu was determined to find a local barber, although he clearly did not need one. He returned rather disgruntled and subdued which puzzled us all, until someone explained that Korean barbers offered many “extras” with their hairdressing services. Others in the group included three senior British naval officers including an admiral, a BBC engineer, a Unilever economist, a senior banker, and a Japanese Tobacco executive. I was something of an outsider, having been the first recipient of the Rosholt fellowship in executive Journalism. I was certainly not earmarked for an executive career in an organisation that I was increasingly at odds with and because of my fraternal link to an anti-apartheid activist.

The point is not to invite you on a nostalgic journey, but to highlight that in those days management training was a process that started in-house at first line supervisory level. As you progressed, you were encouraged or assigned to follow programmes at institutions outside. By then you had already proved your management and leadership potential and everything you learned could be tempered and made to fit with your real experience in the workplace. The “certificate” was never the issue. The purpose was to enhance experience with further empowering knowledge.

In the decades that followed, this approach was completely reversed and there was an explosion of “management” programmes, workshops, courses and degrees with the holiest of grails being the M.B.A. – the master’s degree in Business Administration. This brings me to the brink of the fires of hell which is the debate about the real value of these lofty titles in establishing or running a business, whether a panel-beating shop or a giant corporate. The fact is that such a debate is raging and this link is only one of many of authority that challenges the value of an M.B.A while the counter argument is offered here. The pertinent question is whether the M.B.A. bubble has burst and whether we are world-wide in a “certificate surplus”.

What may be interesting, more for its “gee-whiz” than scientific or empirical value is to determine the number of M.B.A. graduates among South Africa’s or the world’s 20 best and 20 worst entrepreneurs. Just an idle thought!

It is always extremely difficult to question the validity of any form of education or training. It is outright heresy in these days of “education above all else” and the “certificate culture” that sees folk buy them off the internet or forge them on their CV’s and are even prepared to practice medicine with false documents. Education and knowledge are not necessarily the same things. The former is a process, the latter an intellectual asset. Most comments to my previous article seemed to have missed the key postulate that ultimately passion and meaning are far more important than titles and certificates. This does not mean that they are mutually exclusive, simply where the emphasis should be. Sadly, we may have “evolved” to the point where meaning based on contribution is an out-dated concept.

In the end, only those who possess these certificates can attest to their real value – not from a reward point of view but whether it made them more productive. Was it enriching or was it enabling? And can they distinguish between the two? Whether they will do so absolutely objectively is another matter. One does not lightly denigrate a costly item in one’s possession. Education is a huge industry in any society. It is extremely susceptible to spin and the virus of vested interests with “management” training the most vulnerable of all.

Is there such a science? I found the following quote in the Wall Street Journal quite intriguing:

“The economic crisis has exposed long-standing flaws not just in the modern approach to business education but in the very idea of business education.”

One can’t overstate the value of operational or functional knowledge such as accounting, law, science or engineering, and one must also be careful not to understate the negative effects of the brain drain, BEE or affirmative action. But these affect skills across the board and the real question is whether the concept of a “management science” is a not a myth.

One manages things. One leads people. The most important role of good company leaders is to enable others – firstly their customers, and then in the care and development of subordinates. Leaders should cultivate leaders and this implies that their ultimate success will be reflected in the extent to which they have made themselves dispensable and have created worthy successors. These skills should largely be developed internally including providing for a healthy level of turnover and cross pollination within similar industries.

Being service driven requires a lot more than functional or operational knowledge – it requires passion, customer empathy and a thorough knowledge of one’s product or service. These attributes either exist naturally or take time to develop. One simply cannot recruit an executive from say the construction industry to head a retail giant if that company is primarily service or purpose driven and not profit or shareholder value driven.

The title “manager” can be found at all levels up to Chief Executives, many of whom head up companies today. The “professional manager” cannot be equated with business creators and builders, those with entrepreneurial flair who cut their own paths, often making a huge difference to the business scene and to our lives. They stand outside the market and are seldom for sale to the highest bidder. To subject them to the rules of supply, demand and price would be as silly as saying that Michael Jackson’s earnings were a reflection of a shortage of pop-stars.

To enhance shareholder value and the profit track record that inevitably follows the meteoric successes of great entrepreneurs, futile attempts are made to replicate this flair, through head hunting and misguided bonus and share option schemes. These have done little more than create an artificial shortage in this category and contribute to an explosion in executive remuneration and income disparities.

If management as a science is a myth, then so is the published shortage of 216 thousand “managers” in South Africa. At the very least, the shortage of managerial skills, experience and knowledge cannot be blamed on anything else but on a failure by business to develop these skills themselves and on poor succession planning.

In essence, the shortage of these skills reflects a failure of the most important tenet of sound company leadership – the care and growth of subordinates.

The Trust in Leadership crisis.

Trust holds the fabric of society together. When trust in leadership in particular goes, it affects all levels and aspects of social behaviour and, as we have seen, promotes growing levels of social unrest.

Global trust in leadership, both in business and government, has fallen sharply again At levels well below 40% of people who trust these leaders, the level of distrust can only be described as a crisis, and the latest Edelman Trust Barometer researched in 25 countries and among 25 000 respondents, deserves close attention.

While South Africa was not included in the survey report, there can be little doubt that we will mirror, if not show a worse trend than that seen in the sample countries. A rather strange phenomenon in this country is that while the ruling party is clearly trusted more than others by the general public, its leaders and particularly those in government are just as clearly losing the trust battle. We need not look much further than the ongoing service delivery protests, Cosatu’s anti-corruption efforts, and regular media coverage to illustrate this.

People have been skeptical about the credibility of politicians for as long as I can remember. It took an exceptional leader or statesman to bridge this gap and win general popular trust. But few would have expected global trust in the credibility of government officials or regulators to fall by 14 percentage points to below 30% in the past year. This is not only the biggest slump for this group in the Barometer’s history, but makes them the least credible by far of any leadership group.

The sad thing is that no leadership group has gained credibility. Business CEO credibility has fallen nearly as dramatically – 12 points to 38%. Just a year ago, about half of the informed respondents trusted CEO statements as being credible. The report says the fall in the credibility of CEO’s in mature markets such as the United States, the U.K., France and Germany was as, if not more pronounced than the fall experienced after the 2007 global financial crisis.

Circumstances obviously play a huge role in people’s perceptions. It can be argued that skepticism is a product of the times and should not be attributed only to the behaviour of those attracting the skepticism. In good times people will trust leadership more and in bad times less. This is an expedient view at best. Leaders who ignore the distrust of their subordinates and general public do so at a terrible risk. I doubt too, whether distrust in business leadership is a passing phase. I remember a survey done in the 1990’s by CNN/USA Today which showed that company chiefs ranked second-lowest among people that could be trusted; they were just above second-hand car salesmen!

What has eroded trust more than anything else are the coinciding behaviours of declining service, near exclusive focus on profit maximisation, excessive levels of executive pay and increasing wealth disparities. These are all within the control of business itself, and as I wrote last week offer opportunities for business leaders to take a greater initiative in building new customer focused business models and shaping society in future.

So who do people trust? When it comes to information, the credibility of “someone like yourself” has risen from 43% to 65%. Information supplied by a regular employee in a company or government institution ranks as trustworthy by 50% of informed respondents. The most trustworthy sources are still an academic or expert and a technical expert in the company. The credibility of financial or industry analysts has slipped from 53% to 46%.

Traditional media are still trusted the most as sources of information, although at 32% they are not much ahead of online multiple sources at 26%. The huge 75% leap in social media as trustworthy sources of information confirms the challenges facing business leaders in managing perceptions. Social media by their very nature tend to encourage and fuel skepticism rather positive spin. 14% of the informed respondents said they trusted this source, compared with only 8% the year before. This is close to the 16% that said they trusted company sourced information.

There are no surprises in the survey regarding trust in specific industries. Financial services rank lowest with banks second lowest. Media are only marginally ahead of them at third lowest spot. Technology is still the highest trusted industry.

The rise in credibility of ordinary folk, whether peers, pals, employees, Facebook or Twitter, shows that institutions have lost much of their control on information, how it is distributed, received and interpreted. In an age where greater transparency is demanded, this must be a frightening challenge for many. It becomes infinitely more so when behaviour is indefensible.

Purpose, profits and people.

Slowly and inexorably the tide has turned. Being customer driven as opposed to profit driven is no longer an exercise in public relations, but has become a strategic necessity for survival.

The writing may have been on the wall for some time now, but one only notices how far things have moved when one looks back on the debate over a number of years. Since then, the financial crisis, wealth disparities, public debt, global recession, unemployment, and social and political protests have culminated into what a current Financial Times series has called “Capitalism in Crisis”, setting a scene for a similar debate at Davos. World Economic forum founder, Klaus Schwab put it strongly, describing capitalism as being “out of whack” and adding: “I'm a deep believer in free markets but free markets have to serve society," Even if one agrees with Citigroup CEO, Vikram Pandit that the loss of public trust is “not as a result of a failure of capitalism but from specific failures by certain participants in the financial system”, we cannot escape the reality that some of the fundamental tenets of the system are being increasingly scrutinised by a growing number of even the capitalist elite.

The profit motive is one of these core principles. Under its mantle, and the seductive call of immediate self-gratification, behaviour has been allowed to develop into reckless short-termism and the creation of large volumes of financial froth. What is being observed to an increasing extent is something which a few decades ago would never have been seriously argued: that there is not an axiomatic link between the profit motive and service. The idea that being profit driven is the same as being market driven has been thoroughly debunked. We have witnessed too many appalling cases world-wide where customers and society as a whole have been severely disadvantaged, if not harmed by greed and profit maximisation, often within legal boundaries.

So it is not totally surprising that Netcare CEO Richard Friedland proclaimed recently that the company was “going to put purpose before profits.” Perhaps it is not surprising, but rather puzzling, given that for decades business schools have steadfastly preached the Milton Friedman edict that the purpose of a business is to generate profits. No doubt creating ambiguity around a simple and uncompromising word such as “purpose” is a product of organisational theorists ever keen to create consulting interventions.

But if Friedland’s logic is that the company’s focus is going to be on customers then the company is certainly in touch with a global shift. The 2012 Edelman Trust barometer based on research in 25 leading economies and released at the World Economic forum this week confirms again that business has a monumental task in regaining public trust. This has plunged to below half for the general public, and is barely above 50% for the informed public. In the United States, still only half of the informed public trust business to do what is right. Unsurprisingly, there have been massive falls of up to 20 percentage points in trust in business in key Eurozone economies. Perhaps even less surprising is the very low credibility of CEO’s: down to 27% in the U.S. and 22% in the United Kingdom, France and Germany.

About half of the informed public in the 25 countries believe that governments do not regulate business enough to ensure consumer protection and responsible corporate behaviour.

This is a bit of a paradox, because the same survey revealed an even bigger decline in public trust in governments than in business. This has fallen from 52% to 43%, the biggest slump in the Barometer’s history and meaning that while business is not widely trusted to do the right thing, governments are trusted much less.

Richard Edelman observes that business still has a promising opportunity to take leadership not only in regaining trust but in shaping society. He points out that what most stakeholders want from government are actions business can take on its own without waiting for regulation. Unilever CEO, Paul Polman is quoted in the survey as having told the Washington Post: “Our version of capitalism has reached its sell-by date. Never has the opportunity for business to help shape a more equitable future been so great.”

Taking its cue from its respondents, the survey lists (see graph) a number of actions business can take to engender trust, and the extent to which they are doing them at present. Top on the list is listening to customers! Even for this cynical, profit driven age, the low number of people (36%) who believe business

currently does so, is quite appalling. Other top requirements are high quality products and services, treating employees well and putting customers ahead of profits. Most of the current assumptions about good business actually rank pretty low in what the informed public expect businesses to do. The delivery of financial returns ranks 14^th out of 16 attributes.

As I read the list, I hear echoes of the words of great past and present entrepreneurs, whose ventures pre-date the profit driven madness of these last few decades. “It is nothing more than business sense,” they would argue.

Or, as Bill Kellogg once put it: “The purpose of a business is not to make a profit. It is to add value to people’s lives.”

Jobs: the real mismatch.

When my son had just begun to say his first words, he witnessed my car crush one of his favourite toys in the driveway.

“It’s bonnie”, he wailed with such forlornness, hopelessness and sorrow, that it became for a very long time the family’s favourite superlative for something that is broken, trashed, crocked or destroyed.

The word comes to mind again when thinking about the labour market. It is truly “bonnied”.

These last few weeks we have been inundated with announcements, reports, articles, and talk shows covering the celebrations of improved matric results, the tragic scenes of prospective students being crushed trying to register at Universities, the Green paper on Higher Education and Training, and research results on the number of job vacancies in South Africa.

The vacancy numbers more than any other, reflect the real issue of the South African job market. The anomaly has been given excellent coverage by Moneyweb journalist, Malcolm Rees. Together with Kim Cloete’s report on the Green paper, and Felicity Duncan’s assessment of the crisis, we have been given a comprehensive picture of the labour market malaise and government’s response.

To recap briefly, and to quote Malcolm: “On the one hand we have one of the highest levels of unemployment in the world with official figures placing the number of adults without work at over 25% of the population. On the other, estimates suggest that there are anywhere between 500 000 and 800 000 unfilled vacancies in the economy”.

The so-called “mismatch” is largely attributed to poor career counselling; and education and training which is out of line with market requirements, delivering people with softer humanities skills, when technical skills are more needed. Add to this, thousands of qualifying students that have been turned away from the gates of universities, and we are indeed left with a sad, confusing and disconcerting picture.

While a simple statistical comparison between supply and demand, may lead to answers such as those proposed in the Green Paper, there is an important dimension that lies far deeper, is far more chronic, and touches on many other socio-economic ills of our time, here and abroad.

It is the underlying force of human behaviour. I have always questioned the logic of the so-called labour market. The idea that supply, demand and price are the dominant factors in channelling people’s efforts and aspirations is ludicrous and tries to equate the human spirit to little more than a pocket of potatoes. Worse still, by promoting this fallacy and encouraging individual behaviour to fit, we create responses driven by the worst in us, such as greed, materialism, selfishness and immediate self-gratification.

Beating the “education” drum loudest may seem the appropriately encouraging thing to do, but it has severe pitfalls without an equally loud melody of meaning. It creates despair of the kind that will see people crush others to death in admission queues. It leads to a sense of hopelessness and surrender when education is interrupted. Certificates and not knowledge or aptitude become the issue. Even if a young aspirant loved building and bricklaying, he would likely prefer a Bachelor’s Degree in anthropology or art as having far more substance despite having little interest in them. Degrees and certificates are seen as an end in themselves and not a means to an end. They become winning lotto tickets giving the holders unrealistic expectations and a sense of entitlement. The easiest subjects are preferred to ensure quick title. And the problem is severely compounded by lowering the bar for a pass mark.

When we have taught the recipients of fish hand-outs how to catch their own, they still will not be fed unless they are willing to be held accountable for their catches. One cannot approach life with terms and conditions. The most important basic life skill that should be taught in our formative years, long before career counselling, is that we are what we do, not what we own in money, property, certificates, title or status.

Education is not about getting a job and becoming a modern wage slave. It is about creating a meaningful life. It is about equipping the holder with the means and ability to make the right choices. It is about being the best they can be. And it is about expressing their true value in the contribution they can make to others. In most cases, education is also only the beginning. “Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school,” Albert Einstein said.

I think I said it best in the article, A decent job, which had good response and repeat placements on other websites. The single, most important thing we can do for our society, for our economy, and for employees, is to promote work and the work-place as an instrument of meaning; of empowerment; of enablement and of contribution. Material rewards are very much a secondary albeit essential consequence.

Understanding work as primarily about giving and not about getting liberates and changes perspectives across a very broad range such as career selection, subject choices, incentives and involvement. Someone who examines contribution above reward has the essential makeup of an entrepreneur. He or she is far more likely to create a job than to search for one.

Perhaps a few thoughts I gave my academically challenged grandson earlier this year, will say it better: “Find something that you can be passionate and enthusiastic about and how you can use it to make a difference to others. Always and at every moment explore what contribution you are making. And never stop learning.”

Or as Jacob Needleman puts it: “You should be looking for the joy, the struggle, and the challenge of work. What you bring forth from your own guts and heart. The happiness of hard work. No amount of money can buy that. Those are things of the spirit.”

Making the right choices.

“What do you wish for in 2012?” I was asked by someone at a New Year’s Eve social gathering. I was tempted to respond with “That all my wishes will come true”, but then gave it some more deserved thought.

“That all my choices in the coming year prove to be the correct ones”, I replied. And that’s my wish for you as well. The daily choices we make, from the smallest to the biggest, shape who we are and can create happiness or severe discontent both in the immediate and the future. It is quite astounding how many times we will make choices based on knee jerk responses, instinct and emotion. Yet with a little practice and a smidgen of patience, we can ensure that our choices become far more appropriate and productive.

The first tool is reflection. This is more than giving greater thought to each choice, although it is that too. I have made reflection something of a hobby these last few years, but must concede that I am not applying it nearly appropriately enough. I tend to wallow in nostalgia and meander in the hall-ways of the past, sometimes very dark and at other times pleasant and uplifting. But the real value of reflection lies in reviewing the choices we made in those events, their outcomes and how we could have responded differently. It is simply a technique of learning from past mistakes and improving knowledge of the self, which is the most important knowledge of all. We are seldom in control of what happens to us, but we are always in control of how we respond to it.

More important than reflection, but linked to it is patience. A decision postponed to allow for greater reflection leads to a more appropriate and positive outcome. It has been the wisdom of ages, a cornerstone of sound economics for several centuries, and a basic tenet of financial security and saving. I am reminded again of a previous quote by Adam Smith when he praised as one of the most useful attributes to have “self-command, by which we are enabled to abstain from present pleasure…to obtain a greater pleasure in some future time”.

Yet it is one that we regularly get wrong, and seemingly more so these days than in previous generations. Impatience, immediate self-gratification, imprudence, and short-termism have been a growing feature, if not the main driving force of our economic life since the mid-seventies. There is a very credible argument that says that this, more than anything else has caused the economic quagmire we are in today, having led to rampant greed, the financial crisis, greater debt, our cappuccino economies and wealth disparities. The price we have had to pay for impatience has been dealt with in a previous article.

Why are we so prepared to ignore the wisdom of ages? The answer must be found in the third, and perhaps most important dimension of choice: that of intent. It must surely drive everything we do, all the actions we take and all the choices we make. A closer examination of intent is essential to assess the validity of any choice. It seems as if this is painfully obvious, but surprisingly few of us are fully aware of our deepest intentions and misguided motives are more often than not the real source of bad choices. It is only when we re-examine our intent that we fully grasp the inappropriateness of many of the choices we make.

Intent lies at our deepest desire. Our choices may be based on many motives, goals and purpose, but it is only when asking “why” makes no further sense that we have peeled away the layers of the onion to reveal the inner core of intent. Let’s use an example: someone does something and when asked why, he responds: “to make money”.

“Why do you want to make money”?

“For financial security.”

“Why do you want security?”

“For peace and contentment.”

At this point, any further “why” is silly and superfluous. I may have removed a layer or two, but eventually the outcome is most likely to be the same. And it can be logically argued that for all, if not most human beings, intent will reflect a desire for sustainable peace and contentment.

So the simple question to ask is whether the choices we have made both at an individual and communal level have enhanced human peace and contentment over the years, or have they detracted from it. Empirical research confirms the latter. Motives behind the choices we make seem to be totally at odds with achieving our deepest intent.

The solution is quite simple. All motives are defined from two perspectives: a raw immediate self-interest or a desire to contribute; taking or giving; malevolence or benevolence. There are many shades of grey between them – giving to get, getting to give, meaning or means, unconditional altruism, or legitimate rules of transaction. But each gives the opportunity of tipping the balance towards contribution.

Our grand flirtation with the unbridled material self-interest hypothesis has clearly failed to achieve what we as humans desire most. There’s been much talk in recent years about the demise of capitalism and the need to find new economic models. Some of it is based on the false premise that free enterprise is best driven by selfishness, greed, consumption and acquisition. Any model or system builds in automatic failure if it does not re-examine its ultimate intent and the most appropriate behaviour that will achieve that. Ultimately we have to change the context of economics and redefine its true purpose. The resultant change in behaviour will give rise to system changes and new models.

Our capacity to make a contribution to others is not only where our true value lies, it is also the best way of achieving personal contentment.

Together with reflection and patience, it is the perfect guide to sensible choices.

The species that killed itself.

Some 200 000 years ago, a dying elderly female was kept alive by the compassion of her fellow creatures. We know this from palaeontologists who studied her fossilised jawbone so many years later.

Then already, in that small group of creatures that formed part of our prehistoric gene pool, humankind was demonstrating an attribute that was to drive it to become the most majestic and predominant species on the planet – the capacity to take care of each other. It’s a theme I have dealt with before and one that stubbornly and unapologetically informs all of my writing. For I believe firmly that this attribute, the universal human value of love and compassion, has not only made us into a great species, but has the capacity to keep us there, and to offer the ultimate if not only solution to our human problems – on an individual, group, national and global level.

It is more than idealistic rhetoric. It is more than acquired behaviour. The capacity to care is not the result of nurture, but of nature. It is as instinctive as a mother sacrificing her life to save a child; a stranger spontaneously coming to the aid of a fellow being, an inexplicable act of heroism. Scientists say we, more than any other creature or species, are endowed (some may argue burdened) with mirror neurons that create a constant and immediate empathy with the plight of another. Few of us have not felt that urge to extend a hand to someone who has fallen in our presence, or have not felt the “virtual” pain when someone bumps his or her head.

The discovery of these neurons was made only in the late 1990’s and one wonders how Darwin’s theory of evolution would have been written had he been aware of this neurological feature. What makes us distinctly human is not the way we look, walk, eat, or even communicate: it is how we behave. Our ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes is our greatest strength.

I have also tried to show in this column, in books and other articles over many years, how this spirit of generosity and of benevolence has underpinned great achievements on an individual, social, political and business level. Of course, the evidence is always anecdotal. One can never with absolute certainty say what really motivated those heroes of the past and present, apart from their own statements. But clearly their achievements were affirmed by the difference they made to others, not by what they got out of it for themselves. Their intention then is irrelevant, but it is doubtful whether they would have achieved what they did without a very powerful, if not overriding motive of making a difference, and if they were so totally self-absorbed that they could not appreciate the needs and wants of others.

Conversely, seldom will you find amongst champions those who flagrantly and exclusively pursued profit, self-gain, recognition and fame. This, according to Abraham Maslow, is not what self-actualisation is about. Indeed, the unbridled pursuit of self-gain and the championing of it as the engine of prosperity have brought humankind to the brink of its own destruction. We can only marvel at our perverted success in being able to ignore such a fundamental lesson that was learnt 200 000 years ago, and to deliberately turn off the mirror neuron switch that accounts for our magnificence in the first place.

It is when one extrapolates individual self-interest to a group, company or country that it becomes muddied and perhaps more invidious. Individual self-gain easily becomes group self-gain sustained and fuelled by a herd mentality, and a facile transfer of accountability. Self-interest becomes national interest and patriotism an excuse to hide individual accountability behind a flag. History demonstrates that some of the world’s biggest crimes and malevolence towards others have been committed under the pretext of “in the national interest”. For most of the perpetrators that pretext means exoneration and unaccountability.

Yet it need not be so. Families can be groups of people with benevolent intent towards others, incubators of generosity and nurseries of moral character. Groups can marshal and extol their members to a greater good, even those that ostensibly are there purely for self-gain, such as labour unions. Companies can and should be the enablers of meaning for those involved in adding value to people’s lives through the product they make or service they provide.

The same principle holds true for countries. The belief that the most prosperous and successful economies are those with a strong national interest bent that see the rest of the world as an exploitable resource, simply does not stand up to scrutiny. Extensive scientific research by the World Bank in the 1980’s revealed that a primary ingredient for national economic well-being was having an external focus. A variety of the latest “prosperity” indicators (admittedly all done before the latest Eurozone crisis) covers many countries that are well known for their national sense of global responsibility.

Gross National Income Per Capita rankings have invariably and fairly consistently included countries such as Norway, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands. You will find them too amongst the top in Human Development Indices, Gini income equality measurements, and Gallop Happiness Indicators. Their presence in these rankings may not be absolute proof that having a global social conscience is a must for prosperity, but it certainly shows that the opposite of national self-interest is not the Holy Grail many pay homage to.

There’s been at best only lukewarm commitment by the biggest global contributors to global warming at the Cop17 climate change conference in Durban. At the time of writing, prospects for meaningful common gains by the countries represented were remote. It has been argued that in the absence of an international accord, national interest itself will encourage nations like China to combat climate change, as they choke on their own emissions. Climate change is not geographically selective and most would agree that a concerted international effort is needed for meaningful progress. It is indeed the one cause where national interest has to unconditionally come second.

If taking care of each other is humanity’s strongest claim to majesty, then those talks have been a discouraging reflection of how far we have strayed from our essence. Generosity can never be subjected to a haggle. That is a transaction and while perfectly appropriate in most circumstances, it is highly improper in a forum designed to ensure humanity’s future.

The term “save the planet” already has within it a touch of arrogance. From a cosmic perspective, the planet has little interest in whether it is green, red, blue or yellow; whether it can sustain life or revolve in a solar system as a big barren but beautiful ball. What needs saving is our species.

The further we move away from our qualities of benevolence, generosity and compassion, the less likely we will be able to do that. We could become known to some intelligent force vast distances away in time and space, as the species that literally killed itself.

Blinded by colour.

The three most important dimensions of any activity are: “what”, “how” and “why”.

They also apply to writing: knowing what to write, how to write it and why write it at all. I find the “why” the most distressing. The welcome stipend one gets as a columnist is useful in structuring some discipline to the activity, but my own experience has proved beyond doubt for me that money is a poor motivator – a subject that I have covered extensively before. It brings me back to my definition of “decent work” which is “that which gives a sense of meaning in being able to make a contribution to another”. Purpose is all about meaning, and lasting meaningfulness is seldom found in what we receive, but rather in what we give. The extremely important caveat of this approach is not to be too concerned about the outcome; to be detached from an expectation of making a difference, for that could reflect a need to satisfy one’s own ego.

This brings me to the subject of this article – one which really raises a question whether there’s much point in covering it despite its critical importance. Few things in life suffer from assumptions and preconceptions as much as race, ethnicity and culture do … indeed they are founded on these defects of human behaviour. Writing about any race issue will be either endorsed by a solid group of “converted” or automatically rejected by detractors. At the extreme, one could argue that even a discussion about race is itself racist, which may explain my own discomfort in dealing with it.

It was one of those many and endless TV panel discussions about young black aspirations that made me realise with some shock how destructive and blinding the race perspective is to everyone concerned and to the country as a whole. Emotive phrases and slogans such as “white monopoly capital”, “white wealth tax”, “we want what the whites have”, the “legacies of apartheid and colonialism” are thrown into the discussion as if they are the only causes and solutions to our problems. But all these slogans really do is add venom, emotion and defensiveness to the interaction; narrowing it to one dimension and thwarting any useful outcome. Ultimately they simply exacerbate racial divisions.

This topic has many dimensions and can be approached from a variety of angles, but let’s focus on the ideologies that have divided mankind for centuries – the control and ownership of resources. It is really quite simple: if we could overnight swap the “colour” of the various actors on the economic stage, would the problems disappear? If we could, say, convert all of the “monopoly capitalists” to black, and consign all whites to being poor, would the problems of centralised economic power, income disparities and dismal employment prospects for the youth suddenly evaporate?

By colouring very real profound economic issues with a race dimension, we are not only hindering meaningful solution seeking, but we are trivialising the deep malaise that is confronting not only South Africa but the world as a whole. Being constantly informed by race is diverting our attention and forcing us to look for answers where they most likely do not exist. They will ultimately fail and become totally counter-productive.

A good example is the now generally recognised failure of the original approach to Black economic empowerment. It was thought then that the imbalance in ownership of capital had to be redressed by simply allocating equity ownership to black partners. In the process a new elite was created, instant billionaires appeared out of no-where, and some very dubious practices such as tenderpreneurship were encouraged. We were blinded by colour to one simple truth: empowerment is not about owning things. It’s about doing things.

Empowerment is about making a meaningful contribution to others because that is where our true value lies. The extension of ownership to staff suffers from the same defect. It’s what I previously called the “worker capitalist delusion”. Employee share schemes do little to enable employees in controlling their own or the company’s destiny, largely fail as productivity motivators and certainly have had little effect on labour unrest, flexibility and labour costs. In addition, a large number of people are left out of the empowerment loop.

“Monopoly capital”, whether white or black, state or private is little more than centralised economic power which is of real concern to everyone, and which is the main grievance driving the Occupy Wall Street movements worldwide. The simple fact is that market capitalism whether by Smithian default or by financial manipulation has arguably become socially inefficient.

We can fairly challenge the view that these deficiencies are inherent in the Smithian model. Until about forty or so years ago, the West led by the United States, showed significant reductions in inequality. Then came a substantial dismantling of market controls and deregulation from about the mid-seventies and whether instrumental or coincidental financial markets exploded to reach exponential frenzy in the last twenty or so years. Key “players” (there is a pun in there!) in these markets and share-value driven overpaid corporate executives became the new “capital class” hammering a wedge of income disparity into society. They have joined the more deserving and innovative business heroes of the past, present and future, like biker gangs gate-crashing the church fete.

The real tragedy of the debt ridden economic model of today is that the aspirational dream is dead for a large number of particularly and sometimes highly educated young folk. This may be a prison that they are constructing for themselves, but let’s face it, while becoming a new Steve Jobs or modern day Henry Ford may have been a remote dream in the past, it was kept alive by a belief in hard work and equal opportunity. For most, this dream no longer exists and when the 1% is made up largely of beneficiaries of a financial or boardroom lottery, disillusionment by the 99% turns to stone throwing, street protesting anger.

We cannot ignore the real need to redress economic demographic imbalances. But being blinded by colour to a more fundamental reality is counterproductive. It is also highly dangerous.