min-myinnersoul

If you behave like this, you deserve to be cursed, reviled, and generally hated. Unfortunately many business leaders are exactly like this, which is why a business tycoon is considered by society as a figure to be loathed. The "this" I refer to is Stephen Elop, Chairman of Nokia being entitled to a $25m payout for the the sale of Nokia's handset business to Microsoft. Nokia, as everybody knows, has been in dire straits for quite some time. In 2010, the Board fired its existing Finnish leaders and brought Stephen Elop, from Microsoft, as the CEO to "rescue" Nokia. Elop abandoned Nokia's operating system Symbian and tied its fortunes to Microsoft by adopting the Windows platform. It did not work and Nokia has continued to slide. During Mr Elop's tenure, Nokia's market capitalisation fell  by $ 14 bn - that's the amount Nokia's shareholders have lost. Finally Nokia has decided to sell its handest business to Microsoft for under $ 10 bn. Elop...

Alongside  wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy and gluttony - the seven deadly sins - should surely be added "money". For it is now proving to be a deadly sin even in the Vatican. News came out on Wednesday that all forms of plastic money - ATM cards, credit cards, debit cards, etc have stopped functioning in the Vatican. So if you want to visit the Sistine Chapel, you have to fork out cash for admission - cannot wave your plastic. This has happened because the Bank of Italy (Italy's Central Bank) has suspended all electronic operations by banks inside the Vatican in exasperation at the Vatican's continued inability to follow anti money laundering and anti terrorist financing regulations. This has been going on for a long time - the Vatican does not meet the anti money laundering requirements that all countries have to meet and has not been able to set this right for years. Part of the problem is "Ramamrithamisque". Regulations demand all sorts of KYC for...

Not for nothing is Archbishop Desmond Tutu widely known as "South Africa's moral conscience". The Nobel Peace Prize Winner in 1984, Archbishop Tutu was one of the leaders of the anti apartheid struggle in South Africa. He headed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission after the fall of apartheid which so enabled South Africa to move on from the past and not start a war of vengeance. He speaks often in defence of moral positions.  So when he wrote a piece in the Financial Times , I sat up and read. He argues in his piece that you don't have to lead a life of austerity to be moral or spiritual. Being wealthy is not a crime (its often made out to be by those who claim to speak for the poor). "It is fine to make a living; we are meant to enjoy abundant lives. The conflict comes when we separate ethics and economic progress and when we equate the latter with happiness", he says. There's a beautiful statement in his piece.  "Shareholder responsibility is...

There's something about the corporate world that makes smart and decent people do incredibly stupid things. Maybe its the anonymity of being part of a company. Maybe its the pressure generated to perform. Maybe its the brutal focus on the ends and not the means. Don't know what . Why else would some British honcho in Sony decide to raise the price of Whitney Houston's albums on her tragic death. There was surely going to be a memorial upsurge in sales of her records. But what sort of a decision is that to raise the prices then ? Predictably there was a huge outcry; Sony had to back down and I'm sure the guy who did it has egg on his face. Similar is the decision by some Starbucks Manager near the World Trade Centre to raise the prices of water on that fateful day in 2001. Or the decision by the Chairmen of the auto giants to fly by private jet to Washington to plead with Congress for a bailout. Or the insistence by Jack Welch to award himself retirement benefits that i...

Benetton, the clothing company, has been struggling of late. So they've gone back to  their horrible old formula to promote their brand - make shocking advertisements. Their campaign is called "UNhate" - whatever that means. These are some of their abominations. The last one elicited an irritated objection from the Vatican for the depiction of the Holy Father in this manner and that too for a commercial purpose. Benetton has reportedly withdrawn this ad. Benetton is known for outrageous advertising in the past. I won't dignify their earlier indecencies with  reproducing those photographs. They have included a man dying of AIDS, a new born with its umbilical cord still connected to the mother, a soldier holding a human bone, and the like. Sure, there is clutter in advertising and you need to break through it. But there must be a sense of decency in business, just as the same as in all walks of life.  Anything that is legally OK, is not OK. Making money by shocking peop...

Yet another rogue trader has emerged. This morning is ablaze with the news that UBS (a Swiss bank) could have lost some $2bn on account of the actions of one trader - Kweku Adoboli at its London office. Adoboli has been arrested last night and the details are only slowly emerging.  Nothing is proven as yet , but Adoboli might very well join his illustrious predecessors - Nick Leeson of Barings, Jerome Kerviel of Societe Generale, et al in the hall of Notoriety. Apparently the losses stemmed from the trader placing bets, using the banks'own money on something called Delta One - trading in financial instruments linked to exchange traded funds. To lose $2bn, the trader must have been trading staggering sums of money. Clearly UBS has egg on its face. Quite apart from the massive loss, questions will be asked about risk management in the bank. How could they let such a big loss build up. The question to be asked is what on earth banks are doing even indulging in such activities. They ar...

You may have followed the drama of Mark Hurd's exit as the CEO of HP; if you haven't, here's a good summary of what happened. Hurd was very successful  at least in Wall Street's eyes, as HP's boss. All numbers, by which Wall Street judges companies were up and markets loved Hurd after the seemingly chaotic Carly Fiorina. But its rumoured that Hurd was despised by many of HP's employees, not least because while he was cutting costs brutally, he was awarded an annual compensation in the range of $50m. HP seems to be lurching from one disaster to another. After all the drama of the Compaq acquisition and the public ouster of Fiorina, sometime ago a scandal broke out over the investigation of press leaks from insiders that  led to the ouster of the then Chairman Patricia Dunn. Now Hurd is gone in another messy saga. But this post is not about HP. Its about how even very smart people do very silly mistakes.Harvard Business Publishing carried this very good article ...

The bribery mess at Daimler makes sorry reading. Every party involved is showing up in the worst possible manner. Whatever promoted a global corporation of the standing of Daimler to be in this situation ? The case is as follows. Daimler is accused by the US authorities of paying bribes of tens of millions of dollars in over 22 countries over a 10 year period. Daimler, it is reported, has agreed to pay a $185 m fine to settle civil and criminal charges. Daimler, it is alleged, set up shell companies to channelise the bribes, Bribes have included gifting an armoured car to a Turkmenistan official, siphoning of funds to the bank account of the wife of an official in China, 10% kickback to Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein, and so on and so on. It makes sordid reading. First culprit is Daimler , of course. This has been going on systematically over a number of years. A lot of people have turned a blind eye to the goings on. At best, this can be calculated ignorance, and at worst, acti...

One final poser and I'll move on from this topic. You discover something about a key supplier of yours that you didn't know before. He employs child labour. Would you 1) Stop buying from him even though it may affect your business 2) Report his employing child labour to the authorities, but continue to buy from him 3) Ignore this, saying its his business and none of yours If you work for a global company, you probably have no choice - NGOs will roast your company alive. (Remember Nike in China ?) But , assume you are in a small local company. What will you do ? Would your answer be different, if instead of discovering that he employs child labour, you discover one of the following - He is cheating on VAT (excise, sales tax, whatever) and evading them , or, - He is discriminating against women Would your answer be the same ?

Today's poser. You resign from your company and join another company. Your were happy with your previous employer and he treated you well - you are moving just because a better opportunity arose. In your new job, you need to hire four good lieutenants. You know that if you approached your four buddies in the old company, they would join you (for they loved working with you). But if those four left too, the business in the old company would be seriously affected. This is one of those cases where in different cultures, you'd get completely different first responses. In some cultures, this is not a dilemma at all - you'd just do it. In other cultures, this would be a complete no no. But, as I mused before, I believe these are deeply individual decisions based on one's values and beliefs. There is no "right" answer. Would you place the call to your buddies ?

Ethics are either black or white - there are no shades of grey in my view, as I posted before . But there are some situations in business life where ethically it seems OK, but morally its not so clear. In such a situation, an individual's value systems determine what's right or wrong and there is no one right way. Today's poser. Does it matter what business the company you work for, is in ? If your company is an IT company or a soap company or a telecom company or a steel company, there is no issue. But would you work for a cigarette company ? Would you work for a company that makes land mines ? Would you work for a company that buys "blood diamonds" from Africa ? Would you work for a logging company in the Amazon? Or, does it not matter what business your company is in, as long as what it does is legal and you do your job professionally ?

Ethics are either black or white - there are no shades of grey in my view, as I posted before . But there are some situations in business life where ethically it seems OK, but morally its not so clear. In such a situation, an individual's value systems determine what's right or wrong and there is no one right way. I intend to post a few dilemma's over the next few days. I have no answers for any of them - each of you readers will have your own "right" way. Here's the first of the them. You've worked in a company for 10 years. You've wanted a key job, but are not getting it. Your company's direct competitor is offering you that position. Remember its your direct competitor, whom you have spent the last 10 years of your life fighting. Would you take it ?

Chris Jarvis has made a superb post in his blog Realizing your Worth on "Trust : Why businesses lost it and how to win it back." He quotes Charles Handy , an Irish philosopher specializing in organizational management who wrote in his book ‘What’s a Business For’ in 2002 this prescient paragraph: The markets will empty and share prices will collapse, as ordinary people find other places to put their money--into their houses, maybe, or under their beds. The great virtue of capitalism, that it provides a way for the savings of society to be used for the creation of wealth--will have been eroded. So we will be left to rely increasingly on governments for the creation of our wealth, something that they have always been conspicuously bad at doing.....Trust is fragile. Like a piece of china, once cracked it is never quite the same. And people's trust in business, and those who lead it, is today cracking." Click here to read this superb post.