A Framework for Social Media in Sustainability Programs

Over the next several months I will be contributing to the Sustainable Business Forum and Social Media Today on the topic of social business (aka “SocBiz”) and how these tools, methods and approaches can be used to address sustainability programs.  The first article in the series outlines a framework – a cycle – of how private and public sector organizations typically adopt these approaches through four phases of the information life cycle of sustainability efforts.

In my work with companies looking to promote their outbound market and internal communications messages, I have looked at a number of “socialbiz” tools and methods that seem to be resonating in the workplace particularly with those that are members of the Millennial Generation who find messaging platforms are more preferable than corporate or personal email systems. In addition there has been an explosion over the past three years in the use of business analytic platforms and how these platforms render real-time information related to business performance against key targets and metrics. Combine this with the need for greater and more detailed communication regarding sustainability initiatives – including the bounce that mobility and social tools bring to program funding - and you find the convergence point.

Use of Social Media tools during sustainability effort should support the information life cycle.

As I pointed out recently in an Institute of Management Consulting webinar series on the topic, using social business tools is not child’s play. In fact one of the key success factors in using socialbiz platforms is to keep it relevant, timely and focused. I use the expression SAFTK (“stay away from the kids”) for business leaders and IT managers to know that there is a deep well of lost productivity if the tools are used for the wrong purposes across the wrong channels of communication. For example while news and media streams are helpful to keep general knowledge current and to see what the marketplace is communicating about your products and services, the use of socialbiz tools should be business-driven. For sustainability efforts, this means driving market objectives, internal consensus, and developing the requisite information to show the world you really are doing what you say you are.

In the framework I have developed to illustrate this life-cycle for sustainability programs, the axes are based on both the outbound and inbound direction of the communication as well as the strategic or operational context of the messaging. Based on this framework, organizations typically begin in the northeast (upper-right hand) quadrant and work counter-clockwise in their use of social media and socialbiz tools to address the activities of each stage of the life cycle.

For more information on this approach, including a discussion on the four phases of information use in sustainability programs, please read the entire post on Sustainable Business Forum.  Many thanks to editor Carissa Wodehouse  (twitter @CWhoa and Google+ Carissa Wodehouse) for her work on bringing this article series to light.

A New Romantic Comedy: When California met Greece

Harry and Elizabeth are Americans. They have several grown children, three grandchildren, and have become over the years since her retirement from the banking industry cruise veterans. They are lovely and charming people and have become our table mates this week in the Carribean through fate or grand design. Harry and Elizabeth are also very Greek. She from the Bronx and native born New Yorker, he originally from a small island in the northern Aegean sea who naturalized his US citizenship years ago. He doesn’t read much English it is clear after two meals, deferring to her “common sense to order for me after so many years” however he is a very intelligent and charming man who I think understands the language quite well but simply prefers not to read it. They prattle in Greek during lulls in table conversation. I try my best to be cordial with the occasional “Kali spehra”. My wife smiles.

It took only two nights, a couple of glasses of wine, and a looming euro zone payment with constantly streaming images of riots on Sky News, before the topic of the Greek economy hit the table. Harry in his eloquent and heavily accented English moved in to the conversation. His wife could order the dinner entree for him, clearly politics and economics were his domain.

“So let me tell you something, and it’s okay since we talk about this. Greece is no more like America because there is no constitution.” I thought about Greece as the cradle of democracy and I asked what did he mean by this. In a dissertation that continued from the soup, through the salad and into the entree he laid out with simple eyes how the European Union was so ill-designed based on the fact that there was no binding constitution between the nations. I wasn’t exactly sure where this was going but I listened and realized that I could have been listening to the story of my own native California and its transformation to welfare state.

The accounts of California’s transformation are well documented and have been made even more prominent by the book Boomerang by Michael Lewis which compares and contrasts the Euro implosion to the slower changes ocurring in America, particularly the state of California. California has an unsecured border which – albeit combined with other factors such as a dysfunctional state legislature – has swollen the unofficial population of the state over the past 20 years. The state, requiring more services in the form of education, health services, and correctional institutions, was limited in the amount of money it could ask the federal government since the adult members of the migrant communities were undocumented. While some funding was and still is available for the children who are native-born Americans, the state of California could not manage its entitlement and basic services programs and has been running huge deficits for years. Even the recall-enabled former Governor Schwarzenegger could not restructure the debt obligations or change the culture of the state legislature.

My dinner accounting of the nation of Greece – a nation with the population the size of my current state of Michigan and who arguably had a Enron-esque experience with the now-defunct accounting firm Arthur Anderson to present its economic application to the euro zone – was all too familiar. I have through business dealings and my international management studies been made aware over the years that Europe had opened its borders in much the same way that the United States had to immigrant groups from all over the world. Turks and Vietnamese came into Germany (particularly in the former eastern side) to provide low cost labor, northern Africans spilled onto France in a second “Moorish invasion,” and other ethnic groups found their ways into other countries. The Greeks had two sources of immigration, both of and without their control. In the 1990s The Balkan Wars sent streams of Slavs, Albanians, and Bosnians into their borders. Ten years later and with freedom of movement now granted to second-generation European immigrants with an EU passport, these Turks, Vietnamese, northern Africans and other groups found their way to Grecian beaches. With an equally dysfunctional national parliament as the California state legislature, the Greeks kept handing out more money to more people. Unlike California it had a fraction of the economy to do this for many years.

Harry’s comment about the constitution suggests that while California has a guarantor of last resort – the US government – Greece has no such backstop. In a way this current bailout crisis is less about a Greek problem than it is about who pays for the federal results of a European decision when there is no federal european government. Similar to California, the workforces in both California and Greece have become unrecordable. Payments are made in cash to immigrant workers or workers that prefer not to pay taxes in places and areas where it is difficult to observe, trace and enforce an “off the books” economy.

While the workforce and population swells in both California and Greece and continues to be less transparent and traceable, both will continue to drive more services to its population it cannot justify by census and tax records. And while my native California can continue to ask Uncle Sam for help, the Greeks find themselves in a mess that they must now contend with.

Why are analysts worried about corporate technology spending?

Reblogged from CFOKnowledge:

SAP has just enjoyed the most successful year in its forty year history with top-line growth coming from new technologies, strategic acquisitions that reposition the company for the future and robust corporate spending. The stock price gained about 10% over the year, which given the current economy is a stunning performance. I just hope the fund managers looking after my pension plan have it over-weighted in their portfolios. But if you read the analysts comments, investors are worried that they may …

Colleague Richard Barrett (@CFOKnowledge) gives his perspectives on the latest round of earning reports and why concerns in tech spending may be a case of relative perspective.

Right Product Compliance Software Crucial for Green Manufacturing (via @ManufacturingTT)

As a follow-on to our recent white paper on product compliance software, Newport principal and colleague Liz Garnand (twitter @LizGarnand) offers a compelling read in this latest online edition of searchManufacturingERP.com.  

As new market pressures to manufacture “sustainable” or “green” products continue to increase in scope and intensity, manufacturers are looking to product compliance software for help. Meeting compliance regulations is no longer enough as customers increasingly seek products that are environmentally friendly, recyclable and made by companies that practice social ethics.

Manufacturers should expect new legislation to increase in scope as governments continue to respond to people’s demand for greener, ethical products. Given these market and regulatory pressures, manufacturers should expect new requirements not just for environment, health and safety (EHS) reporting, but for greener product materials, green manufacturing processes and sustainable supply chains.

These points are spot-on.  As I have stated many times over in this forum and others it is so very important for an organization to define what sustainability means to them and to their corporate strategy as this will be different for each and every company or association.  As well understanding the specific broad matrix of elements and data metrics needed to address not just the one-up green component but a full future roadmap view of requirements will best serve companies now and for the next several years.

The full article may be viewed here.  Thanks to Liz and editor David Essex for putting together a great read.

Leverage ERP for a Greener Supply Chain

Later this month I will join other experts on sustainable sourcing for a free webinar “Leveraging your Supply Chain for Competitive Advantage” sponsored by Sustainable Business Forum and DuPont Sustainable Solutions.  This blog provides a preview of my eBook article “Leverage ERP for a Greener Supply Chain” which will be available to webinar registrants.  

“If supply chain management is really nothing more than how companies work together, then why all the complexity and concern?”  It is a valid question asked by those not familiar with todays “always on” operational environment and equally compounded by the just in time (JIT) expectation many organizations, both large and small, have in our rebounding global economy.  The events in early 2011 when a natural disaster of epic proportions struck the Japanese automotive industry , sending shockwaves around the world, reminded us of what can happen when the “always on” mindset we have so come to expect suddenly turns off.

Understanding the risks and opportunities associated with a kinder, gentler and greener supply chain suggest a fundamental need to revisit what we already know inside of our organizations.  With systems managing information in terms of petabytes (or 1000³ megabytes) on a regular basis, one of the challenges of having information is knowing what information you have and where to find it.  This can be a daunting task for many information technology (IT) groups.  Fortunately, with the advent of third-generation enterprise resource planning (ERP) software to include business intelligence (BI) tools, manipulating large structures of information at one’s fingertips – properly organized – is possible.  With this new capability, organizations can begin to readily answer the four big questions constituting a green supply chain program across all facets of company operations:

1. What substances are used to make my products?
2. Who supplies my materials, components, and goods?
3. Where do my materials, components and goods come from?
4. Can I make changes to any of these to be greener and more profitable?

In most cases, a company already has the right information to answer these questions.  They just need to know where to look for it.  Enter the friendly and reliable ERP system in its new and enhanced capability with BI and advanced analytics.

If supply chain is really about collaboration, a greener supply chain suggests removing some of the neo-capitalist “one winner only” purchasing mentalities and replacing them with “co-innovation and value creation” thinking between manufacturers and suppliers.  This can mean “opening the kimono” to allow key suppliers into your core ERP system, or creating supplier portals to share and exchange pertinent information on supply chain performance and expectations.   Creating win-win opportunities to engage a value chain under the auspices of creating value through a greener supply chain can open the door to new thinking, both in how we view traditional operating models and how we measure our performance against a triple bottom-line.  This should give new life to the time-tested and trustworthy ERP system, and a new sense of purpose on what information we use to operate our businesses in new and creative ways.

Click here to receive a full copy of the article as part of the eBook and free webinar offer by Sustainable Business Forum.  Thanks in advance to Sustainable Business Forum for the opportunity to participate in this webinar and eBook project.

Staying Ahead of Conflict Minerals [White Paper Preview]

This past month my firm published a new white paper regarding the impending Dodd-Frank Act and the impact on conflict minerals on the manufacturing supply chain. Particularly for electronics manufacturers and suppliers, the reporting issues are ambiguous and the requirements are defined by legislation but appear to be poorly written when it comes to execution.  As my colleague Liz Garnand explains in the paper, there exists a wide chasm between the “what” and the “how” of the new US legislation.

Various industry organizations are tracking and updating their respective manufacturers on Conflict Minerals legislative issues (e.g. EICC – Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition, Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI), AIAG – Automotive Industry Action Group, Mema – Motor & Equipment Manufacturer’s Association). Although these types of associations are knowledgeable sources of information for what will be required for reporting, their role is not focused on the “how to get it done”.

This question on “how” a company can systematically report and track Conflict Minerals is a challenge, especially for industries such as Electronics and Automotive.

…

Finding out a mineral’s origin right to the smelters and mining region is both a workflow and reporting process, and outside the core capabilities of IMDS. The core capabilities of systems that support PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) or SCM (Supply Chain Management) areas tend to be much broader and may not efficiently complete all the workflow and reporting required to ease the implementation around environmental compliance. Without an automated IT and workflow process for compliance concerns like Conflict Minerals, much follow up and requests to suppliers are then limited to emails, letters, and requests for information, all being quite tedious and manual, and prone to error.

You may read the full white paper on the Newport Consulting Group website, which also discusses one possible approach based on our recent client work which can take the myriad of conflict minerals actions into consideration.  Given the gravity of the pending act, manufacturers working with these minerals should plan now in the event legislation is implemented according to schedule or even in the best possible scenario that the implementation period is extended.

CEO Check-list for 2012 | The Return of Big Projects, the Talent Pool, and – again – the Economy

I was reading one of the social blogs earlier today and was struck by the plainness of one opinion of the past year: “2011 was stupid, it sucked and stupid things happened.” One might think that such a chagrined outlook is not what we necessarily write here, but the essence is pretty frank.  2011 was – again – the year things were going to get jump-started and in oh-so-many-ways little materialized.  Residential housing stayed in the trough and the commercial real estate market was so bad that everyone has been ignoring it like the poor little friend-of-a-cousin-whom-you-see-every-five-years-at-Thanksgivingtime who ate too much and complained after the holiday meal.  Then there was that little tsunami episode in Japan where we all learned just how intricate the manufacturing supply chain really was for eight months after the devastation occurred.  As the year drew to a close we found out how important cyber warfare was – and how intrusive it has been all along – when the US Chamber of Commerce disclosed Chinese hackers had infiltrated its systems for over one year before detection.

Fortunately there are some bright spots.  In some areas job growth, buoyed by a resurgence in manufacturing as well as diversification and small business growth, made big head ways.  Earlier this week the Detroit Free Press reported that for the first time since the new millennium there will be positive job growth for the year in the State of Michigan.  Airplanes got bigger – way bigger - as the new massive Boeing Dreamliner 787 entered flight test and Airbus 380 continued deliveries.  We retired the space shuttle while at the same time opened the door for companies like Virgin Galactic to privatize human space travel on a recreational basis.  Apple had another winner – two actually – with its iPhone 4 and 4Gs models, putting pressure on RIM and Motorola and other mobile technology makers to step up or shut up in the exploding device market.  Software maker SAP made a big splash with its high analytic appliance (HANA) platform, showing that – yes, Virginia – you really can run all that batch computing real-time and allow for in-memory and dynamic simulations of critical business information.  Avionics came to the forefront when a coveted stealth drone was captured by Iranian authorities, starting the clock as to how quickly the Iranians, North Koreans, Chinese and even our new World Trade Organization partners – the Russians – can reverse engineer the information contained in that snappy looking fly-by-wire vehicle.

So let’s have a look at what we expected to happen in 2011 and what we do expect to happen in 2012…

2011:

#5 – It’s still the economy, stupid. Totally got this one.

Manufacturing is back, but for how long? (Photo from Detroit Free Press)

We are and continue to wait for the convergence of key indicators – particularly consistent sector growth in manufacturing and services – along with a robust savings rate upwards of 10% to really spark the economy.  While most of the conversation is still focused around how consumers spend their money, history has shown that the most economically sustainable recoveries occur when there is adequate savings and reserves.  After years of low – and at times even negative - savings levels, we seem to be plateauing around 6%.  Savings, according to the Bureau of Economic Activity (BEA), includes funds not used in the purchase or investment accounts.

#4 – Sustainability isn’t a fad.  You can either get on the bus now or have it run over you later.  While this is true, mainstream business has yet to catch on.

Most of the work in private business that we see is self-directed at least in the US.  While this is good – I believe it is better for a company to want to change behavior rather than feel it must change behavior (a la compliance and regulations) - we are still waiting for the spark to pick up sustainability beyond more than friendly “green teams” and cost-reduction actions in large publicly-traded companies and private enterprises.  See more on this bending trend, below.

#3 – If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.  If you don’t have it, break something to make it.  Definitely, as there were some really big winners in 2011.

Business Leaders could learn a lot from dead teenagers. (Photo from FX Network)

I mentioned the mobility game-changers that Apple brought, relegating RIM to third place (depending how you measure) from its once undeniable thrown in the mobile device space.  Small businesses led a lot of innovation this year, and big companies like Volkswagen – now making a pile of vehicles in the US – significantly altered their business models to buy market share in their respective industries.  Even in the motion picture and television industry, this quirky show about ghosts – characters who are not even living according to the script – captured Gen-Z and Millennials in a big way by creating a television series hybrid with American Horror Story.  Talk about out of the box thinking!  Business people need to get into the same disruptive thinking in manufacturing and technology segments.  Learn from dead teenagers how to market to living ones.  One big trend is the continuing decline of email use among Millennials and Gen-Zers.  Social media platforms will continue to be more important for basic electronic communications as well as targeted marketing.

#2 – Don’t just change for change sake – have a plan, stick to it, drive to results.  Crap shoot, some did, many didn’t.

Many companies had excellent plans and great analytics for measuring the performance of those plans going into 2011.  Then the tsunami hit and everything went out the window along with the topical black paint for automotive shops (can you say 10-month back order?)  Risk management has come to the forefront and strategy formulation and organization design are just now re-emerging as approaches that are back on the mind of CEOs particularly in the mid-market.

#1 – Welcome the Mobile Society and Sustainable Mobile Computing Duh, this really was a no-brainer and will be for 2012 as well.

After years of social media experimentation, 2011 showed signs that we are going to get serious - really serious - about mobile computing and make big bets in this arena.  Several aspects to consider.  First in mature markets, the advent of 4G infrastructure and near-field computing (NFC) will eventually make money and currency as we know it obsolete.  Not next year, or maybe the year after, but it will happen.  Smart phones will come with personalized SIM cards which will link to our bank accounts, creating electronic wallets that not only will allow wireless transactions from the device but will also recommend based on buying preferences where the products and services most desired by the consumer might be found.  We saw this in 2011 at an application level, particularly with merchants like Starbucks whose smart phone apps were deadly accurate and screaming fast. Second in developing markets, the mobile device will need to operate like a laptop or home office computer to drive commerce.  Applications with a thin “cloud computing” layer and footprint will enable peer-to-peer transactions so that commerce can exist without a large infrastructure.  Finally, the move to sustainable mobility – such as the Our Mobile Generation program – will create ways in which highly toxic mobile devices of today can be made and used on a more environmentally friendly manner.

So what about 2012?  Some thoughts, ideas and trend-benders:

#5 – The Talent Pool will Continue to Drain.

The talent pool will continue to drain in 2012, particularly in the US market.

While hiring has picked up in many markets, employment stagflation – and along with that the talent development of many decision makers including entry-level management – will create issues.   According to human capital consultants and futurists the Herman Group, employment in the US market will remain at near or even higher than 7.5% in the US market.  Meaning that many positions that would normally be added to back office functions in particular – purchasing, human resources, recruiting, supply chain management – will be working with staff that are over-taxed and in many cases under-qualified to handle workload, position responsibilities, or both.  Working with large corporations will require technology solutions to be explained v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y in the US market in particular in order for very busy, over-burdened and in some cases poorly trained staff to take advantage of business benefits.  Until hiring picks up, for mainstream manufacturing and service industries mediocrity will reign supreme for another year.

#4 – It’s STILL the Economy, Stupid.

Until the magic numbers converge, unemployment will remain high, workers over-tasked, and $2 trillion in capital will remain on the sidelines in the US market.  There is no guarantee that the Obama administration will play nice with the US Chamber and other business groups, resorting to politics and regulation versus business cooperation. However there is also no guarantee that we should expect anything different after the 2012 election.  At the time of this writing the Republicans can’t seem to aim their sites higher than their own foot after stumbling with the employment tax relief vote.  All this means that the economy moves up a notch on this year’s CEO list.  Pray for no natural disasters in 2012 and that the Mayans just ran out of room on their calendar.

#3 – Technology Required – You have it or you don’t.

Don't bother me if you can't cloud...

Second generation cloud computing, where you can combine both on-premises and network based solutions, is now reality.  It isn’t an either-or kind of thing and companies are realizing it is less expensive to have specific functions – such as purchasing or human capital management – or for operations of full subsidiaries to be managed in the cloud.  This can in some ways address the talent pool issues (see #5 above) in some of these functions by automating key processes such as employee benefit self service, purchasing analysis, employee performance management, and some logistics functions.  Security issues have been addressed and now the real hurdle is cultural.  Large companies are looking at software providers expecting these “check-list items” will be provided as options or at least on the future product roadmap.  Even product companies, such as home appliance and automotive  manufacturers, have mobile apps to “check-in” on the performance or maintenance cycles.  Need to start and unlock the car for your husband who locked his keys in the glove box from your smart phone? No problem.  Crazier stuff than that will become not just a fad option, consumers will demand it.

#2 – Innovative companies will make bets, take risks, and claim market share.

I see it in the corporate board rooms and with owners of small to mid-sized companies.  Growth will be a top priority in 2012.  Which will be nice, since that word feel off the radar screen for many executives over the past three years.  In case you missed it the manufacturing recovery will enter its third year according to trends from the Institute of Supply Management (ISM) in 2012.  Mergers and acquisitions will pick up as companies blend both organic and non-organic growth strategies.  I am looking forward to my prediction becoming a reality on this one in particular.

#1 – Big Projects are Back, and they must be Mobile

You knew I had to include mobility in this fray somewhere and here it is.  But the caveat is that mobility at the enterprise level will be a major workstream of larger systems transformation projects.  We saw this trend emerge with our crowd source poll earlier in the year regarding the relative marginal costs compared to the significant increase in project approval rates for systems transformation efforts.  Yes mobility is big.  Really BIG. Mobility also needs to be paid for now that it is proven in the enterprise space.  Doing this as a part of a resurgence in large project activity helps to spread expenses and increases the “cool factor” of each project.

Best to everyone for a prosperous and healthy new year!

For more information on scheduling an initial discovery session or for public speaking events please forward your inquiry via email to info@newportconsgroup.com or visit our firm website.

Making a Case for a Sustainable Business Network

Earlier this week I was joined by Dr. Alexander Dreiling (twitter @alex3ling) of SAP Research at the America’s SAP User Group (ASUG) Community Fall Focus event in Anaheim, California. This tw0-day event had a specific focus on field developments throughout SAP and its customer base in the areas of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), Supply Chain Management (SCM) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM).  The development of procurement and supplier relationship management (SRM) disciplines as a part of a broader SCM strategy has been a passion of mine in the area of sustainability for some time.

Over the past year I have worked with a number of partner groups inside both SAP Labs and SAP Research to understand the best practices and most appropriate frameworks to introduce into a sustainable business network (SBN).  A Sustainable Business Network consists of supply chains that provide financial, environmental and social value.   The value proposition for SBN across commercial organizations and supply chains include several compelling points and value propositions:

1. It returns profit, or at least does not run unprofitable,

2. It enhances the lives of people involved in it, or at least does not create disadvantages for them (similar to principles of the Natural Step),

3. It enhances environmental health, or at least does not harm the environment

This week SAP Research announced a limited ramp-up with selected customers to promote its current version of a Sustainable Business Network platform.  Over the next several weeks I will be providing more information on how this new platform is being leveraged inside selected organizations and what the promise is to fulfill the key value statements and points.

Presentation materials for the conference are available at ASUG Online here (site registration required, reference session code ACF0711)

#Greece and the “Drama over the Drachma” (via @bbc_whys)

This week’s events in Greece drive home several realities in our new post-modern, millennial world.  I was fortunate to have the the opportunity to join the tweet-up and live discussion these past two days on the BBC World Service program World Have Your Say (twitter @bbc_whys or #WHYS) with business leaders, citizens and media reporters from Europe and the Americas.  Despite the ever-changing sociopolitical dynamic in Greece (this situation could be much worse or altogether worked out by the time I finish this blog post) there are some standing conclusions we can make from all of this that will change how banks approach sovereign debt and how the issue of international economic cooperation will and will not be handled in the future.

1. Greece owes a lot of people a lot of money.  The next payment is nearly $US 800B in the coming weeks.  They can’t pay it.  Period. So someone needs to step forward to do so and/or an organized reduction in their debt (read: write-off) needs to occur.  There is a proposal on the table from the Eurozone countries to allow this to happen.

2. Regardless of the workout arrangement that finally occurs, the challenge for the 10M Greek citizens will be difficult ones.  The austerity measures demanded by the Eurozone nations have evolved into a set of policy decisions that questions the rights of a nation state to determine its own society.  The Greeks don’t like it and given the fragile political structure in that country the Prime Minister has deftly taken a “it won’t entirely be my decision” approach to democracy and cast the idea of a referendum.  While the populism of this move is unquestionable, the uncertainty it causes in economic markets creates a “more of the same, always in crisis” mode making it difficult to move ahead on any form of structured, lasting and predictable economic recovery.

3. We are all inter-connected, and while we in the US have our own debt conversations and tough decisions to make, the Greek situation – for a nation state of not many more people than my current state of Michigan – has global implications.  Banks around the world including central banks are going to take a write-down on their debt and we will all need to indirectly pay our share.

4. Greece is just one letter in the word PIGS.  Portugal, Italy and Spain all have similar situations in the future, if not by the end of this year than over the next several years.  How and what we do with Greece will serve as a test-bed to organized work-outs with these other, much larger economic issues.

There is a small fringe group advocating Greece leave the Eurozone.  This would be under the treaty guidelines a decision Greece would need to make as no one nation can “force out” another from the EU or the Eurozone.  However, based on my informal conversations with several German business partners, many in Germany wouldn’t shed a tear over Greece returning to the drachma, devaluing its currency, and providing even greater vacation bargains for the rest of the EU to enjoy on holiday.  The downside to this “eat the bitter pill quickly” approach is that it dangerously sets a precedence for nations to abandon the Euro, while at the same time wiping out a lot of savings the Greek citizenry has put into the banking system almost overnight.  This “structured Argentina work-out” might be a good thing for some Greeks, very bad for the confidence of the Eurozone and its member states.

For more information on the Eurozone conversation visit the BBC media sources across the web.

Decompressing … and Learning … from #TEDxFlint

It’s been over a week now since TEDx came to Flint, Michigan a modest hard-working class city best known for what it has lost over the past through years through the lens of producer Michael Moore.  What TEDx attempts to do is to illustrate the possibilities, for a city and community moving into a new age of revitalization such as Flint.

Fellow speakers Tamika Lamison, Catalina Talero and me in the Green Room at TEDxFlint (photo courtesy of C. Talero)

Our approach was to choose the 16th letter – P – as our guidepost and develop an idea or concept or creative expression that would fit the TEDx motif. My offering was a “Personal Model for Sustainability” based on some of the early coaching work I have made with professionals and executives trying to either implement sustainable business practices into their own organizations, or attempting to find the next outlet for their life journey and a balance of mind, body and soul (some relationship either spiritual or with their community) which can allow individual growth and expression.

The discussions and ideas over the course of the day illustrated a number of possibilities (another P word!).  Ranging from “Blaming the Recipe” to a new way of looking at Not-for-Profit organizations (call them “high impact” organizations, thanks Doug!), to the need for all of us to be a “Hero in Waiting.”  We learned how a bounced check and heartbreak can open the door to fulfilling dreams and how education can save your life (thanks Tamika and Catalina).  We were challenged to Stop Discounting People (thanks Terry) and our eyes were opened to the creative movement sweeping the city and the surrounding community.

This for me was an amazing day.  I am so proud of my fellow speakers, the organizers and for my colleagues at Northwood University in Flint for supporting my presentation and those of all others who were able to participate at the University of Michigan – Flint campus and around the world via live internet link and steaming video.

Look for a number of TEDx presentations from Flint over the next several weeks at the TEDxFlint site and on YouTube.