There must be a camera wherever there is inhumanity

I attended the opening of SA photojournalist Joao Silva’s Retrospective Exhibition on 23^rd October at Museum Africa.

The exhibition was first held in France and thanks to the Portuguese Embassy has now travelled to South Africa

The 55 images still float in and out of my mind.

 

They are of conflicts in South Africa, Iraq and Afghanistan. Some of the work can and should be seen on his website www.joaosilva.co.za  along with images covering Prisons of Malawi, Child Servitude in Ghana and War In Lebanon.

Joao, had both of his legs blown off by a landmine in Afghanistan on 23rd October 2010. The last image of the exhibition is a triptych of US Marines clearing landmines – in the last shutter click he captured was as he stood on the landmine. Since then he has, so far, undergone 70 operations.

Having witnessed such violence in his life, I asked Joao if he still believed in humanity. His quick reply was, “more than ever” .

In his talk he did however speak of the necessity for a camera to be present wherever there is violence, crime and injustice.

His images are of brutality perpetrated from all sides making the point that there is no winning side in war.


As the photographs depict, the victim is always and ultimately a person and our humanity.

Joao’s approach, reminded me of The Family of Man exhibition held in the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1955 with at least 12 subsequent reprinting’s of the photographic work.

In a prologue to The Family of Man book of images, the American poet Carl Sandburg wrote,  

There is only one man in the world
and his name is All Men.
There is only one woman in the world
and her name is All Women.
There is only one child in the world
and the child's name is All Children

Gary Younge wrote to this point in the Guardian News and Media recently when he said that Ebola shows that we are all connected, that it crosses all cultures and borders. He said, It shows that no matter how strong the gates around your community, how high the wall on your border, how sophisticated the alarm on your house; no matter how much you avoid state schools, public transport and public libraries; no matter how much you pay the premium to retreat from the public sphere, you cannot escape both your own humanity and the humanity of others, and the fact that our fates are tied.

Joao's work punches home the same point regarding war, violence, and our inhumanity toward one another, his images reflect the universality of human emotions and that our task is to not get caught in constructed ideologies that separate us one from another.

His exhibition also makes us appreciate the bravery and focus of the great photo journalists who go to the edge of human behaviour to remind us not to go there. Remarkably, the selected images taken amidst chaos and terror have even been composed to have a terrible beauty. (With apologies to Irish poet, Yates).

Thank you Joao Silva. We salute you.

 

Masters of War

Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build the big bombs
You hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know I can see Through your masks.


You've thrown the worst fear that can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You aint worth the blood
That runs in your veins
                                          
                                      - Bob Dylan (1963)


The dead-end of our human imagination


Arms, weapons and war are the dead-end of the human imagination; the end of being human and the beginning of being inhuman. The huge elephant sitting in the world is the armaments industry.

The number of deaths in wars are in the order of magnitude of hundreds of millions. Millions of people died in 19 century wars – the War of the Triple Alliance in South America wiped out more than 60% of the population of Paraguay.

What if we applied the human imagination to prohibiting and abolitioning the manufacturing of all instruments of destruction, all guns, tanks, cannons, revolvers and machine guns?

This should immediately begin with a prohibition of all children’s toys and games linked to the making of war. What are we doing when we give a 3 year old a plastic gun?

More light needs to be shone on the dark, murky global industry of arms manufacturing. Even though there has been an apparent decline in global spending on arms it is estimated that over 1.5 trillion US dollars are spent on manufacturing worldwide. We have a multibillion dollar international arms trade generally lacking in transparency.

The modern arms industry arose in the second half of the 19th century with the creation of large military - industrial companies about which we know very little. Governments may come and go but the arms industry shoots on. It is time to question this.

It is no surprise that the largest exporters of weapons are Russia, the United States and China. The biggest importers are India, the UAE and China. The largest arms manufacturing country is the United States. We need far more determined disarmament and non- proliferation agreements. Ultimately a prohibition on all manufacturing.

Accepting the manufacturing of arms as a reality is denying the reality of the human imagination. We can surely think our way out of confrontation and conflict?

The reason we have arms is that people in high places have vested economic and political interest in fuelling physical conflicts.

There is some good news however. In a remarkable book The Better Angels Of Our Nature, author Steven Pinker, reveals that there has been a tapering off of wars and atrocities that killed more than a tenth of a percent of the world’s population. The deaths decline as we come closer to the present. He says, The landscape of 20^th century values was a resistance by the populations of democratic nations to their leaders' plans for war. The late 1950’s and early 1960’s saw mass demonstrations to ban the bomb and public protest condemned the nuclear arms race and the Vietnam War.

Let's begin the conversation around the question:

How do we start a global movement to lobby and protest against all companies manufacturing guns, bombs and bullets?

We should start by demanding the complete transparency of manufacturing companies, their export destinations and the deals made between them and governments.

The other conversation is how to use our imagination to prevent a turning to arms as the quick fix to solve human conflict. 

His brain has been mismanaged

with great skill.

Who's going to take away

his license to kill?

- Bob Dylan

 

The moral and ethical responsibilities of capitalism and business


Reinventing capitalism will be a work in progress for years or even decades, but the great transition has begun.

- A Kaletsky, Capitalism 4.0

A debate about the moral limits of markets would enable us to decide, as a society, where markets serve the public good and where they don’t belong.

- M Sandel, What Money Can’t Buy, The Moral Limits Of Markets



A house of cards

The collapse of African Bank should not surprise anyone. What is surprising and ethically debatable is the number of asset management companies, investors and even banks who bought shares in this company. Of course they got a good return as did the handful of senior managers at the bank who each reportedly earned about R40 million a year. The banks former chief risk officer made more than R50 million in share options and are R35 million in salary and bonuses according to the Sunday Times. If we ever needed more evidence of rampant capitalism and the need for a new model, we have it with ABIL.

I can recall doing a training session at African Bank about 20 years ago when during the tea break some of the delegates brought staff members to show me their payslips. The slips displayed their net salary within brackets. In other words, they were rolling with so many loans that their monthly salary was negative. I learnt then, and I know this process has since changed, that ABIL had an arrangement with the government salary system whereby repayment on loans would be automatically deducted from government and parastatal employee salaries. One can imagine the selling that went on - like dogs in a butcher shop.

The other obvious indicator of collapse, aside from the rolling loan phenomenon, was the exorbitant, actually obscene, interest rates being charged. So we all made a lot of money at the expense of the poorly educated poor. Now we are surprised that the wheels fell off.

Of course this further disempowering of the poor has taken place for decades in the furniture retail industry. That ABIL then bought Ellerines probably sped up the collapse of the house of cards.

Time for reflection

What do we learn from this sad story? For certain every brand and its company should spend a day reflecting on its purpose and whether it and its products and services are actually creating and adding genuine and sustainable value. 

The context for value is not only economic, but also a social, cultural and an environmental one. I’m suggesting that we become sceptical of our advertised claims and promises and rather reflect honestly on the actual unblinkered value that we claim to add to our staff, customers, the economy and the broader community. We urgently need to get past the fixation to add only financial value for as few people as possible.

Perhaps the following questions could assist during this proposed time for reflection:

• Are our products and services healthy?
• To what extent is there a disconnect between the advertised promise and actual delivery?
• Do we subconsciously perpetuate a social class mind-set within our organisation structures?
• Are our own people developing significantly on an annual basis?
• Are they happy?
• Are our customer’s truly satisfied?
• Are social and environmental concerns implicit within our brand offering and behaviour?
• Do we represent and celebrate cultural diversity?

As Martin Luther King said: Life's most insistent and urgent question is what are you doing for others? 

Professor of Government at Harvard University, Michael Sandel has stressed recently that market reasoning empties public life of moral argument. He warns us that our reluctance to engage in moral and spiritual argument, together with our embrace of markets, has exacted a heavy price: it has drained public discourse of moral and civic energy, and contributed to the technocratic, managerial politics afflict many societies today.

Sandel urges us to rethink the role and reach of markets in social practices, human relationships and everyday lives.

Let's make something positive come from the African Bank collapse. 

Let's not just point a finger but remember, as my mother often told me, that there are three fingers pointing back at you

 

                Setting our education free

 This powerful visual was part of the ANC 1994 election campaign. As I recall, it was designed by Hunt Lascaris and has inspired much of what we have tried to do at Vega. Of course the meaning then was to liberate the people from Bantu Education and to have an integrated school system with access to all. In many ways this has been achieved.

A school is not a factory

The other meaning is to free education from the narrow and limiting context of mere instruction. Far too much of what I see happening in education institutions is teaching and instruction. This is contrary to the core meaning of education which comes from the Latin, to lead out; to bring out, or elicit. As British novelist James Carr said: A school is not a factory. This contradicts the essence of education which, British poet Muriel Spark better described as a leading out of what is already in the pupil's soul.

Education is a developmental process. Literary critic Harold Bloom suggests it is getting students to know themselves. Education has become far too focused on class results.

Perhaps we should better flesh out the purpose of education so it really is a liberating force and not the teaching of people to repeat the past.

An education system should surely:

• Help pupil's identify and develop themselves.
• Show where and how to find information and this requires reading and research skills.
• Develop the ability to hold and present a point of view, both verbally and in writing.
• Teach students that we are all framed by our contexts and to show them that there are always other context and that perhaps the most important one is the human context.
• Show and allow the pupil's to practice both analytical and creative thinking: these are both parts of a single process; do not teach them as separate things. The arts and sciences are not in competition. They are equally important and a good education is using the whole brain!
• Celebrate great thinkers throughout history to inspire pupils.
• Education should be a continuous discovery and a source of amazement - as opposed to being a transmission of knowledge. British author, Edward Blishen, said that the teacher must be prepared to be a medium for that amazement.
• Focus on questions rather than answers and encourage new ways of thinking and doing things.
• Understand the mathematics of financial and economic systems and that nothing is cast in stone. All our theories are constructed.
• Learn about and understand positive and negative forms of human engagement.
• Make us more sensitive to the plight of others and that education should take us out of bubbles and not construct them.
• That an educated response needs to be, in the words of John Bogle, firstly, philosophically right, then ethically right and finally, economically right.

(Your comments and input to improve the above would be appreciated.)

The greatest challenge

Perhaps the greatest challenge in education is to find methodology and systems to engage the individual student and assist them to bring out themselves. The idea of throwing information out to a class and hoping that some of it will stick so an exam can be passed has very little to do with genuine education.

To all the hard working teachers working almost against the tide to achieve this, you deserve a huge accolade; you are part of the most important profession in the world.

 

He not busy being born

Is busy dying

-Bob Dylan

            

Dylan’s verse is true of both individuals and organisations. Part of being born is knowing and believing in what is optimum; what is the greatest good?

The opposite of this, of course, is pessimism; someone busy dying, someone waiting for it to rain (to use a line from Leonard Cohen). The pessimist sees no point in trying to achieve the greatest good as we will all die anyway. The great humanitarian Albert Schweitzer described pessimism as a depreciated will-to-live.

The wonder of optimism is that it has a focus on possibility, on what we could do, could achieve. Interestingly there was an movement begun in 1919 in America called Optimist International. It was made up of professional and business people devoted to civic improvement and improvement among all people.

Importance of purpose

Great organisations have embedded in their brand purpose and their stories a strong sense of optimistic meaning. They therefore naturally tend to attract optimistic people who can support and direct their behaviours toward this optimum concept.

It is my experience that the poison that negatively impacts on brands and organisations and which is far more detrimental than the force of competition is pessimistic staff. This manifests as corridor whining and undermining; a cynicism toward and mockery of forward motion. Author Milan Kundera described this phenomenon as the rust that corrodes all it touches.

Implicit in optimism, as Dylan suggests, is a continuing rebirth, innovation, growth and forward momentum. But, too much of what actually happens in organisations is not about visualising and moving forward, but is too much about what can’t be done and a focus on bureaucratic systems that make it challenging for anything to be born and often leaves most ideas still-born. This is what the plethora of meetings actually achieve.

Organisations need to value optimism and all those people who exude this energy. They must establish pessimism-radars to quickly identify muttering sources of can’t be done and sort them or eject them. Pessimism kills, partly because it is so quickly degenerates into cynicism - the energy of which is 'why even bother'.

Ratchet optimism

Protect your organisations, and align your purpose to specific optimistic behaviours. Certainly do allow sceptical questions as they help rebirth, but do make it as impossible as you can, to allow any fertile soil for cynicism, mockery and pessimism.

The other upside for getting this right is that optimistic people are usually happy people and this energy has magnetic attraction and over-rides obstacles and challenges.

One might ask how to ratchet up levels of optimism and this could require revisiting the purpose and values of the organisation and or the leadership and management thereof.

I guess the above also applies to societies and countries.

If anyone wants an example of unfettered optimism, sit and watch children at play in sandpits and on jungle gyms, merry go rounds and swinging as high as they can.

Remembering You

Remembering You...

The Laughing Heart

your life is your life

don't let it be clubbed into dank submission.

be on the watch.

there are ways out.

there is light somewhere.

it may not be much light but

it beats the darkness.

be on the watch.

the gods will offer you chances.

know them.

take them.

you cant beat death but

you can beat death in life, sometimes.

An the more often you learn to do it,

the more light there will be.

your life is your life.

know it while you have it.

you are marvellous

the gods wait to delight

in you.

                                                                         - Charles Bukowski

Within two days two special young people connected to Vega died.

Megan Byrne, 18 years old, was a free spirit challenging her school system; principled, fun loving, full of energy and passion. Her father Tim, a friend of mine, has been a stalwart in the advertising industry and is now managing Brand Communications at Discovery. He was lining up interviews with us at Vega as they felt this environment could further unlock and better structure her restless and creative energy. This was not to be.

She had symptoms of flu on Saturday and died five hours later with a deadly form of meningitis. This was not meant to be.

Ntwanano,Tiny Maluleke was killed in the early hours of Monday morning in his rented house in Soweto. Shot through the chest in the dark by intruders who took two cell phones and a TV.

Tiny was a final year BA student. More than that he was a larger than life renaissance personality - an innovative thinker, fashion connoisseur, a rebirth of Sophiatown, a photographer, writer and music lover. His most recent Facebook status postings were:

I'm living on a cloud.

I'm a simple guy, its sophisticated.

and finally: 

I am inspired. Be inspired.

A tornado of creativity. The life taken. It was not meant to be.

Both memorial services broke out of the allotted seats and space. In both instances the application of social media brought together very large numbers of people within a few days - notwithstanding that students were on school holiday. The communities of family, friends, fellow students and staff, representing many of our cultures, were present.

In the case of Tiny, some 30 former Parktown Boys High School students, now 3 years out of matric, squeezed into their school blazers and sung an impassioned, grief-torn war cry.

Megan's school friends gave their emotional tributes and spoke of her mischievous and optimistic nature.

At Vega, Tiny's final year class, the Student Liaison Body and a former graduate arranged the entire service, designed the programme. Fellow students play the piano and sing. This was not meant to be. Children should not have to arrange memorial services for another child. This should not be.

Notwithstanding the untimely taking of life, both Megan and Tiny have left an indelible imprint on all they touched.

A professional golfer, Ken Venturi (1931 - 2013) said: The greatest gift in life is to be remembered. In the case of Tiny, Vega will name a creative studio after him and we are currently consulting as to other ways to remember the talent and life Tiny brought to the corridors of this School.

Whatever we do on an annual basis, it will be called something like - The Tiny Inspired Bursary or The Tiny Inspired Award. I’m sure Megan's School and friends will do something similar.

Both Megan and Tiny indeed had laughing hearts and it is ironic that, whoever chose this poem for Megan, probably her father Tim, was selecting a poet who would have been an outstanding, albeit difficult but brilliant Vega student. Ironic too, because Tiny's trademark was his laugh.

The Hotel School Dilemma

Imagine a Hotel School training staff for Fawlty Towers

Marketing.... is the whole business seen from the point of view of its final result, that is, from the customer's point of view. Concern and responsibility for marketing must, therefore, permeate all areas of the enterprise.

- Peter Drucker

A couple of weeks ago when on a trip to run Brand Building workshops, I stayed in a Hotel School in a sub-Saharan country.

I must stress that this School is part of an institution to set benchmarks for hotel leadership, management and service. Most of the tools of marketing apply to service brands. such as the School. Per the work of Chris Lovelock in his famous book Services Marketing there are 3 specific tools applicable to service organisations. 

The first is the opportunity to add physical evidence or tangibility to the implicitly intangible service. On the upside, the architecture and facility which includes the rooms, dinning hall, kitchen and landscaping were superb.

The wheels fall off at the front desk where you may or may not find anyone and certainly from 5pm there will be no one.

Physical evidence for a service brand also includes uniform, whether a formal or an informal one. It is a benchmark in a decent hotel to have some formal uniform at least on the frontlines and in the dinning hall. This was not the case. There was also no evidence of any management or leadership. The School appears to be run by whoever you find walking about.

Managing the customer experience

The second critical factor to build a service brand is the use of flowcharts to design systems and processes that manage customer journeys and contact points on both the front and back stage.

The first challenge here was no working bathroom light nor reading lights. Obviously no checklists were being applied. The lights were fixed the next day by taking the bulb of another light in the room for the reading lamp and fitting a bulb in the bathroom that vaguely lit the basin but not the shower or toilet.

Returning at the end of the first day the room had not been cleaned and the bed unmade. The one receptionist who always appeared to understand (but I learnt, never did) assured me that all would be sorted the next day. It wasn't. I eventually found a "manager" who then made frantic phone calls to establish that the actual problem was that the previous guest had taken the room key. The receptionist assured me that she was well aware of this but had forgotten to ask me to leave my key on the first day so that another could be made. Apologies were never in order.

Do we laugh or cry?

On being assured that there was room service a call for a drink failed to result in one. The wireless network is promoted as a service but it was quickly evident that a password was needed. Another of the various casual receptionists was perplexed as to how to find a password but after thrashing the computer handed me a hand written code on a scrap piece of paper. Back in the room, the password failed. The response was that we would then have to wait for someone else. The next day a new code was  neatly typed out but instead of handing me the clean sheet of paper, it was torn off just missing one of the critical letters. I did establish that these ladies have been working in the hotel school for a number of years.

Leaving in the morning to go about my business there would be no one at reception. On arriving first at the start of dinner one would need to pop into the bar to encourage the crew to hit the floor. It should be mentioned that the stay was not for free and the rates are apparently not significantly discounted when compared to a hotel or guest house. I should also say that the quality of the cooking was very good.

The people issue

The third tool mentioned by Lovelock is the quantity and quality of people working for the service brand. Aside from general scarcity of service people the earnest intent and passion was less than that of underpaid and abused waitrons. The people element also includes the extent of visible management and leadership. At least Fawlty Towers had a clown leader and the place is full of colourful and dysfunctional enthusiasm.

As John Kotter has remarked: The increasingly fast-moving and competitive environment we will face in the 21st century demands more leadership from more people to make enterprises prosper.

Based on my experiences, it was, therefore, not surprising to learn that the tertiary institution behind the Hotel School was anxious about financial sustainability. This of course underscores the fundamental truth that well led and managed brands are the precursor for sustainable businesses.

Perhaps most remarkable was to see the institution's leadership having regular lunch and dinner meetings in the Hotel School but clearly neither hearing nor seeing much.

While we all understand that it is difficult to maintain a consistently strong service brand  there can surely be even less of a margin for error in a School teaching people how to run hotels.

As a customer we probably do have some responsibility to inform management of poor service experiences and I undertake to my readers that I will do so.