Presenting a Strategic Plan is something of a poisoned chalice. On one hand it is an ideal opportunity to demonstrate your understanding of the business and impress pretty senior people about your business acumen. On the other hand its very nature, unlike that of operating plans, invites very wide-ranging intellectual discussions with executive management during the presentation. A slip there can have very serious and permanent consequences.

The challenge therefore is to build up a reasonably believable plan and present it in a manner that, at the end, you still have your job intact. Having survived a number of such sessions, and now mostly having the pleasure of being in the reviewing audience, I do get asked for advice on best survival tips. In my opinion it’s more of a matter of avoiding certain key pitfalls. So here goes my two cents or seven and a half halala’s worth of advice…

First, bond thyself and thy audience. Now this is the real easy part, provided of course you are hot, blond, of the right friendly disposition and can successfully give Pamela Anderson a run for her money. For all the rest of us this is a big challenge.

It always pays to be humble and suitably deferential towards the audience, most of whom , except for the owners progeny, are unlikely to be anything other than shrewd and seasoned business executives. Time-honored openers like “it’s a pleasure presenting to all of you”, work all the time.

Stating that all your labor is, at the most, only likely to lead to a better understanding of the business challenges is another time tested winner: does all this sounds corny? Yes it is, but remember this is all about survival. Nobody likes a wise guy who pretends he is the biggest know all ever, so please do not come across as one, especially not at the start.

Second, know thy business and its limits. Pretty obvious, right? But seldom adhered to! While discussing the key objectives of the plan, we all have this irresistible urge to impress the audience. And in our zeal to impress, our vision comes across as being on par with the desires of a modern day Alexander. However, unless you are a Harvard dropout or had been given away at birth, and now are willing to cheat, copy, bully and lie your way to top, chances are slim that you will be the next Bill Gates or Steve Jobs and lead your organization to everlasting glory. Plus of course, there is the small matter of having a high enough IQ.

Please ensure that you come across as someone who knows the difference between a vision and a dream.

Third, sell strategies they, not you, think are implementable. Therefore, please spare the audience the details of your grand designs related to the new world order. Banish the thoughts of revolutionizing the industry , stick to leveraging what your businesses core competencies are and you should have a built up a fairly reasonable pointer towards where all of you could possibly land up in another three to five years. And please keep the language simple and avoid grandiose expressions. The number of times I come across the words “passion” “anticipation” and “excitement” would make most of our film starlets blush.

Fourth, explain thy key plan assumptions well, and near the start. This does not mean showing a bewildering array of charts setting out endless population, GDP, inflation and sale trends numbers. Try building on something more interesting based on consumer insights, price points evolution, channel segmentation, etc. It is advisable to invest some money on good market research beforehand instead of downloading pages from CIA fact book. This should add credibility to the numbers you are building your whole plan on.

At the fifth place comes tackling thy enemy’s evil plans. Please keep in mind that everyone in that room is aware that you are not, unfortunately, the only player in the market, and that the enemy would also be planning your business’s demise. So an inadequate competitive analysis section makes you look quite foolish and out of touch with reality. Both of these outcomes can have very serious career repercussions.

As for number six, please be cautioned that Capital Expenditure both mattereth and hurtheth the moistest. Now you are on really dangerous grounds. Your audience will know, from bitter experience, that imprudent CAPEX outlays have a striking resemblance to bad marriages. You continuously regret getting into them and it’s impossible to avoid the consequences; and no wonder as most of the CAPEX requests I review are meant to look good on only one place, the Operations Directors CV! So only present what has been thoroughly assessed. Think instead of upgrades, and possibly leasing, and thou should be on safer grounds. This, by the way, applies to romantic liaisons also…

And seventh and the last, and the most critical. Do not wait to be asked questions, you do it all the time. Take the lead in asking them questions and then pointing out the answers in your presentation impresses them a lot, also makes them feel grateful for not having to think too much!

The best way as ever is to be well prepared and to understand that strategic plans are a means to an end, not an end by themselves. This way you will enjoy the experience. And hopefully survive to fight another day…

Microsoft co-founder and Harvard drop out is redirecting his philanthropic efforts in a new direction (though not necessarily moving away from polio) towards research in agriculture. In a letter posted on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation website, he explains the the irony that the starving 15% of the world are farmer families. He goes [...]

Bill Gates Will Feed The World is a post from: PakMediaBlog All Rights Reserved.

Foremost among these is the raging controversy surrounding Salman Rushdie’s scheduled appearance at the Jaipur Literature Festival, a saga that neatly encapsulates both the virtues and vices of the Indian polity. The gathering has fast emerged as the largest and most prestigious literary event in Asia, and it is a fine example of the soft power strengths India brings to the competition with China for influence in the region. This year’s installment attracted some 250 writers from South Asia and beyond (including talk show maven Oprah Winfrey, new age guru Deepak Chopra and Joseph Lelyveld, whose book on Mahatma Gandhi was greeted with a blast of invective from the Indian political class last year) as well as 70,000 visitors. Yet the imbroglio over Rushdie, who was supposed to be the main attraction at this year’s festival, has tarnished India’s credentials as emerging Asia’s brightest exemplar of democratic freedoms.

Rushdie, who was born in Mumbai to a Muslim family of Kashmiri descent, is the author of the 1988 novel, The Satanic Verses, which inflamed Muslim sentiment throughout the world and lead Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s supreme leader, to issue a notorious fatwa against his life. Concerned about the potential for upheaval among its sizeable Muslim population, the Indian government quickly banned the book, part of its familiar but disgraceful ritual of proscribing books that touch on sensitive issues or arouse passions in certain quarters. Rushdie, who continues to live under the threat of death, has traveled to India without incident numerous times in the years since, including an unannounced 2007 visit to the Jaipur gathering that is credited with putting it on the world’s cultural map.

But his headline participation at this year’s event brought forth a torrent of umbrage and threats. Muslim clerics started things off, including those at Darul Uloom Deoband, an influential Islamic seminary in Uttar Predesh, India’s most populous state which will hold legislative elections next month that many believe are critical to the survival of the Congress Party-led national government in New Delhi. Another seminary issued a fatwa calling for protests against the visit and a number of Muslim groups warned of “unprecedented protests” and burned Rushdie’s effigy.

Predictably enough, politicians soon took up the cudgels, many of them Congress Party leaders fearful of losing the allegiance of Uttar Pradesh’s large bloc of Muslim voters, who formed about a fifth of the state’s electorate. Ashok Gehlot, chief minister of Rajasthan, the northwestern state where the festival takes place, and a former general secretary of the All India Congress Committee, reportedly pressed the organizers to rescind their invitation to Rushdie and appeared indifferent to the threats being made against Rushdie’s safety. Chandrabhan Singh, head of the Congress Party’s Rajasthan unit, declared that “Rushdie has hurt the sentiments of many Indians. He must not be allowed to come to India.” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi, the party’s national leader, maintained a studious silence, while one of Singh’s Cabinet members pronounced that Rushdie’s “presence is not desirable.”

In contrast to the poltroon instincts of the political class, India’s boisterous media leapt to Rushdie’s defense. The Times of India accused the Congress Party of playing identity politics and argued that “by catering to such intolerance, the Congress has further contributed to creating an increasingly illiberal atmosphere in the country.” The Hindu called the affair “a national shame” and charged that “India has again betrayed its heritage of providing sanctuary to persecuted individuals and ideas, not to speak of its Constitution.”

If the saga had ended at this point, it would have amounted to an embarassment to the country’s reputation. Instead it unexpectedly morphed into an outrage against free expression. On the eve of the festival’s opening, Rushdie suddenly withdrew when the Rajasthan police warned him of an assassination plot being hatched by a Mumbai underworld boss who has close ties to the Pakistani security establishment. Media outlets, however, soon reported that the death threat was concocted by authorities to scare him away. When Rushdie made plans to address the gathering via video link, Rajasthan officials attempted to throw up new impediments. In the end, the video conference was abruptly cancelled by the venue’s owner following police warnings about violent protests.

In solidarity with Rushdie, four Indian writers at the gathering staged an impromptu reading of passages from The Satanic Verses, a prohibited act that drew quick police notice. Advised by legal counsel that they had unwittingly opened themselves up to criminal charges, the writers hastily departed Jaipur and, in some cases, the country.

Unfortunately, the Rushdie affair stands out for its prominence but not its singularity. Currently, the Delhi High Court is considering a petition that seeks to hold Google and Facebook liable for not censoring content that might offend the sensibilities of Hindus, Muslims and Christians. The judge overseeing the matter ominously warned that if the companies could not police their own sites, “like China we may be forced to pass orders banning all such websites.” Prime Minister Singh’s government has lent its imprimatur to the petitioner’s cause.

Late last year, Kapil Sibal, a Harvard-educated lawyer who serves as Mr. Singh’s telecommunications minister, likewise threatened to censor social networking sites for objectionable content (here and here).  Similar to the rhetoric directed at Rushdie, he argued that “religious sentiments of many communities and of any reasonable person is [sic] being hurt because of content which is on the sites.” Last June’s death of M. F. Husain, the most acclaimed painter of modern India, also recalled how he had been hounded into self-exile by Hindu nationalist groups incensed at his nude depictions of Hindu deities. Prime Minister Singh called Husain’s passing in a London hospital “a national loss” but he did nothing to dampen the mob culture that caused Husain to spend the last years of his life outside of India.

Indeed, over the last two years, India’s illiberal tendencies have been in particular bloom:

• A fictionalized biography of Congress Party supreme Sonia Gandhi was banned;
• Government officials helped put the kibosh on plans to make a movie based on Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire, a non-fiction book that sheds light on Jawaharlal Nehru’s furtive relationship with the wife of the British Raj’s last viceroy;
• An outcry organized by the family of Bal Thackeray, a Hindu nationalist politician, forced the University of Mumbai to drop Rohinton Mistry’s novel, Such a Long Journey, a finalist for the prestigious Man Booker Prize, from its English-language syllabus;
• And Arundhati Roy, a perennial bete noire to the political establishment and a Man Booker Prize-winner for her 1997 novel, The God of Small Things, was charged with sedition for her remarks on the Kashmir dispute.

All democracies are continuous works in progress. But this year’s Republic Day reveals just how far India still remains from the ideals of free expression.

Hello there, its been a while.

2011 has ended and like every passing year, it seems only yesterday when it came our way.
For me, 2011 brought a lot of great experiences and some difficult times too. The year started with an incredible experience that was Harvard Model United Nations 2011 and ended with an opportunity to be part of a Live Q&A session with the one who claims to bring about a ‘tsunami’, the leader of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf [PTI]. Imran Khan came to the Institute of Business Administration on 23rd December 2011 perhaps in an attempt to garner further support and answer a few questions. Ironically the show’s name was ‘To the Point’ and unfortunately he was the opposite of that. I will be talking about this experience and Imran Khan’s political aspirations soon. From tomorrow I have my final exams of my first semester, hopefully it’ll be a breeze.

My blogging sadly took a back seat due to the hectic college days, yet I hope to blog more often in 2012.
Here’s a small yet interesting video about the year 2011. Have a look.
Happy New Year folks!

In a follow up to yesterday’s post, I have come across a piece in Time Magazine by Eben Harrell of Harvard’s Belfer Center. In it, Harrell discusses the thriving nuclear export business Kim John Il established during his reign in which he allegedly provided equipment for fissile materials production and missile technology to countries such as Syria and Iran. Such links are evidenced by, for example, the fact that the Al-Kibar reactor bombed by the Israelis closely resembled the North Korean plutonium reactor at Pyongyang.

With information from North Korean defectors, the Harrell piece also provides an interesting nugget of information about how the illicit export network allegedly functions.

AFP/Getty

“What’s not clear is how much this network relied on support or at least authorization from Kim Jong Il. But reports from North Korean defectors once involved in the tripartite proliferation network suggest it is highly sophisticated and involves many different layers of officialdom. It may work something like this: North Korean state trading companies working directly for the DPRK regime set up branch offices in mainland China. These companies contract private Chinese firms to send purchase orders to the local subsidiaries of European industrial machinery companies, who have set up shop in China specifically to cash in on China’s growing domestic market.  These domestic orders, of course, are not subject to export controls, so without knowing it, western subsidiaries sell dual-use technology — industrial tool and dye equipment, for example — directly to private Chinese firms, who then use their established routes to transport the goods to North Korea. In terms of sales, North Korea state trading companies are also contracting private Chinese firms to move sensitive goods through Southeast Asia (including Myanmar) and on to clients in the Middle East.”

Harrell concludes by emphasizing that the potential vacuum created by Kim Jong Il’s death should prod the West to stop the DPRK’s illicit nuclear trade network once and for all.  As I noted yesterday, one can only hope that the regime change indeed provides some opportunity for breakthrough in the ongoing impasse on the Korean Peninsula.

Micro Manager

The term Micro Management means keeping close control on happenings within an organization. The term has a negative connotation and rightly so. Manager’s role is to facilitate, but a micro manager generally creates roadblocks for other coworkers.

Small business owners tend to micromanage, but once the business grows, the scope of an owner manager’s responsibilities change. It however becomes challenging for him to realize the situation, which ultimately makes life difficult for him and his coworkers. In this post, I would like to focus on why people micromanage and what can be done to improve situation in an organization.

Psychologically, we all are micromanagers; some will consider this a radical statement. But the fact of the matter is that human generally think that “they are correct and others are goofs”. Those who say that they are working for micro managers, most of the time do not realize that they micromanage too!

I found an interesting post at Harvard Business Review that analyzed “why people micromanage?” I strongly recommend reading this excellent post on the subject. Commenting on the post readers shared their views saying:

“I have been micromanaged and guess what? When I rose through the ranks I did the same. It’s difficult to admit to yourself. I believe it’s a part of the learning process.”

The other reader noted:

“I am one of those control freaks you are talking about. I know I am doing it, but sometimes being like that has made me aware of some nasty situations before they turned into disasters. I can imagine that I am a complete nightmare to work for.”

Logically speaking, most of micromanagement stems from insecurity and uncertainty. When an individual tries to behave as a “Mr Know it All” he is actually exerting the behavior of Insecurity and mistrust. And in case of small business owners, this is valid too. They are usually running the show themselves, and their workers are either part time or do not have any future development potential within the organization. Expecting 100% loyalty in such a situation is foolish, hence the attitude towards micromanagement embeds into most small business owners or even managers that are working in similar situations.

Delegation is one of the ways to reduce the effect of micromanagement. Most system driven organizations, small or big create a process that makes workers self accountable. They work on “no blame-game theory”. This means that every individual will agree on a process of self accountability and will be fully responsible to his or her acts.

Individuals and organizations suffering from this negative behavior tend to move slowly due to hurdles created by micromanagers. An interesting way to overcome this is realization and trainings. Change does not come prompt, but in most cases leadership trainings help micromanagers learn to lead effectively.

In the end, lets analyze yourself, are you:

• Making all the decisions
• Setting priorities
• Doing all the talking
• Signing off on every document and communication
• Attending every meeting that anyone of your team attends
• Making sure the spotlight is always on you
• Accepting credit for team accomplishments
• Assigning blame to some individual of your team when something goes wrong

If you are behaving in this manner, I am afraid, you are one of them and remember “a micromanager is one of the most frustrating and demoralizing forces in the workplace!”

Thank you Mark Dummett, for the report in BBC today paying tribute to Anthony Mascarenhas, the brilliant and courageous Pakistani journalist who had to flee abroad in order to be able to tell the truth – Bangladesh war: The article that changed history.

Mascarenhas

“Eight journalists, including Mascarenhas, were given a 10-day tour of the province (East Pakistan). When they returned home, seven of them duly wrote what they were told to,” writes Dummett.

“But one of them refused.”

That was Mascarenhas, who died in 1986 in London.

His wife Yvonne Mascarenhas told Dummett that she remembers him coming back distraught: “I’d never seen my husband looking in such a state. He was absolutely shocked, stressed, upset and terribly emotional. He told me that if he couldn’t write the story of what he’d seen he’d never be able to write another word again.”

“Clearly it would not be possible to do so in Pakistan. All newspaper articles were checked by the military censor, and Mascarenhas told his wife he was certain he would be shot if he tried,” writes Dummett.

Here is a case of a journalist who rose above what was no doubt being touted as the “national interest”. His subsequent reports in the Sunday Times made him a “traitor” to West Pakistan and a hero to the Bengalis. But I think he was a hero to the cause of journalism.

“There is little doubt that Mascarenhas’ reportage played its part in ending the war. It helped turn world opinion against Pakistan and encouraged India to play a decisive role,” writes Dummett… “Not that this was ever Mascarenhas’ intention”.

He was, simply, as editor of the Sunday Times, Harold Evans wrote in his memoirs, “just a very good reporter doing an honest job”.

It speaks volumes for the mainstream Pakistani narrative about the events of 1971, that I, as a journalist with a deep interest in human rights issues, never even heard of Anthony Mascarenhas until just a few years ago, and then too, quite by chance.

My uncle Zawwar Hasan, a retired journalist now over 80 years old, mentioned “Tony Mascarenhas” while reminiscing about how he ended up in this profession. Unsuccessful in getting a job in his own field, marketing, he had landed a job as a sports reporter with the government-controlled news agency Associated Press of Pakistan (APP) in Karachi in 1948. After his first assignment, a cricket match, he went to the India Coffee House with a new friend, another sports journalist, M. Akhtar.

“We wrote our reports there, and he gave me a lift to my office at APP.… Tony Mascarenhas was there – he later ended up with London Times,” said my uncle, remembering how Mascarenhas, who was editor of APP, had told him off for not coming straight back to the office after the match to file his report.

“Do you realise this is a news agency and every minute is precious. Anyway, show me what you have.”

Mascarenhas the editor then himself typed up the handwritten report (because the rookie reporter didn’t know how to type), telling him only to “come early tomorrow and learn to type.”

Being interested in the contributions of non-mainstream Muslims to Pakistan’s struggle for democracy, I was intrigued by the obviously Goan Christian name Mascarenhas. I started looking him up. I also learned how he “ended up with London Times”, initially as their correspondent in Pakistan.

According to the Times obituary of December 8, 1986, he was born Neville Anthony Mascarenhas in “Belgaum, near Goa, on July 10, 1928. A Roman Catholic, he was educated at St Patrick’s College, Karachi, before joining Reuters in Bombay in 1948.

“At the time of partition he was sent to Karachi to start their operation in the new state of Pakistan. He then helped to found Pakistan’s own news agency, APP.  In 1958 he joined the Times of Karachi as assistant editor…  From 1961 to 1971 he worked for the Morning News, mainly as assistant editor, though for two years (1963-5) he was its correspondent in India, and in 1965 was interned there with his family for three months while India and Pakistan were at war.

“In 1970 he was recruited by The Sunday Times, for which paper he wrote, the following year, the report from East Bengal which profoundly influenced opinion in the outside world, and which changed the course of his life.”

Read Dummett’s article for fascinating details about how Mascarenhas and his family escaped from Pakistan.

Later, in Cambridge MA, with access to the Harvard libraries, I found his books, The rape of Bangladesh (Delhi, Vikas Publications, 1971) and Bangladesh: a legacy of blood (Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1986). As far as I know, neither is unavailable in Pakistan although I hear that there have been some translations.

Some years ago I asked a senior journalist who had been posted in Dhaka during 1971, why no one in West Pakistan wrote the truth about what was happening. “We were not allowed,” he said simply. “There was strict censorship.”

But Mascarenhas had the courage, and the opportunity, to follow his conscience.

As I wrote in an essay for the Economic and Political Weekly, the State controlled Pakistan Television, that started broadcasts in 1964, has remained very much ‘his master’s voice’.

Along with a few newspapers and the government controlled Radio Pakistan, PTV reported only what the government allowed. This censorship was particularly evident when it came to the growing unrest in what was then East Pakistan. The news censorship and slanting was so extreme that even on Dec 16, 1971, when the Pakistan army surrendered to the Indian, the West Pakistan media was still predicting victory. An exception was Anthony Mascarenhas, the Goa-born, Karachi-educated journalist…. In 1970, recruited by The Sunday Times, London, his reports on the happenings in East Bengal “profoundly influenced opinion in the outside world, and changed the course of his life”, as his obituary in The Times notes.

“He and his family had to leave their home and all their possessions in Karachi. He arrived in Britain on June 12, 1971, and the following day his three-page story appeared in The Sunday Times. It was quoted all over the world and won him awards from IPC and What the Papers Say. But it also earned him the bitter hatred of Pakistan’s military regime, and for time he had reason to fear for his life.”

Ironically, or perhaps tellingly, he had become an Indian citizen in 1976 –obviously Pakistan had disowned him — although at the time of his death he was intending to apply for British citizenship, according to the Times obituary.

Unified Confederation of Workers (CUT) (photo Haiti Liberte)

“Haiti is a country that supported the fight for freedom in Latin America, a country that terrified slave owners across America and is now subjugated to foreign occupation that has nothing to do with humanitarian purposes, as proposed,” said Julio Turra, president of Unified Confederation of Workers (CUT French acronym). “It’s embarrassing,” added Turra during a Nov. 5 meeting of more than 600 multinational in Sao Paolo, Brazil. “Therefore, the Latin American people, Brazil in particular, owes a debt to Haiti, which is a historic duty,” he added.

According to Haiti Liberty, a Haitian weekly, personalities representing advocacy groups, political parties, student and labor organizations rallied, in Sao Paolo capital’s Hotel de Ville, around their preoccupations with the UN Mission for Stabilization in Haiti (MINUSTAH French Acronym). Participants from the U.S., France, Uruguay, Argentine, Bolivia, Haiti, among other countries participated in the four-hour meeting to lend a shoulder to Haiti’s anti-UN movement. “We must express our solidarity, as we cannot accept a gradual troop withdrawal because we do not know when it will end,” said Turra adding, “We must ask the immediate withdrawal of troops and defend the sovereignty of Haiti, as it faces occupation.”

These multinationals were not lone anti-UN advocates; many other organizations also called for troop withdrawal, including Jubilee South (JS), a global network of anti-debt movements. In an interview with Rebecca Burns, reporting for nonprofit and independent newsmagazine In These Times, Beverly Keene of JS agreed U.N. presence in Haiti “does not respond in any way with the reality of an occupying force.” Jubilee South enacted “Haiti No MINUSTAH,” a campaign endorsed by Nobel Peace Prize laureates Perez Esquivel, Mairead Corrigan Maguire and Betty Williams, calling for troop withdrawal.

Keen also said the campaign would oppose U.N.’s ideals: using Haiti as a laboratory for new forms of interventions and control in Latin America. Furthermore, Burns also reported that School of the Americas as well as hundreds of organizations in troop contributing countries also backed this campaign. “Haiti is the only country in the world where peacekeeping mission operate under a U.N. Chapter VII mandate, permitting it to use force, absent an active conflict or an enforceable peace agreement,” wrote Burns in her article “Haitians to U.N.: Please Leave.”

Peacekeeping entered their eight-year of operations in Haiti, following the October 14 U.N. Security Council unanimous vote to extend MINUSTAH’s mandate another year. The Security Council also authorized a force reduction from 13,000 troops and police to about 10,500. However, the 15 percent reduction did not appease anti-U.N. sentiments that intensified amid serious allegations of sexual and human rights abuses, as well as the incidental introduction of the country’s cholera epidemic. Haitians grew particularly contentious over the issue given U.N.’s persisting denial of responsibility, though plenty of scientific evidence placed Nepalese peacekeepers stationed near the Artibonite River at the origin of the outbreak, dumping sewage in the water consumed by locals. Recently, some Haitian organizations called for a redirection of MINUSTAH’s $800 million annual budget as reparation for cholera victims, families of more than 6,000 killed by the disease since its October 2010 detection and to fund cholera prevention.

Anti-UN demonstration in Haiti (photo In These Times)

“In order for Haiti to become a fully functioning democratic state, MINUSTAH needs to continue building the country’s institutions,” explained spokesperson Sylvie Van Den Wildenberg, justifying U.N.’s presence on the island to Burns. However, as her article revealed, “a recent report from the group Harvard HealthRoots charged that MINUSTAH failed in its mandate to support the democratic process when, despite being charged with monitoring the 2010 national elections, it raised no objections to the exclusion of the country’s most popular political party.” A large majority of Haitians, some 65 percent according to a recent perspectives survey on the troops in Port-au-Prince, wanted the departure of U.N. troops either immediately or within a year, reported Burns.

Echoing Haiti’s frustration in Sao Paolo, “The occupations are examples of the politics of oppression,” declared Hugo Dominguez of the Uruguayan Metallurgical Union PIT-CNT, referring to last summer’s video of Uruguayan Soldiers allegedly assaulting a young Haitian male that invaded the Internet. “As Uruguayans,” Dominguez continued, “We are ashamed because of the actions of Uruguayan troops in Haiti.” Moreover, rights activist Colia Clark characterized U.N.’s presence in Haiti as a violation of all the norms about international human rights. “In spite of seven years of an unjustified occupation, there is nothing positive that resulted from its presence,” added Nelson Guevara Aranda representing more than 5,000 workers of the Union of Bolivian Miners of Huanuni. “On the contrary, it has consistently violated the sovereignty and dignity of Haiti,” he added.

1. The Sao Paolo meeting produced the Continental Committee for the Immediate Withdrawal of U.N. Troops in Haiti that pledged to lead an official international campaign on four requirements:
2. Focusing on medical doctors, engineers, teachers and technicians, rather than troops occupation.
3. Forgiving Haiti’s debt.
4. Reparations for both the immoral debt imposed on Haiti following its independence and for families victimized by cholera and human violations
5. Immediate withdrawal of U.N. trips in Haiti.

Laura C. Gonzalez who covered the event for Haiti Liberte described as a moving illustration what she perceived as a growing movement of solidarity with the Haitian people throughout North and South America. Participants, as she reported, left the meeting projecting to stage worldwide Anti-U.N. demonstrations on June 12, 2012 to mark the eight anniversary of MINUSTAH’s official launch with the Day of Continental Action for the Withdrawal of Troops from Haiti.

Throughout his career, an entrepreneur faces many challenges. One of the biggest tasks for an entrepreneur is to build an effective team and keep it intact. In this real world, teams come together and break, sometime due to inefficiency of the system within the organization, and sometime due to team players not getting along well. Undoubtedly, there will be ups and downs, but an intelligent entrepreneur will always try to make the most of his team.

I read an interesting blog at Harvard Business Review written by Linda A. Hill is the Wallace Brett Donham Professor Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Kent Lineback spent many years as a manager and an executive in business and government. They are the coauthors of Being the Boss: The 3 Imperatives for Becoming a Great Leader. In this post, they raise a valid question:

Are the people who work for you a real team?

I fully agree with their view that most teams are just bunch of people working individually in a group, but not every group is a team! The reason given by Linda and Kent is that entrepreneurs and managers do not pay attention to collective performance!

The second question asked by the authors is:

What is a team and what makes it potentially such a valuable instrument of leadership? And the
explanation to this question is: A team is a group of people who do collective work and are mutually committed to a common team purpose and challenging goals related to that purpose.

Having said above, the question remains – What are the key ingredients that help an entrepreneur build good teams and keep them intact?

In my view, perhaps the most important ingredient is the creation of “Teamwork Culture”. This can be done by creating collective work plans and objectives. So instead of starting at an individual level, these two should be
developed based on a bottom-up approach. This will encourage individuals to look at the bigger picture and place their contribution in creating this “Picture”.

The other most important ingredient is “Team Rewards”. Instead of rewarding individuals for their performance, consider adapting a team reward approach. Some would argue that this approach discourages “Start Performers”, but they often forget that the share meaning of teamwork is the utilization of individual capacities to achieve common objectives.

Linda and Kent in their blog say, “It’s easy to extol teamwork, but not every group is a team. In fact, most teams we see, aren’t — because their managers focus on building the most effective relationships they can with each individual who works for them. They spend their time managing person by person, paying little attention
to collective performance. They rarely use their groups to diagnose or solve problems. And when issues arise that clearly affect the group as a whole, they tend to handle them one on one.”