The Secret Thoughts of Chairman Don
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Logos, Pathos, Ethos and
POWER Leadership is the ability to develop a PURPOSEFUL relationship of influence where you inspire people to take action in accordance with YOUR vision. - e.g. The Corporate Leader [Logos]
Power leadership has nothing to do with morality or empathy. This leader persuades people to follow him by any means necessary. Napoleon led the French to catastrophe, and they followed him almost to the end. Marlborough and Wellington were masters of Power Leadership, unfortunately for the world so was Hitler. Al Capone was a Power Leader in a criminal context.
SERVANT leadership is the ability to develop a LASTING relationship of influence where you inspire people to take action in accordance with THEIR vision. - e.g. The Political Leader
[Pathos]
The archetypal Servant Leader was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who while wielding tremendous personal and political power practised and advocated non-violence and truth, even in the most extreme situations. A student of Hindu philosophy, he lived simply, organising an ashram that was self-sufficient in its needs. Making his own clothes—the traditional Indian dhoti and shawl woven with a charkha—he lived on a simple vegetarian diet. He used rigorous fasts, for long periods, for both self-purification and protest. Nelson Mandela was born and raised to be a Power Leader as a tribal chief, his 'long walk to freedom' sees him arrive in power as the first President of a united South Africa and the most significant Servant Leader of the modern era. Dusé Mohamed Ali an influential Pan-Africanist, a supporter of Islam. He traveled widely throughout the African Diaspora. He founded the African Times and Orient Review in 1911, which spread the call for African nationalism, and later founded The Comet in Lagos, Nigeria.
GREAT leadership is the ability to develop a LASTING relationship of influence where you inspire people to take action in accordance with A SHARED vision. - e.g. The Spiritual Leader
[Ethos]
Servant Leader Martin Luther King moved into the Category of Great Leader when he crystallised a nation's [and perhaps the World's] vision with a speech that captured the 'Dream' shared by all races, creeds and colours. Julius Kambarage Nyerere was one of Africa's leading independence heroes (and a leading light behind the creation of the Organization of African Unity), the architect of ujamaa (an African socialist philosophy which revolutionized Tanzania's agricultural system), the prime minister of an independent Tanganyika, and the first president of Tanzania. Kwame Nkrumah was the motivating force behind the movement for liberation of Ghana, and its first president when it regained independence in 1957. His numerous writings address Africa's political destiny. In 1999 BBC world service listeners in Africa voted Kwame Nkrumah, "Man of the Millennium".
Typically Power Leadership is short lived and the power leader is dethroned by a rival or disillusioned followers. The nature of the Power Leader is such that they will continually strive to return to power
The Servant leader will normally step down once the task is completed and be reluctant to return. Servant Leaders who serve for extended periods can evolve into great leaders... if they survive the twin threats of the corrupting effects of power and the correcting actions of the men in shadows!
Power leadership has nothing to do with morality or empathy. This leader persuades people to follow him by any means necessary. Napoleon led the French to catastrophe, and they followed him almost to the end. Marlborough and Wellington were masters of Power Leadership, unfortunately for the world so was Hitler. Al Capone was a Power Leader in a criminal context.
SERVANT leadership is the ability to develop a LASTING relationship of influence where you inspire people to take action in accordance with THEIR vision. - e.g. The Political Leader
[Pathos]
The archetypal Servant Leader was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who while wielding tremendous personal and political power practised and advocated non-violence and truth, even in the most extreme situations. A student of Hindu philosophy, he lived simply, organising an ashram that was self-sufficient in its needs. Making his own clothes—the traditional Indian dhoti and shawl woven with a charkha—he lived on a simple vegetarian diet. He used rigorous fasts, for long periods, for both self-purification and protest. Nelson Mandela was born and raised to be a Power Leader as a tribal chief, his 'long walk to freedom' sees him arrive in power as the first President of a united South Africa and the most significant Servant Leader of the modern era. Dusé Mohamed Ali an influential Pan-Africanist, a supporter of Islam. He traveled widely throughout the African Diaspora. He founded the African Times and Orient Review in 1911, which spread the call for African nationalism, and later founded The Comet in Lagos, Nigeria.
GREAT leadership is the ability to develop a LASTING relationship of influence where you inspire people to take action in accordance with A SHARED vision. - e.g. The Spiritual Leader
[Ethos]
Servant Leader Martin Luther King moved into the Category of Great Leader when he crystallised a nation's [and perhaps the World's] vision with a speech that captured the 'Dream' shared by all races, creeds and colours. Julius Kambarage Nyerere was one of Africa's leading independence heroes (and a leading light behind the creation of the Organization of African Unity), the architect of ujamaa (an African socialist philosophy which revolutionized Tanzania's agricultural system), the prime minister of an independent Tanganyika, and the first president of Tanzania. Kwame Nkrumah was the motivating force behind the movement for liberation of Ghana, and its first president when it regained independence in 1957. His numerous writings address Africa's political destiny. In 1999 BBC world service listeners in Africa voted Kwame Nkrumah, "Man of the Millennium".
Typically Power Leadership is short lived and the power leader is dethroned by a rival or disillusioned followers. The nature of the Power Leader is such that they will continually strive to return to power
The Servant leader will normally step down once the task is completed and be reluctant to return. Servant Leaders who serve for extended periods can evolve into great leaders... if they survive the twin threats of the corrupting effects of power and the correcting actions of the men in shadows!
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Game Changer
Bright young thing - Technology - ArabianBusiness.com
Meet Suhas Gopinath; the 23-year-old CEO of technology company Globals Inc turning over $25m a year.
The world's youngest CEO is not what you'd expect. A diffident, slight 23-year-old, who stutters lightly when he talks, Suhas Gopinath has none of the brash front you'd expect from someone who hit the pinnacle of corporate job titles when barely into his teens.
He is, in fact, about as far from a Richard Branson-style teen tycoon as you could imagine. So what, at age fourteen, spurred him to set up his own technology firm?
As it turns out, basic materialism.
"I wanted my own PC," Bangalore-born Gopinath admits in his lightly accented English. "The internet shop across the road charged $4 an hour, which was very expensive for me. I thought I could monetise my skills and buy my own computer to use at home."
Strictly speaking, then, his first deal was with the owner of the internet store, whom he persuaded to let him watch the shop in exchange for free surfing hours. Fast-forward six months, and Gopinath had taught himself how to build websites and was pitching cut-price portals to bricks-and-mortar firms in the US.
But business contacts, recoiling at the cockiness of this fourteen-year-old web whizz, didn't respond well.
"There was a lot of frustration and humiliation. Firms would say; ‘I see you're still in high school,' and ‘so, no moustache yet?'" Gopinath recalls. He later confesses he spent years trying to coax a moustache along, in the hope of cultivating an air of gravitas. "The rejections really were the spark for me to start my own company - I knew I needed to formalise my set-up."
At fourteen, however, Gopinath was four years short of being legally able to establish a firm in his native India. So he did what any other tech geek would do and turned to the net, in search of a US partner who was old enough - and willing - to put his name to an unknown dotcom start-up.
His search turned up a Silicon Valley resident who offered his home address as a base and, on August 1, 2000, Globals Inc was born, courtesy of a few hundred dollars saved from Gopinath's freelance web work.
As corporate launches go, it sounds unfeasibly simple. He really launched a firm with someone he had never met?
"Of course," he says, frowning slightly. "There are matrimonial sites that organise arranged marriages without either party even seeing the other person. Why can't I start a company with someone I haven't met?"
Now, at 23, Gopinath's gnat-sized start-up has morphed into a $25m-a-year technology firm, with a 250-strong staff and offices in India, the US and Germany - and all without a modicum of venture capital. It's enough to make even Bill Gates, legendary founder of Microsoft Inc, sit up and take notice. Gopinath met him while mingling with the top brass at a recent World Economic Forum in Davos.
"The first thing he said was, ‘I should be afraid of you. When I started Microsoft, I was already at university. I was eighteen. You started at fourteen - I should be worried,'" he grins. Gates is his self-confessed hero. "He is amazing, so modest."
We are talking on the sidelines of an entrepreneurship conference in Dubai where Gopinath, with all the confidence of nine years of CEO-dom, is about to preach the virtues of going it alone to Emirati high school students. Flanked by property moguls, biotechnology bosses and financiers he is, by some two decades, the most junior member of the panel.
In the course of the day, a trio of Emirati girls will scoop $25,000 in prize money after winning a nationwide hunt for the best student entrepreneurs. Afterwards, they talk of the need for seed money and venture capital to turn their invention into a reality. The contrast with Gopinath - who ran his business out of his family home, without borrowing any money - is sharp. His parents, I say, must have been very proud.
He looks faintly embarrassed. "Actually, I didn't tell them."
This is incredible. He started a firm in secret? He rushes to explain. "I come from a very orthodox, non-business family. My dad is a scientist. The feeling is, if you don't have a nine-to-five job and a monthly salary, you're not settled in life and you can't get married. To them, entrepreneurship is a sin.
He pauses. "So I just didn't tell them. I lied and said I was working as a freelancer for an American firm. Which I was - it was just my own company. I'd go to school during the day, and then work on the business in the evening. The time difference helped - in my evening, US firms opened for business."
Gopinath kept the deception up for four years, until he was eighteen. At which point Globals Inc was employing some 40 staff in the US and generating $1m a year in revenue.
He must be the only CEO on record who, when his firm turned over its first $500,000, was still getting pocket money from his dad: the princely sum of $0.50 a month.
Global Inc's success is testimony to the game-changing power of the internet, which allows any go-getter with a smart idea to hit the ground running.
Meet Suhas Gopinath; the 23-year-old CEO of technology company Globals Inc turning over $25m a year.
The world's youngest CEO is not what you'd expect. A diffident, slight 23-year-old, who stutters lightly when he talks, Suhas Gopinath has none of the brash front you'd expect from someone who hit the pinnacle of corporate job titles when barely into his teens.
He is, in fact, about as far from a Richard Branson-style teen tycoon as you could imagine. So what, at age fourteen, spurred him to set up his own technology firm?
As it turns out, basic materialism.
"I wanted my own PC," Bangalore-born Gopinath admits in his lightly accented English. "The internet shop across the road charged $4 an hour, which was very expensive for me. I thought I could monetise my skills and buy my own computer to use at home."
Strictly speaking, then, his first deal was with the owner of the internet store, whom he persuaded to let him watch the shop in exchange for free surfing hours. Fast-forward six months, and Gopinath had taught himself how to build websites and was pitching cut-price portals to bricks-and-mortar firms in the US.
But business contacts, recoiling at the cockiness of this fourteen-year-old web whizz, didn't respond well.
"There was a lot of frustration and humiliation. Firms would say; ‘I see you're still in high school,' and ‘so, no moustache yet?'" Gopinath recalls. He later confesses he spent years trying to coax a moustache along, in the hope of cultivating an air of gravitas. "The rejections really were the spark for me to start my own company - I knew I needed to formalise my set-up."
At fourteen, however, Gopinath was four years short of being legally able to establish a firm in his native India. So he did what any other tech geek would do and turned to the net, in search of a US partner who was old enough - and willing - to put his name to an unknown dotcom start-up.
His search turned up a Silicon Valley resident who offered his home address as a base and, on August 1, 2000, Globals Inc was born, courtesy of a few hundred dollars saved from Gopinath's freelance web work.
As corporate launches go, it sounds unfeasibly simple. He really launched a firm with someone he had never met?
"Of course," he says, frowning slightly. "There are matrimonial sites that organise arranged marriages without either party even seeing the other person. Why can't I start a company with someone I haven't met?"
Now, at 23, Gopinath's gnat-sized start-up has morphed into a $25m-a-year technology firm, with a 250-strong staff and offices in India, the US and Germany - and all without a modicum of venture capital. It's enough to make even Bill Gates, legendary founder of Microsoft Inc, sit up and take notice. Gopinath met him while mingling with the top brass at a recent World Economic Forum in Davos.
"The first thing he said was, ‘I should be afraid of you. When I started Microsoft, I was already at university. I was eighteen. You started at fourteen - I should be worried,'" he grins. Gates is his self-confessed hero. "He is amazing, so modest."
We are talking on the sidelines of an entrepreneurship conference in Dubai where Gopinath, with all the confidence of nine years of CEO-dom, is about to preach the virtues of going it alone to Emirati high school students. Flanked by property moguls, biotechnology bosses and financiers he is, by some two decades, the most junior member of the panel.
In the course of the day, a trio of Emirati girls will scoop $25,000 in prize money after winning a nationwide hunt for the best student entrepreneurs. Afterwards, they talk of the need for seed money and venture capital to turn their invention into a reality. The contrast with Gopinath - who ran his business out of his family home, without borrowing any money - is sharp. His parents, I say, must have been very proud.
He looks faintly embarrassed. "Actually, I didn't tell them."
This is incredible. He started a firm in secret? He rushes to explain. "I come from a very orthodox, non-business family. My dad is a scientist. The feeling is, if you don't have a nine-to-five job and a monthly salary, you're not settled in life and you can't get married. To them, entrepreneurship is a sin.
He pauses. "So I just didn't tell them. I lied and said I was working as a freelancer for an American firm. Which I was - it was just my own company. I'd go to school during the day, and then work on the business in the evening. The time difference helped - in my evening, US firms opened for business."
Gopinath kept the deception up for four years, until he was eighteen. At which point Globals Inc was employing some 40 staff in the US and generating $1m a year in revenue.
He must be the only CEO on record who, when his firm turned over its first $500,000, was still getting pocket money from his dad: the princely sum of $0.50 a month.
Global Inc's success is testimony to the game-changing power of the internet, which allows any go-getter with a smart idea to hit the ground running.
Thursday, April 08, 2010
The Hau de no sau nee
The people of the Six Nations, also known by the French term, Iroquois Confederacy, call themselves the Hau de no sau nee (ho dee noe sho nee) meaning People Building a Long House. Located in the northeastern region of North America, originally the Six Nations was five and included the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas. The sixth nation, the Tuscaroras, migrated into Iroquois country in the early eighteenth century. Together these peoples comprise the oldest living participatory democracy on earth. Their story, and governance truly based on the consent of the governed, contains a great deal of life-promoting intelligence for those of us not familiar with this area of American history. The original United States representative democracy, fashioned by such central authors as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, drew much inspiration from this confederacy of nations.
"...The European penetration affected every facet of the Native Way of Life from the very moment of contact. The natural economies, cultures, politics, and military affairs became totally altered. Nations learned that to be without firearms meant physical annihilation. To be without access to beaver pelts mean no means to buy firearms. . . .
"European churches, especially in colonial practice, take on their feudal roles as economic institutions. Among natural world people, they are the most dangerous agents of destruction. They invariably seek to destroy the spiritual/economic bonds of the people to the forests, land and animals. They spread both ideologies and technologies which make people slaves to the extractive system which defines colonialism. . . . "
"By pretending that the Hau de no sau nee government no longer exists, both the U.S. and Britain illegally took Hau de no sau nee territories by simply saying the territories belong to them. To this day, Canada, the former colony of England, has never made a treaty for the lands in the St. Lawrence River Valley..."
"The Hau de no sau nee territories are not and have never been part of the U.S. or Canada. The citizens of the Hau de no sau nee are a separate people, distinct from either Canada or the United States. Because of this, the Hau de no sau nee refuses to recognize a border drawn by a foreign people through our lands"
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