Ali Bytes: Bullet-sized strategies for modern living

Last spring I was invited by one of my most favorite and inspirational people, Professor Vivyan Adair, to come speak at my alma mater, Hamilton College, about working for social justice. While I was there, she gave me Muhammad Yunus’ Banker to the Poor. I’m ashamed to admit that I just read it but not so ashamed that I won’t share some insights that come out of it.

As background, Yunus is an Nobel Prize winning economist revered as the grandfather of microfinance for his founding of the Grameen Bank in the late 1970s in Bangladesh. Here are some other things you might not have known about Grameen, and microfinance, that make it revolutionary and worth learning more about.

1. “What would you do with $100?” is how many of Yunus’ conversations start with poor people around the world. Grameen has built its foundation on the principal that all human beings are born with an innate survival skill and need only credit, not extensive training and hand-holding, to work their way out of poverty. Unlike the American welfare system which - with its oversight, bureaucracy, training, ceilings, etc. - disincentives entrepreneurship and “increases [recipients] misery, robs them of incentive and, more importantly, of self-respect,” the Grameen philosophy is that cash alone provides social capital and is a tool that “unlocks a host of other abilities and allows [the poor] to explore their own potential.”
2. Grameen’s goal is essentially to put themselves out of business. Of course they stay open once there are no more poor people to serve as their customers begin to thrive, but they want to make every Grameen Bank branch “poverty-free.” In Bangladesh they define poverty-free using ten specific indicators which I’ve slightly shorted here for simplicity. Every family should have a house with a tin roof, beds, access to safe water and a sanitary latrine, all kids attending school, sufficient warm clothing, mosquito nets, a home vegetable garden, no food shortages, and sufficient income-earning opportunities.
3. Contrary to famed economist Milton Friedman’s belief that the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits, Yunus believes that personal gain does not have to be the only fuel for free enterprise. In fact, he argues that social goals can replace greed as motivators and that “government, as we now know it, should pull out of most things except for law enforcement, the justice system, national defense, and foreign policy and let the private sector, a ‘Grameenized private sector,’ a social-consciousness-drive private sector, take over its other functions.”
4. The idea that all people are potential entrepreneurs is part of the core Grameen approach despite the fact that it goes against a traditional, dichotomized view of economics that says there are only consumers and laborers. The argument is that this widely held perception neglects the potential and value of self-employed entrepreneurs and stifles creative exploration of human capacity. So, how about taking a minute to explore your own creativity: what would you do with $10,000?

In my first semester as a business student, I read a useful article about people-centered management: Putting people first for organizational success by Pfeffer & Veiga, which was part of the inspiration for this list blog (before I realized every business article and book uses numbers ala The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People). I was reminded of this article in a few recent conversations with friends who are looking for more fulfilling jobs so thought I’d share.

Studies show that companies that treat their employees as their greatest asset and manage as such have lower turnover and greater sales, profitability and stock market value per employee. Read on before you dismiss this as common sense. How many of these practices does your company follow?

1. Employment security: To encourage innovative and productive behavior, managers need to make employees know that they won’t lose their jobs for creative risk taking gone awry or work themselves out of a job for a job well done.
2. Selective hiring: Companies that attract a large applicant pool and then carefully choose people based on knowledge, skills and abilities consistent with company values and mission (i.e. the Southwest way) are doing it right. They invest the up front effort into hiring the right people by evaluating individuals on the skills that are hardest to learn (and can’t necessarily be taught) - initiative, passionate problem solving, ability to learn, collaborative approach - and avoid wasting time and resources on fitting people to a job they might not have been right for.
3. Self managed teams and decentralization of decision-making: Allowing individuals the autonomy and power to control decisions within a team structure leads to an increased sense of ownership and accountability. It also provokes initiative and greater acceptance of responsibility because of the lack of hierarchy - barriers to growth and achievement.
4. Comparatively high compensation contingent on organizational performance: This seems so obvious and yet I know too many people who get raises based on lapsed time. Effective companies directly link pay to success and pay for performance - above industry averages if possible.
5. Extensive training: Like Southwest, GE (the other golden child of b-schools across the country) has applicants pounding down the door. If employees are to help push innovation within the organization, critical in a knowledge economy, they need the opportunity to adopt new skills to use on the job. A formal program sends a strong message that employees are worth the investment.
6. Reduced status distinctions: Blurring the hierarchical structure can be done through language, labels, physical space, wages, and a host of other signals. This effectively establishes equal value for all employees and reduces perceived or actual barriers between top management and lower level employees encouraging information flow.
7. Extensive sharing of financial & performance information across the organization: Did you know every Whole Foods store has a book that lists the salaries and bonuses of all 6,500 employees for any employee to see? While that’s an extreme case of transparency, or “open book management,” disclosing financial performance, strategy, operational measures, etc. all convey trust and encourage ownership in achieving established qualitative goals.

I can’t vouch for all of these books but really like the concept. Any suggestions for what I should do one on?

1. Scratch Beginnings: Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream by Adam Shepard (launched this week). “Carrying only a sleeping bag, $25, and the clothes on his back, and restricted from using his contacts or his education, Adam Shepard sets out for a randomly selected city with one goal on his mind: work his way out of the realities of homelessness and into a life that will offer him the opportunity for success.”
2. The Year of Yes by Maria Dahvana Headley. “When Idaho-born Headley, a 20-year-old NYU drama student, laments, ‘I felt like I’d dated and then hated every man in Manhattan,’ she thinks perhaps she’s too critical. So she ‘decided that I would say yes to every man who asked me out on a date.’”
3. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich. “Determined to find out how anyone could make ends meet on $7 an hour, she left behind her middle class life as a journalist except for $1000 in start-up funds, a car and her laptop computer to try to sustain herself as a low-skilled worker for a month at a time.”
4. Self-Made Man: One Woman’s Journey into Manhood and Back by Norah Vincent. “A newspaper columnist used her tomboyish tastes and the indignities of being a woman to motivate a serious immersion into the daily realities of being a man.”
5. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver. “This book chronicles the year that Barbara Kingsolver, along with her husband and two daughters, made a commitment to become locavores–those who eat only locally grown foods.”
6. All My Life for Sale by John Freyer. “As Freyer was preparing to leave graduate school in Iowa City to return to a typically small New York apartment, he decided to sell all his worldly possessions through eBay and his own Web site, allmylifeforsale.com. People bought his used socks, a can of Chunky Soup from his pantry, his Planet of the Apes LP, and a bag of small, roasted cuttlefish.”
7. The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible by A.J. Jacobs. “Jacobs, a New York Jewish agnostic, decides to follow the laws and rules of the Bible, beginning with the Old Testament, for one year. (He actually adds some bonus days and makes it a 381-day year.) He starts by growing a beard and we are with him through every itchy moment.”
8. Give It Up!: My Year of Learning to Live Better with Less by Mary Carlomagno. “Serially, during the course of a year, Carlomagno gave up alcohol, newspapers, shopping, dining out, taxis, cell phones and television for one month each.”
9. A Year Without “Made in China”: One Family’s True Life Adventure in the Global Economy by Sara Bongiorni. “On a post-Christmas day mired deep in plastic toys and electronics equipment, [Bongiorni] makes up her mind to live for a year without buying any products made in China, a decision spurred less by notions of idealism or fair trade-though she does note troubling statistics on job loss and trade deficits-than simply ‘to see if it can be done.’”

What takes 2 weeks and travels on average 2,000 miles to get to you? Answer: most of what you put in your mouth every day.

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, here are resources to help you go green by going local. Though this first weekend of spring-like weather seems to have been just a tease, this month farmer’s markets are starting to open up around the country. You still have some time before they’re all open so you can use the next few weeks to prepare. Shopping at farmers’ markets is a great way to support local farmers, take care of the environment and branch out beyond your typically boring diet of bananas and potatoes. Here’s more to get you started.

1. The most cited of all local eating resources, Local Harvest has events, a blog, photos and an extremely useful map of farmers’ markets that includes a blurb about each, the address and even what products are featured. Here’s a link to one near me in Penn Quarter neighborhood of DC.
2. Eat Well Guide is a handy website that enables you to search for restaurants, farmers, stores, organizations, etc. in your area that are categorized as ‘local,’ ’sustainable’ and/or ‘organic’ in various ways. It’s helpful to see the different “production methods” to actually think about what these often loaded words mean.
3. Before summer hits, you can read up on what it means to buy local. Here are a handul of the more popular and relatively new books on the topic: Simply In Season, Omnivore’s Dilemma, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and 100 Mile Diet.
4. Sustainable Table can tell you what food is local in your state. Unfortunately they seem to have left off DC but I guess we can use Maryland or Virginia instead.
5. Get your own “No Farms No Food” bumper sticker or virtual badge of honor from American Farmland Trust.
6. If you need more convincing, FoodRoutes.com offers tons of information on where your food comes from and different ways to go local.
7. There are a million blogs on this topic but here are two that seem pretty helpful if you want to keep on reading: What to Eat and 100 Mile Diet, the latter includes 13 reasons to eat local including “Taste the difference” and “meet your neighbors.”