Entries Tagged 'People' ↓

The story of an industry bringing in substantial revenue to Mauritius and gave an international recognition to the craft of Mauritian artisan only started less than forty years ago.Ships of Mauritius! I use to boast that may be Mauritius owns the world’s largest shipping yard of naval sailing ships. I saw the birth of this industry and followed its development and growth. The teething issues of the transport were the transport of the bulky Ship model to comply with the baggage allowance of the passenger. Air France accepted to make special concession for the transport by air at special Cargo rates.

The model boat business started in 1969 when Raphael Touze, the first French ambassador to the newly independent country, admired a model made by a friend of his chauffeur’s and ordered one for himself. The hobbyist, Jose Ramar, was so proficient at turning out these small masterpieces that Mr. Touze had the plans of the great ships of history sent to him from the Musee de la Marine in Paris, France’s leading maritime museum. Mr. Ramar recruited a few friends, and his hobby became a business.

Was it not for the idea and drive of Raphael Touze we would still be looking for some creative handicraft ideas? What have we learnt from this page of history which could be replicated?

“Flowers of the world”  by Maujean,was another idea which caught on quite well so somtime until the novelty of the idea worn off.

In an article published last Thursday on L’Express, we were informed of the inauguration of an aquaculture farm in Bambous: Val Farms Ltd. It is a laudable project and hopefully the drive and competency of this young entrepreneur will be crowned with success. All previous attempts to breed fresh water fish & prawns have not lasted for many reasons.  Flopped Berri Rouge  farming was the last attempt which was sponsored by the government fisheries department. The Mauritian public turned their back to the Berri rouge fish and would not accept to consume the fish. Barramundi the Australian fish would appear to appeal more to the local taste; the proof of the budding will be in the eating. Good luck and a courageous salute to Mr. Mike Koon.

To produce 60000tons of fish per year with an investment of 4 millions rupees seems too good to be true. I suspect that the reporter must have mixed up to figures. It was stated in the article that Mauritius imported 58 million rupees worth of fish. Will the farms be producing fish worth 5400 000 000 rupees based on the indicative price of Rs 45/ per half kilo?

Extract from L’Express

 

La première récolte de berris rouges se fera dans deux mois. “Après une étude de marché, nous avons trouvé que le berri rouge avait un grand potentiel d’exploitation pour nous”, révèle Mike Koon. L’australien barramundi a, quant à lui, été plus compliqué à gérer de par son adaptation difficile. “À chaque fois, il faut importer le barramundi et le taux de mortalité est très élevé. Nous en avons importé 84 000 et pensons en récolter 5 000 en août. Mais nous espérons avoir des géniteurs pour pouvoir reproduire les barramundis ici”,affirme Mike Koon. Selon lui, le barramundi a aussi un grand potentiel car sa chair serait comparable à celle de la “Vielle Rouge”.

La ferme de Bambous a nécessité un investissement tournant autour des Rs 4 millions. Elle emploie aujourd’hui dix personnes. Le projet est une idée de l’oncle de Mike Koon, mais ce dernier s’était déjà spécialisé dans l’aquaculture. “J’ai étudié pendant quatre ans en Australie et j’ai aussi travaillé dans des organisations gouvernementales dans le domaine là-bas”, explique-t-il. Il a aussi assuré la formation de tout son personnel.

60 000 tonnes par an

Pour sa première récolte, Val Farms Ltd devrait avoir un rendement variant entre 3 000 et 5 000 tonnes de poissons. Sur le long terme, l’entreprise a une capacité de récolte de 60 000 tonnes par an. Elle compte aussi inclure les camarons dans son élevage. “Pour l’instant, nous avons quelques camarons à l’état expérimental. Nous voulons les avoir en biculture plus tard”, conclut Mike Koon.

Maurice importe actuellement du poisson à hauteur de Rs 58 millions par an. Val Farms Ltd espère trouver preneur pour ses poissons rapidement. Pour l’instant, il est prévu que le berri rouge soit mis en vente à Rs 45 le demi-kilo et le barramundi à Rs 80 le demi-kilo.

I had a very enriching session yesterday with a business consultant from Price WaterHouse Coopers France: Jacques Lesieur. He shared with the participants of the seminar his expertise on Balanced Score Card focused on Small & medium entreprises.

The saying “what gets measured, gets done” has never been more relevant. Today, leaders are using measures to drive performance.

With the right measures in the right places, you not only get a picture of performance that is concise, accurate, and current but a tool that can be used to achieve strategic goals, provide targeted direction, align efforts, sustain performance improvement, guide shifts in directions, and achieve balanced results. By deploying a linked measurement system like our Performance Scorecards, you can identify at a glance what is most important and how you are expected to contribute to success.

Defining the “right” measures is critical. Performance Scorecards allow you great flexibility in defining the key result areas to be measured.

Performance Scorecards can be linked vertically to help managers focus on strategic priorities and corporate profitability and growth. They align with the top-level vision and mission, core values and passions, key results areas and key indicators. Cross-functional teams can use linked scorecards to see their processes end-to-end and evaluate whether they deliver the right outcomes for internal and external customers.

Scorecard Management Cycle

The Performance Scorecard Management Cycle defines a six-phase approach for creating and linking scorecards:

• Phase 1: Collecting. Gather inputs that define the “right” measures—such as strategic goals, senior-level measures, and business objectives; plus work team outcomes, core processes, customers’ expectations, and supplier requirements.
• Phase 2: Creating. Design the scorecard to support key result areas that define the “right” measures for promoting desired outcomes.
• Phase 3: Cultivating. Conduct reviews with the scorecard to improve performance, and refine objectives to be more relevant and results-oriented.
• Phase 4: Cascading. Establish workgroup scorecards, aligning objectives and measures company-wide, and define management measures that link executive scorecards with front-line processes.
• Phase 5: Connecting. Use feedback to drive improvements with individual performance plans that are tied to team objectives and measures—thereby achieving results that support goals.
• Phase 6: Confirming. Determine whether or not the “right” measures, the “right” number of measures, and the “right” relationships among measures exist to clean out obsolete measures and reduce reports that add no value.

For further reading & study on the subject, I would advise “The Strategy Focus Organisation” of Kaplan & Norton. Note that the same processes may well be used in other fields outside the business world.Being familiar with the subject I was suggested last week to my Champlain to use this methodology to our Parish.

Just like Maximillen Brabec with whom I spent an insipiring day a fortnight ago, Peter Drucker, always seek a reply to the prime question: What is our Business?
I was pleased to read through again the legacy article written by Business Guru Drucker only a year before he left us in November 2005.

Answering the question, What is our business? is the first responsibility of leaders. That business purpose and mission are so rarely given adequate thought is the single most important cause of business frustration and failure. In outstanding businesses, success rests largely on raising the question, What is our business? clearly and deliberately, and on answering it thoughtfully and thoroughly.

With respect to the definition of business purpose and mission, there is only one focus and starting point—the customer. The customer defines the business. A business is not defined by the company´s name, statutes, or articles of incorporation. It is defined by whether customers are satisfied when they buy a product or service. To satisfy customers is the mission and purpose of every business. The question, What is our business? can be answered only by looking at the business from the outside, from the point of view of customer and market. Customers are only interested in their own values, wants, and reality. So, any serious attempt to state “what our business is” must start with the customers´ realities, situation, behavior, expectations, and values.

Who is the consumer? is the first and most critical question to be asked in defining business purpose and mission. It is not an easy or obvious question. How it is answered determines, in large measure, how the business defines itself. The consumer—the ultimate user of a product or a service—is always a customer. Each customer defines a different business, has different expectations and values, and buys something different.

It is also important to ask, Where is the customer? and What does the customer buy? If they ask the question at all, most managers only ask What is our business? when the company is in trouble. Of course, then it must be asked. And then asking the question may, indeed, have spectacular results and may even reverse what seams to be irreversible decline. But the question should be asked at the inception of a business—particularly for a business that has ambitions to grow. The most important time to ask seriously, ‘What is our business?’ is when a company has been successful. Success always makes obsolete the very behavior that achieved it. It always creates its own and different problems.

It is not easy for managers of a successful company to ask, What is our business? because everybody thinks that the answer is obvious. It is never popular to argue with success. But sooner or later, even the most successful answer to the question, What is our business? becomes obsolete. Few definitions of the purpose and mission of a business have a life expectancy of more than 10 years.

In asking, What is our business? managers also need to add, And what will it be? What changes are likely to have high impact on the characteristics, mission, and purpose of our business? And how do we now build these anticipations into our concept of the business—into its objectives, strategies, and work assignments?

Again the starting point is the market, its potential and trends. How large a market can we project for our business in 10 years—assuming no basic changes in customers, market structures, or technology? And, what factors could validate or disprove those projections?

The most important trend is one to which few businesses pay much attention: changes in population structure and dynamics. Populations used to change very slowly, except as a result of catastrophic events. Today, however, populations change drastically, affecting buying power and habits, and the size and structure of the workforce. Population shifts are the only events regarding the future for which true prediction is possible.

Management needs to anticipate changes in market structure resulting from changes in the economy, from changes in fashion or taste, and from moves by competition. And competition must always be defined according to the customer´s concept of what product or service he buys, and thus must include indirect as well as direct competition.

Management has to ask which of the consumer´s wants are not adequately satisfied by the products or services offered him today. The ability to ask this question and to answer it correctly usually makes the difference between a growth company and one that depends on the rising tide of the economy for its development. Whoever is content to rise with the tide will also fall with it.

Asking What will our business be? aims at adaptation to anticipated changes. It aims at modifying, extending, and developing the existing business. But there is need also to ask, What should our business be? What opportunities are opening up? What might we create to fulfill the purpose and mission of the business by making it into a different business? Businesses that fail to ask this question are likely to miss opportunity.

Just as important as the decision on what new and different things to do is planned, systematic abandonment of the old that no longer fits the purpose and mission of the business, no longer conveys satisfaction to customers, no longer makes a superior contribution.

A key to deciding what our business is, what is will be, and what it should be is systematic analysis of all existing products, services, processes, markets, uses, and distribution channels. Are they viable? Will they remain viable? Do they still give value to the customer? Do they still fit the realities of population and markets, of technology and economy? If not, how can we best abandon them—or at least stop pouring in further resources and efforts? Unless managers address these questions seriously and act on the answers to them, the best definition of “what our business is, will be, and should be,” will remain a pious platitude. Energy will be used up in defending yesterday. No one will have the time, resources, or will to work on exploiting today or making tomorrow.

Defining the purpose and mission of the business is difficult, painful, and risky. But it alone enables a business to set objectives, develop strategies, concentrate its resources, and to be managed for performance.

The first lesson of my NLP seminar with John Seymour was entitled Building Rapport. In any human interactions, building and maintaining Rapport is the first action. To be able to exchange or converse with an interlocutor in the best way, one has to develop excellent communication skills. Is it more important to be a good sender of information or receiver? It is just as critical to listen as to speak. Is there an art to being a good listener? Yes. Does it come naturally? I think not. In fact, research indicates that we hear half of what is said, listen to half of what we hear, understand half of it, believe half of that, and remember only half of that.

Patti Hathaway in her book “the change Agent” quotes an old Chinese proverb: “From listening comes wisdom and from speaking repentance.” Her writings inspired me in this blog.

How important are the nonverbal aspects compared to the actual words we use when communicating? Your words are about 7 percent of your communication, tone of voice 38 percent, and body language about 55 percent, and yet, most communication training centers on the use of words.

Often we fake attention because our thought-to-speech ratio. We can think five times faster that the other person talking. Now you can do something productive with that extra lag time in your thought-to-speech ratio.

Tom Peters notes: “Good listeners get out from behind their desk to where the customers are.” Do you give your full attention to the people who talk to you? If not, learn a powerful, technique that will improve your listening and help you gain rapport with anyone you meet. This technique comes from the science of neuro linguistics programming, developed by John Grinder and Richard Bandler. By incorporating NLP into the way we work with people, we can “read” people more sensitively, establish a positive relationship more quickly, and respond to them more effectively.

NLP offers a myriad of techniques to improve our ablities to become a better communicator. Mirroring is one example. We tend to like people who are like us. If we look like someone (and 93 percent of who that person is, is nonverbal), they will subconsciously say to themselves, “I like this person. They are just like me.” And, if we like someone, we trust them and want to do business with them. Think about the potential this has for promotions, building business, and building relationships and friendships.

Specifically, this is how you mirror: First, match the other person’s voice tone or tempo. If they talk fast, you talk fast. If they talk slowly, you talk slowly. When I speak in New York, I can’t speak quickly enough. If I’m in southern Texas, I slow my pace down to match their pace. One way to help you match the other person’s tempo is to match the other person’s breathing rate. Pace yourself to it. Match the other person’s body movements, posture, and gestures. If the person you’re mirroring crosses his or her legs, you cross your legs. If the other person gestures, you gesture. Of course, subtlety is everything. You may want to wait several seconds before moving.

The process of mirroring is natural. You do it naturally with people you like and have built rapport with.

Muhammad Yunus was made a Nobel Prize winner in 2006 and had been honoured by the world Press for his deeds. What can we learn from his action and drive in the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh which we could copy here in Mauritius? Micro Credit may well be a remedy to the “casseur” plague that some of the under privileged of Mauritius are suffering from. According to INSEAD: Social enterprise, Using micro credit to help to lift the poor out of poverty is still posting dramatic growth. In China, this idea had been used for centuries. Even in the early days of the arrival of Chinese traders in Mauritius, they had the same cooperative union system amongst themselves.

Kashf is an example of lesson learned from Yunus. It’s a non-profit organization which has been posting dramatic growth while focusing on providing micro credit and social support services to women entrepreneurs at the bottom of the so-called wealth pyramid.

Since its launch in 1996, Kashf has grown to become the third-largest microfinance institution in Pakistan with some 69 branches, more than 135,000 customers and about 90 million US dollars in outstanding loans.

Today, I spoke to Dharamjeet Bucktowar who has been involved with credit union for years in Mauritius. He told me that micro financing is progressing. The cooperative movement gives support to any group wanting to operate a micro finance project. However, he would have expected a much greater expansion of the cooperative movement. I am pleased to learn that Caritas is still involved in promoting this type of Social Enterprise. The funds available in the Paroisse de Ste Therese which I saw the inception now runs in million of Rupees. This is thanks to the motivation of the leaders and the able management of a few willing contributors.

Why not teach credit union at school and start a model credit union at the University of Mauritius? I would suggest to Dharamjeet to start Credit Union in all tertiary institutions of the country as a practicing ground.These students would certainly learn first hand to enhance their leadership,organizational,managerial,and communications skills.

L’église de France célèbre Sainte Jeanne d’Arc le 30 Mai de chaque année. Qu’avons nous à apprendre un événement passé entre 1412-1431 ? J’ai eu l’occasion de voir des films sur Jeanne d’Arc et de lire les récits de sa vie.

Je vous livre aujourd’hui un texte succinct qui résume l’essentiel de son exploit et les vertus pratiquées par elle.

Les étapes de la vie de Jeanne sont connues de tous : Dom Remy, Reims, Paris, Compiègne, Rouen, autant de noms auxquels s’attache le souvenir de tel ou tel événement d’une épopée qui ne dura que deux années et s’acheva par la mort atroce d’une fille de 19 ans sur un bûcher.

Jeanne séduit par sa simplicité, la justesse de ses répliques, l’absence du souci de jouer son personnage, une énergie dans sa décision, un courage dans l’action, que tempère toujours la tendresse d’une fille de son age pour ceux qui souffrent. Elle séduit par sa recherche obstinée de la paix et son respect de l’adversaire. Mais elle s’impose surtout par sa disponibilité absolue à la volonté de Dieu. C’est pourquoi elle domine le procès de Rouen de toute la limpidité de son âme, la fermeté de sa foi, la vigueur de son attachement à l’Eglise et à ce q’elle croit.

Si seulement nous pourrions avoir des chefs d’entreprises à l’image de Jeanne ! Simple, humble, juste, energetique, decideur, courageux, determiné et tendre !

Pierre Chandon Professor of Marketing at INSEAD France completed a study with four other US based Marketing professors on the theme of ‘When Does the past repeat itself? The Role of Self-Prediction and Norms.”

I found the findings from the study to be very interesting and the concepts in human behavior in normative & non-normative activities to be enlightening.

“Everybody becomes more average” is supported by the study and it would seem that there is a regression towards the norm.

Professor Chandon has also written a few articles on obesity and eating habits.I recommend you to read his papers. Understanding how much we are ‘mindless’ most of the time in our behavior is mind blowing.

Only a month ago, while discussing with a group of supermarket owners, I insisted with them in creating in their customers the pattern of behavior which will bring them back to shop at their respective stores. These habits once acquired become hard to break.

“Seduced by Success” written by Robert J. Herbold offers interesting insights in maintaining your business on course and ever renewed.

He has been the Chief Operating officer of Microsoft and an executive of Procter and Gamble.

A summary of the 9 Traps to identify:

1. Neglect: Sticking with yesterday’s business model

2. Pride: Allowing your products to become outdated

3. Boredom: Clinging to succesful branding after it becomes stale and dull

4. Complexity: Ignoring your business processes as they become cumbersome and complicated

5. Bloat: Rationalising your los of speed and agility

6. Mediocrity: Condoning poor performance and letting your star employees languish

7. Lethargy: Getting lulled into a culture of comfort, casualness and confidence

8. Timidity: Not confronting turf wars, infighting and obstructionists

9. Confusion: Unwittingly providing schizophrenic communications

I found the stories developed in the book most interesting.Of particular interest is the story of Sony as opposed to Apple ‘s IPOD.

One of my many cherished memories of my working career was participating and helping to build an international net work of Freight Forwarders. FarEast Transportation Association ( FETA), now better known as FFSI network. I am happy that the organisation is flourishing and answering to the evolving needs of the international community of independent Forwarders.

I was called upon by the present Director Danny Angeles to write a few lines on the magazine which was published for the silver jubilee of the network.

*

If I told you that more than 25 years ago, a bunch of far eastern forwarders under the very able leadership of Francis Ng created the term and idea of Glocal or Glocalisation without naming it. Would you believe it?

This concept, the brainchild of our dear leader Francis and a few others, is still very much a reality and is being sucessfully implemented by a number of companies. The concept is today even being taught by Business gurus. I quote wikipedia “ Glocalisation” as a term, was first popularized in the English-speaking world by the British sociologist Roland Robertson in the 1990s, and later developed by Zygmunt Bauman.”

I dare say, that in 1981, dear Francis, Lawrence, Dany, the founders of Feta, were ahead of the world leaders by some ten years. Something to be proud of, my dear fellows!

That same year, I happened to bump into Francis, who I knew from before, in London outside a Chinese restaurant in Soho. We discussed shortly about the project of forming a network of worldwide Freight Forwarders. I immediately embraced the concept and joined into the network. A Glocal freight forwarders network was born: a very strong local Freight Forwarder with a Global outreach through a very close network of sister counterparts sharing common values.

Ever since being part of Feta, I’ve had unbelievable experiences which will never be erased from my memory. The association with Feta gave me joy, happiness, a sense of personal achievement for my learnings, friendship building and personal growth and was also fruitful for the companies for which I was producing financial results.

I got a shot of the Feta Virus. It had infected my blood and I was positively contaminated in my being. I now call all those who are infected with the virus brothers and sisters of FFSI as we all carry the same virus of loyalty, diligence, friendship, honesty, sincerity, fairness and openness within the frame of the FFSI organisation. I now realise that the Feta Virus has the FFSI glue to bond the members.

From where I nest now, retired and worn out physically, I still cannot free myself from the Feta Virus.The glue is sticking. I often get to skype or chat with so many of you despite being out of business for a number of years and keep tracking your expansion and development.

Congratulations to all of you. I am with you in spirit on this very auspicious day and moment. May I wish that FETA’s virus continue to infect more Forwarders in the world and carry on bonding them with the FFSI glue for the mutual benefits of your own companies and the customers? Long live FFSI!