Intro Thoughts
If you are concerned about the current state of the economy at all, here are some thoughts that might help…
So I was invited a couple months ago, by the turn-around expert Tony Robbins, to join a small international Business Mastermind Group led by himself and the business guru Chet Holmes — 
an idea Tony had to get a certain group of people together to talk about how to not just endure this economy, but how to really utilize this unique time for massive growth.
It has been a fascinating experience that I really should blog more about. In addition to sharing his own insights, he is inviting intelligent and talented people in different sectors of society to speak to the group via conference calls about once every two weeks. And the quality of the other members of the group has impressed me.
While trying not to be too long winded, here are just a couple thoughts which might be of interest (and of course are open to discussion – I’m always interested in your thoughts too).
Two analogies
Seasons – One flaw most of us humans have is that we often think if something is headed a certain direction that it 
will always head that direction (when it is bad we fear it will just get worse). The truth is that every year goes through seasons, and every economy does too. Although we are headed into the winter of the economic cycle, even winters can have some benefits. The darker it gets as you head into the night, the more sure you are that you are getting closer to the morning.
Forrest fires – Just as winter can be beneficial, even forest fires serve a purpose. They help to clear away a lot of the waste in the old, and provide the nourishment and light for the new growth to appear. The winter in the economic cycle can also do precisely that same thing.
What NOT to do!
You know you are headed in the wrong direction if you are doing any one of these three things:
1. Believing your problems are permanent – when you start to think any problem is permanent, you get into a state of “learned helplessness”, and will not be resourceful. Remember, no problem is permanent — don’t let this thought ever get into your mind or the mind (of people on your team, if you have one). 
Who do you know without any problems? All problems do is show you where there is an area where there is room for some more perspective, feedback, creativity, etc. (see below)
2. Believing your problems are pervasive – if there is a problem in one area of your life or business, it does not mean your whole life or business is doomed.Pervasiveness is almost always a lie. It usually comes from fear and hijacks our minds. There are most likely several areas where you are kick-butt awesome. What you focus on expands, so while it is wise to know where the problem areas are, do not lose sight of the strengths you can rightly claim.
3. Believing your problems are personal – this is one of the most easy and destructive things you could do. Thinking things like: “It is about me. If only I wasn’t __” “I just don’t have the skill, etc.” – Well, no one has all the skill. You have certain talents which you can focus on. As you grow, you will need talent with others who are talented in different areas in order to really do something together that you can’t do on your own. If you think any problem is personal, it is because you are being too dependent on yourself, too hard on yourself, not seeing what you are good at, and not allowing others to be good at what they do too.
What to do
Utilize this time to rediscover the world and your place in it – to tap into the resourceful, innovative side of yourself. There absolutely is a purpose for your existence on this earth (with family, and also likely something that you will contribute to your community or the world). Similar to the seasons, the larger economy will shift even if you just wait and do nothing.
But why not utilize this time to your benefit? In order to see a shift in your work, you probably need to first have a shift in you — in your own sense of innovation and resourcefulness.
Here are 5 innovation ideas…With any problem or opportunity (personal or professional) you need to get:
– New voices– Ask yourself, what are the new voices I need? 
What are criteria I need in these new voices? (someone to model, someone with a skill set, someone with resources, perspectives, etc) Who could help innovate? Who would be on the cutting edge here? In having these new conversations, talk to the people, engage them, don’t judge them, go back and forth, brainstorm all ideas out there first, don’t kill ideas too early.
– New Questions (and ask these questions to yourself as well as to the new voices) – Bill Gates, richest man in the world, asked this 
question: “How do I become the intelligence that runs all computers?” He didn’t even develop the Microsoft software. He bought MS dos for 50K, then he innovated it, which saved a lot of time. Now his focus is more how to make a difference in non-profit area. What questions do you ask yourself? What are some new questions you need to ask right now? (if you can’t think of any, get new voices and they will come with new questions)
– New Perspectives – Go to new places to stimulate new perspectives. Your life is different when you experience these things. For example, Nokia – they keep their market share by innovating all the time, getting to know perspective of customer – they actually go to where their customer is. Nokia sent tech people out all over, and the idea that they came back with was to have phones with different colors – and gave customers the ability to design their own color on Internet. Business exploded by 20% in a way no technical innovation could ever have done. 
Go to new homes, new companies, new communities – don’t just talk to people on phone or online – get in these new environments, and it will spark new ideas.
–New Passions – When you have new people and they open up and feel ready to share, it provides new passions. If you don’t quite know what you are passionate about – do the first three and usually passions appear. Especially if those in leadership positions reinforce and encourage themselves and others to do things that are exciting to them – things that they can feel passionate about.
– New Experiments – Try strategic innovation experiments. Google gives people 25% of time to work on something not directly related to core business, a “skunk works”. Give yourself (and team if you have one) an opportunity to tap into passion and run with it. Take risks, break rules, be a bit of maverick – this is often critical to taking your life to the next level.
How does the economic situation influences Developing Countries (and ICT4D)?
Here’s a video I created for my ICT4D class about the effect of the economy on developing countries, and one reason why ICT4D is attractive. I filmed it while here in Washington D.C., after recently being in Trinidad and Guyana where I presented progress on our Consortium to the ACP Secretariat and European Union PMU.
Some questions to discuss:
* Why are the economies of developing countries more vulnerable and influenced with fluctuations in the global economy?
* Why are they open to getting hit so much harder than developed regions?
* What role might ICT4D play in providing more stability for developing countries?
* What obstacles would need to be overcome in order to utilize ICT4D for these benefits?
Interestingly, though, I haven’t testified a single thing that would indicate that Tanzanian economy would’ve yet been hit by the global economic crisis. There are even some who say that the crisis could be an opportunity for Africa:
http://www.globalenvision.org/2009/02/05/can-economic-crisis-be-good-africa
Hmmm…I like that article. Goes along well with some of William Easterly’s claims. And I truly hope that Tanzania and other African countries will take advantage of the opportunities presented (as stated in that article) more than ever.
It has been interesting to see that there has been some insulation or lag time in the global economic crises influencing Africa – telling me that (as a factor of relative smallness of the African economies compared with others) these countries are not as tightly woven in to the international business system.
Perhaps this is because the primary economic relationship of most African countries with the West is not based on real-time trade (instead a lot comes from Foreign Aid that is given in increments of 6 to 12 month periods, or tourism which is seasonal), and most people in African themselves are not immediately impacted by sharp turns in stock markets (they are not going to lose much sleep – not having to worry about things like retirement savings depletion, bank and mortgage crises, not borrowing money in huge tranches for everyday business needs from the West, and not selling as much on a day-to-day routine basis, etc).
I would be very hesitant, however, to say that it will not hit Africa harder in future months, even though I hope I am wrong.
Some examples:
– Tourism (and all the industries that live off tourism – e.g. transport, food, fast moving consumer goods like detergents, electricity, water, municipal councils, aviation) – the seasonal in-flow of capital from tourism will surely be hit.
– Remittances – Money being sent from Kenyans abroad reached 4% or 5% of our GDP (in Guyana it is much higher). Many export industries do not earn that much. As they get paid less abroad, they will have less to send back.
– Agriculture, which provides a lot of income, is becoming more interlaced with global markets and thus vulnerable to fluctuations in other parts of the world. And as commodity prices plummet, agricultural commodities such as tea, coffee, wheat, corn, sugar, livestock etc. are selling at discount prices.
– Taxes – Although a lot of the “aid” goes to people on top, as it dries up in future months (along with taxes from things like hotels, etc), I wouldn’t put it past officials to find additional reasons for taxes (either raising taxes and/or creating new ones).
I wonder if the article you posted is more an example of someone (World Bank economist Dambisa Moyo) looking for the silver lining around the cloud? – Trying to find what could be good about the whole situation and how African’s could end up better than before?
If that is the case, then I still think it is a good article – and exactly what should happen.
See things as they are, but not worse than they are.
And then try and figure out how we can make them even better than they are.
In addition to the benefit pointed out in the link you posted (i.e. that less “aid” could end up being a blessing), maybe some other potential benefits for African countries could include:
(1) the playing field could be leveled a bit if foreign powers are able to give less subsidies to their own farmers which puts?
e.g. farm subsidies at 34% are the biggest single budgetary item in the EU Budget;
(2) perhaps people will question more assumptions behind the “ideal” neoclassical economic ideology which hasn’t yet worked when imposed in developing countries, and look for more home-grown models and solutions?;
(3) real estate prices will likely decrease even in African countries and housing will become more affordable for some.
Any other ideas?
What Tony Robbins says I think is a general “self-help” guide for any moment in your life. Of course, now that it is an “economical turmoil” can turn even “fashionable” his comments, which would not harm 🙂
In my humble opinion, we are in a great moment to assess our value system, and acting locally. Global is good for some things, but local is also relevant.
I agree that it is an opportunity for people in development, because one can realized today that the “money” it is not all. Let me explain: I do not see any difference of homeless living in shack in SouthAfrica (SA) for example, to homeless living in “Tent – city” in California. What I see, at least from the distance, is that the kids who born in those circumstances in SA, might be have more hopes, are willing to fight for a better tomorrow and smile the today. While the kids that used to have a house with a garage full of stuff and now they have nothing, without a doubt are in worse situation, as most of them are in severe depressions, surround of depress and frustrated adults.
You can’t take away anything from someone that has nothing. 🙂 Then it is a perfect time to think and focus on our set of values. What does each individual wants to “give”, or “offer” or to have? . Do we need a garage full of “products” that we do not actually need, however pushes us to be in eternal debt to be happy, OR we understand that our happiness starts in ourselves, and by harmonizing with our environment we can rise self-respect for ourselves and our surroundings while promoting education.
What will happen? I think no-one really knows, but I am sure than more than one is thinking or evaluating his/her own set of values. And THAT is a good beginning already, even if it is painful process.
Interesting thoughts, Clint, on an interesting subject. I would like to add that it will be interesting to follow the case of Rwanda, where a policy has been declared to make the country a “knowledge based economy” and another of providing infrastructure as an incentive for getting a diverse private business to evolve. Supporting current primary production, e.g., “developing the coffee sector” seems not to rank high on the Rwandan agenda. Actually, they depend largely on coffee exports to a handful of countries, hence, are extremely vulnerable. I have been working in quite a few countries in Africa, and I have always had severe issues with internet latency or bandwidth, etc. Yesterday, when investigating how that would be in Rwanda if I went there to work, I found that they have ADSL and even EVDO in place, and that both do work. (However, they come at a high price.) But yes, I have never before been able to browse a Ministry’s web site – hosted in-country – as quickly as their MINALOC site (Min. of Local Government, in charge of decentralization).
Why do they get hit so much harder? – I wonder how much a small scale farmer on the countryside in Tanzania is hit by the fluctations? Quite little I would guess as he is not depending much on a global market unless he produce for export which few small scale farmers do. By the way Clint please pass my regards Obama while you are at the white house, he seems to be nice guy who brings some hope to this world 🙂
Thanks Marcus – I’ll make sure to give him your regards. 😉
Obama Cafe
Oops, the insert image function does not work. Here is the link: http://ict4dconsortium.rhul.ac.uk/elgg/pg/photos/view/825/
The biggest issue then, is the relative size of the economies, and the so called constant cycles of accumulation of wealth that made the US economy so much more resilient to fluctuations, which in the current energy sensitive regime seems impossible to achieve for the developing countries by resorting to industrial production, and hence the role of ICTs in creating new avenues to break the hegemony of the west!
To Marcus’s point: It seems, in my limited experience, that the number of these “small scale farmers” who actually live completely disconnected from the global economy is shrinking rapidly. Whether it’s because their land has been bought up by a wealthy multinational and they now lease it, or because the mass exodus of youth to urban centers has depleted the local market to the point that they must now transport their goods to the city, or simply because one particularly prosperous year brought a cell phone or television into their home, many, many of these individuals are now “tied” to the global market, even though they neither produce goods for export, nor consume much in the way of imported goods. The fluctuations Clint mentioned, like fuel, have a ripple effect through even rural communities (bus fares to city jobs rise, day wages at industrial facilities fall, etc.) In addition, though I’m not sure how this works out theoretically, it seems that the initial stages of integration into the global economy are almost unilaterally vulnerable. The first ties seem to give the global market power to hurt a country or an individual deeply, with relatively little power to benefit him…
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