East Eats West

Building social capital

Picture: He knew how to build social capital over 2'500 years ago! 

The financial crisis has put capitalism in the limelight again as people question the soundness of banks' re-numeration systems. Reading how much bonus some bank employees get one wonders if they only work for lots of money. Or is there else to life! Jeremy Rifkin, a US author, put forward in his book “The end of work” the idea that monetary re-numeration might get complemented by social capital. Social capital is built through private networks of friends, acquaintances and colleagues who share ideas, services and products for the greater common good. On the face of it this is nothing new as Buddhism for over 2 500 years has been promoting to achieve “good karma” through doing good without asking for payment in return. The “payment” will eventually come back, just not in the form of a huge bonus. Over the almost five years I have been writing my blog I also tried to connect people, discover valuable services and products and comment about the quality of things (and not only the price) the way I see it. I recently did a quick survey of all the services that got new customers through my blog (word-of-mouth, so to speak). Here is a quick list:

• Japanese Kaiseki restaurant Hasenberg near Zurich

• Helicopter sightseeing in Switzerland

• Discounted handmade Italian shirts from Kiton at Trois Pommes in Zurich

• My wedding photographer from Malaysia (friends will have him at their wedding in Mexico)

• The Dolder Hotel in Zurich for a good tea in front of a real fireplace

• Books like “Outlier” and “Blink” from Malcom Gladwell

• or the incredibly homely Shui Tang tea-shop in the old town of Zurich

• and many more things!

It is true what they say: sharing makes life better! Try it also in 2010! 

How to gain trust in a post-financial crisis world

Picture: ...or shall I trust a bank?

Often one discovers in a crisis that the emperor is not wearing any clothes. As in any crisis the thing that evaporates the fastest, besides money, is trust. So many companies wonder how to regain clients' trust. And the buzz word often is transparency. However, I got the feeling that transparency is thoroughly misunderstood if you only talk and write more. More of the same useless information is not transparency. Transparency means being able to trust because one trusts the person in the company. People trust someone if they know, where this person stands on key topics. And just a nice ad-campaign as many big banks currently do will not save the underlying problem of greed in banking. So should a bank for example truly want to change, they for example could start giving car-sharing membership, e.g. Mobility in Switzerland, to employees so that they can trade in their expensive German cars.

 

Stable death for banks?

Picture: Maybe they are working in the bank?

As an observer of banks I am baffled by the fact that the solution of many CEOs, be it Oswald Grübel of UBS or James Gorman of newly resurrected Morgan Stanley, is to beef up proprietary (and risky) trading. No wonder that President Obama is trying to curb such behavior (probably in vain). So big banks answer to the financial crisis is not better risk management (aka smaller risk) but more speculation. Isn't that why they got into trouble? Why are banks falling bank on the same business models again and again? I recently attended a presentation by a strategy consultant who works with financial institutions. He highlighted that banks are about stability (at least on the outside). Right after the government (and the church) they are among the most stable organizations, at least up to the financial crisis. Stability in banks means high standardization and regulation and steep hierarchies. Stability used to be a bank's most priced asset so change is the natural enemy. And if change means less bonus stability is even better. Even if it might mean slow death in the long-term.

 

If you are intelligent, why aren't you rich?

Picture: Intelligent men on board!

Many big international banks made losses in 2009. But they still pay their employees bonus', smaller ones maybe, but nevertheless. And funnily many of the bankers think that they rightfully deserve it (the public begs to differ). Why do they think that they deserve it? That answer might baffle you as much as it baffled me. I recently read in an article in the Financial Times that uncovered the basic belief in banking: success means wealth and also intelligence (dumb people don't get rich, eh). So if you are intelligent, you get rich (if you are a banker). And because intelligence does not disappear in a financial crisis, a banker still deserves a bonus. Right? Bankers also love to turn the equation around in asking: “if you are intelligent, why aren't you rich?”. Unfortunately, as we learned in the recent past, for bankers failure still means richness, as former bank CEOs like Marcel Ospel of UBS or John Mack of Morgan Stanley are testimony to. Maybe the government who bailed out big banks should start to ask what type of bankers or “success” their national banks need.

 

Seventy years being an artist

Picture: The venerable Swiss artist Gertrud Guyer Wyrsch in her apartment in Berne. 

For a while now I have been hunting for sculptures as I have no more walls to hang paintings. In contrast to paintings sculptures are quite hard to find. I recently got some wooden and metal sculptures by the deceased Swiss artist Eugen Häfelfinger and his medium sized wooden sculpture made me look for more reasonably priced Swiss sculptures. At the last Kunst 09 in Zurich, a local art fair, I finally found what I was looking for: wonderfully simple and abstract sculptures by the Swiss artist Gertrud Guyer Wyrsch. She has a wide range of wooden and metal sculptures that range from distortedly sculpted wooden structures to wooden or metal boxes and to wooden towers (she calls them “stairways to heaven”). Mrs. Guyer has been an artist for over 70 years and she will celebrate her 90^th birthday next year. She still creates art by hand day by day and even has two workshops where she cuts big wooden blocks herself. She is represented by the very charming gallery owner of almost 30 years, Magit Haldemann in Berne.

Here is her website http://www.galeriehaldemann.ch/

 

Stay hungry, stay foolish!

Picture: Love lifts us up where we belong, far from the world below... (Joe Cocker & Jenifer Warnes).

You might remember the very touching and inspirational speech by Randy Pausch? Do you remember him saying that walls are there for testing your determination? And for many the current unpleasant economical situation is testing our determination. I recently met a fine young man who is contemplating his future after university. For advice I sent him another speech by a very famous American. This American fought a deadly disease recently and in his moving speech, he stressed the importance of working with passion. He urges us to be curious and always live every day like it is your last day. His near death experience showed him to follow his heart as only with hindsight one can “connect the dots”. He was given away by his mother, he dropped out of college and he did not have an own room to sleep in. And he went to found Pixar and Apple. He is Steve Jobs. Watch his moving and inspirational speech here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc

The triumph of love

Picture: A newly married couple in Malacca, Malaysia.  

I recently came across this very touching definition of love: “The triumph of love lies in the small daily kindnesses and considerations, which make one feel valued, seen and understood, not in the great romantic, gushing gestures.” by Kate Figues in her book “The Truth”

Safe flying: one fatal accident per 1.5m flights

Picture: Even this Laotian airline plane landed safely! 

According to a statistics I found in the Financial Times, flying is twice as safe as in the 1990s (okay, you actually can't say that but anyways). With only one fatal accident per 1.5m flights, flying is much safer than driving a car. Therefore I shall continue to fly instead of owning a car!

Picture: Another public transport in Laos (inspired by Mercedes).

 

 

Swiss unwarranted fears of foreigners

Picture: Many foreigners do jobs in Switzerland no Swiss would like to do! 

For most of its history, Switzerland was a small, land-locked country with no resources. Famine and poverty forced the Swiss abroad many times and quite often they ended as mercenaries (the Swiss guards of the Vatican are the last remnants of this tradition). In recent years the Swiss economy has been growing steadily and because of bilateral agreements with the European Union many qualified foreigners found their way to Switzerland. Immigration has continued without any hindrance and many services from banking, hotel, restaurant and even the public transport services (ie.bus-drivers) would not be possible without foreigners. But recently the Swiss right-wing party SVP has been feeding on Swiss fears of having too many foreigners. The Anti-Minaret initiative is just a recent example of Swiss xenophobia and the newest discussion is about too many German professors in Switzerland. Even though the Swiss economy is still doing reasonably well I encounter more and more Swiss who think that foreigners take away their jobs, jobs that they have never wanted before! While traveling I have met Swiss in almost every other country and also more and more Swiss marry foreigners, as statistics clearly proof. I just hope that most Swiss will remember that being open is a strength and that the fear from foreigners is unwarranted.