Impact, Investment and Innovation from the Andes

Today I am sharing with you a blog post from Nutrients For All posted by dosmargaritas functional foods. One of the goals of dosmargaritas is sharing the benefits of quinoa both with the developed world and with its producers – community farmers in the Andes region of South America.

I am member of the board of dosmargaritas and believe strongly in helping for profit businesses make a positive impact in our communities and our world.

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Improving Access to Quinoa Based Products

Quinoa has gained unprecedented popularity in the last ten years: 2013 was declared “the year of the Quinoa” by United Nations, it is a hot item on restaurants menus and consumers are happily experimenting with it in their home kitchens. So, despite its alternate grain status, it is quickly becoming a household name.

But, as Shakespeare said, “What’s in a name?”… Transcending the current quinoa craze and ensuring that the benefits of quinoa and quinoa production reach all stakeholders – in and out of the quinoa value chain – means looking at alternative ways to get quinoa and quinoa based products to market.

Ashoka’s Nutrients For All movement promotes nutrients and access to nutrient rich food choices. One of the areas we are exploring is bringing quinoa based products that are produced, packaged and tailored to a variety of well-defined markets. We are also committed to maintaining quinoa’s unique nutritional properties and ensuring participation by communities of quinoa farmers along the value chain.

Quinoa is produced by community farmers in remote areas of the Andes Mountains in South America. It is sown and harvested by hand and typically bought by merchants who resell it to companies who package or refine it. We want the producer to participate more actively in the quinoa value chain benefitting from farming it but also from it becoming more accessible to people around the world. We believe that we can improve access to quinoa and its benefits as a nutrient rich food by “linking farming to food to diet to health” thereby including more people in the “Nutrient Economy”.

It’s a challenging goal but it’s one of the ways that we want to make a tangible impact in business, in society and in quinoa producing countries.

Savvy Saturday May 25, 2013

“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.”

Peter Drucker

Comunicación Estratégica: Creando Empresas Relevantes (Parte 4)

Implementación

La clave de la implementación de la comunicación estratégica es integrarla en cada área funcional con objetivos concretos siempre alineados con la estrategia corporativa (comunicacional y de negocios). Parte de la integración es involucrar desde una etapa inicial a los empleados, a la gerencia y al directorio, a fin de que éstos entiendan y apoyen la iniciativa. En la mayoría de las empresas se están usando los principios básicos de la comunicación estratégica, sin que haya una estructura formal. Por ejemplo, sabemos que la recepcionista de una empresa es, muchas veces, el primer punto de contacto para nuestros clientes con nuestra empresa y nuestra marca. Esta persona tiene una capacidad enorme para dejar una buena impresión no solo de la firma pero también demostrando en vivo y directo los valores de la empresa también.

En un informe hecho por IBM de CEOs (Global CEO Study 2012), 88% de los CEOs dicen que “cercandose a los clientes” es la prioridad numero uno de sus empresas en los próximos 5 años. No es sorprendente entonces que empresas norteamericanas hayan invertido en comunicaciones hasta el veinte por ciento de sus ingresos de ventas, cada año, por los últimos diez años. A nivel de directorio, hay empresas que tienen un comité de comunicaciones –a más de los comités tradicionales como auditoria y nuevos negocios – con el objetivo de que se tome en serio la comunicación corporativa y su alineamiento con el corporate governance y estrategia corporativa.

El Camino Adelante

Estrategia viene de la palabra griega que significa “liderar un ejército”. La comunicación estratégica permite que los gerentes lideren exitosamente, porque pueden comunicar de manera efectiva sus decisiones y pueden recibir información de los grupos de interés, lo cual les permitirá tomar mejores decisiones. Con el crecimiento de medios de socialización digital y acceso a la información, la comunicación corporativa está cambiando y el buen uso de la Comunicación Estratégica es una manera de estar más cerca de sus stakeholders a fin de que se cree una organización relevante, conectada, coherente y exitosa.

(This is the fourth and final part in a four part series relating to Strategic Communications and Creation of Relevant Companies in Spanish by Esther Clark – Principal, Hipona Consulting)

Savvy Saturday May 18, 2013

“ Failure is only postponed success as long as courage coaches ambition. The habit of persistence is the habit of victory. ”

— Herbert Kaufman

Preparing Leaders for Tomorrow

www.ted.com – Ken Robinson

I am exploring how to prepare business leaders for tomorrow and for managing complexity. This is a TED talk that explores education and creativity. Ken Robinson is so funny and inspiring!

Finding Value in What We Have

One thing I learnt early on in life is that we tend to value things when we don’t have them anymore. I spent 3 years of my childhood sailing around the world on a traditional sail boat. We relied on sail power (for the most part) and had no technological instruments aside from GPS and ham radio. We had no fridge, no running water, no phones and very little personal space.

It’s when we are put into situations of discomfort or when we lack a resource is usually the moment when we place an enormous value on comfort and resources. It’s like in a negotiation when we suddenly feel a lack of air or a rise in room temperature; we suddenly want the negotiation to end and place value on fresh clean (free) air. I wrote an article relating to this in America Economia magazine (in Spanish) and how good negotiators take advantage of these types of elements during negotiation.

So here’s the observation: when we have them (resources, assets, etc.), we usually take them for granted and look for the next professional challenge, innovative project, new market or exciting product. Greener pastures to speak metaphorically.
How do we, as professionals, leaders, and human beings, use the tools at our fingertips to bring benefits to our business and community but without losing sight of valuable assets such as our health, our families, our friends, our creativity and our natural talents?

Here are my thoughts:

1) Reality Check – take a break from social media, your smart phone, TV, caffeine etc.

2) Gratitude – an expression of gratitude for a job well done or a small gesture of civility like holding the door open when entering a building is a way of recognizing the other person and their action. It is also a reminder to oneself that we live in a connected (not just IT connected) world where our highly evolved social interaction is what makes humans different from animals.

3) Bucket List – write a list and start to cross off things you have always wanted to do. Don’t just wait for New Years; I found Michael Hyatt’s life plan here extremely useful.

4) Take Care of our Bodies and Minds. We appreciate our health when we are sick. If we look after our health every day we are placing importance on the tools we need to survive – our minds and bodies.

5) Down Time – I am a firm believer in white space – in having time in your day when you don’t do anything. For me, this usually results in more creativity and productivity! It helps me see what’s important from what is a supposedly “urgent”.

Comunicación Estratégica: Creando Empresas Relevantes (Parte 3)

¿Qué se puede esperar en términos de resultados?

Información. Con la comunicación estratégica, las organizaciones obtienen conocimientos valiosos sobre lo que opinan sus empleados, proveedores y los clientes compradores de sus productos o servicios y sobre cómo se sienten respecto a su empresa. Esta información puede crear una ventaja competitiva porque la organización tiene acceso a información variada, directa y rápida para la toma de decisiones.

Satisfacción profesional. También se crea empleados más dedicados y comprometidos con su trabajo dado que entienden mejor el “por qué” de la empresa y actúan con más autonomía para tomar mejores decisiones. Los expertos en comportamiento organizacional destacan tres cualidades que tiene que tener el trabajo para que sea de satisfacción profesional: 1) autonomía 2) complejidad y 3) conexión entre esfuerzo y recompensa.

Cuando una organización maneja la comunicación estratégica de manera orgánica, el resultado es una mayor satisfacción tanto de empleados como de clientes externos e internos.

Marca. Aristóteles dijo: “Somos lo que hacemos repetidamente. La excelencia, entonces, no es un acto. Es un hábito.” Si una empresa actúa con coherencia – cualquiera sea su tamaño – esta empresa va tener mejor presencia y reputación y contará con clientes más fieles en su nicho de mercado o en la industria en general. Si cada comunicación de cada empleado de una empresa es coherente y alineada con la estrategia de su área y de su organización, no hay la menor duda de que su marca y reputación seguirán creciendo positivamente.

Tercera Parte…

(This is the third part in a four part series relating to Strategic Communications and Creation of Relevant Companies in Spanish by Esther Clark – Principal, Hipona Consulting)

Savvy Saturday May 11, 2013

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

– George Bernard Shaw

Making a Difference

I think it’s safe to say we all want to make a difference. Be it big. Be it small. Sometimes the small things turn big. Sometimes the big things fizzle out and become small. But if making a difference is what we want to do in life and business then there is no better time than the present.

I’m not going to give advice on where or how to make a difference. That’s up to you. But I will say that making a difference isn’t always easy, isn’t always seen favorably, isn’t always met with loud applause and it isn’t always fruitful (at first). But making a difference – big or small – can open up opportunities for business that are totally unexpected. You are able to understand what people believe and engage people with values that are similar to your own. Making a difference has a snowball effect if it is done with heart and meaning.

Procurement in Latin America

Here is a short post to give you the “why” behind procurement processes in Latin America.

Why do I give you this advice?

I firmly believe in helping companies do good work in the region of Latin America and opening channels for dialogue and ethical business practices. I worked in post contract management for the Canadian Commercial Corporation (Government of Canada’s contracting agency) for over six years in Ecuador and the region and I know what a good procurement contract looks like.

What’s unique about procurement in Latin America?

Because the region is composed of developing countries and most of them have gone through political uprisings and economic troubles (including currency devaluation), organizations are cautious about doing business with companies they don’t know or haven’t worked with before. Just as your shareholders are cautious about doing business in Latin America!

Procurement is also normally an arduous process because of the extensive structures in place that help protect an organization from scams, corruption and the like.

What should one expect with procurement?

A company doing business in Latin America should expect various rounds of proposal submissions and financial approvals. The proposal will go through legal review and sometimes third party reviews and “socialization” processes. If it’s a public bid there will be many parties involved.

What can a company do to be the successful bidder?

TEAM: the people responsible for submitting your proposal and getting an answer need to be proactive and convincing. They need to know when to prod the process along, when to be firm (but not desperate) and when to be patient.

PRODUCT: you need to be sure that the product or service you offer is the solution for your client. Through consultative processes, listening to the client and finding the right solution to meet the real and expected needs of the client, you will do your company and your client’s organization a great service indeed.

PATIENCE: I am not advocating laziness or a reactive attitude here. I am also not going to say that all procurement processes take months of waiting. But there is one truth in procurement in Latin America – at some point it will take much longer than you expected; perhaps you calculated an hour to get paperwork certified (and it takes a whole afternoon) or perhaps you thought that you would hear a response next week (but it just happens to fall on a long weekend which usually grows to 5 days of “vacation”) or suddenly the bid goes public and you have to start the process over again.

For those who can understand Spanish, I encourage you to view my article on international business and the art of fishing in America Economia: ¿Qué tienen en común la pesca y los negocios?

Let me know if you have any feedback on procurement or have questions for me; I would love to hear from you!