Leon Sullivan is a special person. He was a responsible leader.
A brief Biography: He was a Black American Man who stood up for what he believed in, a man who fought for what he believed in and a man who had principles. He played a massive role in ending Apartheid in South Africa (where racism was an official policy, and black people were not as important as white people).
He was just 1 man, but he made a huge difference; and he believed that business was 1 of the ways to make a difference in the World. He believed that everyone has equal rights, that everyone has the right to work, and that everyone should be treated with respect.
He organised a boycott in Philadelphia of companies that refused to hire black workers. They started hiring black workers. He organised training for those who had no skills. They got skilled and found jobs. He told American businesses that they should treat South Africans the same as American. The businesses agreed. He told them to stop doing business in South Africa, unless the government changed its policies. The businesses stopped doing business and the Government changed its policy. Black people in South Africa were equal with white people for the first time in over a century.
To learn more about this man, whose 'Sullivan Principles' are now officially proposed and supported by the UN, go to www.revleonsullivan.org.
Here you will find out what his principles are, what he said and what he did. In addition, you can learn more about some of the tools he believes are important for individuals to leave a life of principles:
-The Power of Positive Thought, -The Importance of Involvement, -The Importance of Self-Help and Self-Respect, -The Role of Mentors, -Change Through Non-Violent Action, -Discrimination and Diversity
This website seems to be a fantastic example of how to use the internet and how to create useful and interesting educational materials with an excellent purpose. What is better than leading a
responsible life? Leaving a responsible legacy as well.
I am impressed by those who set up the site -for being able to use Leon Sullivan's life to inspire more people. I hope it helps generate more responsible leaders. Indeed I hope to discover more people and more sites of a similar nature!
Saturday, April 16, 2005
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
The role of a Director
So it seems that there will be no saving Rover, a UK owned and based medium scale car manufacturer; despite the UK government's attempts to sell the company off to SAIC off China or to prop it up with 'loans' before the upcoming election. It is not surprising, since BMW gave up on it and it became British again. It only makes a few models and only sells a few cars. It does not sell Internationally, nor manufacture internationally, and can certainly not compete with the Fords, GMs etc (themselves struggling and only making profits on their financial operations).
Recently the Directors have been forced to put more of their own money into the company to keep it going -in fact they have made about £40million in 5 years of ownership. Many were surprised at the sudden deterioration of the company and it only came to light after 2 separate auditors' reports, that the company was losing £20million a month.
One may wonder how a company on which 20,000 direct and indirect jobs depend, can go bankrupt so quickly, having lasted 5 years without much initial investment (although BMW paid off its existing debt). One aspect seems important to me; that the company was taken private, owned by the 'Phoenix Four' originally.
Its not just that I am suspicious that the Directors made £40 million from their 5 years of work, but I am, especially as they got the company for a token £5. I wonder about the transparency of many private companies. Since the high profile corruption cases in US, Italy and elsewhere, the trend for increasing public companies' transparency and reporting requirements has quickened. A result has been for more companies to go private, arguing that some requirements are too restrictive on their organisations.
Many of the World's most successful businesses have had their turn being privately owned, and many are still privately owned. Yet, not many people know much about these businesses -they are much lower profile, they have less stringent public reporting standards (yet the same legal standards), however many of their owners are significantly richer than the Directors in listed companies or the shareholders (based on profit from their shares).
I'm not going into a full discussion on this, but the point I want to highlight is how ethical is a private business? -not because it is private, but because it has less legal reasons to be transparent, and transparency is a key part of governance, ethics and responsible leadership. Some private companies may be more responsible than listed ones; but one thing stands out. From a UK perspective, there are many different forces involved in monitoring businesses. The more, the better, I think. Private companies have less, and thus the temptation is greater to behave less responsibly.
Some of the forces include investors analysing their investments, the media raising awareness of issues and of employees having access to information about their company. The purpose of this post is not to criticise necessarily the private businesses, or those running them (or taking public businesses private), but just to stress the importance of these issues in responsible leadership.
Leaders have a responsibility to their stakeholders to be ethical and as transparent as is commercially viable. The huge amounts of pressure on companies in recent years from various sources (including NGOs) has, I believe, made many businesses more responsible -they are more aware of their responsibilities, and those they impact are able to have more of a say.
From a Chinese context it will be interesting to see how the financial markets develop here -what rules will be developed etc as well as what role the media, NGOs etc will play. Noting the continuing frequency of corruption at some of the highest levels of businesses here (and it is a fantastic thing that this is being publicised, and that those responsible are being punished), one
hopes that as these forces develop, Chinese businesses will also be more responsible.
Recently the Directors have been forced to put more of their own money into the company to keep it going -in fact they have made about £40million in 5 years of ownership. Many were surprised at the sudden deterioration of the company and it only came to light after 2 separate auditors' reports, that the company was losing £20million a month.
One may wonder how a company on which 20,000 direct and indirect jobs depend, can go bankrupt so quickly, having lasted 5 years without much initial investment (although BMW paid off its existing debt). One aspect seems important to me; that the company was taken private, owned by the 'Phoenix Four' originally.
Its not just that I am suspicious that the Directors made £40 million from their 5 years of work, but I am, especially as they got the company for a token £5. I wonder about the transparency of many private companies. Since the high profile corruption cases in US, Italy and elsewhere, the trend for increasing public companies' transparency and reporting requirements has quickened. A result has been for more companies to go private, arguing that some requirements are too restrictive on their organisations.
Many of the World's most successful businesses have had their turn being privately owned, and many are still privately owned. Yet, not many people know much about these businesses -they are much lower profile, they have less stringent public reporting standards (yet the same legal standards), however many of their owners are significantly richer than the Directors in listed companies or the shareholders (based on profit from their shares).
I'm not going into a full discussion on this, but the point I want to highlight is how ethical is a private business? -not because it is private, but because it has less legal reasons to be transparent, and transparency is a key part of governance, ethics and responsible leadership. Some private companies may be more responsible than listed ones; but one thing stands out. From a UK perspective, there are many different forces involved in monitoring businesses. The more, the better, I think. Private companies have less, and thus the temptation is greater to behave less responsibly.
Some of the forces include investors analysing their investments, the media raising awareness of issues and of employees having access to information about their company. The purpose of this post is not to criticise necessarily the private businesses, or those running them (or taking public businesses private), but just to stress the importance of these issues in responsible leadership.
Leaders have a responsibility to their stakeholders to be ethical and as transparent as is commercially viable. The huge amounts of pressure on companies in recent years from various sources (including NGOs) has, I believe, made many businesses more responsible -they are more aware of their responsibilities, and those they impact are able to have more of a say.
From a Chinese context it will be interesting to see how the financial markets develop here -what rules will be developed etc as well as what role the media, NGOs etc will play. Noting the continuing frequency of corruption at some of the highest levels of businesses here (and it is a fantastic thing that this is being publicised, and that those responsible are being punished), one
hopes that as these forces develop, Chinese businesses will also be more responsible.
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