The situation in Haiti

A few years ago, I was sitting in an economics class and the professor was talking about how, right now, the only real difference between a developed country and and underdeveloped one was infrastructure. Well, if you have roads, a train system and the like, supplies will move faster and reduce the costs of building other infrastructures, giving out services, etc. Building lasting infrastructure takes time and expertise. Usually, this expertise, in “Third World” countries will come from the wealthier areas of the world, from people wanting to do charity work. This is a problem since, part of why infrastructure is so important in our economy is because it creates usually well paid jobs locally.

Now, from what I’ve seen, in a country like Haiti, two things may happen. One, as I said earlier, expertise comes from external sources and the money spent doesn’t really profit the country. Yes, in the end, the project is built and given to the government but, as we’ve seen with the current “stimulus spending” spree, this is only a small part of the benefit. The other possibility is that local talent does indeed get used. However, there is, probably due to the lack infrastructure, a very low amount of locally produced wealth. A lot of goods are imported, but, what’s even more interesting, a lot of the trade activity occurs outside of the country’s boundaries. Indeed, even in a country like the US where there is a large trade-deficit, wealth is still created by internal trading: people buying stuff from merchants in the US.

Maybe it is because of the culture, or maybe there is some other root cause but the Haitian “diaspora” sends a lot of goods back to their families and friends. This is an institutionalized system where you can go to a store that will take care of the whole transfer for you

This means that some of the imported goods are not only not made in Haiti, but produce a minimal amount of economic activity in the country. Now, these are just thoughts and might be totally off. If anyone has any other ideas, please pitch in. I find that this is an interesting discussion. Also, if you have trouble reading this in English, remember that you can copy any URL in Google translate for a rather fair translation. I already did it for French, so click here!

The Division Model part IV – Organic Growth of leadership

One thing that companies need is structure. This formalizes the leadership of some individuals and gives them a bit more legitimacy in their endeavours. The point is that it may be hard to come up with compelling arguments for a cause but you absolutely need people to do a certain task. In this case, being the boss really help. From this evolution however, you have the idea that people that are in certain position are actually leaders or that leaders need to be named as such.

If you look at it, people that start in their first management position usually perform poorly. The reason is that in most cases, those people were great solo performers but have yet to learn how to leverage the combined strength of the team they are now leading. I want to add that this is not a bad thing: a smart person will adapt rather quickly to this new situation. There might be, however, a better way to do this and this brings me to my second point.

A lot of the great leaders in history hadn’t been named as such until they had accomplished quite a bit. If you look at Ghandi or Mandela, they elevated higher than their position would warrant. Because of this, they had no choice, if they wanted to achieve anything, to listen to others and maybe more importantly, bring sound arguments to get others to follow them. This might be harder than simply giving an order, but you get much more involvement from followers this way. Also, once you are used to this way of operating, once you get formalized as a leader, you will keep doing the same thing.

To get back to the division model, that’s a side effect I foresee. A leader will organically grow within the division. They shouldn’t however be formalized. This will create an environment where the people that will elevate to lead will be able to get picked later on for formal management and will not go through the usual learning curve (or at least be significantly reduced in length).

This is, in my opinion, one of the most important points of the division model. It is the fact that it lets the individuals evolve more than in the regular setting. There will of course be more conflict than in a regular structure and the leader might change overtime, even several times. In the end though, the division will basically be similar to an organism, growing to meet the different needs of the workplace.

DESTA Black Youth Network

My friend and I went yesterday to visit a group called DESTA. Basically, it’s a non-for-profit organization aimed at helping black youth aged 18-25. What is interesting is that they are really about self development. For example, they give courses for the youth that need to finish their Sec. 5 (High School) diploma. They also have CV clinics or other job seeking support. I liked how they worked and the atmosphere I felt over there. We, at the Project, will hopefully be working with them in order to promote microcredit but we’ll also probably help them in any other way we can.

I encourage anyone from Montreal (or anywhere, really) to check out their website destanetwork.ca. I’ll be posting a longer profile later this week on the Project’s blog.