What Value Do I Bring?

I'm honored to host this guest blog by Elizabeth Weber about her summer interning at a financial firm in Hong Kong.  The lessons she shares at age 20 are ones many of us don't even learn in our 40's, 50's or our lives.  She's bringing these lessons home, as Co-President of the Entrepreneur Program at Brown.  Please learn from her, share and impact others.

Summer in Hong Kong

I followed a curiosity this summer, and worked at an unfamiliar profession. I’m a rising junior at Brown University with a passion for supporting entrepreneurs and understanding how businesses develop. The University provided me with an exceptional opportunity - to work in Hong Kong at a financial company in their asset management and private equity divisions. For more than two months I became a proud member of Hong Kong’s colorful, cultured, and ambitious community.

My journey began with a conversation with a kind older woman. In Hong Kong, I lived at the Helena May, a historical woman’s hotel dating back to 1916. In dormitory fashion, I stayed with 24 women between the ages of 18 and 65 years of age, four of whom were eating breakfast the morning of my first day of work. The older woman sitting beside me must have noticed my apprehension because she asked if today was important. I raised my eyes to smile and told her I was beginning an internship today. She gave me a knowing smile and said, “You’ll do fine, just remember the importance of relationships.” And then she added, “Think hard about the value you bring to the company, and if you’re not sure what it is don’t be afraid to ask.” Midway through my internship, the woman approached me at breakfast again and asked if I had discovered my value. I started speaking, and after a few sentences I stopped, realizing that I still didn’t have a good answer. I was working hard at the company; I was last to leave and first to come in each day, and I was doing good work. I had two mentors; one of whom was knowledgeable beyond measure with an entire library encasing his desk area. But it wasn’t his knowledge that was so striking but rather his genuine compassion for sharing that knowledge. I was comfortable around him, comfortable enough to show my vulnerabilities. When I asked him the older woman’s question, “What value did I bring?” He said my value comes from, “The questions I ask and my eagerness to learn.” I hadn’t expected this answer; I had anticipated it would be my research or a presentation I had done. Something more tangible. Then I thought back to the woman’s first statement about relationships and began to understand. The best relationships are those in which, we share ourselves – our genuine beliefs and our thoughts. Even in business, defined by coveted numbers and profit expectations, relationships are what matter. I formed a strong relationship with my mentor not through my research, but through my questions, through showing weakness, and working hard. I learned the best relationships are honest and genuine.

My final lesson took me awhile to fully understand. Much of my work for the company revolved around identifying business opportunity. Through research, I learned what metrics and patterns to look for in a company’s financial statements, and what traps and common misconceptions to avoid. I became curious about process, what to look for first, then second, and then third on the income statement or balance sheet. I was becoming a process thinker. I realize this logic is not singular to investing but rather something I can apply to all aspects of my life. As humans, the first way we empower ourselves is through our thoughts. By constantly improving our thought processes, we can improve our working intelligence and translate that into work performance. At school, I’m head of the Entrepreneurship Program. I connect my peers with advisors, and potential investors to help them become entrepreneurs. Reflecting on my work this summer, I’ve realized a flaw in the Entrepreneurship Program. The organization puts more resources into rewarding success than it does into teaching the process. It’s human nature, to strive for the end product; parents wish success for their children, CEOs desire profit for their company but these end goals cannot overshadow the path to achieve them. The path is sometimes long, ridden with mistakes and struggles, but for the patient teachers and persistent workers, the process is worth far more than the end product.

While cultural differences separated me from my Cantonese co-workers and friends, I believe truths like these hold us together. Cultural differences – how to hug, how to politely eat a meal, and what to give as gifts – seem inconsequential in comparison. These can be learned by reading a book, but to become a person of the world, one needs to understand genuine relationships and respect how others think and learn.    

Also published in Echoes of LBI (Long Beach Island) Magazine.

Guest Post: An Entrepreneur's Thoughts on Market Incentives & Foreign Aid

This is a guest blog by Chia Han Sheng, Brown University '14, co-founder of MedInternational. You will be excited and optimistic about the passion, compassion, thought, analysis, and implementation of this generation.  See what two not yet 20 year olds were able to do and sustain.

MedInternational was started in 2011 to raise the standard of healthcare in resource-poor regions of the world by sharing and maintaining appropriate hospital technology in these areas, initially Zanzibar, Tanzania.   

Thoughts on Charity, Foreign Aid and Market Incentives - Tanzania

by Chia Han Sheng on Sunday, August 19, 2012

It’s been two months since Jayson and I started work in Zanzibar, Tanzania. Today I am in the Serengeti, a four-hour flight north of Zanzibar. I have come to join my parents who flew up from Singapore for a short break. We are here to hang with lions and wildebeest for a few days.

The time away from work has granted me some valuable space to think, notwithstanding the guilt I feel about abandoning the rest of the team who are working hard in Zanzibar. Over the past three nights, I have met some exciting and intelligent people at dinner, many of whom have provoked these thoughts on charity and foreign aid. Among this group has been a founder of a wildlife foundation, a married Wall Street duo, a management consultant, his digital artist wife, and an urban planner.

It’s funny that at different points of our dinner, we were all drawn to think about how to make nonprofits more financially sustainable, the one that Jayson and I run included. I almost asked for a white board when the conversation got intense. These are my takeaways:

SerengetiCharitable giving is as much about the donor as it is about the recipient. I was talking to a British ENT surgeon that had come to Zanzibar to donate a fairly sophisticated surgical microscope. I gathered that he was quite established in his profession, and that he was satisfied about having flown down to make sure his donation was properly handled. I enjoyed our conversation, he was introspective and raised questions like, “What if I hadn’t spent money on my plane ticket and instead donated that sum to the hospital? Would that have benefited the recipient more?” He also highlighted the fundraising events of another British organization. In these events, participants raise money in the UK before arriving in Zanzibar for a biking marathon around the island. The money raised helps keep hospitals here running. But what if the participants donated the money they had spent on their airfare to the hospitals? Lets say they spend $2500 on airfare and accommodation, and raise $1000 for the hospital. Wouldn’t it be the most socially optimal for them to have donated all $3500 to the hospital and not come down? Imagine how many sachets of Oral Rehydration Salts could be bought with $3500. In Zanzibar it would cover a doctor’s salary for 1.5 years.

I am beginning to learn that charity does not work that way. It may seem obvious, but when I spend all day thinking what is most cost effective and what is the most efficient allocation of resources, it is easy to lose track of the human dimension of charitable giving. It really is as much about the donor as it is about the recipient. That $1000 may never have been donated if the allure of coming to Zanzibar for a marathon was not present, even if it cost the donor $2500 of his own money. There is much in common between this and Dan Pollata’s arguments, which state that nonprofit leaders should be allowed to earn large salaries if it draws in productivity (or funds) that were otherwise unavailable to the social sector.

I am undecided about this. I have been constantly asking myself, if Zanzibar was significantly less comfortable than it is now—if there was no running water where I lived, if food was hard to come by but the need for our work just as present, would I do it? Where do I draw the line? Tomorrow afternoon I am stopping by a friend’s polo club to horse around for a bit. I’ve spent several weekends at some very nice beaches in Zanzibar. Very honestly, these are all great incentives to come back to Tanzania and work. The British biking participants have their marathon that brings them here, Dan Pollatian nonprofit leaders have their large salaries and I will have my polo and beaches. Is such comfort in the face of the destitute right even if I strive to contribute to Zanzibar’s health sector? I wonder how many bottles of Proziquantal medication my Zanzibar beer fund could have bought. How decadent is too decadent? Or should everyone be a Mother Theresa, helping the neediest of the needy, with few rational incentives for oneself. Can everyone be a Mother Theresa?

One of the Wall Street guys at dinner, a highly intelligent man with a PhD from Carnegie Mellon was describing his former job to me. He worked in a firm that supported fixed income investments in emerging markets. One of his main tasks was to structure a hedging derivative that negated foreign exchange risks so that Microfinance institutions could take safer loans from the developed world. I think that microfinance is one of those rare game changing social initiatives that manages to use market forces to drive social change. In that light, you don’t have to be a Mother Theresa to squeeze out as much social benefit as possible from a donation. The entire concept of Microfiance’s social change is not built around redistributing wealth and the associated opportunity costs. Instead it is about effective investments and growth opportunities that hardly require a sacrifice from the wealthy. It’s an oversimplification, but the rich grow and the poor grow financially too.

Another rare example of utilizing market forces to achieve social good can be seen in the Clinton Foundation’s efforts to drive down the prices of HIV Anti-Retrovirals (ARVs). This is a butchered summary, but they essentially consolidated demand and cut out middlemen, allowing suppliers to access larger markets at lower costs. Pharma keeps their money, the poor get ARVs.

Reading about these market driven social endeavors is always exciting. There came a point during our dinner in the Serengeti where we agreed that the trite line “When there’s a will, there’s a way” should be altered to the clunkier but more true “When there’s a will and a market incentive, there’s a way.” This question, of how to morph MED’s work into a social cause fuelled by market forces is something that is on Jayson’s and my mind daily. Surely not every social cause can be squeezed into a market framework, and there will have to be some social endeavors that rely heavily on traditional donor-recipient models. But can we make that transition? How do we do it?

I haven’t quite touched on foreign aid yet, but I think I’ll save that post for another time. This issue of charity, opportunity cost and market incentives is however more personal and has been on my mind since Nepal last year. I guess this tension feels most real as I sit in my safari tent listening to the rain beat overhead, getting ready for an artisanal dinner cooked in the middle of the wilderness… 

ODE to Innovation

One of the most amazing leaders I’ve ever met, Mike Waite, President of Menasha Packaging Corporation, believes his job is making sure his people get to live their dreams.  While profit, revenue, shareholder value etc. are critical, without his people’s ability to turn dreams into reality – for customers and for themselves – there is no revenue, profit or anything else…simple…and too rare.  Mike is Menasha’s ODE, Official Dream Enabler. 

Dreams allow us to think of what could be, of what is possible - maybe not probable, but possible.  That’s why dreams are innovation’s fuel.  We know what happens to organizations that don’t innovate - look at the 1990 Fortune 100 list. 

We are innately creators and dreamers.  Somewhere along the way, for most of us, we are taught, encouraged, required to push those inherent capabilities to the back and obey the status quo (e.g., public education).  So how do we become an ODE to innovation?

My friend Whitney Johnson’s book, Dare, Dream, Do, provides a framework for becoming an ODE to our people and ourselves.  It provides a roadmap for risking to and realizing dreams – both for individuals and more broadly organizations.  If individuals aren’t allowed to dream, how can teams and organizations?

Three quotes in the book stick in my mind:

• “The only safe harbor is our convictions…because it ensures we are honest to our core values.” For dreaming - innovation to have a positive impact, it must be based on values and integrity.  As we are finally recognizing from the financial crises and our youth’s response to ‘Corporate America”, without providing meaning and purpose, there is no sustainable money and profit;

• “Sometimes we set out to be competent.  At other times our competence is simply the unintended consequence of doing what needs to be done…” We’ve been hiring for skills first and maybe culture and passion.  It’s time to turn that around.  Skills can be taught – enhancing a culture and bringing passion to work? Not so much; 

• “Hell is a place where nothing connects with nothing.” T. S. Eliot commenting on Dante’s “Inferno”: As many of you know, connecting, networking is in my DNA.   Dreams and innovation are not solo events; they are team sports.  How you encourage, support, reward teams around common passions will determine how well you delight your customers…and your people.

Do you define your role, your success, by the ability of your people, let alone yourself, to dream? 

Do you allow your people, yourself, the freedom and autonomy to turn dreams into reality?

Can you become an ODE to Innovation? Start reading Whitney’s book – for your people, yourself, even your family.  And then you can start turning dreams into reality.  So, go – Dare, Dream, Do.