Freedom, GEABSOLUTE POWERS CORRUPT ABSOLUTELY, General Election (GE15), Malaysia, Politics, polling Nov 19: Destroy Umno for the betterment of Malaysia, race, religion, Solidality, support Aliran for Justice

Share This

Tuesday, 10 May 2011

LinkedIn IPO to value firm at $3.3bn





LinkedIn's IPO in New York next week is expected to spark a gold rush of social networking flotations

Josh Halliday and Dominic Rushe,guardian.co.uk

Reid Hoffman, executive chairman and co-founder of LinkedIn.
Inside LinkedIn HQ, Mountain View, California. The firm expects to raise up to $274m in the first IPO for a major US social networking group Photograph: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg News

LinkedIn, the social network for business professionals, will be valued at $3.3bn (£2bn) when it floats on the New York Stock Exchange next week, setting off a multimillion-dollar gold rush of social media companies.

The nine-year-old social network plans to float on the NYSE on 19 May and said it could raise as much as $274m. In January the firm said it was looking to raise $175m in the initial public offering.

The firm is cashing in amid an increasingly frenzied investor appetite for the next generation of internet firms. It will become the first major US social network to go public and follows the float of Renren, China's version of facebook, which saw its stock soar 40% in its first day of trading on the NYSE earlier this month.

LinkedIn's float is expected to be followed by a wave of flotations including those of Groupon, the online discount business; Zynga, maker of the Cityville and Farmville online games, and Facebook. Facebook's valuation has soared in recent months as investors clamour for shares in the privately held company. The company was valued at $50bn when investors put in more cash in January but its privately held shares have since traded at prices that suggest the firm could be worth more than $70bn.


Analysts said LinkedIn's flotation would be seen as the first real indicator of investor appetite for US social media firms. Colin Gillis, internet analyst at BGC Partner in New York, said: "Renren had everything – it's Chinese and it's social networking. LinkedIn is going to be the first real indicator of demand for the US social network firms."

LinkedIn has about 100 million users and turned a profit of $15.4m on revenues of $243m in 2010. Though other social networks are far larger, notably Facebook with about 700 million users worldwide, the business orientation of LinkedIn's members make them potentially more valuable to advertisers. The company managed to grow through the recession and turned profitable last year having made operating losses from 2007 until 2009.

At $3.3bn, LinkedIn would be priced at 13 times last year's revenues of $243m – a lower multiple than its peers. Facebook has a multiple of 32 times its estimated 2010 sales, according to Nyppex, a private-share market.

The company will offer 7.8m shares at $32-$35 each – the top of its previously expected price range. It said it intends to use the proceeds for general corporate purposes, including working capital, sales and marketing, general and administrative matters and capital expenditures.

Reid Hoffman, co-founder and chairman, and the chief executive, Jeffrey Weiner, are selling a small number of shares, less than 0.5% of the company. They will join the company's other shareholders, Bain Capital, Goldman Sachs and McGraw-Hill, in selling 3m shares in the public offering. LinkedIn will offer a further 4.8m shares.

Other major investors – Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners, which together own about two-fifths of the company – will not be participating.

Unlike more mainstream advertising-supported social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, LinkedIn has a "freemium" commercial model, offering premium services to paying customers, while basic features and registration are free.

According to its flotation prospectus, filed in January, revenue from paying users dropped to 27% of overall revenues for the first nine months of last year, down from 41% in the previous year. Job listings and recruitment contributed 41% of net revenue in the same period, up from 29%. Advertising revenue remained steady at 32%.

Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and JP Morgan are LinkedIn's three lead advisers.

Newscribe : get free news in real time

Apple bumps Google as most valuable brand

by Don Reisinger





Chalk another one up for Apple.

Apple is the world's most valuable brand with a value of $153.3 billion, according to Millard Brown Optimor's annual "BrandZ: Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands" study released today. In just one year, Apple's brand value has increased by 84 percent, the study said.
Google, the leader in the study for four years running, was knocked down to second place this year, losing 2 percent of its brand value to end up at $111.5 billion.
 
(Credit: Millard Brown Optimor)

IBM, McDonald's, and Microsoft rounded out the top five with brand values of $100.8 billion, $81 billion, and $78.2 billion in brand value, respectively.

The marketing and advertising industry, not surprisingly, believes strongly in the importance of brand value. "Strong brands, while not immune to the vicissitudes of the market, are more protected, prepared, resourceful and resilient," David Roth of WPP, parent company of Millard Brown Optimor, said in a statement.

If that's the case, Apple's ability to insulate itself from market issues has exploded over the last several years. Millard Brown Optimor said Apple's brand value has increased 859 percent since 2006--the first year of the BrandZ study. Moreover, Apple's year-over-year growth has easily overshadowed the rest of the market. According to the study, the top 100 brands have seen their combined value increase by 17 percent to $2.4 trillion since last year.



Apple wasn't the only fast mover in the study. Facebook's brand value jumped to 35th place, increasing 246 percent year over year to $19.1 billion. China's biggest search engine, Baidu, saw its brand value increase by 141 percent year over year to $22.5 billion, which gave it 29th place.

Such companies have helped tech lead the way in brand value. The researchers said tech companies make up one-third of the top 100 brands worldwide. Amazon.com was also able to beat Wal-Mart to become the most valuable retail brand with a value of $37.6 billion.

Emerging markets are playing a bigger role in the top 100 list. Back in 2006, just two companies from emerging markets made the list. Last year, that tally reached 13. And this year, 19 of the top 100 brands came from emerging markets.

Millard Brown Optimor's BrandZ study is derived from both financial performance and "in-depth" interviews of consumers about their perceptions of brands and why they choose a specific product over another. The company's database includes 2 million such interviews from 30 countries.

Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, posting at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.

Newscribe : get free news in real time

Monday, 9 May 2011

Targeted killngs, a human rights concern?



Global Trends By MARTIN KHOR



The killing of Osama bin Laden, the bombing of Muammar Gaddafi’s house and the deaths of civilians by drone missile attacks are some incidents that highlight the many questions of the legality and human rights in the issue of targeted killings.




THE killing of Osama bin Laden was undoubtedly the biggest news last week. While the shooting of the al-Qaeda chief filled the headlines for days, the confusion over what happened and questions over legality of the killing had taken over the discussion soon after.

United States officials had originally announced that Osama was killed in a firefight in the house in Pakistan he was occupying, and that he used his wife as a human shield.

A few days later, it was admitted he had been unarmed, and there was no use of a human shield. Instead, there was no firing on the US forces, except for one person at the initial stage.

The death of Osama came a few days after the Nato bombing of the house of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, which the Libyan authorities said had killed his son and several grandchildren.

This raised the question of whether it is legal for one state or states to kill persons, including political leaders, in other states.

These two events, in Pakistan and Libya, highlight the issue of targeted killings carried out by a government agency in the territory of other countries.

For example, drones controlled by operators thousands of miles away are increasingly being used to fire missiles at buildings and vehicles in which the targeted persons are believed to be in, with high “collateral damage”.

Drone attacks killed 957 civilians in Pakistan last year, according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. This was almost as many as the 1,041 civilians killed by suicide bomb attacks in the same year.

The high civilian deaths and casualties by US drone attacks have caused great public resentment in Afghanistan and Pakistan, with the leaders in these countries warning the United States to control or curb the attacks.

As worldwide public clamour increased last week for more information on what really happened during the raid on Osama’s house, United Nations human rights officials also called on the United States to disclose the full facts, including whether there had been plans to capture him.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay called for light to be shed on the killing, stressing that all counter-terrorism operations must respect international law.

Last Friday, a joint statement was issued by Christof Heyns, UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, and Martin Scheinin, special rapporteur on protecting human rights while countering terrorism. Both report to the UN Human Rights Council.




They said that in certain exceptional cases, deadly force may be used in operations against terrorists.

“However, the norm should be that terrorists be dealt with as criminals, through legal processes of arrest, trial and judicially-decided punishment,” they added.

A Reuters report from New York on Thursday said: “The legality of the commando killing of the al-Qaeda leader is less clear under international law, some experts said. President Barack Obama got a boost in US opinion polls, but the killing raised concerns elsewhere that the United States may have gone too far in acting as policeman, judge and executioner of the world’s most wanted man.”

The German newspaper Sued­deutsche Zeitung expressed misgivings about the legality of the killing.
“Which law covers the execution of bin Laden?” wrote its senior editor Heribert Prantl.

“US law requires trials before death penalties are carried out. Executions are forbidden in countries based on rule of law. Martial law doesn’t cover the US operation either. The decision to kill the godfather of terror was political.”

In May last year, the issue of targeted killings was addressed in a landmark report to the Human Rights Council by Philip Alston, who was then UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions.

Alston, who is a law professor in New York University, criticised the CIA-directed drone attacks, which he said had resulted in the deaths of many hundreds of civilians.

“Intelligence agencies, which by definition are determined to remain unaccountable except to their own paymasters, have no place in running programmes that kill people in other countries,” the report said.

Alston suggested that the drone killings carry a significant risk of becoming war crimes because intelligence agencies “do not generally operate within a framework which places appropriate emphasis upon ensuring compliance with international humanitarian law”.

More generally, the report said that in targeted killings, there has been a highly problematic blurring and expansion of boundaries of the relevant legal frameworks – human rights laws, laws of war and use of inter-state force.

“The result is the displacement of legal standards with a vaguely defined “licence to kill” and the creation of a major accountability vacuum,” said the report, concluding that many of the practices violate legal rules.

It warned that whatever rules the United States attempt to invoke or apply to al-Qaeda could be invoked by other states to apply to other non-state armed groups.

The failure of states to comply with their human rights law and international human rights obligations to provide transparency and accountability for targeted killings is a matter of deep concern.

In light of the increasing use of targeted killings in recent weeks and years, the issues and proposals raised in the May 2010 report should be seriously followed up.

Britain's super-rich get even richer!





Britain's richest people got collectively wealthier by 18 percent as the rest of the country weathered harsh government cuts, according to an annual list published Sunday.

Indian-born steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal retained the top spot in The Sunday Times Rich List for a seventh straight year, despite seeing about £5 billion ($8 billion, 5.7 billion euros) wiped off his fortune.

The 1,000 richest people in Britain saw their wealth continue to bounce back from the recession and increase to a collective fortune of £395.8 billion.



The number of billionaires in Britain now stands at 73 -- up from 53 last year and almost matching the record of 75 set in the list of 2008 before the financial crisis. Forty are British-born.

Russian businessman Alisher Usmanov moved from sixth position to second spot in the list after adding £7.7 billion to his fortune, which is now worth £12.4 billion.

Usmanov owns a large stake in Russian iron and steel firm Metalloinvest and recently courted controversy in Britain by trying to build up a controlling stake in English football giants Arsenal.

His bid was thwarted last month when US sports tycoon Stan Kroenke took control of the Premier League side.
Meanwhile the fortune of Mittal, the London-based head of ArcelorMittal, the world's largest steel maker, fell by around 22 percent to £17.5 billion in the past 12 months, the biggest drop on this year's list.

The huge fall in the 60-year-old's wealth was driven by a plunge in the share price of ArcelorMittal as the global steel industry struggled to cope with costly raw materials and slow demand.

The highest new female entry is Chinese businesswoman Xiuli Hawken, 48, who made her fortune converting underground military shelters in China into underground shopping malls. She was ranked 61st, with a fortune of £1.06 billion. She lives in London.

Another new female entry is Mary Perkins, who founded the chain of glasses shops, Specsavers, with her husband Douglas. Their wealth has increased 42 percent since last year and stands at £1.15 billion.

The increased wealth comes as most of the country faces harsh austerity measures introduced by the coalition government to cut Britain's record deficit.

The list, which is for those who have Britain as their home or main base of operations, is based on identifiable wealth such as land, property or significant shares in publicly quoted companies, and excludes bank accounts.

- Britain's top 10 billionaires in The Sunday Times Rich List 2011 (last year's rank in brackets):

1. Lakshmi Mittal -- steel -- £17.514 billion (1st)

2. Alisher Usmanov -- steel -- £12.4 billion (6th)
3. Roman Abramovich -- oil, industry -- £10.3 billion (2nd)
4. The Duke of Westminster -- property -- £7 billion (3rd)
5. Ernesto and Kirsty Bertarelli -- pharmaceuticals -- £6.87 billion (4th)
6. Leonard Blavatnik -- industry -- £6.237 billion (15th)
7. John Fredriksen and family -- shipping -- £6.2 billion (16th)
8. David and Simon Reuben -- property, Internet -- £6.176 billion (5th)
9. Gopi and Sri Hinduja -- industry, finance -- £6 billion (new)
9. Galen and George Weston -- retailing -- £6 billion (7th)

© 2011 AFP
This story is sourced direct from an overseas news agency as an additional service to readers. Spelling follows North American usage, along with foreign currency and measurement units.
 
Newscribe : get free news in real time

Sunday, 8 May 2011

Golf legend Seve Ballesteros dies, Fierce commitment and uncharted brilliance!





Seve Ballesteros

Seve Ballesteros, the legendary five-time major winning golfer, has died at the age of 54 after losing his fight against cancer.

The news was confirmed by a statement on the golfer's official website which said: "Today, at 2.10am Spanish time, Seve Ballesteros passed away peacefully surrounded by his family at his home in Pedrena.

"The Ballesteros family is very grateful for all the support and gestures of love that have been received since Seve was diagnosed with a brain tumour on 5th October 2008 at Madrid Hospital la Paz.

" Ballesteros' brother Baldomero told reporters the funeral will be held on Wednesday in Pedrena, while Miguel Angel Revilla, head of the local Cantabria government, said the region would observe three days of official mourning.

Ballesteros had been recuperating at his home in northern Spain after a series of operations since being diagnosed with two malignant brain tumours in 2008.

His condition worsened on Wednesday, at which point he was admitted to hospital; rumours had swept Spain last week that Ballesteros's situation had taken a rapid downturn. On Friday, Ballesteros was under heavy sedation and his family released a statement confirming his situation had deteriorated.

In an unfortunate coincidence, the Spanish Open – the last competition Ballesteros won as a professional in 1995 – is currently taking place in Barcelona. José María Olazábal, the golfer closest to Ballesteros and inspired by him since childhood, was too emotional to speak to the media in the aftermath of his Friday round in Barcelona. "I can't talk," Olazábal said. "I can only wait, and cry."

Another Spanish golfer and Olazábal's playing partner, Miguel Angel Jiménez, was in tears upon completion of his second round. Olazábal, Europe's Ryder Cup captain, recently stated his dream that Ballesteros could be alongside him for the meeting with the United States in Chicago next autumn. The pair met a fortnight ago, at which point Ballesteros was in a wheelchair.

Olazábal's manager, Sergio Gómez, reported that Ballesteros's daughter had passed on details of her father's condition on Thursday. "Seve's physical condition was not good when José María went to see him, but they talked about golf and everything," Gómez said. "Then came the call yesterday to tell him that Seve was in a critical condition."

Ballesteros's illness initially came to light after he collapsed at Madrid airport in October 2008; during the intervening period, he has rarely been seen in public. Since his first surgery, which lasted 12 hours, he has undergone almost continuous chemotherapy and radiotherapy. In 2009, after his fourth chemotherapy course, Ballesteros labelled it "a miracle" he was still alive.

In 2010, during his last television interview with the BBC, Ballesteros spoke of fighting cancer. "You can't have it all in life," he said. "One day you feel fantastic, the next you never know what is going to happen. You just take a look at how many days of glory I had before. It has been a fantastic life and this, what has happened to me, is what I will call destiny; one test that God is putting on me."

Ballesteros, who retired from professional golf in 2007, was earlier regarded as a pioneer for the European game overseas. He had turned professional at the age of 16, in 1974, finishing second to Jack Nicklaus in the Open at Birkdale only two years later.

He was the first from this continent to claim a Masters title, in 1980, a feat he repeated at Augusta three years later. Ballesteros was the winner of the Open in 1979, 1984 and 1988. Besides winning a total of 87 titles in his career, Ballesteros played in eight Ryder Cups, claiming 20 points from 37 matches. He also captained a successful European team, fittingly on his home soil in Valderrama, 14 years ago.

Ballesteros had not been deemed well enough to make a planned trip to St Andrews to say a farewell to British fans at the time of last year's Open. At the Masters last month, Phil Mickelson dedicated a Spanish-themed champions' dinner to the absent Ballesteros, the man he credits with his own decision to start playing golf.

Newscribe : get free news in real time


Fierce commitment and uncharted brilliance

By James Lawton - The Independent

Ballesteros's death was more than the end of a great sports career

Seve Ballesteros, pictured in 1976
Seve Ballesteros, pictured in 1976

The great matador Manuel Benitez announced to his young sister that he would dress her in the finest clothes – or in mourning. His compatriot Seve Ballesteros never made such a declaration. It wouldn't have been appropriate on the lips of a golfer, because when Seve was young the game he embraced as if it was life itself made no great call on Spanish emotions.
Last night, though, we could measure the extent of his achievement because much of his country, and the wide world of sport, were indeed in the deepest mourning.

There were times when the golf of Ballesteros was almost incidental. The passion and the grace and the burning eyes and the windswept hair and the noble head and the wild, fist-pumping self-belief were what commanded the attention of his people as much as the superb anarchy of his play, and they sent a great charge through a game that had never known such fierce commitment and uncharted brilliance.

Ballesteros's death, which came after a typically brave and stoic reaction to the crushing news of a cancerous brain tumour, was more than the end of a great sports career. It was the last sigh of a man who brought a flamenco snap to everything he did, whose life of 54 years was perhaps not so cruelly compressed as it might have seemed at the first news that he had gone. Not, at least, for anyone who had seen the poignant truth that when Ballesteros could no longer play golf as masterfully as a god and, sometimes, as impishly as a street urchin, a central part of his existence had disappeared.

Ballesteros at times hinted as much. His obsession with golf, a game far from the heart of most young Spaniards, was nurtured by the evidence that it could provide a boy of humble stock with a good living, something far above the expectations of his father, who worked on the land around the Real Golf Club of Pedrena on the Gulf of Santander.

Severiano's uncle Ramon Sota was professional champion of Spain four times and once finished sixth at the US Masters, a title his nephew would win twice in a blaze of virtuosity. The boy could see the most desirable of lives and he pursued the ambition as single-mindedly as the torero Benitez, better known as El Cordobes. But there was a price, one he acknowledged in the wake of his failed marriage to Carmen, the mother of his three children, and later the death in a car crash of his girlfriend.

Ballesteros saw more clearly than ever before that when he embraced golf, playing in the moonlight on a course banned to caddies but for one day of the year, he had immersed himself in a game which had brought him unimagined fame and wealth but one that also, when it withdrew its favours, and was no longer susceptible to his fierce will, had left him with a hollow place in the pit of his stomach – and a sometimes almost unbearable pain in his back.

El Cordobes had played with the bulls in the Andalucian breeding fields in the night, a gypsy boy, impertinent and impatient, and Ballesteros fashioned his game, almost completely self-taught, on the forbidden course and then on the neighbouring beach. The bullfighter risked his life; the golfer placed his in a tunnel from which in the end there was really no escape.

That was the truth which, at least in the view of so many of his warmest admirers, haunted the corridors of the La Paz hospital in Madrid, before he died surrounded by his family at his home in Pedrena.

Life isn't a game, of course, but the tragedy behind the glory of Seve Ballesteros was that sometimes he plainly found it hard to distinguish between the two. He wept unashamedly in defeat and was distraught when he finished second as a 19-year-old at the Open at Royal Birkdale in 1976. Ballesteros always lived in the moment, and if such anguish was hard to understand after he had been beaten only by the superstar American Johnny Miller, and tied with Jack Nicklaus, it was soon enough widely understood that the thin, intense youth played only to win. It wasn't considered an ambition; it was a birthright.

He won three Opens along with his Masters titles, and each time he won a major he seemed to journey a little deeper into the improbable, even the surreal.

When he won his first Open, the American Hale Irwin sneered that the Claret Jug had gone to the "car-park" champion, a wild hitter who had had to retrieve his ball from under a car. Ballesteros smouldered and went on to dazzle the world.

Before the range of his genius began to ebb, irretrievably, he was able to produce one last great expression of it. It was in his final major triumph at Lytham in 1988. He overwhelmed the tough and gifted pro Nick Price with golf that was filled with all of his nerve and invention and a touch that was rarely less than exquisite. For his last round he wore a blue sweater, and the banner headline was inevitable: Rhapsody in Blue.

But then if Seve Ballesteros was in some ways a rhapsody that turned into a lament, his meaning was never threatened, not even when his life rushed away these last few days.
When he received the grim diagnosis, he thanked all his admirers for their messages of support and said he would fight with as much courage and serenity as it was possible to muster. Serenity was something that had been denied him for some time, even to the extent that reports of an attempted suicide were not lightly dismissed.

But then if it was true that in his last days Seve Ballesteros found a degree of that elusive serenity, it may have had something to do with the fact that finally he understood quite how he was valued by the galleries he had fought so hard, and sometimes so desperately, to please. There was a time when he seemed to believe that everything he had achieved was finely balanced on the brilliance of his next shot. Of course it wasn't. Few sportsmen on earth had less reason to worry about the meaning of what they had done – and how much they would always be loved.

Related articles/Post

Saturday, 7 May 2011

Give, you should receive!


Are you a giver or receiver?

SCIENCE OF BUILDING LEADERS By ROSHAN THIRAN



 Great leaders are great givers” - John Maxwell

I have often been told that money cannot buy us happiness. But now scientists beg to differ. They say it can make us happy as long as we spend it on someone else!

According to three scientific studies done by University of British Columbia Professor Elizabeth Dunn and her team, “regardless of income, those who spent money on others reported greater happiness, while those who spent more on themselves did not.”

In tests, those giving money away were far happier than others spending it on luxuries for themselves. Giving away as little as a couple of ringgit daily is enough to significantly boost happiness levels, according to Harvard professor Michael Norton.

The same can be said of countries. According to a global study by Arwin and Lew, “the statistical evidence from this study therefore suggests that as far as happiness is concerned, it is better to give than to receive aid.” Leveraging the World Database of Happiness, this study found that countries that gave more aid had a direct correlation with happiness whilst receiving aid did not impact happiness.

A large banner displaying the image of Mother Teresa in Calcutta, India. Mother Teresa, who died at age 87 in 1997 in Calcutta where she is buried, says “a life not lived for others is not a life.” — AP 
Interestingly, it seems the same for businesses. Businesses that are primarily focused on enhancing shareholder value (i.e. receiving profits), have unhappier people compared with start-ups and social enterprises (companies that give to its communities).

In fact, in a recent UK poll, people in large companies have a far higher disposable income than their grandparents, yet are not happier. Unhappy people mean lower productivity and higher healthcare costs.

Most people forget that inspired leadership is more about people and not products or profit. And people are inspired by organisations and leaders that give rather in addition to receiving.

History is awash with the value of giving. Christopher Chapman's 1680 grave in Westminster Abbey reads: “What I gave, I have. What I spent, I had. What I left, I lost by not giving it.” Longfellow wrote, “Give what you have. Notable author John Bunyan reminds us, “There was a man, though some did count him mad; the more he cast away the more he had.”

Of course there are some who believe they have little to give, and that their gift will make little difference. Mother Teresa confounds that by saying, “A life not lived for others is not a life.” If anyone truly lived a life of giving, it was Mother Teresa.

Leaders sometimes give at great personal cost to themselves. Gandhi lost his life to his cause. So did Martin Luther King. But their leadership legacies live forever.

Today, we see a different form of leadership. A leadership of wanting to receive more and more. The Wall Street Journal suggested that a culture of greed' was to blame for the recent financial crisis with billionaire investor Stephen Jarislowsky echoing that extreme greed' was to blame. Even when organisations were falling apart, we read of its leaders receiving more and more. In the movie Wall Street Gordon Gekko, in his greed is good' speech, crystallised why receiving is the new leadership mantra.

But yet when we explore new research on legendary leaders', the following are the top three leadership traits identified:

  • Legendary leaders seek significance (people) rather than success (profits). They value people - their families, employees, and customers. They make decisions based on the impact to key stakeholders.
  •  Serve a purpose rather than achieve results. Legendary leaders resist the pressure for immediate gratification and focus on long term purpose. They evaluate new products and services on the needs of the marketplace and how it improves the lives of its users.
  •  Legendary leaders focus on “what can I give?” rather than “what can I get?” They follow a philosophy of abundance. Instead of fighting to get a bigger piece of the pie, they work to make the pie larger.

Reading through the top three traits of legendary leaders, it paints a picture of a giving leader. The opposite of Gordon Gekko in Wall Street. They focus on people, not only on profits, have long term purpose and bring benefit to society. Interestingly, social enterprises are organisations that focus on significance, ensuring impact to the community and these organisations end up creating new markets in the process.

I recently was invited to be one of the main judges at the latest reality show from TV3, Sejuta Impian (to be aired Sunday weekly from May 15th). The show centres on enabling Malaysians to be able to fulfil their dreams', as long as these dreams' benefit the community in some way or form.

As I watched the 92 finalists come and present their cases for funding, I was inspired by how Malaysians want to impact the community. More interestingly was the mushrooming of social enterprises with a clear social mission and a solid plan of sustainability through profits.

More and more organisations today are transforming from profit-driven' only into social-driven' missions. GE is moving into green territory with its eco-imagination' mission. Google “does no evil” whilst AirAsia's social mission is to ensure “everyone can fly.” Everywhere organisations realise that giving ensures a bigger return and are altering their focus from profit singularly to a more community-based mission.

Social enterprises and giving' companies don't just donate cash and gifts. They give back to society by making the world a better place, engaging with stakeholders and the community around them. They give back to their employees with great workplace practices.

Companies who consistently try to take into account its stakeholders and community outperformed the S&P 500 by more than twice the average over the past 15 years. (Schmidt, 2000). This result was confirmed by Harvard University, who found community-based' companies showed four times the growth rate and eight times the employment growth when compared with companies that are shareholder-only focused (Harvard University, 2000).

How is it that giving' companies outperform the traditional maximising shareholder value' organisations? In C.K. Prahalad's book Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, he challenges big companies by showcasing that we could make bigger profit and margins by focusing on people who earn less than US$2 per day.

His book showcased how social enterprises that championed the poor and other social causes reaped significant bigger margins than the big boys. Grameen Bank in Bangladesh outperformed all other banks but their core mission was to serve the poor, not to enhance shareholder value.

Traditional businesses compete either on price, quality level or service as their competitive advantage. NGOs often use value of service or societal benefit to generate their competitive advantage.

Social enterprises tap on both these competitive advantages but additionally tap into further social advantages that can be used for competitive purposes, such as community support, superior brand identity, customer commitment to the cause, and employee engagement.

Nothing unites people more (especially your employee base) than to work together towards the greater good of mankind and the community. Giving' truly excites your employees and gets them committed to your cause, ensuring higher margins and profitability.

We often hear of stories of leaders who jump out of their big CEO roles and gravitate towards new roles which have more meaning. It is a strange phenomenon that they all reach a stage in their careers when leaders feel compelled to suddenly give back'.

Peter Lynch was at the peak of his career, having grown the Fidelity Magellan fund, when he decided to leave to set up a philanthropic fund. So did Bill Gates, Carnegie and Rockefeller.

Why does it have to be so late in one's career that giving happens? Giving is simple. Giving is not only providing financial support. The best leaders believe that “you get the best out of others when you give the best of yourself” and they start giving early in life.



So, how do leaders in business give throughout their careers? Below are three simple ways that each of us can begin the process of giving back.

  • Listening - The greatest courtesy a leader can give is to listen. Everyone wants to be listened to. The problem is most leaders have no time to listen and be an empathetic ear to colleagues, subordinates, suppliers, and customers. You will be surprised by the information and ideas you may receive in exchange for listening.
  •  Giving feedback to employees - Courageous leaders know that giving and receiving feedback are needed for inspiring relationships. 70% of employees feel they hear too little feedback and have too little interaction with their direct manager, with limited positive feedback and constructive feedback offered. Most view the annual performance appraisal as being a broken process for delivering feedback. I personally struggle with this as it is extremely time-consuming, but the more feedback you give, the better your team performs.
  •  Developing others - Leadership is not a platform to use people but to develop them. The legacy of a leader is not one who achieves the most, but one who builds up other great leaders who will accomplish more. If you want to succeed as a leader, focus more on what you can do for others rather than what you expect others to do for you. Teach, coach and mentor your employees. In return, they will outperform for you.

Give always

I am going to end this article with a short story on why giving sometimes even gets you out of trouble, especially poor drivers. A few years ago, an accident took place with a woman's car crashing into a man's car. Both cars were wrecked. But amazingly, neither got injured.

As they crawled out of their demolished cars, they both counted their blessings with the man shocked by this miracle. “Even more amazing,” said the woman, “my wine did not even break. Here, have my bottle to celebrate our survival,” as she gives the new bottle to the man.

The man smiled and with his manly grip opened the bottle, drank half and handed it back to the lady, who simply put the cork back in and handed it back. Flustered, the man asked, “Aren't you having any?” To which the woman replied, “No. I think I'll just wait for the police.”

Final thoughts

Giving is limited when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give and reap the rewards. As Albert Einstein said: “The value of a man resides in what he gives and not in what he is capable of receiving.” Be a generous leader keep giving to your people.

l Roshan Thiran is CEO of Leaderonomics, a social enterprise passionate about transforming the nation through giving. If you are interested in giving back to the community or being part of supporting leadership development for under-privileged kids, call +60176362047or login to www.diodecamp.com

Friday, 6 May 2011

China's First Space Station




How China's First Space Station Will Work (Infographic)

Date: 06 May 2011 Time: 01:26 AM ET



Sneak a peek at China's plans for its first orbital space station and the milestones to build it.
 

Source:
SPACE.com: All about our solar system, outer space and exploration
Newscribe : get free news in real time