“So there’s this family next door … nice people, seven kids …”
“ Seven kids? That’s quite a lot.”
“Yeah, I don’t know whether they planned it that way, it’s not like I ever asked, anyway they seem to have enough to go round. Anyway, it’s a bit weird really cos they have these seven kids, right. And one of them, the little boy, Johnnie, he’s got some kind of disease or some medical problem, he’s not well.”
“Sounds harsh. Must be difficult for the whole family.”
“Yeah. And then they’ve got this girl, Sara, she’s always looking pale and she’s much shorter and skinnier than the rest of them.”
“Is she ill? Is it the same thing as Johnnie’s got?”
“Well no I don’t think so. They said it wasn’t that she’s ill at all. Just that she doesn’t eat enough or something. But it’s not anorexia or anything like that. Anyway, this family, they need money for little Johnnie’s treatment, his medication, and they say it’s curable what he’s got, he needs some medication every day but it’s totally curable.”
“That must be a weight off their mind then. It’s not like he’s got some incurable illness or cancer of something. I know a family who had a kid with cancer, horrible, nothing they could do to cure it, just try to be there for the kid and make sure she has a happy life.”
“ Well yes it’s not like a cancer, it’s curable, it’s quite a common thing apparently and it can be cured with pretty basic drugs, antibiotics or something like that.”
“The meds must be expensive though, every day?”
“Luckily not really. They’re not a poor family. The meds are totally affordable for them. But here’s the weird thing.”
“What?”
“Get this. Last month, one of the other kids had a birthday. Jack. He’s doing well at school, he’s clever, he works hard, he’s a lovely kid, really kind. So they bought him an amazing trip for his birthday. He’s curious by nature, he likes meeting people, travelling, seeing new places, trying out new things.”
“He’s going to love his present then.”
“Yep, he’s there right now. Diving off the Great Barrier Reef or something. Anyway, that’s not the weird thing. The weird thing is, the family bought this trip, and then the Mum was telling me all about it, how she was so proud of Jack’s achievements and he’d worked so hard at school and got good grades and he totally deserved this big present. But then she said, we’re a bit worried about Johnnie, cos he’s not getting any better.”
“Oh that’s stressful for her. It must be terrible to be a Mum and see your child ill. Poor woman.”
“Well yeah, but get this. Then she says: “We stopped giving Johnnie his medication because we needed to save the money.” And I was like: “What?” And she said yes, they didn’t get Johnnie his drugs, his antibiotics this month, and now he’s got worse because he can’t fight the disease without them. So he’s really poorly.”
“But hang on, didn’t they just buy his brother a massive present?”
“Yes! I was a bit confused at this point but you know, you don’t like to ask. I wasn’t going to imply that she’d spent little Johnnie’s meds money on that holiday.”
“Well yeah, she would have thought you were mad. Maybe they messed up on the finances or something and couldn’t get the holiday money back once they realised. So did you find out what’s happening?”
“ Well … it’s a bit awkward. She says to me “I know it’s a shame that little Johnnie has to get sick again, and we have to save money on Sara’s food so we only feed her once a day, that’s why she’s so skinny…”
“WHAT? They’re not feeding her??”
“The Mum says they can’t afford it.”
“They bought the other kid a massive present last month!”
“I know! She said that the brother had really earnt his trip, they’d planned it for ages, he’s really enjoying it. She said – she actually said this – “it’s a shame about Johnnie and Sara, I feel really bad about it, I wish things were different, but really Jack wanted that trip and we’d said he could have it, plenty of his friends also had similar presents, so we didn’t want him to miss out.”
“I cannot believe that. How can a family do that? How could Jack go on the trip knowing it was costing money from Johnnie’s meds and Sara’s food?”
“I don’t know. They’ve just worked it out that each child is separate and what happens to one isn’t relevant to the others or something. Something about not feeling guilty about it and it’s no one’s fault really, life isn’t fair, that’s just how things have turned out.”
“Well yeah, life isn’t fair, but that’s ridiculous.”
“I think so too. Especially when I found out that the money for Johnnie’s meds and Sara’s food – what she needs just to stay healthy and grow properly, I mean she’s seriously looking ill, all the rest of the family are strapping lads and lasses and she’s … well … she looks a bit … stunted? – all the money they needed was just the cost of ONE WEEK of Jack’s trip. He’s going for three months.”
“You’re kidding me. You. Are. Kidding. Me.”
“I am not. So basically, Jack would have just had a slightly shorter holiday, and Johnnie and Sara would be absolutely fine.”
“But that’s bonkers.”
“I know. How can a family do that?”
The aliens sighed, and looked across at the neighbouring little blue planet, wondering what kind of family these humans – with their 7 billion children – really were.
Dear friends, if you liked my little story, please pass it on
As energy costs rise and the recession bites, more and more families in the UK are falling into ‘fuel poverty’: from a low of 1.2million households in 2004, we’re now up to 5 MILLION UK households in ‘fuel poverty’ – which means, paying over 10% of their income to heat and power their homes.
New technologies now exist which can help us to make a smooth transition to low-carbon energy sources, such as solar or wind power. As the cost of oil keeps rising steadily, and more people start using these new clean energy sources, the costs will be comparable before long, with the new clean energy sources becoming cheaper than ‘old and dirty’ oil, coal and gas.
The UK has schemes to help people out of ‘fuel poverty’. These include winter payments for heating bills, grants for insulating properties and the ‘Feed-in Tariff’ scheme which encourages home owners to install solar panels and sell clean electricity back to the grid at an agreed price.
So far so good – if you own your home. If it has cavity walls and a loft you can insulate, and a South-facing roof. But what about everybody else? What about home-owners with the wrong type of home? More importantly, what about leaseholders in shared blocks, and what about tenants?
Don’t we ALL have a Right to Renewables?
Don’t we want clean power to ALL the people, not just the lucky owners of detached houses?
As ‘old’ fuels get more and more expensive, why should tenants and leaseholders be stuck with them, instead of having the chance to take part in the new clean fuel economy? Why can’t a leaseholder on a council estate invest in a solar panel installation on the communal roof – on their own, or by rallying a group of neighbours to invest together? That would allow the flourishing of exactly the kind of distributed, micro-generation, clean power network the UK needs, and other countries have already invested in.
The UK can’t meet its low-carbon targets without including the existing, hard-to-retrofit housing stock in its plans – we only replace at most 5% new housing each year, even less in these recession years. And the UK can’t meet its low-carbon targets without including tenants and leaseholders.
Just as important as the targets, is the right of everyone – rich or poor, homeowner or tenant, in leafy suburb or inner-city estate – to have access to cheap, clean power.
Would you like to be informed as soon as the details have been confirmed?
“THIS HOUSE BELIEVES THAT ‘PROFIT’ WILL ALWAYS BE A DIRTY WORD”
Join us for a challenging and informative debate that cuts to the heart of Social Enterprise, Corporate Responsibility and Business Ethics. Can businesses “do well by doing good”? Do non-profits unnecessarily limit their options for investment and impact?
We’ll be announcing the date, venue and speakers for this debate after Easter. Don’t miss out: to make sure you get the details first, direct to your inbox, please leave you name and email in this form [we will ONLY use it for informing you of this event's details, and we'll then delete it from our records. We hate spam as much as you do.]
YES, PLEASE SEND ME AN EMAIL WITH THE DETAILS FOR THE “PROFIT WITH PURPOSE” DEBATE:
Debate sponsored by Intelligent Futures Ltd and EthicalStartups
Once upon a time, far far away, there was a little girl called Cinderella who lived in a land of frozen winter.
Snow lay cold and white upon the ground as far as the eye could see. The branches of the trees were bare. No birds sang to welcome the dawn. The people were sad and hungry.
The land was ruled by a wicked ice queen who lived in an ice palace at the top of the hill. The wicked ice queen had cast a spell of winter over the land because it made her laugh to see the animals shiver and the children trudging barefoot through the snow to collect firewood. (She really was a wicked, wicked ice queen.)
And that’s not all! She even kept a unicorn locked up in a tiny ice cage in the ice palace, crying unicorn tears!
Each morning the animals shivered, the birds were silent, the children gathered firewood in the snow and Cinderella quietly swept the ashes from the hearth of her family’s house. Each morning when the wind blew, a cold, icy tune would blow down the chimney. Cinderella’s hair would stand up on the back of her neck, even though she was quite used to being cold in her rags. She would look up at the ice palace on top of the hill. Was that really the wind whistling in the chimney, she wondered? It seemed… like music. Cold, icy music.
What Cinderella did not know, of course, and you are about to find out, is that the ice queen kept her spell of winter by playing an ice violin each morning. She played a tune so sinister, so cold, it chilled the sun’s rays before they could reach the ground and warm up the earth. The ice queen’s violin was made of ice. Her bow was a perfectly straight and clear icicle, snapped from the eaves of the ice palace.
The strings of the violin – and here is where it got its magic power from – were tail hairs from the imprisoned unicorn. Each morning the wicked ice queen would reach through the ice bars of his tiny ice cage and pluck four hairs from the tail of the poor unicorn, making him cry. She dipped the strings in the unicorn’s tears and froze them – with one look from her ice blue eyes. And, throwing back her head and laughing, she would restring her violin, play her chilling tune and keep the land under the spell of winter.
It seemed the village and the land around would be in winter forever.
But then, one day, a day like any other, Cinderella was out gathering firewood with her friends when she found, half hidden in the snow, an old wooden violin. She took it home with her wood and her sticks and other bits and pieces, intending to burn it. But when it was time to burn the wood, she hid the violin under the thin bed of yellow straw that she lay on to sleep each night.
The next day she took the violin to an old man in the village – his name was Dr Suzuki – who she knew could play the violin. She asked him if he would please teach her to play too. Dr Suzuki tightened up his bow and smiled. “Of course I will teach you. I do not know where you got that violin from, but it looks very special.” Dr Suzuki had a sparkle in his eye that Cinderella had not seen in anyone’s eyes in the village for a very long time – a sparkle of excitement.
At first Cinderella could not play at all. She could barely get a squeak out of the silly violin. She was very disheartened. But when you have lived for so long under the spell of winter, you don’t give up easily. So she just kept trying. Each day, she kept trying. And one day, she got her first fine note from the violin. And an extraordinary, unexpected thing happened.
[pause]
As Cinderella played her first note, a tiny brown bird alighted on the windowsill of the old man’s cottage. She shook a snowflake off her tiny orange beak, cocked her tiny brown head and made a tiny “Chirrup?” sound. Cinderella was sure she’d heard a question mark at the end of the chirrup. The bird seemed … tentative, hopeful. It had been such a long time since any of the birds had had anything to sing about.
The tiny bird flew up to a branch and pointed with its beak at a small green bud. Cinderella played another shaky, squeaky note (it’s very hard to keep a violin bow from slipping and sliding on the strings you know, especially when your hands are cold and your tummy empty.) Another green bud popped open next to the little brown bird. The bird cocked its head again. Cinderella was almost sure she saw a question mark appear above its head, or was that just the light glinting off a patch of ice that was … was it really? … beginning to thaw?
Now, you and I both know that when an ice queen who lives in an ice palace on top of the hill, and delights in holding the kingdom under her spell of endless winter, starts to see the first signs of spring down in the village – patches of green around the old man’s cottage, buds and shoots and birds chirping and such like, things are not going to go well. Things are not going to go well at all.
Each day Cinderella would stop by the old man’s house and practice her violin. And of course, although the music was hardly easy on the ear in the early days (give the poor girl a chance) each day the patch of warm spring spread around the cottage, through the gardens, over the hedges, down the lanes. By the time the music had thawed the duck pond on the village green, the ice queen had had enough. She was FURIOUS. She tacked up the poor unicorn with an ill-fitting saddle and down she rode, bumping all the way down the hill, icy fire blazing from her cold blue eyes.
“WHO?” she screamed, standing in the village green, as a frog splashed into the duck pond for the first time in years, “WHO IS PLAYING THE MUSIC????”
“You people are forbidden from playing music! I forbid it!” she continued, as a new patch of ice spread around her feet and her breath froze white in the air.
The villagers had gathered around, fearfully. Cinderella and the old man were nowhere to be seen – the miller had hidden them in her empty grain store. A tiny voice piped up from the back row – “Why are we not allowed to play music? Why is it forbidden?”
The wicked ice queen was a. po. plectic. “BECAUSE I SAID SO!!!!!” she screeched, and the exclamation marks froze in the air, fell down a-tinkling and shattered at her feet like icicles.
” I am the only one who can play the vi. o. lin,” she fumed, pacing around the terrified unicorn. “I am the only one who can make beautiful, enchanting music!!!”
“Well that’s true” mumbled a boy in the back row, who was careful to keep his head down. “It’s not like Cinderella is making much progress is she?” agreed his friend, “Yesterday I thought a cat was being strangled!”
“Oh really?” the ice queen asked, looking up. “Cinderella you say? And I suppose it’s that old man, Dr Suzuki, who’s teaching her to play is it? I wondered why she was going to his cottage every day. Well. As you know, I am a fair queen, a kind queen. I only want what’s best for us all. And it seems to me, that we should all have the best possible music gracing our ears. My music may be icy – my violin is made of ice, my bow an icicle and my strings made from frozen unicorn tears after all – but it is beautiful. I therefore suggest, if you will allow me the conceit…” her eyes flashed…
“I suggest that we hold a competition. A violin playing competition. I will allow Cinderella to practise her violin every day for one hour, for one year. See how fair I am? One whole year. And we will meet here again at the next vernal equinox (March 21st to you and me) and whoever can play the best will win, and the other will never, ever play any music on any instrument ever again.”
“And as you may have noticed, if you are not all as thick-headed as your potato-faces suggest, Cinderella’s violin is thawing my ice violin’s winter spell. If she wins, spring will return to your lands, and I shall leave you.”
Well, the villagers could hardly object. They were terrified of the wicked ice queen anyway, and this didn’t seem like such a bad deal. Not that they thought Cinderella could win. Her playing was sincerely atrocious. And not that they thought that the ice queen would keep her promise if she lost anyway. But potato-headed as they may have been, they knew better than to backchat an ice queen who keeps a unicorn captive and crying in a tiny ice cage, just for fun. So they agreed, and went back to scratching out their pitiful, cold existence.
And Cinderella practised her violin, every day. And the villagers covered their ears every day, the dogs barked and then whimpered, the ducks ran away and hid, the hens tucked their heads under their wings. Time after time Cinderella wanted to give up. “It’s no use,” she sobbed to the old man, “I’ll never be any good.” Some days she stamped her feet. One day round about the middle of July she just threw the violin down and ran off home, tears streaming down onto her grey rags.
As bad as the music was though, each time she played the patches of green grass grew bigger, and the buds sprouted and the birds let out feeble cheeps. And each evening the ice queen plucked her strings from the unicorn’s tail, moistened them with his tears and froze them with a glare, and played, and played her icy melody out over the valley, the green turned back to white and the water to ice, as surely as night sets after day.
So the next morning Cinderella dried her eyes and with new determination she stomped back to the cottage, and the old man had fixed the violin with love and care, and she hung her head and said sorry and she played again, and every day after that, and for one hour each and every day, without any more stomping or huffing or whining (well maybe just a bit, once a week or so). And the old man kept encouraging her: “To learn how to play the notes is called Knowledge. To practise them ten thousand times is called Ability.” Cinderella had heard it all before and she’d lost count a long time ago, but now she could hear the music, the magic, the springtime in her playing.
By the time of the autumnal equinox, the villagers had pretty much forgotten about the competition. The days were getting short, the nights long. The patch of green hardly appeared now when Cinderella played. It was a mild winter, milder than they’d known in years, but the villagers didn’t notice that. They just turned up their collars, closed their shutters and huddled together for warmth, hoping to live to see the days lengthen again and the warm yellow of the spring sun. Same as every year.
And Cinderella played, she played her hour each day and on the coldest, shortest, darkest most miserable day of the year, December 23rd, a proper pea souper of a frozen fog hanging in the air, she wanted to give up again. But the old man had a surprise up his sleeve – literally. He pulled from his sleeve three battered sheets of yellowed music paper. With a melody etched on.
The paper read “JS Bach, Minuet #2″ It took a long time for Cinderella to learn the piece, almost three whole months (ten thousand times is a lot of hours!) but as she worked away she could hear the most wonderful, uplifting melody emerging from the cacophony of squeaks and squawks and wrong notes. It was early March when she finally mastered it, and each time she played the springtime was emerging faster and faster and she played faster and faster and better and better and the days got longer and warmer and the birds were singing and squirrels dancing and ducks laying and cocks chasing hens up and down the yards and it was crazy, crazy springtime, everyone was going crazy!
And on the 21st of March the ice queen came down from the ice palace with the unicorn trotting behind. Cinderella and the villagers were ready for the big showdown. But the ice queen just took Cinderella’s hand and kissed it, leaving a tear on the back of her hand. Cinderella noticed that the ice queen’s hand was warm. And the unicorn was not crying as he trotted over and nuzzled his mane on Cinderella’s shoulder.
The ice queen smiled, bowed her head and walked away quietly, never to return.
Cinderella looked up to the ice palace and saw that the springtime had reached it too, the icicles were melting and the unicorn’s cage was no more, the bars had melted away too.
The End
I hope this springtime story warms your heart today, on the first day of spring, the Vernal Equinox, as music did the heart of a wicked ice queen, once upon a time, in a land far far away.
1. Transparency = trust [social media leaves businesses with nowhere to hide]
2. Local. Local local local local local! [eg. Mary Portas' British knicker lace shocker]
3. ”The Innovator’s Dilemma”: big companies konw they need to innovate, and know they can’t do it. [see Clayton Christensen's excellent book of same name]
4. Collaborative partnerships to co-create solutions. [business+customer, business+startups, business+supply chain, even business+competitors] [= solutions to problem 3.] [possible outputs: create new products/services, access new markets, frugal innovation, disrupt competitors' advantage]
5. Metrics. Companies need reliable ways to measure and communicate the impact of their CR activities.
Thanks to BITC and UBM for an excellent event.
What do you think? Have I identified the right themes? What else is important or challenging for your business this year? Perhaps your company is doing something special you would like people to know about? Do leave a comment below.
You may have followed my travails working out the best way to get Likes to my pages on Facebook. [see previous post]
You might also have tried it yourself. Have you? If so you may have come to the same conclusion as me … that making successful Pages is relatively simple (Zuck and friends have created an amazingly intuitive system) but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. You know that chess quote: “knowing the rules of chess and being a good chess player are two different things” – same with FB pages. There are a number of tricks and tips that combine to make a Page take off.
I actually took a course last year and spent a good month trying it out before I got the hang of it and got my first 10,000 Likes. It took me many more months to finally crack how to make my pages work for me and my business. It still sometimes feels like a dark art – more sorcery than science – but by rigorously split-testing your actions you can build up a picture of WHAT works, even before you find out WHY it works.
My four main Pages combined now have over 25,000 Likes. Three of those pages I don’t even actively engage with nowadays (they were tests) but they keep attracting new people as their members share new posts every day. That’s nice to see.
Here are five things I’ve learnt that may be helpful to you too:
- Don’t give up if you don’t get it right first time. My first ‘ethical business’ page got stuck at 124 Likes and I couldn’t shift it. I actually sulked then, since my ‘frivolous’ pages (Hello Kitty and Lady Gaga themed) were rocking in the thousands. A few months later I retried it with EthicalStartups and it took off like a rocket. 10,000 Likes in just three weeks, and climbing steadily since.
- Work with what you believe in – be authentic. Don’t change who you are to suit what other people are. Keep your voice and those who want to hear you will find you, eventually. What’s the point of building up a network of people you don’t genuinely click with? You won’t want to hang out with them online and it will be obvious.
- If your Page is supporting your business, make sure it fits into your business strategy. Facebook is a lot of fun, but if you want or need it to be more than that, you need to think it through. Internet marketing guru Rich Schefren says “you read a book from beginning to end, but you design a business from the end to the beginning”. Have your “business blueprint” ready (full business plan or just a back-of-envelope sketch) or – even better – work it up in parallel, since your Pages will give you great marketing insights for finding out what people are actually looking for and how you can help them.
- Play the long game – or as Gary Vaynerchuk quoted Beyonce: “Put a Ring on It” – don’t act like a 17-year old on a first date. If you’re not genuinely interested long-term in the people who Like your page, if you don’t want to help them find interesting info and ideas and connect with likeminded folks, don’t bother. Social media is social – be sociable! Think of your Facebook page like a house party, not a trade fair. [That doesn't even work on LinkedIn where people go with work in mind, so it definitely absolutely categorically will not on FB.]
- Keep track of your successes and failures – and learn from them. Use split-testing for everything you do (it’s really incredible how much you can find out from this, scientifically. Just a decade ago marketing was like groping in the dark, now we have … METRICS! FB Insights! … use them!) Keep track of your time spent, as everyone knows social media can chew up your life. You need to be in control, as time=money. 15-minute timesheets, people! (At least, once in a while to check you’re on track.)
OK I hope that helps and if you would like to know more – or get some direct help with your own Page and fit it into your business strategy – do get in touch. [Leave a comment below and I'll contact you.]
Here are three brilliant, for-profit businesses that are “doing well by doing good”, pushing boundaries and taking risks in search of new solutions.
Innovation with values. Success without compromise.
1. OMEGA & SWATCH GROUP – pioneering technical partnerships
One of the first Main Partners (financial and technical sponsors) of Solar Impulse, the world’s first solar plane. OMEGA is responsible for the instrument panel, vibrating alarm devices in the pilot’s sleeves and an ultra-lightweight landing light system which delivers an astonishing watts per weight ratio and incorporates Swatch resilient plastics. OMEGA have also undertaken the timekeeping for the Olympics 24 times to date.
They say: “Solar Impulse Partners have in common a pioneering spirit, a long-term vision and a desire to explore new horizons. They share the basic values of the project: exploration, technological innovation, competence, entrepreneurial expertise, passion, teamwork, dream and emotion. Like Solar Impulse’s initiators, they are keen to use these values to promote renewable energies and the technologies needed for protecting the environment.”
2. DEUTSCHE BANK - Impact Investment Fund (social benefit + financial return)
“Deutsche Bank is the first investment bank to create a discrete, ring-fenced fund to invest in this nascent asset class (Impact Investment) … The fund itself will be to a maximum of £10million, to be invested over the next three years, and to be repaid over 10 years.”
Not only that, the bank displays an impressive range of CSR projects including several design competitions – one of our favourite methods of pushing innovation forward.
3. ATELIER TEN - global leaders in environmental engineering
“We are committed to high- performance and sustainable design within the built environment. We use our imagination, knowledge and experience to contribute to our clients’ success. Enlightened but pragmatic solutions are a hallmark of our work.”
Founded in London in 1990 by progressive engineers, Atelier Ten now have offices in Glasgow, New York, New Haven, San Francisco and Abu Dhabi. Their world-class projects include Yale University Kroon Hall and “The Visionaire”, the first LEED Platinum condominium building in New York City.
