Month: May 2020

Good Leadership: Example – Mitigating Crime

Posted on May 31, 2020 in Ethos, Government, Implementation, Strategy, Tactical

Go Lean Commentary

Why is leadership so important?

Think of society as a vessel or a vehicle; only one person “steers the ship” or drives the bus. The direction and speed of the vessel-vehicle is determined by the leadership; so too its safety. This is the actuality of the “Ship of State”. Yes, we put a lot of responsibilities and privileges in the hands of our societal leaders, so we had better choose well. We had better select those with Good Leadership skills, practices and intentions as our lives may depend on it.

In fact, this is the origins of civilization and society. City-States built walls to protect their occupants; kings were the warriors or commanders-in-chief protecting their people. Security was the only consideration for Good Leadership at that time; economic stewardship and efficient governance are all more-modern evolutions.

As related in a previous blog-commentary, the emergence of the implied Social Contract codified the expectations of all parties involved in society. Despite the forms of government or versions of constitutions, the principles are all similar in the expectation of citizens versus their governments. That Social Contract is summarized as follows:

Citizens surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority of the State in exchange for protection of remaining natural and legal rights.

This is a matter of public safety and security. Good Leadership ensures that the mutual deliveries of the Social Contract are fulfilled. Good Leadership, therefore, should mitigate crime in the jurisdictions of their homeland. (See the feature article from the Caribbean member-state of the Turks and Caicos Islands in the Appendix below). While citizens may love their homeland, there must be the assurance that the homeland loves (and protects) their citizens back.

“Love their citizens back …”

This has long been a problem in many countries. There is blatant discrimination and unequal justice in many communities that have yet to reconcile their dysfunctional racial realities – think the United States of America. The primary responsibility for delivering public safety – for mitigating crime – is the local police, but for many American communities, the police do not “serve and protect”; they are the threat to peace and security. This commentary have long reported on “Cop on Black” atrocities in America; but this is also a problem in other countries like Canada, UK, France and the Netherlands.

Do you see that pattern?

Those countries are the exact destinations for many of the Caribbean Diaspora. The Black-and-Brown of the Caribbean had fled their homeland in search of refuge but instead have found a more threatening climate in their new homes. See the VIDEO in the Appendix below where the Black populations – and those that love them – are protesting. If only, these ones were able to prosper where planted in their ancestral homelands and did not have to leave in the first place.

This is the quest of the new Caribbean governance as presented in the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean; the book posits that an embrace of Good Leadership can allow for these communities to reform and transform, allowing more success in the mitigation and remediation of crime.

This is the completion of the Teaching Series on Good Leadership from the movement behind the Go Lean book; this is entry 6 of 6 for the month of May 2020. This submission asserts that Good Leadership in the administration of a Caribbean regional security force and police force can have immediate effect on public safety and justice institutions – we can mitigate crime. The full catalog for this month’s series is listed as follows:

  1. Good Leadership – Inaction could be deadly
  2. Good Leadership – Caring builds trust; trust builds caring
  3. Good Leadership – Agile: Next Generation of leadership and project delivery
  4. Good Leadership – Hypocrisy cancels out Law-and-Order
  5. Good Leadership – Example – “Leader of the Free World”
  6. Good Leadership – Example – For Mitigating Crime

The 30 member-states of the Caribbean need to reform and transform the Homeland Security deliveries in the region to better fulfill the Social Contract. We do not want our good citizens forced to leave to find refuge abroad. That refuge is elusive there in those foreign abodes, so the “best bet” is to do the work here to elevate society. What exactly can be done to mitigate crime in the Caribbean region?

Plenty!

There are many strategies, tactics and implementations. In fact, we have exhausted this topic … in the Go Lean book and in previous blog-commentaries. See this sample here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14424 Title: Repairing the Breach: Crime – Need, Greed, Justice & Honor
“Black men and boys” in the US amount to 6.5 percent of the total US population but 40.2 percent of the prison population. Surely, there are some special issues associated with this special interest group, but “Yes, we can” reduce crime among this special sub-population. While this is an American drama, 29 of the 30 Caribbean member-states feature a majority Black-and-Brown demographic, so there is relevance for us.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13476 Title: Future Focused – Policing the Police
People flee their Caribbean homelands for many different reasons, including deficiencies in security measures. There is the need to Police the Police. This will mean giving help and support to policing authorities, but also accountability too. There must be “good” checks-and-balances.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7485 Title: A Lesson in the History of Interpersonal Violence – Street Crimes
To elevate Caribbean society there must be a focus on the region’s security and governing engines to provide justice assurances. Street violence stems from 3 considerations: 1. Need, 2. Greed, and 3. Justice. The Go Lean roadmap addresses jobs, to lower the “need” factor. Plus, the emergence of new economic drivers will bring “bad actors” who would seek to exploit the opportunities for greed, so there is an intense focus on White Collar crime mitigations. Lastly, the last factor “justice” addresses street riots, civil unrest and other outbursts against perceived injustices. So the “Justice Institutions” – in the new Caribbean – must be optimized to ensure accountability, fairness, equality, law-and-order for all.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7179 Title: Crime Specialist Urging: ‘Change Leaders in Crime Fight’
Remediating and mitigating crime is both an “Art” and a “Science” so we have to rely on professionals and Subject Matter Experts – the Police – to do this job efficiently and effectively. These ones need to learn and abide by best-practices. The chain-of-command is essential for law enforcement, so change the head – leaders – and the body will follow.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6693 Title: Ten Puerto Rico Police Accused of Criminal Network
An exposed case of corruption by police officials in PR have demonstrated that this community is not so elevated in their societal engines, an expectation due to their US territorial status. American territories (PR & USVI) need this Go Lean roadmap just like the rest of the Caribbean region.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5307 Title: 8th Violent Crime Warning to Bahamas Tourists
The stewards of the new Caribbean economic eco-systems, need to pay more than the usual attention to Travel Alerts about crime in the region. We must be On Guard to mitigate and remediate threats with anti-crime initiatives, even “policing the Police”.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=392 Title: Jamaica to receive World Bank funds to help in crime fight
Crime has proceeded to cast such a “dark cloud” on Jamaica that the country is near the assessment of a “Failed-State”. The World Bank funded grants to help Jamaica in 3 ways: 1. Improved services, 2. Basic infrastructure and 3. Targeted crime & violence interventions.

The focus is for Homeland Security, not just for mitigating crime. All threats (foreign and domestic) against Caribbean society must be addressed. This includes elevating the effectiveness and efficiency of First Responders for all of these Bad Actors:

That last one – pandemics – is all the rage right now. There are no Ands, Ifs or Buts, with the current Coronavirus-COVID-19 crisis, Good Leadership would do a better job of managing such a crisis. We also have to contend with policing the Police.

Also notice too that the Go Lean roadmap calls for the mitigating the eventual ‘Abuse of Power’. Since “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”, there is the need to monitor, mitigate and manage the risks of bad behavior among law enforcement, security personnel and elected leaders – this is the cause for complaint in the US right now (Appendix below).

This is an important consideration for us in the Caribbean considering our prior history with the Pirates of the Caribbean. That was an example of a prevalence of a lawless society and a blatant abuse of power. This was detailed in the previous entry of this series – 4 of 6 – for May 2020 – Good Leadership #4: Hypocrisy cancels out Law-and-Order – it stressed how important optimizing justice institutions to ensure law-and-order for all. See this excerpt here:

For Good Leadership, those at the top must avoid hypocrisy, or hypocritical standards.

This is right, no one should be “above the law”; when there is the manifestation of Bad Actors that operate “above the law” or “without law”, then chaos ensues in society. This is an issue of justice, fairness, mercy and law-and-order. This is the historicity of our regional homeland; remember the Pirates of the Caribbean.

No doubt, the Caribbean region needs Good Leadership to mitigate crime in the homeland. We must appoint leaders to “serve and protect” our residents and trading partners – think tourists and Direct Foreign Investors. We need to do better at this. We need to dissuade our own people from fleeing to find refuge and we need to invite others to come from afar to enjoy our hospitality. This will make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. We hereby urge all Caribbean stakeholders to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap to forge and benefit from Good Leadership.  🙂

About the Book
The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society – for all member-states. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

  • Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
  • Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society.

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

Who We Are
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 11 – 13):

x. Whereas we are surrounded and allied to nations of larger proportions in land mass, populations, and treasuries, elements in their societies may have ill-intent in their pursuits, at the expense of the safety and security of our citizens. We must therefore appoint “new guards” to ensure our public safety and threats against our society, both domestic and foreign. The Federation must employ the latest advances and best practices of criminology and penology to assuage continuous threats against public safety. ….

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes … can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

xxiv.  Whereas a free market economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, the Federation must install the controls to better manage aspects of the economy: jobs, inflation, savings rate, investments and other economic principles. Thereby attracting direct foreign investment because of the stability and vibrancy of our economy.

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

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Appendix – Title: Governor’s statement on addressing crime in Turks and Caicos
Sub-title: Governor’s statement on addressing crime in Turks & Caicos Islands delivered during 10 September joint press conference.

Let me start, as the Governor, by welcoming you. For those listening to us on the radio we are in the Premier’s Office and I’m joined by the Premier and the recently appointed Commissioner of Police. We also have with us the Deputy Governor, Deputy Premier, and the Executive Leadership team of the Police Force.

We are here to describe and take questions about the recent spike in the murder rate on the islands.

Let me first start with the most important group we want to acknowledge; the victims. Their lives taken, their futures stolen. Their families, their friends hurt beyond imagination. Those who were their parents, their partners, their sweethearts, their brothers, their sisters, their children. Those who were once at their school or who shared a work place or who just thoroughly enjoyed their company or their humour. Those that loved them intensely in life and those who had no idea how much they thought of them until they were gone.

I’m very aware that a life taken away – suddenly, unexpectedly and violently – is a blow very hard to deal with. There’s an immediate overwhelming heart-stopping shock to be replaced over time by a feeling of sadness that remains and returns when least expected. No opportunity for a final goodbye, no opportunity to perhaps put something right or say something that needed to be said.

The cold statistic of 10 murders doesn’t start to explain the impact this has on those very close to the person who has lost their life, but also on a community. And on an island, which is one extended community, a violent attack on one member feels like an attack on us all. I speak therefore for all of us when I say we want to bring those who did this, to your loved ones, and to our community, to justice.

Beyond gaining justice for those we have lost, you quite rightly want to know what we are going to do about this to prevent further loss, and that’s the purpose of this press conference.

I promised when I was sworn in that I was going to be clear, and in being ‘clear’ I was going to be ‘straight’. So what we are not going to do is down-play the seriousness nor are we going to offer you the illusion of a quick fix.

Anyone suggesting there is one, hasn’t looked at a whole range of comparative scenarios from around the region or from around the world as to how serious crime has to be tackled across government and society.

I said when appointing the new local Deputy Commissioner, last month, that when we come to talking about ‘the police and crime’ we have reached the end of a conversation rather than having a much needed conversation about its causes. It’s going to take time, and it’s going to take far more than just ‘the police’ to develop a society that’s at ease with itself and where serious crime is a genuine aberration.

The important march on Sunday, led by our church leaders, supported by the Honourable Premier and Honourable Leader of the Opposition, which placed an emphasis on society and community, was an excellent example that these leaders, religious and secular, understand that.

In being clear and in being straight we are also not going to engage in hyperbole or stoke emotions. What our collective intention is, in a leadership role, is to inform you with facts. What’s the issue? What’s being done?

I’m first going to say something about the leadership, not only of this issue, but our general approach to leading the country at times such as this, and then something about what the facts are telling us. The Commissioner is then going to talk about the immediate policing response that he and his Executive Team have led. Most importantly the Premier is going to talk to the wider societal issues and her government´s continued support to the police as we move forward. We will then take questions.

Let’s start at the top. The most important thing we, as a national leadership team can do, at this time, is lead. The symbolism of the three of us presenting together should not be lost on you, nor on the criminals. We have been working on this, in the background, as part of the National Security Strategy since I arrived and we had expected to explain this change of approach, when we rolled that out. But today we have the opportunity to give you a glimpse of how we are going to lead national and internal security going forward.

The world is now too complex for there to be institutional stovepipes and we intend to lead in a joined up way in the expectation that others will match our behaviours and work across institutional boundaries to deliver results.

Beyond that simple thought: those on the front line delivering operational impact; those paying for it; those who are held responsible to the electorate; those who can propose policy and deliver legislation, and; those who hold the Constitutional lead, including in extremis the power to call on emergency powers, or on international support, have to be working in sympathy.

Being blunt, if we can’t get it together at the top, what hope below. Some have called this a crisis (given what I’ve seen in my life this isn’t, I assure you, a crisis). But if it is, it’s also an opportunity to make this three way relationship meaningful. The three of us have seized that opportunity. It’s now the new normal. Key point: every resource and power available to us can, as we wish, now be focused rapidly when and where we want it to be because we are joined up.

So what’s the problem we are seeking to solve? I’ve already described 10 murders. That’s 10 too many; justice needs to be done and will be done. Beyond that, what else are the facts telling us.

The first is, is that the emotions the public are feeling, are grounded in truth. I’m going to give you the facts as to why we should as a society be concerned and focused. What we should not be, as a society is panicked or afraid. In this regard what is not helpful are misleading accounts on social media of phantom shootings and non-existent attacks that distract police from dealing with issues where there is genuinely life at risk.

If you are spreading a story on social media about an attack that’s supposedly occurring but that you’ve not witnessed, please pause and think. Are you helping make society better and safer. Gossip and rumour are toxic at the best of times but when they promote unnecessary fear, when what we need is strength and resilience, they become part of the problem. Please be part of the solution. Please deal in known facts.

I want to first of all explain one fact that I know you are less interested in but one that is none-the-less accurate and important. Year-on-year the overall (and I stress the word here overall) crime statistics have been falling. Over five years overall crime is down 30%. I’ve been with our police more since my arrival than I have been with my own team. We have an increasingly good force. The statistics tell us that away from the most serious crime where there are really deep non-policing factors at play, our police have been getting better at doing their job and part of this is down to investments made in them.

But I also know that, at this moment, this is not the figure that you are interested in. What you are interested in are the levels of serious crime. On this issue the figures tell us an interesting story. Over the last five years they initially rose to peak in 2016/17 at 426 serious crimes that year to then fall back, in line with other falls in crime rate, to 314 last year.

So what’s happened this year. If we look at the April to August figures and compare them to last year, there is a sharp increase in serious crime. If you break this down further it’s not ‘murder’ (the very visible and appalling tip of the ice-burg) that shows a significant increase but instead that which is less easy for the press or public to see: ‘firearms offences’.

Murder, itself, shows a relatively small rise but the more general firearms offences have increased from 26 last year to 62 this year. That’s very significant.

Some of these firearms offences are linked to robbery, it’s those that we know are causing widespread public concern, but a significant number are indeed ‘retaliation’, not so much linked to gangs or turf, but to perceived arguments and disrespect amongst groups. It’s an uncomfortable truth, but it’s a truth the three of us need to share with you, that much of this problem is not imported, it’s home grown. Its not ‘the other’, it’s ‘us’.

It’s also worth saying that we believe we are dealing with a very small number of criminals – who are increasingly becoming known to us – and when arrested and charged – because there is evidence that can be put before the court – will reduce, possibly seriously reduce, the problem we have right now.

Having explained the local picture I now want to say something about how this impacts on our tourist industry as it’s not just local but international commentators that are following this. The way murder rates are calculated globally is by death per 100,000. In a country as small as ours just one murder starts to impact on this ratio. Just one bad individual can start to change the way our Islands are presented globally.

The facts are that in 5 years we have lost only two tourists to murder. One at a resort, one in a private residence. That is two too many. Everything I said at the start of this conference about the devastating shock to family and friends I want to reemphasize, again. The shock is exacerbated because these were our guests in our country, away from their family and their friends and they came because they knew they were coming to a world class, amazingly relaxed and tranquil destination, that have people returning year-on-year, who in many cases see it as their second spiritual home, because they love these islands and her people. It is, and it remains, one of the most perfect destinations in the world.

The facts regarding tourist safety are we have 1.8 million tourists arriving with us by air or sea every year. A tourist is statistically extraordinarily safe; almost certainly safer than in their home country. It’s important, as we face down the problem we have, we don’t unintentionally signal that this island is anything other than amazingly safe for our visitors and what a superb job our tourist industry do in ensuring their guests have an extraordinary time with them and with us.

Finally TCI: we are bigger, we are better and we are stronger than allowing a small number of bad men, to bring fear into our amazing country. The stoicism we show in times of natural disaster is admirable; let’s show it now. As you hear the Commissioner and Premier speak let’s all of us assume ‘agency’, not just in observing the problem, but being a part of the wider societal solution.

As I hand over to our Commissioner, I end where I began, we are determined to bring those who are working so hard to undermine our society to justice. Our thoughts – indeed our motivation – come from us understanding the deep hurt that these men did to the victims and those close to their victims – and if this ever was to your mind a crisis, it’s now become a realised opportunity. You have an unshakable national team that intends to impose itself on this and any future national security problem. This is therefore an important moment for the country in more than one sense. Commissioner, over to you.

Published 18 September 2019

Source: Posted September 18, 2019; retrieved May 31, 2020 from: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/governors-statement-on-addressing-crime-in-turks-and-caicos

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Appendix VIDEO – Protests over George Floyd’s death spread across the United States … and the World – (Redfish)

 – https://youtu.be/QK6zJo3o8l8

Fábio Duarte Persiani
Posted May 31, 2020 –

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Good Leadership: Example – “Leader of the Free World”?

Posted on May 30, 2020 in Ethos, Government, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

Is this standard still valid (as reported in a previous commentary)?

The United States of America presents itself as the “City on the Hill“, the richest, most powerful model democracy in the history of the world. But this country has some societal defects – i.e. Institutional Racism & Crony-Capitalism – that are so acute that they distort the American reality as a Great Society. …

In addition to the country presenting itself as a model democracy, the Chief Government official in the US, the President of the United States (POTUS) is considered the “Leader of the Free World” – this has been the association ever since the start of the Cold War (early 1950’s)..

This is a commentary about Leadership; and the urgent need for it during this Coronavirus-COVID-19 crisis. So can we look to American entities as good examples of Good Leadership?

Yes and No … and Yes.

Yes

The good example of America is its “kinetics in evolution”, not the snapshot it presents to the world. The country is always trying to get better, always evolving. This used to be the defined characteristic of America:

  • White
  • Rich
  • Straight and able-bodied.

… but now today, so many other definitions of Americans have emerged and have been empowered. Think: minorities, women, LGBT, disability-challenged, etc..

No

The current POTUS – Donald Trump – is not to be credited as the “Leader of the Free World”. He has not provided a good example of Good Leadership. He is not ready, willing nor able. This is not our opinion alone; see this portrayal here:

Title: COVID-19 further confirms: The position of ‘Leader of the Free World’ is vacant

On Aug. 8, 1990, President George H.W. Bush gave a rare Oval Office address announcing America’s response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait just days earlier. In the days leading up to the speech, Bush had worked tirelessly with his national security team to build a coalition of nearly 40 leading nations to condemn Iraq’s illegal invasion and to build support behind the critical UN Security Council Resolutions that fall.

In the speech, President Bush made special mention of his administration’s work to rally the world, “We are working around the clock to deter Iraqi aggression and to enforce U.N. sanctions. I’m continuing my conversations with world leaders. Secretary of Defense Cheney has just returned from valuable consultations with President Mubarak of Egypt and King Hassan of Morocco. Secretary of State Baker has consulted with his counterparts in many nations, including the Soviet Union, and today he heads for Europe to consult with President Ozal of Turkey, a staunch friend of the United States.”

Nearly 40 countries would contribute troops, weapons, and resources to the effort that would become Operation Desert Storm. In one of the shortest wars of the 20th Century, coalition forces overwhelmed Iraq’s military, and — just one hundred hours after the ground campaign started — President Bush declared a ceasefire to active hostilities.

This is a global crisis that will have generational ramifications.

Unlike his predecessors, who united the countries of the world against a common enemy, President Donald Trump has taken an inward, nativist approach in his speeches and actions. Writing in Foreign Affairs, former Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns noted Trump’s lack of international outreach. “Beyond individual phone calls with world leaders, he has made just one attempt to organize countries to band together — a single conference call with European, Canadian, and Japanese leaders in the G-7 forum he currently chairs.”

Whether President Trump likes it — or even comprehends our role in the world — the United States is the last and only indispensable nation when it comes to a global response to a global problem.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, China was on a course for rising economic parity with the United States on the world stage, but not now — at least in the short term. We have no idea how this pandemic will reshape the international economic order in the coming months and years, but China’s rise will likely continue. Right now, however, the United States enjoys a singular, unique and leading role in international affairs, and Trump is actively redefining and expanding the notion of “leading from behind.”

Perhaps the clearest recent example of a similar global economic calamity occurred during the 2008/2009 financial crisis, bridging both the end of the Bush Presidency and the start of the Obama Presidency. Both leaders and administrations recognized the need for American leadership on the world’s stage to reassure international markets and stem financial loses. As former Under Secretary Burns noted, “Both Bush and Obama understood that the United States, with all its power and immense credibility, had to lead if the world was going to prevent the Great Recession from becoming a Great Depression.”

During this COVID-19 pandemic, America’s credibility is being tested as never before. In direct contradiction to the very tone and message of President Bush’s speech 30 years ago addressing the invasion of Kuwait, President Trump spoke from the same Oval Office on March 11. Rather than speaking as the leader of the world’s only indispensable nation, Trump’s nativist tone called the European Union’s response to the pandemic a “failure” and sought to boast about America having “the greatest economy anywhere in the world by far.”

Historians differ on the origins of the phrase “Leader of the Free World,” but it is widely accepted that its use as a colloquialism for the president first started during the early years of the Cold War. Since the end of the Second World War, presidents of both parties have assumed the tremendous domestic and international mantle of leadership, with varying degrees of success, but always united in the primacy of the United States on the world’s stage.

The “free world” is desperate for American leadership during this global pandemic, but unfortunately for them — and us — that position is vacant.

Kevin Walling (@kevinpwalling) is a Democratic strategist, Vice President at HGCreative, co-founder of Celtic Strategies, and a regular guest on Fox News and Fox Business and Bloomberg TV and Radio. 

Source: The Hill; posted March 30, 2020; retrieved May 30, 2020 from: https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/490313-covid-19-has-further-confirmed-the-position-of-leader-of-the-free-world

Yes

A previous POTUS – Jimmie Carter – was/is a great example for “Leader of the Free World”. Consider this portrayal here:

Title: Former President Jimmy Carter Just Made a Solar Farm to Power Half His City
Sub-title: This is one action taken by one man…and it’s powering half a town.
By: Christianna Reedy

Steady Solar Supporter
In 1979, in the throes of the U.S. energy crisis, then President Jimmy Carter addressed the nation as he installed 32 solar panels designed to use the Sun’s energy to heat water. He told the country, “A generation from now, this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken, or it can be just a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people.”

Former President Carter’s vision for clean, renewable energy proved to be far ahead of his time.

While his successor, former President Ronald Reagan, had the panels removed, Carter and his family have continued their work toward ensuring that those 32 panels became a part of a much bigger story.

Carter leased 10 acres of land in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, to be used as a solar farm. This February, the solar development firm SolAmerica finally completed the project, which will have the capacity to meet more than half of the town’s energy needs.

This is, in essence, one action taken by one man…and it is powering half a town.

Then, in June of this year, the Carter family had 324 solar panels installed on the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, which will provide about seven percent of the library’s power.

The Power Of People
“Distributed, clean energy generation is critical to meeting growing energy needs around the world while fighting the effects of climate change,” Carter said in a SolAmerica press release. “I am encouraged by the tremendous progress that solar and other clean energy solutions have made in recent years and expect those trends to continue.”

Carter’s continued activism in support of renewables showcases the importance of local and individual efforts to reduce humanity’s reliance on fossil fuels, even in the absence of strong national initiatives.

We, the people, have power.

The solar farm in Plains is expected to generate 1.3 MW of power per year, which is equal to burning about 3,600 tons of coal. Over time, that will prevent a sizable amount of greenhouse gases from being emitted into our atmosphere.

Many individuals, communities, and even states are joining with Carter in working toward shifting to clean energy sources. Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, has invested in developing technology and products that are making solar energy cheaper than ever before. The U.S. states of New York, California, and Washington have banded together to form the “United States Climate Alliance” after President Donald Trump announced the country would pull out of the Paris Climate Accord.

These are just a few examples of people and communities who are working towards a sustainable future. And their work is bearing fruit — the construction of coal power plants is declining worldwide, and a new report projects that the U.S. will exceed its Paris Accord goals despite the recent withdraw. Regardless of the opposition, people around the world are choosing to embark on exciting adventure to a bright, renewable (and clean) tomorrow.

The future is looking bright.

Source: Posted July 11, 2017; retrieved May 26, 2020 from  https://futurism.com/former-president-jimmy-carter-just-made-a-solar-farm-to-power-half-his-city

VIDEO – Jimmy Carter’s Hometown Turns to Sun for Power – https://youtu.be/5-7SJ7Uz6xs  

Associated Press
Posted February 9, 2017 – Plains, Georgia, the hometown of President Jimmy Carter, is turning to the sun for power. Solar panels installed on Carter’s farmland are generating enough power to supply half of energy used in Plains. (Feb. 9)

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This is the continuation of a Teaching Series on Good Leadership from the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean; this is entry 5 of 6, which portrays samples and examples of Good Leadership. This entry specifically considers the President of the United States. The full catalog for this month’s series is listed as follows:

  1. Good Leadership – Inaction could be deadly
  2. Good Leadership – Caring builds trust; trust builds caring
  3. Good Leadership – Agile: Next Generation of leadership and project delivery
  4. Good Leadership – Hypocrisy cancels out Law-and-Order
  5. Good Leadership – Example – “Leader of the Free World”?
  6. Good Leadership – Example – For mitigating crime

For the 30 member-states of the Caribbean, we have no voice nor vote for the Office of the American Presidency; this disposition is even true for Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. Too bad, as we really need a selection of Good Leadership to emanate from that Office. There are no Ands, Ifs or Buts, with the current Coronavirus-COVID-19 crisis, Good Leadership would do a better job of managing such a crisis. We saw it before – GW Bush with SARS in 2003, GW Bush & Barack Obama with H1N1 in 2008/2009 and Obama with Ebola in 2014.

The historicity of this crisis is that Donald Trump came along, threw out the Pandemic Playbook (that was developed by Bush & Obama) and then didn’t have a plan at all. As related in the first entry in this 6-part series, his inaction caused thousands of deaths.

Sad!

Also, consider this sample of previous commentaries relating the inadequacies of the American hegemony on the Caribbean actuality. These show that we are both powerless and parasitic – poor us! See the sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18770 Christian Journal Urges: ‘Remove Trump; he is not a Good Leader’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18438 Refuse to Lose – Despite American Expansionism
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13746 American Mirage for a Caribbean Basin Security
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=17135 Way Forward – Puerto Rico: Learns its true status with America
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12468 State of the Union: Self-Interest of ‘Americana’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12380 A Lesson in History – ‘4th of July’ and Slavery
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10895 Trump’s Vision of the Caribbean: Yawn – He doesn’t care
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8099 Caribbean Image to America: ‘Less Than’?
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5353 POTUS and the Internet and the Caribbean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4551 US Territories – Between a ‘rock and a hard place’

In a previous entry of this series – 2 of 6 – for May 2020 – Good Leadership #2: Caring builds trust; trust builds caring – it was stressed how important “Trust” is:

Trust is very important for forging Good Leadership. Subjects must feel that they can trust their leaders, that the leaders care and would only have their best interest at heart. So actions of caring and trust are inter-related.

So the actual subjects and citizens of American leadership feel dismay emanating from the Office of the POTUS; they cannot Trust the current occupant – how much more for us in the Caribbean. Surely, you accept that “blood is thicker than water”.

This sad reality was actualized in April 2020 when this POTUS blocked the shipment of necessary PPE (Personal Protection Equipment) to Caribbean nations that had been bought and paid for them, to ensure all domestic needs were fulfilled before accommodating foreign requests – as a candidate in 2015/2016, Donald Trump did advocate for “America First”.

A previous POTUS – Harry Truman (1945 to 1957) – lived by the rule that the “buck stops here”.

Buck passing, or passing the buck, or sometimes the blame game, is the act of attributing to another person or group one’s own responsibility. It is often used to refer to a strategy in power politics whereby a state tries to get another state to deter or fight an aggressor state while it remains on the sidelines. Wikipedia

The Antipathy of Trump.

Truman recognized, acknowledged and accepted that the responsibility to protect the American people – and other allied nations – rests with him. How we miss that kind of Good Leadership!

No doubt, our Caribbean region needs our own Good Leadership. We cannot trust any POTUS, benevolent or malevolent, to look after us – we must Grow-up already!

In summary, Good Leadership is an Art and a Science. At a bare minimum, we must pursue the associated best practices ourselves rather than looking for someone else to pursue our best interest for us. Freedom is not free! We must pay the price ourselves to live, work and play in this “Free World”.

We want to be a protégé, not a parasite of the United States of America. The “buck stops here” – Grow Up Already!

We hereby urge all Caribbean stakeholders – even the ones in the Caribbean American territories – to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap. We must make the efforts ourselves to make our homeland a better place to live, work and play.  🙂

About the Book
The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society – for all member-states. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

  • Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
  • Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society.

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

Who We Are
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 11 – 13):

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes … can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

xxiv.  Whereas a free market economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, the Federation must install the controls to better manage aspects of the economy: jobs, inflation, savings rate, investments and other economic principles. Thereby attracting direct foreign investment because of the stability and vibrancy of our economy.

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

 

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Good Leadership: Hypocrisy cancels out Law-and-Order

Posted on May 24, 2020 in Ethos, Government, Implementation, Social

Go Lean Commentary

What is good for the goose is good for the gander. – Ancient Idiom

That is just the standard. Global Standard, that is! It assumes that moral code must be equally applied to all stakeholders. Any violation of this standard is considered hypocrisy, of which the end result is a total disrespect for all standards, rules and/or law-and-order.

For Good Leadership, those at the top must avoid hypocrisy, or hypocritical standards.

This is right, no one should be “above the law”; when there is the manifestation of Bad Actors that operate “above the law” or “without law”, then chaos ensues in society. This is an issue of justice, fairness, mercy and law-and-order. This is the historicity of our regional homeland; remember the Pirates of the Caribbean.

But no one is perfect, right?
Shouldn’t everyone be excused and tolerated even if they commit a misdeed every now and then?

While this is a popular notion – introducing a balance between justice and mercy – this is still a flawed philosophy, as many times the practice of justice and mercy is wielded unevenly. There appears to be a different standard at play: one of pluses and minuses; counting good acts versus evil acts, then taking the average.

This is familiar in the European rationalization. In my school days, there was a system of “Merits and Demerits”:

A point system for benevolent and malevolent behaviors.
Pros and Cons
Advantages and Disadvantages

It’s a flawed concept; it assumes that you will be acceptable, despite your shortcomings, if you only perform some good works … every now and then.

To anyone in leadership and contemplating leadership, I entreat you to flee from this flawed philosophy. This belies the actuality and reality of hypocrisy.

Yes indeed, there are certain demerits that cancels out any meritorious deeds a person may commit. Think murder, rape, child/elder abuse. For the New World, the Slave Trade was more than just a demerit; it was so morally indefensible, that hypocrisy – of the European colonizers – could not be excused, justified, rationalized or minimized.

In fact, go back in ancient history and think of the conduct – atrocities, lawlessness, debauchery, murder, naval hijackings, etc. – of the Pirates of the Caribbean and their actions during the eco-systems during Slave Trade. (Also, consider the very recent examples of the Sheriff eco-system for law-and-order in the United States). There is no doubt as to the historicity of these actors; where there is doubt, it is related to the lessons of the prevailing hypocrisy by the orthodox institutions.

This is the continuation of a Teaching Series on Good Leadership from the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean; this is entry 4 of 6, which details the lessons-learned from the hypocrisy of orthodox institutions on the demand of the public to abide by law-and-order; they simply do not! The full catalog for this month’s series is listed as follows:

  1. Good Leadership – Inaction could be deadly
  2. Good Leadership – Caring builds trust; trust builds caring
  3. Good Leadership – Agile: Next Generation of leadership and project delivery
  4. Good Leadership – Hypocrisy cancels out Law-and-Order
  5. Good Leadership – Example – “Leader of the Free World”?
  6. Good Leadership – Example – For mitigating crime

The days of the Pirates of the Caribbean provides a glimpse for today’s pandemic crisis; the blatant hypocrisy of the times made societal progress difficult. There are no Ands, Ifs or Buts; today, we need Good Leadership – among our political, corporate, religious and civic stakeholders – to survive and thrive as a society. We need to heed, adhere and comply with Good Leadership; we do not need blatant examples of hypocrisy cancelling out the Law-and-Order principles. We needed this hypocrisy-free climate before this COVID-19 pandemic; we need it now in the throes of this crisis – think quarantines, stay-at-home orders, wear masks orders, and isolation orders – and we will need it afterwards.

The theme of the atrocities of the Pirates of the Caribbean thriving amongst the hypocrisy of the colonial orthodoxy- the civilized world – has been accurately depicted in the 2014 premium cable television series called Black Sails; (4 seasons of 38 episodes). Though fictional, the characters portrayed in this drama are loosely based on many historical characters; this is Art imitating Life; Life imitating Art. Consider the actuality of historical characters that were serialized:

A new pirate adventure coming to Starz from Michael Bay in 2014 centers on the tales of Captain Flint and his men, and takes place twenty years prior to Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic “Treasure Island.”

Characters: Captain Flint, Long John Silver, William “Blackbeard” Teach, Anne Bonny, Governor Woodes Rogers, William “Billy” Bones.

See this First Trailer of: https://www.imdb.com/video/vi2814748185?playlistId=tt2375692

Wikipedia Summary: Set roughly two decades before the events of Treasure Island, the 2014 televised series Black Sails follows the adventures of Captain Flint and his pirate crew. His first name is given as James in the episode “VI.” Episodes “IX” and “XIII” further reveal that he is a disgraced former Royal Navy lieutenant named James McGraw, dismissed from the service for falling in love and having an affair with Lord Thomas Hamilton. He was exiled from England with Thomas’ wife, Miranda Barlow, who has subsequently since hidden herself as a lowly Puritan lady on the trading island of Nassau. Lord Thomas Hamilton was the son of Lord Alfred Hamilton, lord proprietor of the Bahama Islands. McGraw adopted the name “Flint” after a mysterious man who boarded his grandfather’s ship while at anchor and then disappeared. He is portrayed by Toby Stephens.

The historicity of the Pirates of the Caribbean is really stark in considering its impact on Caribbean society’s moral code, even down to this day. In a previous submission from the movement behind the Go Lean book, this summary was presented:

The distinction between a privateer and a pirate has always been vague beyond the licensing Letters of Marque. Without the letters, the parties were considered pirates; of which many frequented the Caribbean region. This industry employed many unemployed seafarers as a way to make ends meet, but became increasingly damaging to the region’s economic and commercial prospects.

Licensed (Privateers) versus unlicensed (Pirates) exhibited the same practices, same conduct, same capital offenses and the same value systems, the only difference: one was considered legitimate while the other was illegitimate. This morality – or lack there of – was based on a piece of paper from the established orthodoxy. This was pure and blatant hypocrisy!

No wonder many privateers and pirates alike abandoned adherence to the orthodox moral code of their day. This is proof that any lack of moral authority – clear standards on right versus wrong – does not bode well for Good Leadership. Unequal Justice emerges and thrives in this climate. The Caribbean was doomed … with this Bad Community Ethos; (Community Ethos = the fundamental character or spirit of a culture; the underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices of a group or society; dominant assumptions of a people or period).

Also, consider this sample of other previous commentaries related to the eco-system of piracy, independently and correlated to the dread of hypocrisy. These experiences are noted in regards to Caribbean society and other communities. See the sample list here::

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18337 Title: Unequal Justice: Bullying Magnified to Disrupt Commerce
Analogies abound … as to why it is important to “nip bullying in the bud”. If we do nothing – or not enough – then conditions of Unequal Justice go from “bad to worse”. The bad actor can emerge from terrorizing a family, to a neighborhood, to a community, to a nation, to a region, to a hemisphere, to the whole world. Think: Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, Soviet Russia, British Empire, Napoleonic France, Spanish Inquisition, and more …
Unchecked, bad actors in the community become tyrants – they can even affect the local economic engine.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18321 Title: Unequal Justice: Sheriffs and the need for ‘soft’ Tyrannicide
The need for justice can never be undermined, undervalued or questioned.People will abandon everything else – culture, family, home and comforts – in pursuit of justice, for themselves or their children. …
The reality of southern rural life for African Americans was that justice was impeded by one institution, often one character: the County Sheriff.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18100 Title: 400 Years of Slavery – Cop-on-Black Shootings in America’s DNA
Slavery was clearly an oppression, suppression and repression of the African race on American soil. This was true in the Year 1619 … and unfortunately; there is still some truth to this assessment in 2019, 400 years later. …
There is no slavery in America today; yet there is still some racial oppression-suppression-and-repression, especially evident in the dynamic of Cop-on-Black Shootings.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16104 Title: Guy Fawkes – A Lesson in History
Appendix B: Is Guy Fawkes Day relevant to Jamaica?
The Treaty of Madrid obliged Britain to control piracy, and this led to the imprisonment of pirate captain Henry Morgan who was shipped by boat to the Tower of London. But only Morgan could control the pirates, and so King Charles II made him governor of Jamaica to do that. Morgan controlled piracy by selling land cheaply to the pirates and they became the aristocracy. This meant that the ex-pirates became owners of slaves and masters of corruption and criminality that affects many Jamaicans to this day.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13746 Title: Failure to Launch – Security: Caribbean Basin Security Dreams
The Caribbean region has an eclectic history when it comes to security, think the bad actors of the Pirates of the Caribbean. Yet, those Pirates have since all been extinguished, thanks to a multilateral effort among European (and now American) imperial powers. Credit goes to the British, French and the Dutch military/naval powers of the past.
That was a BIG accomplishment in terms of regional security. Can we get that again? Can these championing national powers – and their descendants – come together and provide a modern day shield so as to project Caribbean homeland security anew?
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=673 Title: Ghost ships – Autonomous cargo vessels without a crew
In many ways automating a ship should be a lot easier than automating aircraft, Mr. Levander believes. For a start, if something did go wrong, instead of falling out of the sky a drone ship could be set by default to cut its engines and drop anchor without harming anyone. As for piracy, with no crew to be taken hostage it would be much easier for the armed forces to intervene. Of course, more modern pirates might try to hack their way into the controls of an autonomous ship to take command. Which is why encrypted data communication is high on the maritime industry’s list of things to do before ghostly vessels ply the trade routes.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=546 Title: Book Review- ‘The Divide’- Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap

The United States … seems to [have] a Great Divide in justice, one set of standards for the rich, another set for the poor.

The grass is not greener on that (American) side!
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=341 Title: Hypocritical US slams Caribbean human rights practices
The United States [is] meddling/voicing opinions about issues in other countries, while they themselves have less than a stellar human rights record on this subject. Consider that the State Department’s report many times cited prison conditions in the Caribbean states. This is classic “pot calling kettle black” – the US has the highest incarceration rate in the world[a]. What’s worse is the fact that 60% of the US prison population is Black or Hispanic; even though non-whites only committed 30.7% of the crimes. Obviously justice in the US is dependent on the access to money. Where is the Human Rights outcries there?!

In a previous entry of this 6-part series for May 2020 – Good Leadership #2: Caring builds trust; trust builds caring – it was stressed how important “Trust” is:

Trust is very important for forging Good Leadership. Subjects must feel that they can trust their leaders, that the leaders care and would only have their best interest at heart. So actions of caring and trust are inter-related.

Trust is definitely the opposite of hypocrisy.

As we measure against this proven formula for Good Leadership we see that many of the flaws in the Caribbean past were due to a hypocritical foundation that only made bad times worse. There was no way to look at the institution of slavery and see any good that could come from it – merits and demerits be damned. Then the situation worsened with the Pirates of the Caribbean attempting to exploit the economic gains for themselves.

The “buck stopped with the colonial leaders”. Who were they?

The English colonial organization structures were based on the system of “Lords Proprietors” – see Appendices below. The flaws and frailties of Nassau, Bahamas were dramatized in the premium TV series Black Sails – see the VIDEO Trailer here:

VIDEO – Black Sails | Official Trailer | STARZ – https://youtu.be/rT2Y5jjBNpQ

STARZ
Posted August 11, 2014 – The Golden Age of Piracy. New Providence is a lawless island, controlled by history’s most notorious pirate captains. The most feared – CAPTAIN FLINT.

Watch Black Sails now on the STARZ app: http://starz.tv/WatchSTARZYT

Subscribe now for more Black Sails clips: http://bit.ly/1kalhP0

Like Black Sails on Facebook: http://bit.ly/BlackSailsFacebookYT

Follow Black Sails on Twitter: http://starz.tv/BlackSailsTwitterYT

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  1. The Golden Age of Piracy. New Providence Island [(Nassau)] is lawless territory, controlled by notorious pirate captains. The most feared—Captain Flint. Driven by ulterior motives, Flint hunts the ultimate prize. But first he must overcome rival captains, the local smuggling kingpin, and a young sailor new to his crew—John Silver.

Like STARZ on Facebook: http://starz.tv/STARZFacebookYT
Follow STARZ on Twitter: http://starz.tv/STARZTwitterYT
Follow STARZ on Instagram: http://starz.tv/STARZInstagramYT 

A lot of this drama was set in Nassau, but Jamaica – think Port Royal – also proliferated with pirates. So there are lessons from this drama for us here in the full Caribbean. These lessons apply right up to this moment in our handling of today’s crises; think Coronavirus-COVID-19. Is there blatant hypocrisies today? Are we mandating one sets of rules for one group of people while ignoring those rules for others – think Black versus White, think rich versus poor, urban versus rural, tourists versus natives, etc..

In summary, the good and bad experiences of Caribbean leadership over the centuries are well documented. We see that the mandate for Good Leadership is uncompromising. We must strive for this at all times, otherwise subjects defy the laws of their leaders. (Many condemned Pirates of the Caribbean were belligerent and cursing the powers-that-be right up to their last words before execution). Bad people feel justified for their bad actions against good people because of the unreconciled hypocrisy. No doubt, we must dissuade organizational hypocrisy, institutional oppression and tolerated discrimination.

Yes, elevating Caribbean society means elevating the Caribbean character; we must start with the man in the mirror.

We hereby urge all Caribbean stakeholders – leaders and followers – to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap. This is how we will make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

About the Book
The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society – for all member-states. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

  • Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
  • Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society.

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

Who We Are
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 11 – 13):

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xii. Whereas the legacy in recent times in individual states may be that of ineffectual governance with no redress to higher authority, the accedence of this Federation will ensure accountability and escalation of the human and civil rights of the people for good governance, justice assurances, due process and the rule of law. As such, any threats of a “failed state” status for any member state must enact emergency measures on behalf of the Federation to protect the human, civil and property rights of the citizens, residents, allies, trading partners, and visitors of the affected member state and the Federation as a whole.

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes, including piracy and other forms of terrorism, can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

xxiv.  Whereas a free market economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, the Federation must install the controls to better manage aspects of the economy: jobs, inflation, savings rate, investments and other economic principles. Thereby attracting direct foreign investment because of the stability and vibrancy of our economy.

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

—————–

Appendix A – Lord Proprietor

A lord proprietor is a person granted a royal charter for the establishment and government of an English colony in the 17th century. The plural of the term is “lords proprietors” or “lords proprietary”.

Origin
In the beginning of the European colonial era, trade companies such as the East India Company were the most common method used to settle new land.[1] This changed following Maryland’s Royal Grant in 1632, when King Charles I  granted George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore proprietary rights to an area east of the Potomac River in exchange for a share of the income derived there.[2][3] Going forward, proprietary colonies became the most common way to settle areas with British subjects. The land was licensed or granted to a proprietor who held expanse power. These powers were commonly written into the land charters by using the “Bishop Durham clause” which recreated the powers and responsibilities once given to the County Palatine of Durham in England.[4][2] Through this clause, the lord proprietor was given the power to create courts and laws, establish governing bodies and churches, and appoint all governing officials.[2]

Governance of proprietary colonies
Each proprietary colony had a unique system of governance reflecting the geographic challenges of the area as well as the personality of the lord proprietor. The colonies of Maryland and New York, based on English law and administration practices, were run effectively. However, other colonies such as Carolina were mismanaged.[5] The colonies of West and East Jersey as well as Pennsylvania were distinct in their diversion from the traditional monarchial system that ruled most colonies of the time.[5] This was due to the large number of Quakers in these areas who shared many views with the lords proprietary.[5]

Effective governance of proprietary colonies relied on the appointment of a governor. The lord proprietor made the governor the head of the province’s military, judicial, and administrative functions. This was typically conducted using a commission established by the lord proprietor. The lord proprietor typically instructed the governor what to do.[6] Only through these instructions could legislation be made.[5]

…

Source: Retrieved May 23, 2020 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_proprietor.

—————–

Appendix B – Bahama Islands History; Arrival of the English

…
In 1670, King Charles II granted the islands to the Lords Proprietors of the Carolinas in North America. They rented the islands from the king with rights of trading, tax, appointing governors, and administering the country from their base on New Providence.[22][17] Piracy and attacks from hostile foreign powers were a constant threat. In 1684, Spanish corsair Juan de Alcon raided the capital Charles Town (later renamed Nassau),[23] and in 1703, a joint Franco-Spanish expedition briefly occupied Nassau during the War of the Spanish Succession.[24][25]

Appendix B – Bahama Islands History; Arrival of the English

…
In 1670, King Charles II granted the islands to the Lords Proprietors of the Carolinas in North America. They rented the islands from the king with rights of trading, tax, appointing governors, and administering the country from their base on New Providence.[22][17] Piracy and attacks from hostile foreign powers were a constant threat. In 1684, Spanish corsair Juan de Alcon raided the capital Charles Town (later renamed Nassau),[23] and in 1703, a joint Franco-Spanish expedition briefly occupied Nassau during the War of the Spanish Succession.[24][25]
18th century
During proprietary rule, The Bahamas became a haven for pirates, including Blackbeard (circa 1680–1718).[26] To put an end to the ‘Pirates’ republic‘ and restore orderly government, Great Britain made The Bahamas a crown colony in 1718 under the royal governorship of Woodes Rogers.[17] After a difficult struggle, he succeeded in suppressing piracy.[27]

Source: Retrieved May 23, 2020 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bahamas#Arrival_of_the_English

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Good Leadership: Next Generation of ‘Agile’ Project Delivery

Posted on May 23, 2020 in Ethos, Government, Implementation, Industries

Go Lean Commentary

Good Project Management = Good Leadership.

The Art & Science of Project Management is just one way of  improving leadership. As related in the course of this series on Good Leadership, it is possible to change the habits and practices of the leadership of any society. Start at the top or start with the head and the body will follow.

This is a discussion about “tools and techniques”. As the world advances, not only do our tools – think computer hardware, software and communication systems – become more efficient and effective, but also the techniques …

Technique – Lexico, powered by Oxford
A way of carrying out a particular task, especially the execution or performance of an artistic work or a scientific procedure.

Technological tools and techniques evolve … over time.

Speaking of technological evolution, there used to be a time that people with professional careers didn’t know how to …

Type; (think typewriter).

… lawyers, accountants, managers and other occupations would simply dictate (live or into a “Dictaphone”) or wrote freehand and someone else would do the actual typing.

That is right; the typewriter was only used by secretaries, journalists and/or authors; (think Murder She Wrote opening credits). There were jobs like “Typing Pool”, Key-Punch Operators and Data Entry Clerk. Previously, the professional staffers would simply delegate their typing duties to these clerical specialists. In fact, the job title “Clerk/Typist” still exists in the office hierarchy, popular in many government agencies, even though there may be no more typing in their duties.

Then the world changed; driven mostly by technology advances. The Personal Computer was introduced in 1981; then smartphones in the 2000’s; now everyone knows how to type, and do their own typing. The workplace adapted to the new normal.

More technological advances; more adaptation … this time with project leadership. As related, the Art & Science of Project Management is just one form of leadership; good Project Management is part-and-parcel to Good Leadership. The importance of this Art & Science is related in the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean with this quotation (Page 109):

10 Ways to Deliver – # 1: Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market & Economy initiative: Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU).
… There are many projects that must be delivered on time, within budget and with a measurable satisfaction. These include Public Works, Information Technologies, Industrialization and others. Embracing a technocratic ethos means that these projects cannot be left to chance and hope for the best. They must be delivered. The CU envisions strict project management disciplines in the planning and executions of these regional endeavors.

————-

The Bottom Line on Project Management Office
A Project Management Office (PMO) is a group or department within a business, agency or enterprise that defines and maintains standards for project management within the organization. The PMO strives to standardize and introduce economies of repetition in the execution of projects. The PMO is the source of documentation, guidance and metrics on the practice of project management and execution. In some organizations this is known as the Program Management Office (sometimes abbreviated to PgMO to differentiate); the subtle difference is that program management relates to governing the management of several related projects. The Project Management Institute (PMI) Program Management Office Community of Practice (CoP), describes the PMO as a strategic driver for organizational excellence, which seeks to enhance the practices of execution management, organizational governance, & strategic change leadership.

PMOs may take other functions beyond standards and methodology, and participate in Strategic project management either as facilitator or actively as owner of the Portfolio Management process. Tasks may include monitoring and reporting on active projects and portfolios (following up project until completion), and reporting progress to top management for strategic decisions on what projects to continue or cancel. Traditional PMOs base project management principles on industry-standard methodologies such as Six Sigma, CMM, Agile and PRINCE2 – (an acronym for Projects in Controlled Environments, version 2); it is a project management methodology. It was developed by the UK government agency Office of Government Commerce (OGC) and is used extensively within the UK government as the de facto project management standard for its public projects).

As the tools and techniques evolve, Agile is the new wave in Project Management. This allows for the role of skilled project managers in societal deliveries; (or skilled project delivery even without project managers). See how this actuality was related in the Go Lean book.

10 Ways to Deliver – # 2: Agile – Lean
Agile project management is an iterative and incremental method of managing the design-and-build activities for engineering, information technology, and new product or service development projects in a highly flexible and interactive manner. Agile, linked to lean techniques, (delivering more value with less waste) is best used in small-scale projects.

There are many flavors – methodologies and frameworks – of Agile. These refer to the values and principles espoused in the Manifesto for Agile Software Development (2010).[5]  These underpin a broad range of software development frameworks, including Scrum, Kanban.[6][7] and SAFe, the most popular subset. See more details on SAFe here; (and related VIDEO’s in the Appendices below):

The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) is a set of organization and workflow patterns intended to guide enterprises in scaling lean and agile practices.[1][2] Along with large-scale Scrum (LeSS), disciplined agile delivery (DAD), and Nexus, SAFe is one of a growing number of frameworks that seek to address the problems encountered when scaling beyond a single team.[3][4] SAFe is made freely available by Scaled Agile, Inc., which retains the copyrights and registered trademarks.[5]

SAFe promotes alignment, collaboration, and delivery across large numbers of agile teams. It was developed by and for practitioners, by leveraging three primary bodies of knowledge: agile software development, lean product development, and systems thinking.[6]

The primary reference for the scaled agile framework was originally the development of a big picture view of how work flowed from product management (or other stakeholders), through governance, program, and development teams, out to customers.[7][8] With the collaboration of others in the agile community, this was progressively refined and then first formally described in a 2007 book.[9] The framework continues to be developed and shared publicly; with an academy and an accreditation scheme supporting those who seek to implement, support, or train others in the adoption of SAFe.

Version 4.5, was released in June 2017[10] while the latest edition, version 5.0, was released in January 2020.[11]

While SAFe continues to be recognised as the most common approach to scaling agile practices (at 30 percent and growing),[12][13][14], it also receive criticism for being too hierarchical and inflexible.[15]

But the way technology advances and evolves, the only constant to change is change itself. So now even the “new thing” of Agile is being supplanted with an even “newer thing”. See this comment here from a relevant authority, and respected co-worker:

Quotation – Suman Surabi, Scrum Master with Daimler Benz (Mercedes-Benz Financial):

Agile is getting diluted…. SAFe and Kanban methodologies are being projected/becoming more popular these days.

If you looked 10 years back, or earlier, Project Management being very popular; then after from 2011-2016/17, Agile become very popular; now after especially from last 2 years SAFe is being projected by others as the popular methodology; even I agree with this to some extent.

… if you see the trends these days, the PM role has become negligible as many projects are going without PM’s – they may only have Product Owners, Scrum Masters and Product Managers. Where as in pure Agile projects, we used to have PM’s, now we see the trend for projects to be run without PM’s.

This commentary presents some strategies, tactics and implementations for pursuing the goal of reforming and transforming the Caribbean region. This commentary, along with the whole output from the movement behind the Go Lean book, asserts that Good Leadership is within reach for the Caribbean member-states. Just a little effort by the right people in the right positions and boom: Change, elevation and progress for everybody. “We” can do more with less.

Every month, the Go Lean movement presents a Teaching Series on a subject germane to Caribbean life. For this May 2020, our focus is on Good Leadership, positing that we need Good Leadership now more than ever, as the world battles the Coronavirus pandemic. This is entry 3 of 6 for this series, which details how to employ the tools and techniques of Agile to deliver projects on time, on budget and with a measurable satisfaction. The full catalog for this month’s series is listed as follows:

  1. Good Leadership – Inaction could be deadly
  2. Good Leadership – Caring builds trust; trust builds caring
  3. Good Leadership – Agile: Next Generation of leadership and project delivery
  4. Good Leadership – Hypocrisy cancels out Law-and-Order
  5. Good Leadership – Example – “Leader of the Free World”?
  6. Good Leadership – Example – For mitigating crime

There are no Ands, Ifs or Buts; we need Good Leadership – among our political, corporate, religious and civic stakeholders – to survive and thrive as a society. We needed this before this COVID-19 pandemic, and we will need it afterwards.

This theme, “effective leadership tools and techniques”, shows the positive consequences of leadership attempting to get better in their deliveries. The points of better deliveries, using lean-agile methodologies in a corporate setting (i.e. CitiGroup) was elaborated in a previous blog-commentary from August 9, 2018:

‘Lean Is’ as ‘Lean Does’ – Good Project Management

“It is good to be lean”.

But lean does not just happen, it takes real effort to be lean.

This is the awakening, right now at the Wall Street Big Bank CitiGroup. They are making an all-out effort to “do more with less” and they are thusly investing in “process and people” or “people and process” to be lean. They have launched an all-encompassing program branded CitiLean – a continuous improvement program with tangible and measurable benefits to Citi and its customers. This features “process and people” in every sphere of Citi’s operations: employees, contractors, suppliers and vendors. In fact, they even present an annual Lean Partner Award to recognize the supplier that most embodies the spirit of CitiLean.

The Go Lean book … asserts that any Caribbean super-national governance must be a lean operation, embracing the best-practices of the Art & Science of lean methodologies. The book opens with this introduction of lean (Page 4):

The CU will also be lean (adjective), in that it will not feature a “fat” bureaucracy. To the contrary, the institutions of the CU Trade Federation will embrace lean, agile, efficient organization structures – more virtual, less physical, more systems, less payroll. This will result in less of a tax burden for the people of the Caribbean.

Also, consider this sample of previous submissions of Good Leadership in corporate settings:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=19669 Keep the Change of “Working From Home”
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18749 Learning from Another ‘Great Place to Work’: Mercedes-Benz
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16002 Good Governance: Good Corporate Compliance
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16000 Good Governance: Facilitating Local Economic Empowerment
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15543 Fostering Caribbean Unity – Learning from the Ross University Saga
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14191 Scheduling and Lean Workforce Management in the ‘Gig Economy’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11184 JPMorganChase investing $10 billion in Lean ‘Fintech’ for just 1 year
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8966 For-Profit Education Companies – Plenty of Profit; Little Education
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2126 Where the Jobs Are – Computers Reshaping Global Job Market

In summary, there is a formula for Good Leadership in organization structures; this could be corporate entities or government agencies. The goal is to deliver on behalf of the stakeholders: shareholders or citizens. We need to double-down on this formula. Agile project management has proven that it can ensure on-time, on-budget deliveries. See the related VIDEO’s in the Appendices below.

There is a pandemic crisis – Coronavirus-COVID-19 – we need effective deliveries right now. The scientific best-practice is to:

  • Test
  • Trace
  • Isolate

A culture of Good Leadership, good administration and good delivery will help our society endure this crisis. Let’s all do more, with less – this is the mantra of agile, lean project management.

Yes, elevating Caribbean leadership will actually elevate Caribbean society.

We hereby urge all Caribbean stakeholders – corporate and government – to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap. This is how we will make our homeland a better place to live, work and play.  🙂

About the Book
The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society – for all member-states. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

  • Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
  • Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society.

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

Who We Are
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 11 – 13):

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes … can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

xxiv.  Whereas a free market economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, the Federation must install the controls to better manage aspects of the economy: jobs, inflation, savings rate, investments and other economic principles. Thereby attracting direct foreign investment because of the stability and vibrancy of our economy.

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

—————-

Appendix VIDEO 1 – What is Agile – https://youtu.be/Z9QbYZh1YXY  

Mark Shead
Posted May 31, 2016 – This short cartoon answers the question “What Is Agile?” and will give you the background to understand the Agile principles and values and how they can help you and your team work together more efficiently.

If you’d like a free book on this topic, please see below… https://mailchi.mp/326ba47ba2e8/agile…

I’ve published a book called “Starting Agile” that is designed to help you start your team’s Agile journey outright. You can buy a copy from Amazon, but I’m giving free copies away to my subscribers from YouTube.

You can signup for a copy at the link above.

You can subscribe to my channel with this link: https://www.youtube.com/markshead?sub…

If you’d like to connect with me on LinkedIn you can find me at the link below. Just send me a message saying hello and that you found me from one of my videos: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markshead

—————-

Appendix VIDEO 2 – What is Agile Methodology? – https://youtu.be/ZZ_vnqvW4DQ

Mark Shead
Posted Aug 22, 2018 – Agile is a collection of values and principles. So what is this “Agile Methodology” you keep hearing people talk about? If you’d like a free book on this topic, please see below…

I’ve published a book called “Starting Agile” that is designed to help you start your team’s Agile journey outright. You can buy a copy from Amazon, but I’m giving free copies away to my subscribers from YouTube.

You can signup for a copy at this link:

https://mailchi.mp/326ba47ba2e8/agile…

—————-

Appendix VIDEO 3 – Scrum vs Kanban – Two Agile Teams Go Head-to-Head – https://youtu.be/HNd1_irOL5k  

Posted Sep 27, 2017 –
Development That Pays

This is the tale of two Agile teams. It wasn’t just an organisational separation: it was an AGILE separation.

Download your FREE CHEAT SHEET: http://bit.ly/scrum-vs-kanban-cheatsheet

This is a story of Two Agile Teams. More correctly, it’s the tale of one Agile Team that split into two Agile Teams.

What makes the story interesting is that it was more than just an organisational separation.

It was an Agile separation:

– One team continued as before – with *Scrum*

– The other team dropped Scrum in favour of *Kanban*

Will it all end in tears?

→ SUBSCRIBE for a NEW EPISODE every WEDNESDAY: http://www.DevelopmentThatPays.com/-/…

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Good Leadership: Caring builds trust; trust builds caring

Posted on May 22, 2020 in Economics, Ethos, Government, Implementation

Lean Commentary

Do you want greatness?

Of course, every sane person desires to be around great friends, great family and maybe even work for a great company. In fact, then Presidential Candidate Donald Trump got support in the United States in 2015/2016 with the promise of “Making America Great Again”.

One of the most important ingredients for all great entities is great leadership. (Let’s scale it down to just Good Leadership). This is more than just a fantasy; families, companies and even countries can foster Good Leadership. There is a certain quality that makes this goal possible:

Trust.

Trust is very important for forging Good Leadership. Subjects must feel that they can trust their leaders, that the leaders care and would only have their best interest at heart. So actions of caring and trust are inter-related.

In a previous blog-commentary on “Fostering A Great Place to Work”, this main point was summarized:

There is a ‘Great Place to Work’ Institute that spent 25 years researching the best companies to work for around the world; they found that high levels of trust between employees and managers is the main element found in great workplaces.

Caring builds trust; trust builds caring …

While it is near impossible to change all the citizens of a country or all the employees of a company in “one fell swoop”, it is possible to change the habits and practices of its leadership team; (or maybe change the team). Start at the top – start with the head and the body will follow – within the organization structure and all stakeholders will experience the benefits of Good Leadership in due time.

Companies and countries … there are differences; there are similarities. While a company’s prime directive make be to maximize shareholder value, the country will be more concerned with optimally executing the Social Contract between citizens and the State; (where citizens surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority of the State in exchange for protection of remaining natural and legal rights).

Accountability is still the same. The need for trust is still the same.

In a previous blog-commentary, this Executive Summary of the book Good to Great was provided, where it depicted the important role of leadership to make a great organization:

Book: Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap … and Others Don’t
By: Jim Collins; one of the most influential management consultants

Chapter Summaries

Chapter 1: Good is the Enemy of Great

Chapter 2: Level 5 Leadership

    1. In this chapter, Collins begins the process of identifying and further explicating the unique factors and variables that differentiate good and great companies. One of the most significant differences, he asserts, is the quality and nature of leadership in the firm. Collins goes on to identify “Level 5 leadership” as a common characteristic of the great companies assessed in the study. This type of leadership forms the top level of a 5-level hierarchy that ranges from merely competent supervision to strategic executive decision-making.
    2. By further studying the behaviors and attitudes of so-called Level 5 leaders, Collins found that many of those classified in this group displayed an unusual mix of intense determination and profound humility. These leaders often have a long-term personal sense of investment in the company and its success, often cultivated through a career-spanning climb up the company’s ranks. The personal ego and individual financial gain are not as important as the long-term benefit of the team and the company to true Level 5 leaders. As such, Collins asserts that the much-touted trend of bringing in a celebrity CEO to turn around a flailing firm is usually not conducive to fostering the transition from Good to Great.

Chapter 3: First Who, Then What

Chapter 4: Confront the Brutal Facts (Yet Never Lose Faith)

Chapter 5: The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity Within the Three Circles)

Chapter 6: A Culture of Discipline

Chapter 7: Technology Accelerators

Chapter 8: The Flywheel and the Doom Loop

Chapter 9: From Good to Great to Built to Last

How can Good Leaders build trust with their stakeholders (citizens, employees, etc.)? Quite simply: Care for your subjects; do not just say it, do it; walk the walk not just talk to talk. Caring should be “action”. See a great example in these VIDEO’s here:

VIDEO 1 – [Gravity Payments] CEO Cut Salary To Pay Employees $70k – https://youtu.be/4ygSJwzJ1tM

TYT’s The Conversation
Posted Oct 7, 2019 – Dan Price set a $70k minimum wage for his employees and cut down his own pay. Cenk Uygur, host of The Conversation, breaks it down. MORE TYT: https://tyt.com/trial https://gravitypayments.com/ Hosts: Cenk Uygur, Cast: Cenk Uygur.

***

The Largest Online News Show in the World. Hosted by Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian. LIVE STREAMING weekdays 6-8pm ET. http://tyt.com/live

Subscribe to The Young Turks on YouTube: http://youtube.com/subscription_cente…
TYT on Facebook: http://facebook.com/theyoungturks
TYT on Twitter: http://twitter.com/theyoungturks
TYT on Instagram: http://instagram.com/theyoungturks

Merch: http://www.shoptyt.com

…

Producer, Senior Producer and Executive Producer membership: http://go.tyt.com/producer

Young Turk (n), 1. Young progressive or insurgent member of an institution, movement, or political party. 2. A young person who rebels against authority or societal expectations. (American Heritage Dictionary)

#TYT #TheYoungTurks #TheConversation

—————–

VIDEO 2  – Gravity Payments Team Surprises CEO, Dan Price, With A Tesla! – https://youtu.be/kgF9ohgylWY

—————-

There is no doubt that the company CEO in these VIDEO’s reflect caring for his subjects; and in turn the subjects – his employees – trust him. The goal of Good Leadership is fully manifested in this case.

(Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/profile/company/9897253Z:US)

Don’t get it twisted, a person does not have to give up a million dollar salary to be considered a Good Leader; it was the caring for the needs of his stakeholders that made Dan Price effective. His employees had real concerns affording housing in the expensive city of Seattle, Washington – their headquarters. See the article excerpt in the Appendix below. (Such a topic is also important for Caribbean Public Servants, as they have poverty wages).

Other leaders have had to express similar concern and consideration for their subjects; think workplace safety, health insurance, disaster recovery-response, and today: pandemic threats. But this benevolence is not standard or common. For example, there are hospitals that are on the opposite end of the spectrum when it comes to Good Leadership; they have:

The presence of Good Leadership is just as obvious as the opposite extreme: the dread of Bad Leadership.

  • Who would you rather work for?
  • Or serve under?
  • Or practice good citizenship towards?

This commentary presents some strategies, tactics and implementations for pursuing the goal of reforming and transforming the Caribbean region. It starts with Good Leadership.  But the Art & Science of Leadership is not always something that is taught in school; sometimes it is taught … in Church; remember the Golden Rule … here:

Bible Reference – 6 Bible Verses about the ‘Golden Rule’

  • Matthew 7:12 – “In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets.
  • Luke 6:31 – Treat others the same way you want them to treat you.
  • Matthew 22:39-40 – The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.”
  • Mark 12:31 – The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
  • Romans 13:8-9 – Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. For this, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Source: Retrieved May 27, 2020 from: https://bible.knowing-jesus.com/topics/Golden-Rule

Every month, the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean presents a Teaching Series on a subject germane to Caribbean life. For this May 2020, our focus is on Good Leadership. We need Good Leadership now more than ever, as the world battles the Coronavirus pandemic. This is entry 2 of 6 for this series, which details that “caring builds trust”. The full catalog for this month’s series is listed as follows:

  1. Good Leadership – Inaction could be deadly
  2. Good Leadership – Caring builds trust; trust builds caring
  3. Good Leadership – Agile: Next Generation of leadership and project delivery
  4. Good Leadership – Hypocrisy cancels out Law-and-Order
  5. Good Leadership – Example – “Leader of the Free World”?
  6. Good Leadership – Example – For mitigating crime

There are no Ands, Ifs or Buts; we need Good Leadership – among our political, corporate, religious and civic stakeholders – to survive this COVID-19 pandemic. Over 300,000 people have died; this is not a hoax.

This theme “Caring builds trust and trust builds caring” shows the positive consequences of benevolent leadership. Benevolence in government has many positive benefits, like dissuading people from fleeing the homeland in search of refuge.  The points of benevolent governance, management and administration – a subset of Good Leadership – were elaborated in many other blog-commentaries; consider this sample of previous submissions:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=17697 Good Administration of Common Pool Resources
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=17358 Marshall Plan – A Lesson in History of a Good Solution
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=17697 Good Governance: The Kind of Society We Want
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16002 Good Governance: Good Corporate Compliance
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15996 Good Governance: Stepping Up in an Emergency
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15479 ‘Lean Is’ as ‘Lean Does’ – Good Project Management
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14174 Canada: “Follow My Good Example” on ‘Climate Change’ Action

In summary, there is a formula for Good Leadership; leaders should care for their subjects and the subjects will then naturally trust them. So in effect, trust can be built using this formula. We need the caring; we need the trust; especially now during this Coronavirus-COVID-19 crisis and in everyday life: before, during and after this pandemic disaster.

So Good Leadership , Good Administration and Good Governance is just the expectation of good people in society. Most people do not know how to forge Good Leadership, but they know “it” when they see it. This realization is important for the movement behind the Go Lean book and roadmap. We need to reach and reform the Caribbean leaders and the Caribbean subjects.

Yes, we can elevate Caribbean leadership. We want our leaders to care; we want to trust that they are acting with our best interest in mind.

We hereby urge all Caribbean stakeholders – leaders and followers – to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap … and subscribe to this vision. We specifically urge all leaders to care about their subjects and we urge all subjects to trust their leaders. While this is easy to say – and hard to do – the manifestation of this vision, is how we will make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

About the Book
The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society – for all member-states. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

  • Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
  • Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society.

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

Who We Are
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 11 – 13):

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes … can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

xxiv.  Whereas a free market economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, the Federation must install the controls to better manage aspects of the economy: jobs, inflation, savings rate, investments and other economic principles. Thereby attracting direct foreign investment because of the stability and vibrancy of our economy.

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

—————

Appendix – Title: Here’s What Really Happened at That Company That Set a $70,000 Minimum Wage
Sub-title: Dan Price decided to pay all 120 employees at least $70,000. Grown men cried. Profits soared. Then things got really crazy.
By: Paul Keegan, Contributing Editor, INC Monthly Magazine

Before Dan Price caused a media firestorm by establishing a $70,000 minimum wage at his Seattle company, Gravity Payments… before Hollywood agents, reality-show producers, and book publishers began throwing elbows for a piece of the hip, 31-year-old entrepreneur with the shoulder-length hair and Brad Pitt looks… before Rush Limbaugh called him a socialist and Harvard Business School professors asked to study his radical experiment in paying workers… an entry-level Gravity employee named Jason Haley got really pissed off at him.

It was late 2011. Haley was a 32-year-old phone tech earning about $35,000 a year, and he was in a sour mood. Price had noticed it, and when he spotted Haley outside on a smoking break, he approached. “Seems like something’s bothering you,” he said. “What’s on your mind?”
…

Finally, he realized why: Haley was right — not only about being underpaid, but also about Price’s intentions. “I was so scarred by the recession that I was proactively, and proudly, hurting my staff,” he says. Thus began Price’s transformation from classic entrepreneur to crusader against income inequality, set on fundamentally changing the way America does business. For three years after his face-off with Haley, Price handed out 20 percent annual raises. Profit growth continued to substantially outpace wage growth. This spring, he spent two weeks running the numbers and battling insomnia before making a dramatic announcement to his 120-member staff on April 13, inviting NBC News and The New York Times to cover it: Over the next three years, he will phase in a minimum wage of $70,000 at Gravity and immediately cut his own salary from $1.1 million to $70,000 to help fund it.
…

The 20 percent raises Price implemented in 2012 were supposed to be a one-time deal. Then something strange happened: Profits rose just as much as the previous year, fueled by a surprising productivity jump — of 30 to 40 percent. He figured it was a fluke, but he piled on 20 percent raises again the following year. Again, profits rose by a like amount. Baffled, he did the same in 2014 and profits continued to rise, though not quite as much as before, because Gravity had to do more hiring.
…
“I began wondering what my friend would have to make so she wouldn’t have to worry about a $200 rent hike,” says Price. He recalled a 2010 study by Princeton behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman finding that, while people did not feel happier on a daily basis as their income rose above $75,000, they were decidedly unhappier the less they earned below $75,000. At Gravity, new hires made $35,000 a year.

By any measure, Gravity was doing relatively well. Revenue hit $150 million in 2014 and was growing 15 percent per year on $7 billion in customer transactions. Profits hit $2.2 million — actually a so-so 1.46 percent net margin, below the industry average. About 40 percent of the profits went to Dan and Lucas as dividends …
…
Is there a magic number that keeps workers focused while still generating a profit? Price calculated a figure but never imagined the publicity he’s gotten would boost new customer inquiries from 30 per month to 2,000 within two weeks. Customer acquisition costs are typically high, so in that sense, the strategy has paid off. And in this business, customer retention is key. Gravity’s 91 percent retention rate over the past three years — far above the industry average of about 68 percent — has been crucial to its success.
…
Six months after Price’s announcement, Gravity has defied doubters. Revenue is growing at double the previous rate. Profits have also doubled. Gravity did lose a few customers: Some objected to what seemed like a political statement that put pressure on them to raise their own wages; others feared price hikes or service cutbacks. But media reports suggesting that panicked customers were fleeing have proved false. In fact, Gravity’s customer retention rate rose from 91 to 95 percent in the second quarter.
…
Price says establishing a $70,000 minimum wage is a moral imperative, not a business strategy. And yet he must prove the business wisdom behind it, not only to keep Gravity from sinking — and going down with the ship himself–but also to achieve his long-term goal of transforming the business world. “I want the scorecard we have as business leaders to be not about money, but about purpose, impact, and service,” he says. “I want those to be the things that we judge ourselves on.”

See the full article here – Source: INC Monthly Magazine Posted May 2015; retrieved May 27, 2020 from: https://www.inc.com/magazine/201511/paul-keegan/does-more-pay-mean-more-growth.html

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Good Leadership: Inaction is Deadly

Posted on May 21, 2020 in Ethos, Government, Social

Go Lean Commentary

 He who does nothing, makes no mistakes. – Old Adage

Inaction is a reality, not a good one, but a real option all the same. Unfortunately, we do not need inaction from our leaders, we can do “nothing” all by ourselves. Remember this idiom/proverb:

We reap what we sow.

Using the agricultural framework, we know if we sow wheat, during the harvest, we will reap wheat, but if we sow nothing, this does not mean that we get nothing in return. No, we get something bad! Back to the agricultural reference, we get weeds and insects. Truthfully in life, if our leaders do nothing, do not do their duty, the end result could be:

Death.

This is due to the implied Social Contract that we are all under. Despite the versions of constitutions or the forms of government, the principles are similar in the expectation of society versus their government. That Social Contract is summarized as follows:

Citizens surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority of the State in exchange for protection of remaining natural and legal rights.

This is not just theoretical! The world is enduring the Coronavirus COVID-19 crisis right now; people are dying and economies are being wrecked. Yet some political leaders are accused of doing nothing … for far too long. It has been assessed that the inaction has led to death. See this assertion in the New York Times news-article and a related AUDIO-Podcast here; (these media productions consider an American example and the European examples of Boris Johnson versus Angela Merkel, the Prime Minster of the UK and the Chancellor of Germany respectively):

Title: Inaction that cost lives 

By the final days of February, many public health experts were sounding the alarm about the coronavirus, and some people were listening.

In the San Francisco area, major employers began directing their employees to stay home. Washington State declared a state of emergency. South Korea, Vietnam and other countries ordered aggressive measures.

President Trump did not.

On Feb. 26, he said — incorrectly — that the number of cases was “going very substantially down, not up.” As late as March 10, he promised: “It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.”

Some local leaders also continued to urge business as usual. In early March, Mayor Bill de Blasio told New Yorkers to “get out on the town despite coronavirus.”

This kind of advice appears to have cost tens of thousands of American lives, according to a new analysis by researchers at Columbia University.If the U.S. had enacted social-distancing measures a week earlier than it did — in early March rather than mid-March — about 36,000 fewer Americans would have died, the study found. That’s more than one third of the current death toll, which is about 100,000.

If the measures had been in place two weeks earlier, on March 1, the death toll would be 54,000 lower.

These are hypothetical estimates, of course, and they’re unavoidably imprecise. But they are consistent with real-world evidence from places that responded to the virus more quickly, including San Francisco, Washington State, South Korea and Vietnam — where per capita deaths have been much lower than the U.S. average.

Jeffrey Shaman, the leader of the Columbia research team, told The Times: “It’s a big, big difference. That small moment in time, catching it in that growth phase, is incredibly critical in reducing the number of deaths.”

Related: Trump and some top White House officials are arguing that the reported virus death toll is overstated, The Times reports. Public health experts overwhelmingly reject this view.

A  simple way to understand why experts believe the official count is actually understated: The number of Americans who have died in recent weeks is much higher than normal.

Source: Posted and retrieved May 21, 2020 from: https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oakv2?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20200521&instance_id=18657&nl=the-morning&productCode=NN&regi_id=69450329&segment_id=28666&te=1&uri=nyt%3A%2F%2Fnewsletter%2F8d437750-97d5-41dd-b68b-8fd573bf28c2&user_id=de9db917120d820078919cfacc03d8b3

—————–

AUDIO Podcast – Coronavirus Pandemic Tests Leadership Styles In U.K, Germany – https://www.npr.org/2020/05/21/859991289/coronavirus-pandemic-tests-leadership-styles-in-u-k-germany

Morning Edition
Posted May 21, 2020 – U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel present different visions of leadership during the coronavirus pandemic.

In 2013, the book Go Lean…Caribbean was introduced to prepare the stakeholders in the Caribbean for the turn-around and reboot that was vital if there was to be any hope for this society. The book introduced the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) and identified the two approaches for formulating change:

  • Bottoms Up
  • Top Down

Since then, we have fully engaged the people in the Bottoms Up approach. We have communicated to them and convinced, cajoled and coalesced with them to get a receptive ear to the idea of regional harmony among the 30 member-states. The response has been overwhelming and positive.

See the image to the right depicting the responses we have measured on the community’s Facebook Page, for just the last month; (we also publish on Twitter, Instagram and send out direct emails, which are all shared again and again, thereby extending the reach exponentially).

In addition to the people, we have also messaged to the societal leaders (politicians, religious, civic and business leaders). In fact, there is a petition to the applicable Heads of Government for each member-state, urging them to lean-in to the tenants of this Go Lean roadmap.  In fact, of the 1000+ blog-commentaries, the last 700 contain a button to petition the leaders accordingly. These petitions are forwarded directly to the appropriate addresses (i.e. the UK’s Home Office receives the petition every time someone “Click to Balk” … in representation of the British Overseas Territories). In fact, see the destination list of that petition in the image to the right here.

So there it is; we advocate to the “Indians and to the Chiefs”. 🙂

The Go Lean book presented strategies, tactics and implementations to pursue the goal of reforming and transforming the Caribbean region. The “Improve Leadership” mission was stated as follows regarding these narrow objectives (Page 46):

  • Fix the broken systems of governance in our region and deter against movements towards Failed-States, and any preying upon our people. We must protect the most vulnerable among us and guarantee the human/civil rights of our women and minorities. Basic to any governmental effort is the collection of sufficient revenues; the CU must therefore foster new revenue streams, financing options, and a professional civil service to directly benefit the local governance.
  • Ensure the fiscal integrity of the region, by providing proper oversight and support for the depository institutions, and insuring deposit accounts up to a competitive limit compared to other western democracies.

Good Leadership is missing in many Caribbean communities – sometimes, elected leaders simply do nothing in solving problems! Don’t get it twisted … Good Leadership is more than just “good people doing good deeds”. No, bad people can also exercise good leadership – think “Organized Crime”. Good people can also do bad leadership – remember the expression: “the road to Hell is paved with good intentions”. So Good Leadership doesn’t just happen; it is an Art and a Science.

It is like a muscle that must be exercised; doing nothing is not exercise. For this reason, there is an actual advocacy in the Go Lean book to address the Art, the Science and all the best-practices for good people to do good in terms of leadership.

This is a good purpose; see here some of the specific plans, excerpts and headlines from Page 171, entitled:

10 Ways to Improve Leadership

1 Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market Confederation Treaty: Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU)
The CU treaty allows for the integration of the Caribbean region into one market, thereby creating a single economy of 30 member-states, 42 million people and a GDP of over $800 Billion (per 2010 figures). The CU maintains a philosophy that the region must prepare for the economic battles of globalization as if it’s a military campaign. As such, the leaders that direct the battles must be skilled in trade strategies and tactical endeavors. The focus of this advocacy therefore is on the individuals, not the organization or institutions, rather the attitudes and influences to achieve victory. There are lessons to learn for the application [from the book, ] the Art of War, [the ancient Chinese military treatise attributed to Sun Tzu, a high-ranking military general, strategist and tactician,] by local, national and federal officials in forging good leadership.
2 Leaders Must Inspire, Not Just Direct
There are top leaders and experts within business, politics, art, sports, organized crime, philanthropy and health care that are skilled in the application of the leadership, ethics and visions raised in the 13 chapters of Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” [133]. The consistent theme is that leaders must inspire, not just direct. Followers should envision the successful destination and their role in the goal, not just follow directions, this way they can work for success at the micro level. “For want of a horseshoe, a horse was lost; for want of a horse a soldier was lost; for want of a soldier a Calvary was lost; for want of a Calvary a battle was lost; for want of a battle, a war was lost”.
3 Genius Qualifier – Interpersonal
4 Project Management and Technocracy
The CU’s embrace of a technocratic ethos will allow for projects and services to be optimally delivered, due to strict project management (PM) disciplines. But while PM is for organizational delivery, the CU managers need not just be bureaucrats, rather a technocracy require leadership training so as to align the detail management to the overall vision.
5 Big Data Intelligence
The CU organizes the Trade battles under the principles of Trade SHIELD (Strategic, Harvest, Interdiction, Enforcement, Logistic & Delivery). While this is a military icon, the purpose of this principle is to optimize trade within and for the region. The Harvest feature of SHIELD calls for capturing and measuring statistical data and abstracts from all the trade focused activities. The CU’s Commerce Department will spearhead the effort to capture the trade data, thereby measuring and gleaning intelligence on many aspects of Caribbean life (economic, consumption, societal values, etc).
6 Collaboration Culture
7 Remote Management Tools
8 Legislative Review
9 Federal Civil Servants Personnel Development
10 Train the Trainers

Every month, the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean presents a Teaching Series on a subject germane to Caribbean life. For this May 2020, our focus is on Good Leadership. By coincidence, the world is battling the impact and recovery of the Coronavirus pandemic on society. So we have the opportunity to look-listen-and-learn from the supporting evidence of the good, bad and ugly examples of leadership on display today. This is entry 1 of 6 for this series, which details that there is much hard-work and heavy-lifting that our leaders need to do to foster good leadership abilities.

The full catalog for this month’s series is listed as follows:

  1. Good Leadership – Inaction could be deadly
  2. Good Leadership – Caring builds trust; trust builds caring
  3. Good Leadership – Agile: Next Generation of leadership and project delivery
  4. Good Leadership – Hypocrisy cancels out Law-and-Order
  5. Good Leadership – Example – “Leader of the Free World”?
  6. Good Leadership – Example – For mitigating crime

There are no Ands, Ifs or Buts; we need Good Leadership to survive this COVID-19 pandemic. Hundreds of thousands have died, so this is not just an academic discussion. Even in our Caribbean region, we have experienced losses; see the related chart in the Appendix below.

Everywhere in nature there is leadership; this is a necessary trait for any grouping of mammals. But unfortunately, there is a lot of bad leadership in the world, so Good Leadership is not the default; it must be taught, nurtured and mastered. This is why the coaching and development of Good Leaders have always been a part of this roadmap to reform and transform the Caribbean. The points of fostering Good Leadership were also elaborated upon in many other previous blog-commentaries; consider this sample:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=19431 Big Hairy Audacious Goals: Obama vs Trump for Inspiring Leadership
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=19391 Chef Jose Andrés emerged as a leader of the disaster relief efforts
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18770 Christian Journal Urges: ‘Remove Trump’ for Bad Leadership
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=17992 What Went Wrong? Losing the Best; Nation-building with the Rest
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15296 100 Years of Nelson Mandela – Model of Good Leadership
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13749 Failure to Launch – Governance: Assembling the Region’s Organizations
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12098 Inaction: A Recipe for ‘Failed-State’ Status
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11048 Effectively manage the ‘Strong versus the Weak’ – Model of Hammurabi
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9428 Forging Change: Good Leadership and the Herd Mentality
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7646 Going from ‘Good to Great’ – Model for Coaching and Leadership

In summary, our Caribbean region needs Good Leadership; we need it now to endure this Coronavirus-COVID-19 crisis and in everyday life: before, during and after this pandemic disaster. While Good Leadership is not automatic, change is. As time passes, the world will always change: move to the left or move to the right. The world does not stand still. So in many ways our society is like a moving vehicle. Like all vehicles, there is only 1 steering wheel, so we need good people with good ability “at the helm”.  This is why Good Leadership is not ignored in this Go Lean roadmap to elevate Caribbean society.

We hereby urge all Caribbean stakeholders – leaders and followers – to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap. We must do the heavy-lifting ourselves to preserve our society and our culture. No one else can do the “Caribbean thing”, but Caribbean people.

Remember the animated television commercials for “Charlie the Tuna”?
The sponsoring company, Starkist, was saying that they do not just want tuna with good taste, but rather tuna that taste good.
We want both: tuna with good taste and tuna that taste good!

Substitute Tuna for Leadership …

We want good people with good leadership. This is how we will make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

About the Book
The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society – for all member-states. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

  • Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
  • Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society.

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

Who We Are
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 11 – 13):

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes … can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

xxiv.  Whereas a free market economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, the Federation must install the controls to better manage aspects of the economy: jobs, inflation, savings rate, investments and other economic principles. Thereby attracting direct foreign investment because of the stability and vibrancy of our economy.

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

——————

Appendix – Confirmed Caribbean Coronavirus cases as of today, May 21:

  • Dominican Republic- 13,477 cases, 446 deaths, 7,142 recovered
  • Puerto Rico- 2,913 cases (positive only patients), 126 deaths
  • Cuba- 1,900 cases, 79 deaths, 1,573 recovered
  • Haiti- 663 cases, 22 deaths, 21 recovered
  • Jamaica- 529 cases, 9 deaths, 171 recovered
  • French Guiana- 237 cases, 1 death, 136 recovered
  • Martinique-192 cases, 14 deaths, 91 recovered
  • Guadeloupe-155 cases, 13 deaths, 113 recovered
  • Bermuda- 125 cases, 9 deaths, 80 recovered
  • Guyana- 125 cases, 10 deaths, 47 recovered
  • Trinidad and Tobago- 116 cases, 8 deaths, 107 recovered
  • Cayman Islands-111 cases, 1 death, 55 recovered
  • Aruba- 101 cases, 3 deaths, 95 recovered
  • Bahamas- 97 cases, 11 deaths, 43 recovered
  • Barbados- 90 cases, 7 deaths, 70 recovered
  • Sint Maarten- 77 cases, 15 deaths, 54 recovered
  • US Virgin Islands- 69 cases, 6 deaths, 61 recovered
  • Saint Martin- 40 cases, 3 deaths, 33 recovered
  • Antigua and Barbuda- 25 cases, 3 deaths, 19 recovered
  • Grenada- 22 cases, 17 recovered
  • Belize- 18 cases, 2 deaths, 16 recovered
  • Saint Lucia- 18 cases, 18 recovered
  • St Vincent and the Grenadines- 18 cases, 14 recovered
  • Curacao-16 cases, 1 death, 14 recovered
  • Dominica- 16 cases, 16 recovered
  • Saint Kitts and Nevis- 15 cases, 15 recovered
  • Turks and Caicos- 12 cases, 1 death, 10 recovered
  • Montserrat- 11 cases, 1 death, 10 recovered
  • Suriname – 11 cases, 1 death, 9 recovered
  • British Virgin Islands- 8 cases, 1 death, 6 recovered
  • Saint Barthelemy-6 cases, 6 recovered
  • Anguilla- 3 cases, 3 recovered
  • Sint Eustatius- 2 cases, 2 recovered
  • Bonaire- 2 cases, 2 recovered
  • Saba- 2 cases, 2 recovered

Source: Posted and retrieved March 21, 2020 from: https://www.loopjamaica.com/content/coronavirus-cases-caribbean-date-21222-1

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‘All Take and No Give’ ==> No Loyalty; No Patriotism – Encore

Posted on May 20, 2020 in Ethos, Social, Strategy

The Bahamas Prime Minister, Dr. Hubert Minnis, is asking the citizens in his country to sacrifice for the good of the country so that the whole community can endure the Coronavirus-COVID-19 panndemic:

… the process will require sacrifices from all Bahamians.

This seems so wrong!

This is the same country that systemically suppresses, represses and oppresses one minority group after another. (When you add up all the minority groups, they form the majority).

If you kick your guard dog and abuse him all the time, he will probably not try to defend your house. You would have broken his spirit.

This should be a familiar refrain by now. In September 2019 when Category 5 Hurricane Dorian devastated the Northern Bahamas, some regional stakeholders complained then that they were dis-inclined to help because of the Bahamian track record of abuse.

We learned nothing! The Bahamas has still not developed any “Give and Take”, no symbiosis, no mutualism. Even the Bible presents the Golden Rule as:

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

This is just how life works. In nature, it’s called a symbiotic relationship. The encyclopedic definition is as follows:

Symbiosis (from Greek “living together”, from Sym meaning”together” and biosis meaning “living”)[2] is any type of a close and long-term biological interaction between two different biological organisms, be it mutualistic, commensalistic, or parasitic. The organisms, each term a symbiont, may be of the same or of different species. …

Symbiosis can be obligatory, which means that one or more of the symbionts entirely depend on each other for survival, or facultative (optional) when they can generally live independently.

———-

Mutualism; describes the ecological interaction between two or more species where each species has a net benefit.[1]

In a previous Go Lean commentary this argument was presented, against the backdrop of the quotation from Alexandre Dumas’s story of the Three Musketeers. “All for One and One for All” was elaborated upon in that previous blog-commentary.

“One for All” must equally accompany a quest where there is “All for One“. This aligns with the implied Social Contract, defined as:

Citizens surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority of the State in exchange for protection of remaining natural and legal rights.

It is only apropos to Encore that original commentary from June 10, 2016 now:

———————————

Go Lean Commentary – Respect for Minorities: ‘All For One’

This subject of “Respect for Minorities” is dominant in the news right now. This commentary is 1 of 3 in this series on lamentations for defective Caribbean social values. The complete series is as follows:

  1. Respect for Minorities: ‘All For One’
  2. Respect for Minorities: Climate of Hate – ‘It Gets Worse Before It Gets Worse’
  3. Respect for Minorities: Reconstruction then Redemption

There is this impactful quotation from the Bible:

“What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? – The Bible; Matthew 18:12 – New International Version.

But someone might argue: “the needs of the many out-weight the needs of the few”. This is the principle of the Greater Good. Yes, this is true! This principle is very familiar to the publishers of the book Go Lean … Caribbean; the principle is foremost in the book (Page 37) as a community ethos, the underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices of a society. The region needs to adopt this ethos to forge change in the Caribbean. But it turns out that the Greater Good is not just a priority on the majority, it is very much reflective of minorities.

All For One … and … One For All!
- Photo 4

This expression is from literature, the book: The Three Musketeers, by the nineteenth-century French author Alexandre Dumas – it represents “art imitating life” in it’s meaning:

All the members of a group support each of the individual members, and the individual members pledge to support the group. Note: “All for one and one for all” is best known as the motto of the title characters in the book. Source: http://www.dictionary.com/browse/all-for-one-and-one-for-all

Since everyone is unique, we may all be minorities in some respects. Consider (these previous blogs):

There is the need for the majority to protect the basic rights of minority groups; this is in effect protecting the rights for life, liberty and pursuit of happiness … for all.

What’s more, the minorities should not have to beg the majority for these rights; the rights should be an automatic entitlement.

Let’s consider the example here of the “peanut“.

It’s a great little snack; a lot of people enjoy them. But, for some – a small but growing minority in any society; see VIDEO below – the peanut is deadly, due to their allergic reactions. Should a majority of people be inconvenient due to allergies of just a few people, or sometimes, just one. Consider this model here:

Title: Customers with Disabilities – Peanut Dust Allergies
Source: Southwest Airlines Website – Customer Service Policy; retrieved 06/09/2016 from: https://www.southwest.com/html/customer-service/unique-travel-needs/customers-with-disabilities-pol.html

- Photo 3Because it is nearly impossible for persons who have an allergy to peanut dust to avoid triggering a reaction if peanut dust is in the air, Southwest Airlines is unable to guarantee a peanut-free or allergen-free flight. We have procedures in place to assist our Customers with severe allergies to peanut dust and will make every attempt not to serve packaged peanuts on the aircraft when our Customers alert us of their allergy to peanut dust.

We ask Customers with peanut dust allergies making reservations over the phone to advise our Customer Representatives of the allergy at the time the reservation is made. If the reservation is made via a travel agent, the Customer should telephone 1-800-I-FLY-SWA (1-800-435-9792) afterward to speak with a Customer Representative. If the reservation is made via southwest.com, the Customer may advise us of the allergy on the “Southwest Airlines Payment and Passenger Information” screen by clicking on the link to “Add/Edit Disability Assistance Options.”

We suggest that Customers with peanut dust allergies book travel on early morning flights as our aircraft undergo a thorough cleaning only at the end of the day.

We ask the Customer with the allergy (or someone speaking on the Customer’s behalf) to check in at the departure gate one hour prior to departure and speak with the Customer Service Agent (CSA) regarding the Customer’s allergy. Please allow enough time to park, check luggage and/or receive your boarding pass, and to pass through the security checkpoint. Our CSA will provide the Customer with a Peanut Dust Allergy Document and ask him/her to present the document to the Flight Attendant upon boarding. If the Customer has a connection, the CSA will provide the Customer with two documents, one of which should be retained to present to the Flight Attendant on the connecting flight.

Our CSA will advise the Operations (Boarding) Agent so that service of packaged peanuts can be suspended for that flight. Our Operations Agent will notify the Provisioning and/or Ramp Supervisor to stock the aircraft with a sufficient supply of pretzels or alternate snacks. The Operations Agent will also notify the Flight Attendants of the Customer’s final destination and advise them that we cannot serve packaged peanuts until the Customer deplanes.

As some of our other snack items may contain peanut particles, peanut oil, or have been packaged in a peanut facility, Customers who have allergic reactions to eating/ingesting peanuts should read the ingredients on any packaged snack before consumption. Of course, all Customers are welcome to bring their own snacks with them.

Southwest cannot prevent other Customers from bringing peanuts or products containing peanuts onboard our flights. In addition, Southwest cannot give assurances that remnants of peanuts and/or peanut dust/oil will not remain on the aircraft floor, seats, or tray tables from the flights earlier in the aircraft’s routing.

In addition, Southwest Airlines cannot guarantee that a flight will be free of other allergens such as perfumes, lotions, cleaning solutions, etc.

The publishers of the book Go Lean…Caribbean wants to forge change in the Caribbean; we want to change the attitudes for an entire community, country and region. As depicted in the foregoing article, but on a larger scale, we want to ensure that one peanut allergy sufferer can be assured of best efforts to not deprive them of life and health. But this quest is more than just peanuts; it is the attitudes of the people. We need majority populations to sacrifice, however small or large, to allow minority populations every opportunity to participate fully in society.

Besides, how much of a sacrifice is it truly to forego peanuts … for a short period. There are other alternative snacks. This is the full definition of a reasonable accommodation.

The “peanut” is this case is truly a metaphor. The seriousness of the allergy – life-and-death – is representative of the seriousness for the rights of minorities in a community. But at the same time, peanut allergies have increased in western societies. Why? See VIDEO in the Appendix below.  So for peanuts and other aspects of societal life, what may only be an inconvenience for the majority may actually be “life-and-death” for the affected minority. This is why the requirements for someone’s quality of life, should never be subject to a popularity contest. This is the Greater Good.

So the community ethos of the Greater Good must be tempered with the ethos of National Sacrifice. The Go Lean movement (book and blog-commentaries) posits that these new community ethos must be adopted by the Caribbean; they are undoubtedly missing. This is evidenced by the fact that every Caribbean member-state suffers from alarming rates of societal abandonment: on average 70% of college educated ones in the population have fled in a brain drain, while the US territories have lost more than 50% of their general populations). Why do people flee?

“Push and pull” reasons! “Push”, as in people fleeing to find refuge from abuses tied to their minority status, and “pull”, as in the perception (though many times false) that life is better on foreign shores.

The term National Sacrifice is defined here as the willingness to sacrifice for a greater cause; think “patriotism or love of country”. This spirit is currently missing, in that many in the community refuse to extend some reasonable accommodations so that others who may be minorities or differently-abled can participate in the out-workings of their community. As it turns out, “All For One and One For All” is also a recipe for forging successful communities.

The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU); a confederation of the 30 member-states to bring change, empowerment, to the Caribbean region; to make the region a better place to live, work and play for all stakeholders (residents, tourists, visiting Diaspora and trading partners). This Go Lean roadmap also has initiatives (strategies) to foster solutions for the Caribbean youth. Any attempts to change Caribbean society’s community ethos (Greater Good and National Sacrifice) must start with the youth in order for the changes to be permanent. We are embarking on the effort to fix our Caribbean culture:

What is it that young people want in their society, so as to map a future for themselves at home: opportunity!

More specifically, equal access to opportunities – despite any minority status – to pursue their passions in life; whichever fields of endeavor they might pursue. This includes the strategies of education, jobs, entrepreneurial options, sports, and aspects of culture (art and music). Young people who cry, sweat, and bleed for their communities – embedding a desire to sacrifice for the Greater Good – are less inclined to flee. While these strategies are important, there is something else even more vital: a culture of inclusiveness; as follows:

Our community’s values, how we treat each other, our citizens, and stakeholders, and a healthy inclusive culture are more important than the elevation strategies executed.
- Photo 1

Yes, when we make reasonable accommodations to be a more inclusive society, we invite “more people to the party” and elevate our society.

An African proverb brings a lot of solace to this discussion:

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
- Photo 2

This also corresponds with the next verse in the above Bible scripture:

“And if he finds it [the one errand sheep], truly I tell you, he rejoices more over that one sheep than over the ninety-nine that did not go astray.” – Matthew 18:12 – New International Version.

The purpose of the Go Lean book/roadmap is more than just the embedding of these new community ethos, but rather the elevation of Caribbean society. In total, the Caribbean elevation roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

  • Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
  • Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure protection to the economic engines, public safety and justice for all.
  • Improve Caribbean governance to support these societal engines.

The roadmap details the following community ethos, plus the execution of these strategies, tactics, implementation and advocacies to expand inclusiveness – to go together – and forge permanent change in Caribbean society:

Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – People Choose Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – People Respond to Incentives in Predictable Ways Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – The Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future Page 21
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Lean Operations Page 24
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Cooperatives Page 25
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact a Turn-Around Page 33
Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Sharing Page 35
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Happiness Page 36
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Confederate 30 Member-States Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Enact a Defense Pact to Defend the Homeland Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Keep the next generation at home Page 46
Tactical – Confederating a Permanent Union Page 63
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy Page 64
Implementation – Assemble – Incorporating all the existing regional organizations Page 96
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change Page 101
Implementation – Foreign Policy at Start-up Page 102
Implementation – Ways to Deliver Page 109
Planning – 10 Big Ideas for the Caribbean – Confederation Without Sovereignty Page 127
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better Page 131
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Homeland Security Page 181
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Communications Page 186
Advocacy – Ways to Preserve Caribbean Heritage Page 218
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Youth Page 227
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Persons with Disabilities – With Reasonable Accommodations Page 228

All in all, there are certain successful traits (community ethos) associated with populations that have endured change, like the Greater Good and National Sacrifice. These are focused more on deferred gratification; on the future more so than immediate impact.

No sacrifice; no victory.

Now is the time for all stakeholders – majority and minority – to lean-in to this roadmap for Caribbean elevation, as depicted in the book Go Lean…Caribbean. “We need all hands on deck” to make our homelands better places to live, work and play. 🙂

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

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Appendix VIDEO – Why Are Peanut Allergies Becoming So Common? – https://youtu.be/Mjr9h_QmdeM

Published on Oct 3, 2014 – Peanut allergies are becoming more and more common, and researchers are trying to find the cause. Trace is here to discuss this unique allergy, and how we might have finally found a cure.

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Education in the USA is Illogical For “Us”

Posted on May 15, 2020 in Economics, Social, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

Imagine the negotiation with an alternate party; they declare:

Let’s make a deal …
I want to take everything and give you nothing.

How eager are you to forge a bond with this negotiating party?

Unlikely?!

Yet, for the 30 member-states of the Caribbean, this is the exact negotiating stance with the United States of America.

Their motive, in offering opportunities for your students to matriculate in their universities have ulterior motives:

They want to keep the good students, not return them.

This was conveyed in a recent news article in the US; see this excerpted key phase here about a post-matriculation On-the-Job Training program called Optional Practical Training (OPT):

Talk of suspending OPT has pitted business interests against immigration hard-liners …
…the program has been rife with abuses, particularly by Chinese students whom they accuse of getting American educations and then returning to China….

Why is this a problem? The US business interests have no altruistic motives – they want the best-of-the-best students to stay.

There is Big Money involved. The US officials are NOT investing in the education of the foreign students; but rather the student’s homelands must do so – at great costs. See this further excerpt:

International students contribute nearly $41 billion a year to the U.S. economy. Our campuses and our communities benefit from the contributions international students make to education and research,” Schmid said. “This move does nothing to ensure the health of U.S. citizens during the COVID crisis. As with Trump’s Muslim ban, this is just bigotry posing as concern for national security.

There you have it; you now know what the underlying intent is of the American invitation for “our” students to matriculate in their country. This reveals the true motives of any negotiations with America.

Do you still want to engage these people?!

See the full news article and related VIDEO here:

Title: Trump admin weighs suspending foreign students program, prompting backlash from business, tech
WASHINGTON — At the direction of the White House, the Department of Homeland Security has sent recommendations for further restricting legal immigration during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to one former and two current administration officials.

Among the recommendations expected to be considered is the suspension of a program for foreign students to stay in the U.S. to get one or two years of occupational training between secondary education and full-time employment, a move many in the business and university communities are fighting.

The program, known as Optional Practical Training, or OPT, is an incentive for foreign students to come to U.S. universities, as it provides some cushion between school and employment. Talk of suspending OPT has pitted business interests against immigration hard-liners like President Donald Trump’s senior adviser Stephen Miller, the officials said.

Miller, acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf and Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., have all said the program has been rife with abuses, particularly by Chinese students whom they accuse of getting American educations and then returning to China. Data from the Congressional Research Service, however, shows otherwise.

“Suspending or ending OPT makes no practical sense — it solves no problem, it reduces the quality of America’s higher education system, and it threatens the international exchange of ideas so vital to academic freedom,” said Julie Schmid, executive director of the American Association of University Professors.

“International students contribute nearly $41 billion a year to the U.S. economy. Our campuses and our communities benefit from the contributions international students make to education and research,” Schmid said. “This move does nothing to ensure the health of U.S. citizens during the COVID crisis. As with Trump’s Muslim ban, this is just bigotry posing as concern for national security.”

The new guidelines, expected to be announced in an executive order this month, would expand curbs on legal migration announced by the White House in April. The administration is expected to frame the move as economic protection for Americans faced with staggering unemployment rates.

Representatives of the White House and DHS did not respond to requests for comment.

A U.S. official familiar with the matter said, “While we won’t comment on internal administrative policy discussions one way or the other, millions of Americans have been forced out of work by the pandemic and they ought to be first in line for jobs — not lower-paid imported labor. Polling shows Democrats, Republicans and Independents agree.”

Critics of the proposals say Miller and other immigration hawks are using the pandemic to accomplish a goal they have had since Trump took office: bringing down the overall number of legal immigrants.

When Miller served on the staff of then-Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., he helped draft a bill that would have eliminated OPT. Now, four Republican senators have asked the White House to take the issue of curbing OPT and other legal migration programs into their own hands.

“We urge you to continue to suspend new nonimmigrant guest workers for one year or until our new national unemployment figures return to normal levels whichever comes first,” Cotton and Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Josh Hawley of Missouri said in a letter to the White House on May 7. The letter said OPT, along with H-1B visas for highly skilled workers and H-2B visas for non-agricultural seasonal workers, should be suspended.

Todd Schulte, president of FWD.US, a pro-immigration reform group of business and tech leaders that counts Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg among its founders, said the plan is too similar to previous proposals to be framed as a legitimate response to the economic crisis caused by COVID-19.

“Three years ago, when unemployment was at 4 percent, the signatories who were in the Senate at the time tried to slash legal immigration by more than 50 percent. … Today, as unemployment has skyrocketed, these senators now say we need to slash legal immigration in response to the COVID-19 crisis,” Schulte said.

An official familiar with discussions at the White House said the influence of the business community, often communicated by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, could sink plans to suspend OPT.

But Rosemary Jenks, executive vice president of NumbersUSA, which shares Miller’s goal of decreasing overall immigration, said it would be a mistake to keep the program open. Jenks noted that OPT is a regulatory program not protected by statute.

“At a time when millions of Americans and lawful permanent residents are graduating from college with severely limited job opportunities due to COVID-19, it makes absolutely no sense for the administration to continue a regulatory program that allows foreign graduates to take jobs Americans need,” she said.

Related: F-1 visas let foreign students stay in the U.S. to work after graduating. Most use the program legally, but recent probes have revealed fraud.

Source: Posted May 10, 2020; retrieved May 15, 2020 from: https://news.yahoo.com/trump-admin-weighs-suspending-foreign-090056680.html?.tsrc=notification-brknews

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VIDEO – Fake Companies Exploiting Federal Student Visa Program | NBC Nightly News – https://youtu.be/JiVKPpmSlCM

NBC News
Posted Jan 1, 2020 – A joint NBC News/NBC Bay Area investigation found a number of companies that appear to be illegitimate are using the F-1 student visa program to skirt immigration laws. The founder of a company called Findream, which claimed to employ 500 students in 2017, was charged with criminal fraud for “false verifications of employment” for Chinese F-1 via holders.

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Fake Companies Exploiting Federal Student Visa Program | NBC Nightly News

Study at home! There are many regional options. This has been the urging from the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean. Otherwise, we  continue to suffer as a parasite of the American hegemony. It is undisputed that the American college education is a bad investment for our Caribbean communities.

This was the consideration in a previous blog-commentary back in April 30, 2018; it is only apropos to glean this lesson now:

Title: ‘Loose Lips Sink Ships’ – Undermining College Enrollment
Inappropriate talk can undermine societal engines … and economic engines.

Universities, even not-for-profit ones, need to preserve their economic engines. They must have an influx of new students to replace the ones that graduate every year. Where do these students come from?

The economics of universities are simple, especially state-sponsored universities:

  • In-state students pay a per-credit fee for tuition, since state taxes subsidize schools
  • Out-of-state students pay a higher per-credit fee, sometimes double the in-state rate
  • Foreign students must pay out-of-state tuition every year; there is no in-state option for them
  • More revenues – and no financial aid or discounts – are associated with foreign students.

For many American universities, the appeal to lure international students is a “hen that lays golden eggs”. It will be unbecoming to compromise this business arrangement. Enter …

Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States

As reported in that previous blog-commentary, the “United States is suffering the dire consequence of ‘loose lips sinking ships’ right now. The new President – Donald Trump – has made disparaging remarks about certain foreign groups, and then introduced policies that reinforce his disdain for these foreigners”.

As a result, more and more foreign students are refusing to come to the US to matriculate. …

In addition, since April 2018, we had examined a few other angles of this subject – College education in the US for Caribbean students – with these additional commentaries; (this is only a sample):

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=19694 Title: Keep the Change – Making e-Learning Work
e-Learning may be the answer for all the ills in the Caribbean education landscape. This industry can be a great equalizer in economic battles of global trade. Thanks to the Coronavirus – COVID-19 crisis, the world is coming to the e-Learning party. e-Learning options are now real and viable. We can “hedge our bets” and mitigate the risks of studying abroad, by doubling-down on e-Learning. This changed environment has been forced on us – uninvited – by the Coronavirus; but we can Keep the Change and invite these new tools and techniques to stay for good.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=19213 Title: Brain Drain – Geeks and Freaks: Ultimate Revenge
Many times, the people that are the most accomplished academically, are characterized more as Nerds, “Geeks and Freaks”. Yet, these are the ones best suited for accomplishment and excellence. In the Caribbean, we have had 60 years of futility with our best-and-brightest leaving us, abandoning the Caribbean homeland. We must now be “On Guard” against bullying and other threats – domestic or foreign. We must do the heavy-lifting to retain our people; we must protect all vulnerable, weak and innocent people in society, even from “leaving home”.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18371 Title: Unequal Justice – Student Loans Could Dictate Justice
America is one – but not the only one – community experiencing dysfunction and economic injustice due to the College eco-system and  Student Loans. We have a lot of dysfunctions in the Caribbean too. For example: many islands have atrocious default rates (> 75%) with their student loans for ex-students that left to study abroad. There is a demand now for this money, but not just the principal; we need the interest, too. What’s more, student loans are supposed to be investments in the young people of the community. So those loans have been a fallacy: Where is the return on these investments for us?
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=17992 Title: What Went Wrong? Losing the Best; Nation-building with the Rest
Caribbean communities are all suffering from a bad case of societal abandonment; everyone knows someone that has left. In fact, whenever there is a skilled and competent colleague, we are disappointed if they have not left the region and remained in the homeland. Losing our best, means we have to nation-build with the rest (lesser; D Average)!
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16882 Title: Exploring Medical School Opportunities … as Economic Engines
Medical Schools average over $300,000 in tuition for a 4-year education; ($60,000/yr). Imagine the economic engine of having 3,000 students on a Caribbean campus; that would amount to $180 million annually added to GDP, just for tuition; (more from room-and-board, extra-curricular activities and spending by visitors/family/students). Since Economics = the supply and demand dynamics; we know that there is the demand for many “minority” students to study medicine. They should feel “at home” here in any Caribbean community.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14973 Title: Graduation Speakers – Say ‘Something Nice’ or Nothing At All
The new Minister of Education, Jeffrey Lloyd gave his first Commencement address and vocalized this bad policy:
“Go out and see the world … visit them all, and even work in them all, but come back home and build your country”.
The Education Minister here seems to be doubling-down on failure, as good students rarely return after matriculation; we get no R.O.I..
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14834 Title: Counter-culture: Monetizing the Change
Many financial and economic changes emerged as a result of the 1960’s counter-culture movement; subsequently a more independent spirit emerged for planning retirement, education and healthcare. Consider:
* Education / College Planning – A 529 plan is a tax-advantaged savings plan designed to encourage saving for future college costs. 529 plans, legally known as “qualified tuition plans,” are sponsored by states, state agencies, or educational institutions and are authorized by Section 529 of the Internal Revenue Code (Source: SEC.gov).

We need to do better retaining our people here in the Caribbean homeland.

Sending the best-of-the-best of our students to study abroad – in the US – would be foolish, knowing that it is their intent to keep them from returning. This is like “giving aid to the enemy during time of war” – a treasonous act.

Yes, we need to always dissuade our own people from abandoning the homeland, for whatever reasons. We hereby urge all Caribbean stakeholders to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap.  This is will allow us to make our homeland a better place to live, work, learn and play.  🙂

About the Book
The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society – for all member-states. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

  • Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
  • Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society.

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

Who We Are
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 11 – 13):

x. Whereas we are surrounded and allied to nations of larger proportions in land mass, populations, and treasuries, elements in their societies may have ill-intent in their pursuits, at the expense of the safety and security of our citizens. We must therefore appoint “new guards” to ensure our public safety and threats against our society, both domestic and foreign. The Federation must employ the latest advances and best practices … to assuage continuous threats against public safety. ….

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes … can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

xxiv.  Whereas a free market economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, the Federation must install the controls to better manage aspects of the economy: jobs, inflation, savings rate, investments and other economic principles. Thereby attracting direct foreign investment because of the stability and vibrancy of our economy.

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

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