41 minute read
Soul enterprise
Peace work
How can your job relate to world peace?
Just about every place you turn there are prospects for violence, so you don’t have to go far to be a peacemaker. You can wage peace on the job.
Hopefully you’ll never experience it yourself, but violence lurks in every workplace. It’s a $4 billion a year problem in North America, producing half a dozen homicides each month. If you become a manager of any kind you will have plenty of opportunities to wage peace. You can distinguish your managerial style by watching for danger areas or “triggers” that can lead to workplace violence (such as job loss or demotion; problems at home; romantic obsession with a co-worker; or increased substance abuse).
Managers spend an average of 15 percent of their time resolving staff conflicts. The lazy ones turn their heads and either let staff battle it out themselves or let them internalize their frustrations (and maybe take it out on their families when they get home). More effective is to cultivate teamwork and delegate with clarity. Ensuring that each person’s work is properly integrated and interrelated with the work of others sends a message of respect for each person’s contribution. That not only reduces strife in the workplace, but also creates synergy and ends up being good management.
Interesting, isn’t it, that something as formulaic as management style can make a difference to peace.
Wherever humans work together there’s a chance of friction. Even something as simple as answering the phone can bring you into conflict. One savvy office receptionist who gets at least one angry phone call a day relies on a verse from the Bible — “A soft answer turns away wrath” (Prov. 15:1). She defuses seething callers by hearing them out, not leaving them on hold, not being defensive, not passing the buck, and making sure someone follows up.
“Unseen ministers” can bring the leaven of peace to the world at their doorstep.
Valerie works as a liaison between the livestock industry and consumers. Among her tasks is to encourage cooperation as competing interest groups lobby for their approaches to the environment. No one thinks of her as a “peacemaker,” but her goal is to bring warring sides closer together and work towards amicable solutions.
Byron toils behind the scenes for a regulatory agency ironing out wrinkles in a water agreement between the United States and Canada. The work he does is paving the way for greater neighborliness in the future.
In any job, you’ll be part of a working community where you can build relationships of trust and integrity that promote peace.
Excerpted from You’re Hired! Looking for work in all the right places, a career guide from MEDA. Available for free download at www.meda.org
There’s the rub
Steve Jobs got an early business lesson from a neighbor’s rock tumbler. “Get some stones,” the neighbor told him one day. Young Steve complied, and brought back a handful of jagged stones which the neighbor placed in the tumbler along with some grit. He turned on the machine and let it run.
The next day he showed the result. The rough-edge rocks had rolled and rubbed each other smooth, producing beautiful polished specimens that looked like gems.
The young computer genius gained a metaphor suggesting how great products are made. Organize a team of highly talented people, let them work closely together, bump up against each other, argue (maybe even fight) and make noise. Over time they will polish each other and polish their ideas and “what comes out are these beautiful stones.”
Your biggest legacy
“When you’re gone, your work will stand as the single biggest testament to who you were and what you believed. By ‘your work,’ I don’t just mean your occupation, but any way in which you contribute value to the world using your available resources. This, of course, includes every task you do and project you engage in, but also every time you encourage someone else or contribute to a relationship, every instance in which you make an effort to grow your skills or develop your mind, or every time you go the extra mile even though you are exhausted. Your body of work comprises the sum total of where you choose to place your limited focus, assets, time, and energy.... Naturally, your worth as a person transcends the value you create, but your work is the most visible expression of your priorities.” — Todd Henry in Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day
Godly competitiveness
You’re ambitious, but does that mean your desire to advance necessarily means clashing with your coworkers?
“Competition is not a bad thing,” say Sebastian Traeger and Greg Gilbert in The Gospel at Work: How Working for King Jesus Gives Purpose and Meaning to our Jobs. “Being a Christian doesn’t mean we just have to curtsy and make way for everyone to pass us up. It’s not competition the Bible forbids, but rather the world’s playbook for competition — the cutthroat mentality that says the only way for you to go up is for everybody else to go down. Our goal as Christians is to compete with and love our coworkers all at the same time. How do we do that? We compete by working at whatever we do with all our heart, not by undercutting or sabotaging the efforts of our coworkers. Compete, but compete with honor. Win by running faster, not by tripping up all your competitors. Even more, encourage them to run faster too. Help them see where they can improve their work, and congratulate them when they advance.”
Five ways to connect
Few executives have done more to promote faith/business integration than William Diehl, former sales manager for Bethlehem Steel and author of books like Thank God It’s Monday. In his book, The Monday Connection, he sets out five ways he sought to carry out Christian ministry at Bethlehem Steel: 1. Being competent. Competence is a primary means of carrying out Christian faith in the workplace. Whether we be a carpenter, a shoemaker, a lawyer, a doctor, or a steel sales manager, to the extent that we are competent in our work, we serve others. 2. Bringing faith into the conversation. As we relate to others in our work, we can bring the presence of God into our interactions. 3. Being ethical. It is through our ethics that we express our Christian values in the workplace. 4. Striving for change. When we work to bring about change in unjust or careless policies or procedures in the workplace, we are serving God. 5. Living simply. Through our lifestyle in the workplace, we demonstrate our Christian values to others.
Overheard:
“Never commit to anything that you can’t give your all to. Hustle overcomes nearly every shortcoming.” — Entrepreneur Rich Seal
Devoted to rice
Jason Dudek is a firm believer that the private sector should lead the way from poverty to prosperity.
It may seem immodest to say so, but it’s possible Jason Dudek and his partners know more about rice than anyone in Sierra Leone.
“We were among the first in,” says Dudek, CFO of Mountain Lion Agriculture. “Most others are five or 10 years behind us.”
That’s no small feat in a country that lives by rice.
Rise of rice
Rice is humanity’s leading source of calories, according to The Economist. Half of the world’s population get a fifth or more of their daily caloric intake from rice.
Usually associated more with Asian countries, consumption is rising elsewhere. “In Africa, where a third of the population depends on rice, demand is rising by almost 20% a year,” the magazine says. “At that rate rice will surpass maize as Africa’s main source of calories within 20 years.” ◆
A healthy field of new rice in Sierra Leone. Demand for the crop is rising nearly 20% a year across Africa.
“Rice is the staple food in Sierra Leone,” says Dudek. “Everyone eats it every day. The local saying is ‘if you haven’t eaten rice today, you haven’t eaten’.”
Most of the country’s farmers cultivate rice, but their efforts are not enough to meet demand. Dudek wants to help Sierra Leoneans to produce and consume all the rice they need.
Dudek grew up in a southern Manitoba family whose ethical stance was shaped by Catholic social teaching. His grandparents were farmers, so he knew his way around soil and crops.
He put himself through undergrad studies in Canada by planting trees in the summer (200,000 of them by his tally). He obtained a degree in philosophy, which means, among other things, that he can now throw around terms like “epistemological humility.”
He followed up by going to the London School of Economics for a master’s degree. Then he and a friend
Jason Dudek (inset) poses proudly on land being leveled for the foundation of the new rice mill building (since completed).
His goal is to develop a national brand of rice to feed Sierra Leoneans
started a consultancy business in Iraq to facilitate investment.
“I found that I really had a knack for business and a strong interest in it,” he says.
In 2004 he volunteered for a development assignment with the United Nations and was sent to their roughest outpost. That happened to be Sierra Leone, which was still reel-
ing from the aftermath of its 1991-2002 civil war. “They inferred from my tree-planting experience that I could handle going without showers or e-mail,” says Dudek, who fell in love with the African country. The NGO community was less alluring, however. “I found very little longterm commitment,” he recalls. “I was disappointed by how little beneficiaries were engaged and involved in the processes — and by how little actually Moses Samou, one of Mountain Lion’s master farmers, ended up getting to the displays improved seed varieties he is helping breed. people we were supposed to be serving.” Stirred by the glaring needs he saw, Dudek gathered financial backing and opened an orphanage, which by
his own admission “spun off into a big deal” and still operates.
By now he had earned two degrees, started an investment company in Iraq and built an orphanage.
Did we mention that he’s only 32?
The company he’s part of defines
in this case our smallholder farmers who are often held back by enormous challenges and cycles of subsistence.” Some 70 percent of Sierra Leone’s people are small farmers who subsist on plots of about three acres. Unfortunately, the quantity and quality of the rice they produce does not match their appetite for it, and up to 30 percent of it has to be imported. Before the civil war, Sierra Leone had a flourishing rice industry, and even exported some of it. But now, demand for the staple is no longer met by local production, creating an unhealthy reliance on imports. Dudek wants to change that. “The main thing for me is helping farmers,” he says. “They face so many barriers — no access to credit, no acMEDA’s connection cess to markets or machines.” Mountain Lion began laying groundwork in Sierra MEDA is helping Mountain Lion Agriculture improve rice production in Sierra Leone with financial and technical assistance. Besides Leone in 2008 and became incorporated in 2010. “We designed it as an impact business,” says Dudek. “Our business model is designed to help farmers break lending the company $500,000 from its Sarona Risk out of the cycle of subsistence that they’re trapped in.” Capital Fund (SRCF), MEDA arranged an additional The company began to create a series of individual $1.15 million of financing, including a $900,000 grant solutions with different business divisions that would from the African Enterprise Challenge Fund (AECF), improve farm practices and milling capacity, provide and $250,000 from the Horsch family of Germany. access to better equipment and inputs (but not neces-
The rice-processing company aims to help 5,000 sarily chemicals), and carefully build a national brand of small rice farmers boost production and then buy/ high-quality rice to feed process what they produce. Its “ecosystem approach” Sierra Leoneans, not to draws in multiple elements such as input sales, seed export. loans, machine rental/sales, a 250-acre research farm In the area of agroand modern processing mill. The ultimate goal is to nomic practices, Dudek displace lower-quality rice imports with a higher-qual- cringes to see farmers ity, competitively priced domestic product that will burn stubble. “They become Sierra Leone’s first nationally produced brand use a lot of burning, of local rice in decades. which is very bad for the
MEDA’s technical services will include: land,” he says. “They • Refine, strengthen and expand small-farmer pro- burn because they have duction and training and extension arrangements; this tall, tough elephant • Optimize production and business models lead- grass – eight feet tall. ing to improved yields, higher-quality rice, soil health, It’s so tough you can’t reduced post-harvest crop loss and better small-farmer really cut it down, so profitability; they burn.” • Help Mountain Lion develop new rice varieties, Tropical soil is natuscale up/replicate milling operations, technology trans- rally acidic, he explains, fer, linkage to national rice breeder/foundation seed and burning just makes it worse. “The first thing is to sources, improve information and communication teach farmers not to burn.” technology to better capture small farmer data. Because the grass is so tough, most implements just
In addition, MEDA board member Donovan Nickel won’t, well, cut it. One implement that does work is a serves on the Mountain Lion Agriculture board. ◆ powerful cutter called the Joker, produced by the Horsch company in Germany.
Dudek’s social and business passions. He is a single-minded devotee not only of rice but also of the powerful role the private sector can play in alleviating global poverty.
“I’m a firm believer that the private sector — and local Sierra Leoneans as actors A pot of Sierra Leone’s unique and agents rather than passive recipients of ‘development’ — should lead the way from rice, the most popular dish in the country. poverty to prosperity,” he says. “I have seen the results of this approach. No one has more of an incentive to make change happen than those who stand to benefit from it,
“In Sierra Leone you need good machines,” says Dudek. Cheap tractors, which the government has imported in large numbers, can wear out in one season. The environment is rough, and drivers often don’t know enough to raise up the implement at the end of the row.
“Bringing in good equipment has doubled our yields,” he says. “All of the
Mountain Lion’s own 250-acre farm serves as a model for farmers. Irrigation is still in its outcomes infancy, with farmers dependent on rain or swamps. Dudek is working with a large irriga- normally pursued tion company to develop a pivot system and a multi-user community-based model. The company’s centerpiece is a mill that in development processes output from its own operations as well as from other farmers in the community. can be achieved Dudek expects it will be the largest and most advanced processing facility in the country. Of indirectly through the thousand farmers Mountain Lion works with, half already supply rice to the mill, which business.” is expected to dramatically improve quality and lead the way to the country’s own domestic brand of rice. The mill pays farmers market rates and offers interest-free loans to buy high-quality seed for next year.
Dudek sees the various divisions as feeding into each other. “We can help farmers grow more, and we can purchase more rice, which is what our mill needs. We want to create a national brand to displace lower-quality imports.” Dudek says Mountain Lion’s expertise grew from its own humility — they acknowledged their ignorance from the outset, and then persistently gathered information,
honed skills and focused relentlessly on research. “Now we’re getting four tons per hectare,” he says. “That’s a huge accomplishment. We’re operating in a highly acidic environment with shallow soil, endemic iron toxicity, all kinds of issues. And we’re trying to do it in a way that other farmers can replicate what we’re doing.” But size of crop is not the prime metric. “It’s not about the yields, it’s about how much money you spend getting the yields,” says Dudek. “Our target is environmental and financial sustainability.”The Mountain Lion Agriculture team with their high-quality tractor in the foreground. By his reckoning, if you can help farmers grow and each make an extra 10 or 20 or 30 dollars, that money will be spent on food, medicine and education. “All of the outcomes normally pursued in development can be achieved indirectly through business,” he asserts. Dudek notes proudly that Mountain Lion has built a maternity clinic and is constructing a library. Being part of the community they serve goes beyond altruism. “All the things we do for our community benefit us too,” he says. “After all, if our own guys get sick we’ll want to have a clinic nearby.” Being community-based brings its own set of rewards. “We don’t need guards or barbed wire fences,” says Dudek. “The whole community is our security force.” He gets animated as he extols the nexus where “ethics meet good business thinking.” By making a big impact and “doing well,” Mountain Lion aims to model what he sees as the future of capitalism – where pursuing values can make a business more profitable, not less as is so often assumed. “Having a long view and integrating values into our business model has been an essential part of our success, as opposed to the financial crises of the past few decades which were often created by short-term and profit-exclusive thinking,” he says. “It is not hard to envision the future of business and investment as one where profit and purpose become unified. To be able to see this dynamic firsthand in the lives of the smallholder farmers we work with is really invigorating.” ◆
Wheels for the journey
What do Millennials need for a career of adventure? Graduation speaker Joyce Lehman gives tips for preparation.
Seventeen years ago Joyce Lehman came to a fork in the road. A successful Chartered Public Accountant, she was offered a chance to teach at Goshen (Ind.) College. Then she worked for MEDA in Afghanistan, traveled to dozens of countries promoting financial services for the poor, and wound up with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. This spring she spoke to Goshen graduates about the ingredients of exciting career transitions. An abridged version follows.
You live in a new world. You are the Millennials. Once there was the Greatest Generation, then the Baby Boomers, Generation X and now you Millennials, also known as Generation Y. You are the first to grow up with a computer in your home — you have distinctly different behaviors, values and attitudes as a result of social media, smartphones and other new technologies. Notice I did not say better or worse, just different. And that computer you grew up with? It’s now as obsolete as a land line phone and white pages.
You are entering a chaotic job market and will make many job changes and several career changes in your life. You will delay the traditional rites of passage into adulthood — foregoing early marriages and mortgages — and you will in fact redefine what it means to be an “adult.” It will be about personal abilities and characteristics rather than about having a “real job” or being “settled down” and yes, it may drive your parents crazy.
You have been described by sociologists as more confident, tolerant, optimistic and engaged. You are the most racially diverse generation — 43% of you are non-white.
Others say you are narcissistic, have a sense of entitlement and seek instant gratification. Only one third of you self-describe as religious. You will not only seek new employment online, you will also seek your life partner there. When man first walked on the moon 45 years ago it was a remarkable achievement, but that will pale in comparison with what you will experience in the next 45. When I graduated from college, a woman had three career choices — teacher, nurse, secretary — and most didn’t aspire to a career at all, often just working long enough to get their husbands established in theirs. Now you have Sheryl Sandberg in her book Lean In saying that the most important career decision a woman can make is her choice of a life partner. Whether that resonates with At last count Joyce Lehman had set foot in 70 countries, many to carry out her second career as an enabler of business solutions to poverty. you or not, it speaks to the complexity of juggling two careers with household and family care, if indeed you make those choices at all. Still, given a choice I would take your world in a heartbeat. But this world still requires a framework to help navigate through all the decisions. Three pieces of that which I have found useful are passion, courage and patience.
Passion
“Do what you love. Hang on to your dreams. Follow your bliss.” Clichés, I know. But I’m guessing each of you has some one thing that you hope to be able to do sooner or later. Don’t lose sight of it, and when the time is right, make the commitment. Goethe said, “When one is committed, then Providence moves too.” When the Peace Corps was established in the early 1960s, I thought the opportunity to travel to new and unfamiliar places and do good work sounded very appealing. But that was not an option for me at the time, and the limited choices I had took me in a different direction. I can’t honestly say with a straight face that I was pas-
sionate about public accounting or even business in general. But without that time of preparation, I would not be able to do the work I am doing now and feel passionate about — that of finding or enabling business solutions to global poverty.
Many of you want to serve the global community. The disciplines of education or health or social services are easily connected to a life of “service,” but not enough attention is paid to the skills and discipline of business, management, accounting or information technology. So here’s a shout out to you who are embarking on that path.
Every organization on the planet needs people with your skills to help them be more efficient and effective. The private sector must be part of the solution to many vexing global problems, whether disease or food supply, the environment or financial services. There will never be enough government aid money or philanthropic capital to solve these problems alone. The private sector must be part of it and that requires people with both the skills and passion to move it forward.
And I’m not talking about businesses simply giving their profits; I’m talking about finding market solutions
Joyce Lehman working with a women’s savings group in Mali.
that improve the lives and opportunities of the global poor. I have had a lot of people — both young and not so young — ask me how they can prepare to do what I do. When I tell them to study business or become an accountant, I can read the disappointment in their faces. So they should NOT aspire “Financial barriers,” to do what I do, but rather find something they both want to do my friend said, and want to become good at doing — pas“are false barriers. sion and preparation. And that can take People use money courage. as an excuse to Courage Once when I was NOT do what they trying to figure out my next move I spoke really want.” with a friend who periodically reinvented herself. She would quit what seemed to be a really great job and move on to something completely different. I knew she was not wealthy and needed a regular paycheck. I took her to lunch to learn how she made those tough decisions. When I told her I was being tempted by a dramatic Dining at the No Problem fish restaurant in Philippines. career shift she said, “Take a year off. You need time to
think and figure out what you really want to do.”
I was hesitant. “But,” I said, “I need a paycheck.” (I still had a mortgage and tuition bills).
She retorted, “I have found that financial barriers are false barriers; people use money as an excuse to NOT do what they really want.”
When I continued to protest, she said “Okay, forget that you don’t think you There will never can do it. How does it sound to you?” be enough “Are you kidding,” I said. “I’d love to be able government or to do that.” “Well then,” she philanthropic said, “FIGURE IT OUT!” Clearly tired of my excuses, she got up and capital to solve left me sitting alone in the restaurant. vexing global A lot of decisions don’t get made because problems alone. of fear — fear of uncertainty, fear of failure, or The private sector even the irrational fear of what people might must be part of it. think. Bold decisions take courage. It’s not easy to walk through one open door without knowing exactly where it will lead. Many people are not comfortable with ambiguity, but sometimes the movement itself is the most important — and most courageous — first step.
Patience
You may be the generation of “instant gratification” but I’m still going to talk about patience. I’m not suggesting you wait until your mid-50s to make a major career move like I did, but it’s important to take time to prepare. Luck, or Providence (which I prefer) happens at the intersection of opportunity and preparation. You need to be good at what you want to do. In his book The Outliers Malcolm Gladwell says it takes 10,000 hours (or five years of 40hour weeks) to become an expert at anything (athlete, musician, etc.).
Patience is also required for when well-laid plans don’t work. We all know life can change in an instant, sometimes in a good way but most often not. No matter
Time out for a tourist visit to the Taj Majal.
how many precautions we take — from airport security to hand sanitizers — we can never be fully protected from harm or misfortune. What’s important is how to respond when unforeseen events do occur (and they will) and how to see the new opportunities that otherwise would never have come your way.
People talk of trying to discern the will of God in making decisions. I was never able to figure out how that was even possible, but I think it may in fact be the reverse — that Providence waits for our commitment and then moves to support us.
At the end of my one year at Goshen, I still had no plan for what to do next and stayed on one more year to fill in for a faculty member on sabbatical. That fall I crossed paths with a friend who told me MEDA was looking for people with a finance background.
It wasn’t the Peace Corps, but close enough. I joined the MEDA staff and entered a great adventure that took me to places like Afghanistan and beyond.
All the rest of what I’ve done in the last 15 years has followed sequentially from that moment, all of which involved events and opportunities that I could not have dreamt would come my way.
So whatever it is — start your own business, find a cure for malaria, become a master teacher, take your family on a trip around the world, climb a mountain, run a marathon, write a novel, travel in space, invent the next big thing — the possibilities are endless. Go for it with passion, with courage, and with the patience required for preparation.
Figure it out. Commit. And Providence will move. ◆
How entrepreneurship fights global poverty
by Marc and Craig Kielburger
The last time we visited India we met a young man who we thought was a mischievous street kid. But he was in fact a harbinger of sustainable economic development.
Maybe 13 years old, he held his hand out for spare rupees. We offered instead to buy him lunch, and over chapatis and dhal he shared with us his hopes and dreams. “I want my own carrom board,” he said, referring to the portable, Indian equivalent of air hockey. He thought by renting the board out to passersby, he could earn money to eat and possibly escape his life on the street.
While kids the world over usually say they want to be a teacher or a doctor when they grow up, increasingly, many dream of becoming an entrepreneur. While a university degree was out of reach for our new young friend, he also realized his hopes for a better future would not be achieved with handouts from charities. He was determined to take control of his own fate, however modest the ambition, so he wouldn’t need help again.
Business is often seen by the non-profit sector and protest movements as the enemy of sustainable development in poor countries. But entrepreneurship is a key player in ending global poverty by reversing the cycle of dependency with a cycle of self-sufficiency and employment. From pint-sized street vendors and rural artisans, to technological innovators and social entrepreneurs who creatively tackle barriers to progress, small businesses are the building blocks of resilient, independent economies — one carrom board at a time.
Despite the starving-child stereotypes pushed in the ads of some charities, the entrepreneurial spirit is vibrant in the developing world — even more so than in wealthy countries. When governments fail to provide, it’s amazing how creative citizens become. Our favourite examples often come to us while parked at a red light: bottled water on a sweltering day; cell phone batteries that are fully charged; even porta potties when the traffic line-up is long.
Many small entrepreneurs in developing countries are women, whose contribution to household income and the local economy give them unprecedented power and influence. Empowered, employed women have fewer children, and tend to spend more of their income than
Charity can help their husbands on the health, education and well-being of their families. people grab the Entrepreneurs build economies. Charity can help people grab the first rung of the first rung of the development ladder, but only their own enterprise will allow them to climb the rest development of the way. Entrepreneurs are motivated and able to innovate, devising new ways to farm, provide basic goods and services, ladder, but and solve social problems — from “edible insect” farming for improved protein only their own consumption in Thailand, to solar-powered lanterns where electricity is unreliable. enterprise will But they can’t succeed in a vacuum. Among the missing links to productive allow them to enterprise in developing countries are basic infrastructure, skills, capital, and regulaclimb the rest of tion. Try being a farmer without a road to get your wares to market; a factory owner the way. where electricity is always blacking out; or an aspiring entrepreneur trapped in the red tape of arcane bureaucracies. We need rich-country governments and international charities to invest in building roads and power grids, provide business skills, and help developing-country governments foster an entrepreneurial climate in their countries and communities. As individuals, we can help in small ways. Resist supporting projects that send used clothing or other finished products overseas, where these well-intentioned gestures displace existing and potential jobs making those products domestically. Support charities that offer education, literacy training and micro-loans. And talk to your financial advisor about investing in “impact finance” or other funds that support social enterprises around the world. There are smart investments with good financial and social returns out there — we just have to look. We know how important charity is in providing basic needs and empowerment. But if the end goal of development is long-term self-sufficiency, then we must engage the entrepreneurial spirit that is so vibrant in the developing world. The entrepreneurs and their workers will pay tax, invest back in their communities, and like our ambitious young carrom-board-seeking friend’s dream, never need a handout again. ◆ Brothers Craig and Marc Kielburger are co-founders of Free The Children, the world’s largest network of children helping children through education. Their article first appeared on The Huffington Post Canada.
Paying what you owe
Faith and family history told him to pay what you owe, even when undercharged
Donovan Oberholtzer is Chief Financial Officer for Stauffers of Kissel Hill, a large supermarket and home & garden enterprise in central Pennsylvania. Begun as a fruit stand in 1932, the family company now employs 1,000 people and operates eight stores in the Lancaster-York-Harrisburg area — five home & garden stores, and three supermarkets and home & garden combinations. Oberholtzer, a third-generation family member, has been with the company for more than 40 years. The following article is adapted from a short address he presented to his home congregation, Lititz Mennonite Church.
by Donovan Oberholtzer
As a business person who is a Christian, I view our family business as a calling. I endeavor to incorporate Christian principles in our business practices. That can provide both challenges and opportunities.
Recently we realized that we were not billed by our electric utility provider for two of our locations when we switched providers. It was no small amount — more than $10,000.
I told my assistant to contact our energy broker and tell them we were not billed and to contact the provider.
The broker called back the next day. “Are you sure you want us to contact the supplier?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Our business practice is to pay what we owe, no more and no less.”
She sounded surprised and said she was just making sure. Then she said she didn’t get many calls like that, and I had made her day.
Afterwards, I kicked myself for missing the opportunity to mention that the reason was driven by my faith in the Lord.
About three days later, I was at a conference and she came up to me and said I had caused quite a stir at their company. I asked her why (while claiming James 1:5
From a single fruit stand in 1932, Stauffers has grown to eight stores in southeastern Pennsylvania.
and asking God for wisdom). She said she brought up our phone conversation at their morning managers’ meeting and some of the people didn’t understand why we would do something like that. After all, they reasoned, we were talking some large dollars. Why not let it ride? It wasn’t our fault we hadn’t been billed. I breathed a prayer of thanks to God for giving me a second chance to explain my actions. I shared that our company motto indicates we want to operate our business to the glory of God and that
CFO Donovan Oberholtzer: “When we do what is right, we can be a blessing to others.”
integrity was the first of our core values. It would seem hypocritical to me as a Christian if we did not pay what we rightfully owed. As a Christian I am called to live and act with honesty and integrity.
AND it makes good business sense. When trust is high, the speed of a transaction goes up and cost goes down. If you don’t trust me, a lot of time and effort is wasted trying to figure out what my angle is. The transaction slows down and the cost goes up.
I also shared a similar event that happened
with my uncle in the business.
A grower delivered 20 trees and billed us for the 25 we had ordered. My uncle reduced the total on the monthly statement and only paid for the 20 he received. After receiving the smaller check, the grower called and asked why we did not pay the full bill. My uncle explained that we only received 20. We pay for what we receive, and no more.
A couple of months later, we received trees from the same grower. This time we received 35, but were only billed for the 25 we ordered. My uncle changed the invoice and paid for the extra 10 trees.
A couple of days later the grower called and said that this had been a test to see if we did what we said we would do. He had sent extra trees on purpose to see if we only adjusted the bill when it was in our favor.
I told our broker how much I appreciated the foundation and example that the previous generation had set. When we do what is right, we can be a blessing to others.
With a big smile on her face she asked, “Do you mind if I give you a hug?”
We both were blessed that day. ◆
Bagels and butter tarts
Patrons ooh and aah over John Bergen’s café bakeries
by Dave Rogalsky
In 2002 the men at WaterlooKitchener United Mennonite Church decided to name their annual Valentine’s Dinner the “Henry Bergen Beef Dinner to support the annual pork sale at the MCC Relief Sale in New Hamburg.” Henry, a retired salesman for legendary meat producer J. M. Schneider, was one of the founders of the meal and had passed away since the previous year’s dinner. When Henry’s son John came to the microphone to receive the honor on behalf of Henry’s family he called all the men serving and preparing the dinner forward. Then he leaned into the microphone and whispered, “My Dad would be disappointed.” He continued, “My Dad was an advertising man.” Instead of the long and convoluted name John suggested The Henry Bergen Beef Bash and produced t-shirts emblazoned with HB3. He then drew attention to the fact that the graphics looked an awful lot like those of his own City Café Bakery. He leaned in one more time and repeated, “My Dad was an advertising man.”
John Bergen is a man of values, one of which is selfpromotion. He ran a successful ceramics firm creating his art for 20 years until age 44. “You have to recreate yourself every six months in the art world,” he says, but his contemporary design had fallen out of style. His business partner then and now, Rudy Dorner, suggested he take off time and think about what to do next. They met for lunch weekly to bounce around ideas. The shortage of good lunch places as well as a great bread recipe created by Bergen’s brother David, a dentist in St. Catharines, Ont., led to the idea of a café bakery, and so City Café Bakery on the corner of Victoria and Strange was born.
In his signature colored glass frames (blue now, they used to be red) Bergen is the face of the enterprise. When he and Dorner were hatching the idea they could think of no personality connected to cooking or baking in the Waterloo region. That has all changed. Mention John Bergen now and people will ooh and aah over his Montreal-style wood-fired oven bagels, rhubarb and butter tarts and thin-crust pizzas. The last were Dorner’s idea, too. “If you
Photos by Dave Rogalsky
have a wood-fired oven for the bagels you have to do pizza, too,” he said. That was 2000 and now there are four City Café Bakeries in Kitchener and Cambridge, all still run on the same principles of honesty and fairness. Bergen wants things to be simple so products are priced in 25-cent increBakery entrepreneur John Bergen (in green), flanked by Rob Engel at left and Anni Nazaretian and Andrea Campbell at right in the Ottawa St. bakery. ments with many rounded to a dollar figure. Instead of cash registers a repurposed transit fare box stands near the bakery part of each location and patrons are asked to throw in their totals. Staff will make change for patrons but Bergen figures a cashier would cost him half a person’s wages per location a week so the honor system saves that cost. This cash system drives auditors crazy, he says, but a detailed audit has shown that while there is about a 2% loss due to patrons not paying, other patrons overpay about 2.1% on average. That’s much better than the 5 to 10% loss he had expected and was prepared to tolerate. “The honor system is deeply ingrained in Waterloo County,” he says. “Just look at all the end-of-lane sales all over the place for wood, flowers and fresh veggies with just a jar or box for patrons to place their payment.” While staff get no benefits they are guaranteed a wage over $16 per hour and eight-hour shifts. Bergen figures they can buy benefits with the higher wage rather than him paying the benefits and lower wages. He looks for people who can multi-task and fit into the chaotic world of a working kitchen: re-heating pizza or baking bagels, forming tarts in a tart shell press, and preparing lunches of sandwiches and salads. If he hires someone and they don’t work out, he gives them four weeks’ severance pay, saying he made the mistake of hiring them. Generally folk have 90 days to prove themselves. This year Bergen expects about an 8% turnover in a staff of 25. A benevolent fund of around $5,000 helps out staff who find themselves in difficult straits, such as having to stay home due to illness but being dependent
Young patron Cam McTavish pays for his lunch on the honor system at City Café Bakery in Kitchener.
on the paycheck. They might get those days paid anyway.
Bergen finds he is constantly learning new things in this stage of his entrepreneurship. Dealing with up to five different parts of government bureaucracies (labor, health, auditors, etc.) he has to constantly figure out how to either prove what he is doing works or find ways to make it work. But it excites him as he is always learning.
When health officials wanted “sneeze guards” installed over the fresh bread he turned to Dr. David Waltner-Toews (professor emeritus at University of Guelph, a specialist in the epidemiology of food and diseases and ecosystem health), to research bread and disease spreading. Waltner-Toews found that there was no case of disease being spread through bread on display. Sending this research to the health board led them to invite Bergen to remove the sneeze guards, which, Bergen points out, actually don’t work anyway if shorter people are doing the shopping (and sneezing).
Overall he insists that what he is trying to do is make it easy on himself. Pay more and you have a stable trained staff. Don’t use cash registers and you have less book work.
Knowing a bit about depression caused by stress, he wants to keep stress down, though he says that most creative people are somewhat manic-depressive. “If you want to do something you need to be somewhat manic to make it happen. But when it doesn’t work you get depressed.” City Café Bakeries required a manic touch to begin but they’ve worked.
Bergen is satisfied with what he has, enough and creative work that pays the way. Rich, he says, is being able to afford a new transmission for your car without having to worry about it. He considers himself rich in many ways.
“Love others as you love yourself,” he says. “So love yourself.”
Then you can love others more.
And maybe open a restaurant.... ◆
Dave Rogalsky is a writer for Canadian Mennonite and pastor of Wilmot Mennonite Church, New Hamburg, Ont.
How hard do you work?
Experts debate whether busyness is a malady or a delusion
Do you think you’re working harder than you used to? Or are you working less and enjoying more leisure time?
Whichever way you answer, there’s research to back you up.
Those who feel they’re busier than ever can find support in Brigid Schulte’s book, Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time.
She examines the busyness of modern society and warns of its health tolls. But despite people’s complaints, she says, being too busy actually makes us feel good.
One of her examples is a man who claims to work 72 hours a week (because everyone else at his office does) and is contemplating cutting back on sleep so he can be even more productive.
Schulte says working parents in a two-parent family today work a combined 28 days more every year — an extra month — than their counterparts in the 1960s.
In the 21st century, busyness has become a badge of honor. “People now tell pollsters that they’re too busy to register to vote, too busy to date, to make friends outside the office, to take a vacation, to sleep, to have sex,” writes Schulte.
Technology hasn’t helped. Even a one-minute interruption, by tweet or by text, can require 10 to 20 minutes to re-focus on a previous task, she says.
A new therapy niche for psychologists is treating burned-out clients who believe the busier you are, the faster you work, and the more you multi-task, the more you are deemed to be competent, smart and successful. “It’s the Protestant work ethic in overdrive,” says Schulte.
“If people remain idle, they are miserable,” writes psychologist Christopher Hsee in Psychological Science. “If idle people become busy, they will be happier.”
How did this happen?
For one thing, life got more expensive and wages failed to keep up. People worked more to compensate. Second, many jobs became less mechanical and work became more creative. Work in the knowledge economy became more enjoyable and easier to overdo. Moreover, work became defined as answering questions of personal identity and providing the key to meaning and purpose.
Offsetting research suggests a different side to the issue.
Maclean’s, Canada’s national newsmagazine, found “scant evidence that we’re actually busier or more overworked than in the past.” In fact, it found that “today’s employees work less, do less housework, spend more time with their kids and get more sleep than previous generations.”
John Robinson, a University of Maryland professor who heads Americans’ Use of Time Project, found that the average employed American worked 34.2 hours a week last year; workers are getting slightly more sleep than they used to; and people tend to overestimate their work by two to three hours a week.
In Canada, research shows women are putting in about the same number of hours as they did 20 years ago, and men are working 14 minutes a week less. Researchers with StatsCan found “Canadians seem to be experiencing less time stress.”
The more education and skill your job requires, it seems, the more likely you are to exaggerate the time you spend on it. CEOs were far more likely than office managers to overestimate their work load. Lawyers overestimated their work week by 7.2 hours, Robinson found.
Despite this data, most people think they are suffering from an epidemic of busyness.
“It’s a status symbol to say that you feel busy,” says Robinson.
“If you’re busy, you’re important. You’re leading a full and worthy life,” says Ann Burnett, a North Dakota State University professor who studies busyness. No longer is “keeping up with the Joneses” about money, cars and homes. “Now, if you’re not as busy as the Joneses, you’d better get cracking.”
“You don’t ever want to say you’re working less than other people,” writes Laura Vanderkam, author of 168 hours: You Have More Time Than You Think.
Researchers noted that technology has blurred the lines between work and private time: having your BlackBerry on while you’re watching a movie does not mean you’re working. ◆
