“The planet does not need more successful people. The planet desperately needs more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers and lovers of all kind.”
– Dalai Lama
John felt a little dazed as he walked out the hospital doors. The medication was still kicking in, he realized. That and the late afternoon sun. Raoul, his driver, was walking closely behind him, not too sure if he should let him walk off on his own. But John felt the need to walk a little. On his own. The weather was beautiful, an early autumn breeze, and he needed to shake off the stuffy air of his hospital room and be able to think.
Too much had been going through his head in the last few days, since his heart attack. The doctor had told him he’d been very lucky to come out alive. Apparently he’d had an amazing recovery from the bypass surgery. But he’d always been a fighter, a winner, and this wasn’t going to stop him. Thoughts kept shooting through his mind.
John wandered along the river bank, drifting by the shady benches. The leaves were starting to fall with the breeze, on the graveled pathway and the well-kept lawn. He couldn’t quite pinpoint why he felt so uncomfortable, a funny feeling that something had changed. There had been all the flower bouquets in the hotel room, the quick visits by board members and his leadership team. His faithful Anne had been on stand-by in front of his bedroom door for days, but she was probably feeling that was part of her Executive Assistant duties. He’d waited for her to get some late lunch so that he could sneak out quietly.
Then it hit him, and his medication-numbed brain started to spin. The hollowness of it all, the shallow conversations with his bedside visitors, the well-intentioned but heartless words, the cards from people he’d never visit in their own hospital stays… The loneliness of power, he thought to himself.
John shook off these thoughts as post-operation nonsense and decided to focus. He checked his watch. 3:42 pm. Clear, precise time, just what he liked. His watch meant a lot to him, it reminded him of where he’d come from and what he had achieved. He’d started off as a nerdy computer programmer from a lower income neighborhood. He’d gotten a scholarship and became a brilliant programmer in Wall Street just out of university, developing new ways of anticipating changes in wheat futures markets. That had gained him a lot of credibility, but also a realization that his real interest was in financial management, where the real money is. He’d worked his way up the corporate ladder until a European bank headhunted him to become their Chief Executive for Global Private Banking. He moved to Europe and a couple years later he became Chief Financial Officer.
John knew he had pretty much everything he could ever wish for. He brought his dad over to live in a nice apartment a couple blocks from his penthouse. John would stop by every morning around 5:30am to bring him coffee and they’d have a 20-minute chat before he headed off to the office. He knew he was attractive, attractiveness that money enhanced, and he had the occasional short-term romantic engagement. He was more faithful to his annual sailing trip in some tropical destination. Life was good, but he was still missing something.
Then the Union Bank merger happened. Or at least it should have happened. John was the perfect number 2, carrying out all of the tasks that Gilbert, the CEO, needed conducted. He was hard-working, extremely loyal, and appreciated by Gilbert who showered him with praises to the Board. John progressively convinced Gilbert to think differently, be more ambitious and take risks. John mentioned a couple ideas which he knew would resonate with Gilbert. He focused particularly on Union Bank, a large US-based bank going through some difficulties. He was very eloquent, and his charisma quickly overcame any of Gilbert’s reservations.
Both Gilbert and the president of the Board saw the takeover of Union Bank as a great way to expand their global reach, and they made a convincing case to the Board. The implementation of the merger was left to John’s capable hands. A small grin came to John’s face as he remembered those not-so-distant days. He’d worked hard, real hard, to get his team where he wanted them. But the information he provided them with was, John remembered with a smile, somewhat partial. The merger fell through, the stock price fell dramatically, and John was asked to explain to the Board what had happened. He provided the full picture, the stronger than expected situation of Union Bank and the alternatives that he had identified to pull the merger through. Gilbert was asked to leave, replaced immediately by John as the new CEO at the ripe age of 42.
John still remembered crisply that day, as he left the Boardroom. First he stopped by his favorite jeweler and purchased a new watch, expensive even by his standards. The same brand Gilbert had owned, but nicer. Then he had what turned out to be his last dinner with his dad. And then he embarked on his grand plan to restructure the bank to fit his global aspirations. He no longer had time to chat with his dad on his way to work, partly because he bought a bigger penthouse closer to the office and partly because he was now traveling around the world. His dad passed away four months later, an old lonely man on a big hospital bed, and John had arrived a few hours too late.
***
“Une pièce s’il vous plait!” The low shriek from the drunken homeless man sitting on the bench caught John by surprise. He’d wandered deep into his thoughts and instinctively jumped to the side when the beggar reached out. He gave him a quick look and gave another step to the side. A cold shiver ran down his spine. The stare on the tired man’s face… a stare so similar to that gaze of deep sorrow that his dad had left with. He felt a cold sweat run down his neck as he continued to walk.
Damn medication, thought John, feeling both dizzy and emotionally drained. He never gave to beggars, by principle. Let them work if they want money. Heck, I didn’t get here by asking for favors. He never approached beggars, by fear. Fear of their smell, or maybe a superstition that their bad luck would rub off on him. He wasn’t sure which of the two, probably a bit of both.
He needed to get back on track. He simply had no time for this emotional nonsense. He walked out of the riverfront park and headed to a crowded pedestrian street. Shops were full, sidewalks were bustling and everyone seemed to be enjoying the late afternoon rays.
Suddenly he found what he was looking for. There she was, at the terrace of a café, the vision of an angel. He walked up confidently, enjoying the view as he approached her: the high-heeled shoes, the black stockings, the carefully measured knee-long skirt over her crossed legs. He had come to admire the attention to detail of European women over the years. Her hair was down and no ring in sight, all was well. She was oblivious to her surroundings, reviewing some notes with an empty coffee cup by her side. He sat down assertively, took a relaxed pose and gave her a quick “hello” as if they had always known each other.
“Nice afternoon, wouldn’t you say? I love this town.” He paused for effect. “Do you have any idea as to how many bank vaults this city has, all bigger than this square?” She gave him a slightly annoyed look, finished her paragraph before putting her notes down.
She looked at the table where his hands were playing with the ashtray. “Any particular reason you want to show me your watch?” The tone was direct, measured, but also clearly reproachful. She had exposed his opening move at showcasing his success.
“You do realize you won’t be able to take it with you the day you die?” Her tone had changed, caring, somewhat concerned, like a mother or a friend. He wondered if the weariness of the last few days was that obvious. He thought of a couple answers, opened his mouth and chose to shut up. Damn medication, he thought again. He wasn’t thinking straight.
“Look, I appreciate your interest, but want to let you know it is misplaced. You obviously feel successful and entitled, though you look like you’ve had a rough day. So have I. Why waste your time with me? There are so many people out there who could use a helping hand.” Her English was fluent, with traces of French and British in her accent.
Damn it, an idealist, he thought. Why couldn’t he just meet an aspiring banker or stockbroker? Breaking the awkward silence she went on.
“Listen, the best advice I can give anyone after a rough day is to sort out your priorities. If you wouldn’t need to work for a living, what would you do? If you weren’t paid to do what you do, would you still do it?” She paused, realizing he probably already had all the money he needed and picking up girls like her was probably his life’s ambition. The waiter came up to the table and gave her change back. She continued.
“What will your legacy be? The guy who had fancy watches? The guy with fancy girlfriends?” She had this softness in her tone that made her disapproval seem almost inviting. His mind projected the image of his hospital bed with the flowers and the meaningless cards. And a grey tombstone that read: “John Mintleton, CEO.” He gave her a blank stare.
“It’s never too late to find your passion. Take care of yourself, you don’t look too good,” she added as she picked up her handbag and walked away.
John remained seated for a couple minutes, staring in the direction she had left. Legacy? He thought of his dad, alone in his hospital bed. He thought of the beggar with that stare carrying such sorrow.
He got up, decided to shake off his thoughts and headed back to the park. He traced his steps back, and saw the beggar sitting on the same bench, an empty vodka bottle to the side. He sat down next to him.
“What will your legacy be?” he asked the beggar in his broken French. The beggar looked at him with a strange look, half questioning what this man wanted, half wondering where he was.
John went on for a while, telling the beggar about his dilemmas, assuming his neighbor was too drunk to make any sense of what he was saying. Out of habit, he asked the beggar what his own aspirations were, though expecting no answer. Mumbling at first, the beggar started to talk about his own life, his successful career as an intercontinental pilot, his wife and kids. He explained how his life had collapsed when he got fired for becoming an alcoholic, lost his house and then his wife. He talked slowly, without any anger, explaining as clearly as his slurred speech allowed him to how proud he was of his kids. His son had become a pilot as well and flew around the world as he once did, though they no longer stayed in contact.
John laid back and relaxed on the bench, feeling the warm sunset on his face. It was nice listening to someone else’s story. He asked the beggar if he had any regrets. Gabriel’s answer was clear: get to know his grandson, spend time with him before he would grow up. But he knew he could not do it alone, he had been drinking for too long.
John looked at the colorful clouds in front of him. He let the silence settle in. So many thoughts were bouncing around his head. His dad. His hospital bed. Grandsons. His legacy.
John suddenly sprang to his feet, told Gabriel to wait a little while and ran out of the park. He walked nervously down the street until he found a pawn shop a few blocks away. He barged into the store and walked up to the sleepy shop owner in his sixties. He took his watch off his wrist and told the mystified gentleman to value it. The pawn broker’s eyes suddenly widened when he gave the watch a close look. He gave it a deeper look with his magnifying lens. He then handed the watch back to John. He seemed deeply apologetic as he told John he did not have that kind of cash on hand. John told him to give him what he had and he’d return a few days. The pawn broker went to an old fashioned cash register and took a large envelope to put in the cash he had on hand, carefully writing in the case number and handing the receipt and the envelop over. John rushed back out.
Gabriel had not moved an inch when John returned. He gave the thick envelope to Gabriel with a single condition: “Find a decent place to live, clean yourself up, stop drinking and let us meet by the café across the street every morning at 6 am for breakfast to see how you are doing. But you had better be there on time. We’re going to get you to your grandson in no time.”
Gabriel looked at John with a dazed look for a few minutes. Then suddenly he got up and jumped awkwardly onto John. He hugged him as hard as he could. John could feel the warmth below the layers of clothing and the smell; he felt tears falling on his neck.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you.” Gabriel was hugging him harder and harder, maybe because he was too drunk to stand on his feet. Then he stopped and explained.
“Thank you, not for the money, though right now I could use a shower and a warm bed. Thank you for caring. See you tomorrow at 6 for breakfast, you owe me your story.”
***
Two years had gone by, two years exactly. Two years since John had given away his watch and his ambitions. Two years since he’d stepped down as CEO and dedicate himself to taking over the bank’s struggling Social Responsibility Unit. No-one seemed to know why the unit even existed, so he came in with a new vision and sense of urgency. He sold his penthouse and put in the amount as a starter fund, as much to make a point to himself as to the bank. There was no turning back. He knew that the new CEO, whom he’d pretty much appointed, would leave him full liberty to take on this new course.
Even so, John knew enough about banking and bankers to acknowledge he was pretty much clueless about helping people, real people, those who struggle to pay bills every month and keep their kids in school. But he did know a thing or two about the importance of getting the right information. He set himself to track down those who knew. And he found those experts in surprising places. Not in global conferences or in fancy international development banks but in nickel-and-dime neighborhood organizations that could stretch that nickel and that dime a very long way. Those organizations were everywhere, as ubiquitous as the poverty and inequality he was so interested in. But he also realized how these local volunteers – these soup kitchen workers, literacy teachers, anti-bullying campaigners and so many others – were so often ignorant of the value of their own knowledge, of their own “common sense” as one community mobilizer had referred to his advice and tips.
John looked out the window from his uncomfortable economy class seat. A beautiful sunset seemed to embrace the mountains below. He checked the time on his watch, then smiled as he realized he still had on the fake Casio watch he had bought from a street vendor in Mumbai. The time wasn’t always right and the wristband was about to break off, but – as the vendor had pointed out convincingly – it could always serve as a calculator. And for John it was a token from a great conversation with that street vendor, who had walked half way across India at age 14 to sell whatever he could find to buy his sick mother some medication. That kid could tell a story. And give his watches meaning.
Street vendors have amazing stories, he realized. At least if you took the time to listen to them. Not that salespersons in luxury watch stores in Geneva don’t tell stories, they do, they even rehearse them. Just not necessarily the kind of stories that give you hope in the future of humanity.
John had come to realize that every human being has a story waiting to be told. Stories of suffering, often, of mothers sacrificing their health and aspirations to care for a sick child, of migrants spending entire lives away from those they care most about, of successful executives realizing too late that a long-sought promotion cost them their marriage and the respect of their children. But also stories of hope and redemption, stories often sparked by the small gesture of a friend, a foe or an unknown passerby. Stories that often only required a little spark to change a life.
Time is money. John’s grand-father had a plaque with that inscription above his desk. He’d been a successful businessman, building bridges in colonial India. And he’d always been a busy man. John had stuck to that mantra throughout his life. Yet it now seemed irrelevant. Time is money, or at least can become money if that is how you decide to spend it. But time is so much more. It really is the only thing we have. And how we decide to spend that time is ultimately what will determine what our lives become. We get to choose how we spend our evenings, whether watching TV, liking pictures of cats or answering work emails. Or sit down with new and old friends alike, childhood acquaintances or just-encountered street vendors, and exchange accounts of our struggles and successes. Deciding how to allocate those 24 hours every day had become an obsession of John’s, as if there was a way he could regain all of those lost years.
John had given himself a new job title, “Story listener”. He’d come to realize that most marginalized people don’t want help, most poor people don’t need handouts. They just want to make sense of their struggles, share them with others and find ways to relate to others in a different way. He found it fascinating to hear how people give meaning to their failings and successes, across cultures and languages. If only he had more of that precious time, not to change his past – he was too pragmatic to look back – but to hear just one story of change per family around the world. Wouldn’t that be amazing, John thought amusingly, to have a billion stories of change at our fingertips, a billion stories of our common humanity?
***
Part of John’s daydreaming stemmed from the trip he had just completed. He was on a flight back from El Salvador, where he had just participated in a workshop on “the dignity of urban youth” organized by an amazing non-profit working on youth self-esteem in gang-ridden neighborhoods. The mayor of the small town had given him a tour of the new basketball court in his fancy SUV in the middle of one of the city’s roughest neighborhoods. They stopped to speak to a few youth on the basketball court to talk about their dreams, finding a job, a girlfriend and maybe a little house. But also to keep on rebuilding their neighborhood, one street at a time, without the trash, the gunshots and the violence, at home and outside. The mayor told him that for the first time, youngsters actually spoke of their dreams without the traditional “The day I leave this neighborhood, I will…” It gave John a little chill to realize how little stood between a fulfilling life and a life of drudgery.
The whole playground project had cost a fraction of that fancy watch of his. John was always amazed by how much people got done with so little, when they believed in what they did. Their resourcefulness in finding gravel and tools and in transforming old tires into play areas. He used to spend more on restaurants in a week than what the basketball court had cost.
In comparison, his own contribution seemed so insignificant, almost farcical. Via some global resilience network, he had been invited to join the city’s resilience coalition, a pet project spearheaded by the mayor and led by a handful of local civic leaders. They had explained their ambition to reach out to every single street and get people agree on the first actions they wanted to take together. But more importantly, John had been invited to the coalition’s secretariat, a small stuffy office in the basement of the Town Hall. The Mayor had proudly exhibited the piles of maps that had been drawn by the residents of the different neighborhoods. John was confused at first, as he looked at their mapping of needs and their database of volunteers. Suddenly he realized everything was done on paper and filed in large filing cabinets. So he had offered to help them jump into the technological era.
All the participants in the city coalition were thrilled by the innovations he had introduced, praising him endlessly for the new opportunities he was creating. With a helping hand from some of the bank’s programming geeks, John had helped the local coalition develop an App to allow people to identify areas of interest, topics they would want to volunteer for, and register for the courses they would want to take from all of those offered by the city coalition member organizations. It created a huge list of potential volunteers across the town, willing to be trained and support existing member initiatives. People were training themselves to solve their problems on their own, or tasking individuals to take on specific courses to solve different problems. It also helped local non-profits to reach out to these trained individuals for joint actions, from drainage clean-up ahead of the rainy season to repairs to retention walls to avoid landslides.
As John found out later, even one of the local gangs had signed up for a first aid course and six members showed up to take it when it was offered at the local Red Cross. Though the rumor says most of their questions were extremely technical and always related to bullet wounds. They all got certified – though apparently no local organization had called on their services.
John’s other contribution, which his IT team had developed globally and offered across a number of cities, was a database where the different neighborhoods could post their priorities. It worked like a job search engine, indicating the level of progress by the community groups themselves, as well as the resources – money, stuff, people, training – needed to complete each project. Nothing too different from a traditional advertising site, only that it posted the consensually-approved priorities from street consultations. It did require a small number of humanitarian and development non-profits to support the process to guarantee the seriousness of the community consultations and the commitment of the local groups. The neighborhood John visited, Santa Rita, had identified activities for the youth and had listed the resources they had found and the actions they needed. Local partners had been quick to fill the gap. John’s Corporate Social Responsibility Unit had made a small donation towards a new playground, to match a small grant from the Municipality.
So any of the city coalition partners could now log in from their computer anywhere and identify where their contribution would best fit in, based on local requests and their own particular interests. In the case of Santa Rita, a university had offered ten students to help map out the repairs to the drainage system; the water authority had assigned a team to review existing gaps in the water supply; and the corporate foundation of the large textile mill had provided materials and lent a few trucks to repair the school yard.
An added benefit was that this same database was accessible from anywhere, from the Government Ministries in the capital city to different foundations and international donor organizations around the world. By becoming a member of the national platform coordinating these city coalitions, John had gained access to a complete listing of possible interventions for his Corporate Social Responsibility Unit anywhere in the country. Apparently even a humanitarian organization had flown in staff within a week after an earthquake to carry out distributions when Santa Rita leaders posted a list of needs for affected families.
Yet the greatest stories were often the untold ones, not the ones posted on the website, insisted the Mayor. As they drove through Santa Rita, he presented John to a young volunteer, Mario was his name, who happily told his story to John. He talked of a community transformed, the emergence of new leaders and the transformation of the local gang into small business owners focusing on private security services.
After Mario departed, the mayor shared the other story, the one Mario was too humble to share. The Mayor explained that Mario had a strong admiration for one of the local leaders, Doña Yolanda, and he had matured incredibly under her wing. Which is when Mario had shown his own kind of heroism. When a European humanitarian organization showed up, everyone knew trouble was brewing, as the gang relations had remained tense. Yet Doña Yolanda went to observe, with Mario in his stride. Then things went bad, as the neighboring gang attempted to take over the distribution, leading to a hostage situation. Doña Yolanda, in her typical resolute self, decided to intervene. Sensing that Mario would follow her despite her plea for him to stay behind, she imprudently came up with a task to ensure he would stay put: “if things go bad, tell the Santos gang to save our community, but no guns!” Never did she think her improvised mission would materialize.
As the hostage crisis led to a shoot-out, Doña Yolanda’s mediation role suddenly went askew. Mario, realizing his mentor had been hit, rushed to the center square of the Santa Rita neighborhood and barged into the Los Santos headquarters. As he ran into the house, he tripped over his former high school bullies, who recognized him at once. They immediately took great joy in teaching their favorite scapegoat a lesson on respecting one’s elders. It took a number of punches, kicks, cries and broken bones before the gang leader showed up, upset that so much racket would wake him up. The bullies stopped their drubbing and Arturo asked for an explanation. Spitting blood out of his mouth, Mario briefly explained the Esperanza gang’s takeover operation and the arrival of the military. He repeated Doña Yolanda’s exact words. “Save our community, but no guns”. Arturo left the room, leaving Mario and the bullies wondering whether they should continue. Arturo came back a minute later, speaking on his phone on one hand and holding a stretcher from his first aid course on the other. He quickly ordered his henchmen to leave their guns and follow him. Mario collapsed in the pool his own blood, satisfied that, somehow, it had all been worth it.
On their boss’s orders, Mario’s bullies patched him up later that afternoon before taking him to the local doctor.
****
John was now part of fifteen city platforms, all of which had benefited from some technological support from his team. These two contributions – the volunteer interest App and the database of community needs and actions – seemed so basic, and yet that seemed to be the beauty of it. He’d been able to fund community activities directly in 52 communities, activities that local partners were willing to support but could not fund. They ranged from community clean-up to violence prevention to health clinics. Anything and everything seemed to work, as long as the community really wanted it. Networking on steroids, cutting out the middle man, was how John liked to summarize his approach.
The rest of the bank staff had jumped on board, to John’s surprise. The HR department was the first to buy in. They were simply thrilled when they realized that retention rates among staff members who participated in Corporate Social Responsibility activities were two times more likely to stay employed with the bank the following year. Staff satisfaction rates shot up, and they encouraged friends to join the bank. And age did not seem to make a difference, both junior recruits and senior managers expressed increased job satisfaction after supporting a coalition activity, sometimes through their own fundraising efforts, matched by the Corporate Social Responsibility Unit.
The Communications Department was the next to join. They realized that the bank’s brand perception in the countries where the bank has an operating presence was noticeably more positive following community-level interventions, even when there was little or no media event. The word got around and the other coalition members were the ones to promote the commitment of this foreign bank. The Chief Communications Officer had even reached out to suggest she assign a part of her budget to the Corporate Social Responsibility Unit’s work – not just communicating what they did, but also funding community activities directly.
John pondered the changes of the last two years. He’d come to realize the eagerness of everyone around him for the bank to take on a greater role, a role in line with its original mandate but clearer as to how it led to social change. Somehow derivatives and bonds didn’t do that. Even more surprisingly to him, his credibility had shot up since he’d stepped down as CEO to take on this blurry vision of his, of local social impact through global banking technological know-how. He’d had to work on it, clarify what a committed bank meant, determine which resources of the bank really added value for communities, beyond the checkbook. And he’d come across this local-to-global coalition model in many different places, so simple yet with so many moving pieces. The power of an idea. High tech software to connect low tech realities, that’s where his modest contribution would fit. Or rather the contribution of the IT geeks he’d been drawing into his Corporate Social Responsibility Unit from the stock exchange modelling unit. Channeling so much goodwill while cutting out the egos and the need for visibility and recognition. Networking on steroids – how did he ever get his board to endorse such a slogan?
Connecting across barriers, such seemed to be John’s greatest success. He hadn’t started from the most favorable position – bankers were hardly the most trusted professions – but he’d shown his interest was genuine and his ability to deliver was admired. It did not seem like much to him, but his technological capacity had made wonders: the platforms had successfully allowed communities to advertise their realities and their challenges for all to see. He’d made the case, perhaps more than anyone else, that all could contribute to coalitions, even evil high-flying bankers such as himself.
One Billion Legacies 