Who is Farhan Lalji?

Let’s recap here, fuel prices are going up and up and up. People want to have a work-life balance. The internet has revolutionised the way people communicate. So why do we need to be in the same place to work together? We don’t.

Sure being in the same room as people you work with adds value, it means you’re able to socialise, you’re able to learn more about people and trust people. But how many people do you actually work that closely with? Is it enough to justify large rents in metropolitan locations? Not to mention a lot of times meeting with people or conversations get in the way of productivity.

I’ve worked virtually with lots of folks in past jobs and in my present job. I find getting together once a week with some, once a month with others, and once a quarter with others is enough to build rapport and through the telephone, instant messaging, email, desktop conferencing, video conferencing and other tools we don’t need to be in the same office as each other to work together effectively. I like working from home. I probably should do it more; I bet I’d be more effective.

So my prediction for the near future is that we’ll see a lot more virtual working, a lot more working from home and lot more smaller offices. This will potentially mean fewer meetings, less distractions and a drop in our collective foot prints. Not to mention a healthier bottom line as you don’t have to pay for large offices.

Jeff Jarvis has a great post on Walmart and good companies and bad companies, which includes my favourite analogy about making a bad product or company look better superficially rather then addressing the core problem; “putting lipstick on a pig”.

What’s good? What’s bad? Good questions. To me, good companies spend as much time thinking about their social impact and the impact of their mission and vision on society as they do on the bottom line. Bad companies only focus on maximising the bottom line.

If only investors spent as much time valuing companies social bottom line, if only the social bottom line had a more direct impact on the market value of the company. Might be easier to convince companies to be more socially aware in the way they operate but on the other hand some companies are just authentically good and evil. I’m not sure, whatever we change in the market to evaluate companies “goodness”, would help Walmart operate in a way that’s beneficial to its communities and society as a whole.

The wife and I often get into a heated debate about how to solve the world’s problems.

One such problem is war and violence.  My take is that things like sport and business play a vital part in progress, and that politicking and government intervention isn’t enough.

I was reminded about this as I read a posting on nba.com that talked about the Seeds of Peace basketball clinic.  The clinic invites kids from Israel, Palestine, Egypt, Jordan and America to learn more about the game and play the game together.  By cooperating on the basketball court kids have to learn more about each other and hopefully form a bond.  The theory behind camps like this is that when these kids grow up they’ll take these experiences and be less likely to resort to violence against other cultures.

But waiting for kids to grow up can take time that we don’t really have.  So companies like New Generation Technology can also provide a helping hand to peace through enterprise.  Getting Israeli money to flow into Palestine links the two regions and, hopefully, means that by destroying one another they actually destroy themselves.  I love this idea.  And it seems like Sir Ronald Cohen is catching the invest in peace fever as well.

I totally think there is a place for governments and peace discussions and whatever else Tony Blair et al are trying to do; I just think roadmaps and peace plans work politically but enterprise and sport actually can work socially.