One of most frustrating challenges facing business leaders today is closing what is commonly known as the execution gap (or sometimes the strategy gap). The execution gap is a perceived gap between a company’s strategies and expectations and its ability to meet those goals and put ideas into action.

Due to the complexity of people, businesses, and the societal constructs in which we operate, it is more difficult than it might seem at first glance to close this gap. A survey in 2007 found that 49% of business leaders perceived a gap between strategy and execution; 64% lacked confidence in their company’s ability to narrow it.

However, there are some simple rules for closing the execution gap.

1. Clearly Define the Desired End Result

A big problem with going from idea to implementation is simply a lack of clearly defined vision and goals. Leaders who cannot define what they want accomplished can hardly expect others to understand their strategy and participate in their projects with any level of meaningful contribution. Fuzzy definitions will produce fuzzy results, if any at all. The more specifically you can define your expectations, the better it will allow employees to wrap their minds around what they’re supposed to be working toward. Without this clarity, they will often end up stumbling around in the metaphorical dark, trying to divine what the leaders really want instead of accomplishing it.

2. Concisely Articulate the “Why”

Since leaders need the effort of others, they must be able toeffectively communicate to them what they want done and, more importantly, why they want to do it. Clear and concise communication is vitally important because employees are more likely to disappoint if they don’t understand what you expect.

Furthermore, explaining the why behind strategic decisions gives employees a deeper understanding of how their knowledge and work will be a contribution to the larger whole. Without this understanding it is easy for them to feel isolated instead of feeling like actively engaged participants in a meaningful enterprise.

3. Acknowledge Ignorance and Acquire Necessary Knowledge

To make sure strategies get put into motion, you must make sure you have the knowledge and skills to manage the project.

With adequate self-awareness, leaders can honestly assess if they have the necessary working knowledge for their roles. There are educational resources to make up for any shortcomings (with the added caveat that ultimately leaders cannot know everything and to pretend otherwise is egotistical folly; hire good people if you are not the best fit to manage).

4. Assemble a Quality Leadership Team

Some might argue that this should be the first item, and I would not dismiss this position out of hand. There are overlapping activities that somewhat simultaneously occur. However for an executive team to be in a room collaboratively developing a strategy requires that someone initiate it and determine who to invite in the first place. And typically this process begins with an idea from the initiator as its starting point regardless of how it might develop from there.

You should aim to build a highly qualified team that can honestly pick apart your strategies from all angles. Allow your team to poke holes in your ideas as you debate and deliberate together. Finding weak spots prior to implementation will help close the execution gap.

5. Closely Monitor Progress

Implementing any strategy involves meetings to discuss the various projects and programs that will be required. But all too often, meetings end with task assignments that are not accomplished on the agreed time line. This is anathema to closing the execution gap, and the executive leadership team should ensure project leaders are acutely aware that this practice is not acceptable. Those under their purview should be expected to perform and be held accountable for the results.

On the other hand, nobody likes to be micromanaged and thus monitoring progress should be done with an understanding that people need to be given a certain latitude in order to be productive. Wise leaders are able to find the fine balance of exercising reasonable accountability while still allowing enough breathing room for employees to do their best work.

6. Listen Intently to Feedback

Since leaders and their teams are not omniscient, there is no way for them to know every possible eventuality in advance. Even after all the worst-case scenarios are discussed and back up plans are put in place, something will likely arise that was not anticipated and that threatens to derail or delay the implementation process.

Therefore, leaders must listen to feedback from all of their employees (and also from customers, when appropriate). You cannot afford to be insular and surrounded by yes-men who refuse to tell you the naked truth about the problems as they occur. Simple, solvable problems can quickly escalate if they are not nipped in the bud.

7. Be Flexible (Within Reason)

Because implementation often reveals unanticipated problems or issues, changes must often be made on the fly. With a stream of accurate and timely information being sent your way from project managers, adjustments can be made to move the implementation process forward, even in the face of unexpected difficulties. But there should be a limit to how many adjustments are acceptable, since typically additional resources will be used for each one that becomes necessary.

8. Celebrate Incremental Achievements Along the Way

Breaking down a long execution process into smaller parts and celebrating each milestone as they are reached is a practice that allows leaders to acknowledge and recognize the hard-won accomplishments their teams are making on a more regular basis. Constantly performing at high levels over a long period of time can drain employees of their energy, which leads to burn-out and low morale. Pausing to celebrate along the way lets your employees know their efforts are valued and are not going unnoticed.

9. Share the Credit for Success With Everyone Involved

There are few things worse than leaders (at any level) who take all the credit for what they have accomplished together with their teams. It is for good reason producers have a long list of credits at the end of their films — it matters to those who contributed to the production. Leaders should be very cognizant of this fact and remember to always give credit where it is due. Failure to do so will cause their employees to resent them and undermine any camaraderie that has built up over the course of working together. Resentful employees will be less likely to execute your vision at a high level.

10. Be Willing to Abandon a Strategy or Project

This is sometimes a difficult thing to do. Very often leaders will consider a strategy or project their “baby” and have a hard time letting go. They consider scrapping it to be a personal failure and let pride override rational thought. Continual objective analysis and honest assessment should be built in to the implementation process; that will allow leaders to know when to call it quits on a failing project and end the hemorrhaging of resources.

By Hugh Sykes BBC News

In Morpurgo's book, children's hopes of peace can fly higher than any wall

A school in the Middle East and a new book by a British children’s writer share a common vision of peace based on a new generation of Arab and Jewish children growing up together as friends. 

At a demonstration I went to last week against evictions of Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem there were more Jews chanting and holding up banners in support of the Palestinians than there were Arabs.
The banners were in Hebrew and in English. That is a change.
I remember going to an anti-occupation demonstration by a variety of peace activists in Tel Aviv a few years ago.
They had slogans entirely in Hebrew, which meant I had to clumsily ask a number of people what their posters meant. “ There is much more contact now between Jews and Arabs who feel the same way about the occupation ”
I wondered why some of them were not in a more international language, like English.
“Ah,” said one of the demonstrators, “I suppose you have a point.”
Then I asked her, “Who do you think you are actually talking to at demos like these?”
After a long pause she said, “That’s a very good question. I think we are just talking to ourselves.”
That has changed too.
Playing together
There is much more contact now between Jews and Arabs who feel the same way about the occupation, and a lot of it is under the radar, so to speak – barely reported.
“We are successful,” said Raida, a Palestinian teacher. “And that’s why the government don’t like us”.
Raida teaches English and History to a class of 11-year-olds. She looked round the room at the children gathered at small tables.
“Two Jews at that table, one Arab,” she told me. “Three Arabs, two Jews over there. And in the corner, two Jews and two Arabs.”
The school is in Wahdat al Salaam/Neve Shalom (Oasis of Peace), a village where Arabs and Jews have lived together willingly as neighbours since it was established in 1970.
“But the children are spontaneously genuinely mixing, are they?” I asked.
“Yes, absolutely,” Raida insisted. “They play together, they visit each other’s homes, they go to the cinema together. They are friends.”
The day I visited, the children were making kites in honour of their special guest, the British author of numerous books for young people, Michael Morpurgo.
He has just written a children’s book about the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Mutual respect
It is a heartening story of a Palestinian boy who lets kites fly free over the concrete wall round an Israeli settlement, with “salaam” written on them.
When the wind changes, the kites come flying back with “shalom” written on them by the settlement children.
Michael Morpurgo believes peace can only come from young Jews and young Arabs living together, learning together and showing respect to each other.
“It’s not going to start from the other end,” he told me, “we’ve seen that.” He means it will never come from the top.
But does the children’s experience at Neve Shalom/Wahdat al Salaam endure?
Raida the teacher said yes, absolutely it does – it is rooted in them, after 11 years in an enlightened community like this.
She tells a revealing story about one of her Jewish students going on to secondary school and daring to challenge the teacher who was telling the class there was nobody living in what is now Israel when the state was created in 1948.
“If a Jewish child can stand up to an inaccurate teacher like that in a Jewish school,” Raida smiled, “there is some hope.”
Arab and Israeli ‘brothers’
Rami and Mazen believe in hope as well. “ Rami and Mazen are now close friends – they call each other brother ”
They also visit schools, in Israel and in the occupied territories.
Their message is that violence will never solve the conflict.
They are very persuasive.
Rami is a Jew, Mazen a Palestinian Arab and they know what violence is.
Mazen’s 62-year-old father was shot dead by an Israeli soldier.
Rami’s 14-year-old daughter was killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber on a bus in Jerusalem.
Rami and Mazen are now close friends – they call each other brother.
They are members of the Parents Circle and Families Forum.
It is not a psychological support group. It is a campaigning organisation with a very precise objective which is written on their smart business cards: “Bereaved families supporting peace, reconciliation and tolerance”.
Negotiation
“Initiatives like these are essential ‘baby steps’,” Hind Kabawat told me.
Hind is a Syrian lawyer who specialises in conflict resolution.
In her fabulous, spacious, stone Damascus house – with a fountain in the courtyard and elaborately painted high ceilings – she proudly pointed to “the most important books on my shelf: the Bible, the Koran and the Sayings of Mahatma Gandhi”.
Does she believe Israel and the Palestinians are reconcilable?
Does she believe – especially now, with talk of attacks on nuclear sites – that Israel and Iran can negotiate?
“Of course,” she said. “In Ireland, peace only came after the British negotiated with the IRA.”
Then she added: “Look at Europe. Millions of people died there in the Second World War. Millions! Did your parents or mine ever believe there would be peace in Europe?” she asked.
“Well there is,” she went on, “because they did believe in it. We have to have hope.”

First, while some religion may be true, religion may also be entirely untrue. If what we mean by religion is the particular claims of scriptures and religious legends, then at the very least, a lot of religion has to be untrue, since major religions make conflicting claims. If Jesus is in fact the messiah, then we can safely say that contemporary Judaism and Islam are false, or at least deeply mistaken; if Jesus is not the messiah, then there are big problems for Christianity. If certain Wicca claims are true, then certain claims of Hinduism are not. And so forth.

Second, it is clear that religious institutions and people are responsible for major crimes throughout history—maybe more so, all things being equal, than their irreligious peers, maybe less so. I am not sure how we would quantify such things. And as a historian and journalist, I am firmly in the camp that believes too much religious “journalism” just sucks up to clerics and churches. Our job should be to report fairly and unflinchingly, and that means often showing just how crooked religious folks, like the rest of us, can be.

Basically, I think of religion as a major human institution, like markets, or marriage, or government. These major institutions are powerful and persistent, and they can lead to profound happiness, deep misery and a lot in between. They are not logical necessities of human existence—that is, we can conceive of a world without any one of them—but they seem not to be going anywhere.

Lastly, let me add that while some scholars can call anything religious, from the cult of Lady Gaga to the Super Bowl, I will trust that we know what we are talking about. It might be interesting if Sam Harris, my interlocutor, wants to talk about “spirituality”, which I generally take to be more personal and less communal than “religion”. But I will avoid that thicket for now.

So what might we mean by saying that “religion is a force for good”? I’ll talk about three things today.

First, religion responds to a deep, satisfying human need for ritual. Throughout human history (and certainly among my three young daughters, who are the nearest evidence at hand), people have liked occasion, routine, ceremony. We like regular, predictable occasions to come together, offer thanksgiving, celebrate common history and experience, and affirm our ties of community.

Such rituals do not have to be religious, of course: there are civic rituals, which in America include Independence Day (and its fireworks), Thanksgiving (and its meal) and Memorial Day (often with a picnic or barbecue). But many of the best, most enduring rituals are religious: Christmas, Easter, Sukkot, Passover, Iftar, etc. And it is worth noting that even supposedly secular rituals tend to accrue quasi-religious elements to lend them meaning: prayers, invocations, discussions of a people’s “destiny”. In other words, it is hard to keep such rituals purely secular, although I am sure it can be done.

By the way, the best religious ritual of all is the Sabbath, and it so happens that religious people are much better at keeping a day of rest than secular people who make periodic resolutions to keep a “secular Sabbath” or just to “slow down”. It seems to be a particularly, if not uniquely, religious good.

Second, religion often organises the human quests for ethics and meaning. To think about the common good, the purpose of life and how to live, it has proven useful to use religious stories or theology. Pure scientific materialism is much better at describing how people evolved, and evolutionary biology and psychology are the best ways to inquire about human nature. But these are insufficient tools for thinking about value and meaning. At the very least, they are not the only tools.

Let me offer a specific example of what I mean. Discussing the Old Testament concept of a jubilee year, with the land lying fallow and property returned to its original owners, is morally valuable and inherently interesting. Maybe one could start that conversation with science, or with a purely secular ethics, but I have no reason to believe those are better ways to begin the conversation.

Finally, religion is fun! As a philosopher might say, it generates utility. Not everyone will enjoy reading religious books, or singing hymns, or puzzling over theological puzzles, or hunting for Easter eggs, or hearing a great sermon. And in a free society—the best kind—nobody has to. But for people who do enjoy these things, religion is certainly a force for good.

Wetland habitats are particularly vulnerable to mercury contamination

Mercury affects the behaviour of white ibises by “turning them homosexual”, with higher doses resulting in males being more likely to pair with males.

Scientists in Florida and Sri Lanka studied the effect of mercury in the birds’ diet. Their aim was to find out why it reduced the ibises’ breeding.

Mercury pollution can come from burning coal and waste, and run-off from mines.

The report, in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, shows that wetland birds are particularly badly affected by it.

Although the researchers already knew that eating mercury-contaminated food could affect an animal’s development, they were surprised by the “strange” results of this experiment.

“We knew mercury could depress their testosterone (male sex hormone) levels,” explained Dr Peter Frederick from the University of Florida, who led the study. “But we didn’t expect this.”

The team fed white ibises on food pellets that contained concentrations of mercury equivalent to those measured in the shrimp and crayfish that make up the birds’ wetland diet.

The higher the dose of mercury in their food pellets, the more likely a male bird was to pair with another male.

Dr Frederick and his colleagues say the study shows that mercury could dramatically reduce the breeding rates of birds and possibly of other wildlife.

The exact mechanism that causes this change in behaviour is not yet fully understood.

But mercury is known to disrupt hormonal signalling, so it could have a direct impact on the sexual behaviour that is mediated by those hormones.

Importantly, the males with the higher mercury doses performed far fewer courtship displays, so they were more likely to be “ignored” by females.

Chemical mimic

Wetland habitats, like the Florida Everglades that are home to these birds, are particularly vulnerable to mercury contamination.

Bacteria that live in the thick, oxygen-free sludge chemically alter the mercury, turning it into its most toxic form – methylated mercury.

And this chemical can act as a sort of biological impostor, mimicking hormones that act as the body’s natural chemical signals.

Some of these signals are involved in reproductive behaviour – they may stimulate an animal to carry out a courtship display or motivate it to mate.

“We’re seeing very large reproductive effects at very low concentrations [of mercury],” said Dr Frederick. “So we really need to be paying more attention to this.”

‘Goldilocks mixture’

When a wetland is warm all year round, like the Everglades, it is an ideal environment for this methylation process.

Scientists refer to these conditions as a “Goldilocks mixture”.

Dr Frederick says that measures could be taken to clean up any sources of mercury where they are close to wetland habitats – for example by filtering or “scrubbing” the smoke from nearby coal-burning power plants.

Gary Heinz, a wildlife researcher from the US Geological Survey in Maryland, who was not involved in the study, told the BBC that mercury was “a serious problem in many aquatic environments”.

“It cannot be broken down, only be moved about and transformed from one chemical form to another,” he said.

“And any effect that might reduce the productivity of a species would likely be harmful in nature.”

Dr Heinz said the next step would be to study the reproductive behaviour of mercury-contaminated animals in the wild.

Scientists have apparently discovered a type of bacteria that, unlike every other known form of life, uses arsenic instead of phosphorus as one of the basic components of its DNA molecules.

In Mono Lake, Calif., astrobiologist Felisa Wolfe-Simon has discovered an organism that can utilize arsenic instead of phosphorus, a discovery that could upend our conceptions about the basic building blocks of life. (Newscom/File)

By Henry Bortman, Astrobiology Magazine
posted December 2, 2010 at 5:17 pm EST

All signs point toward an increasingly multilingual future for the web. It’s estimated that over a billion people will be using PCs in the so-called BRIC countries alone by 2015, and the opportunity is even greater when you factor more people accessing the web using mobile devices than computers in many emerging markets. It’s time businesses of all sizes embraced the foreign language .

Foreign Languages on the Web

A truly global web must represent the languages of its users. And with growth in usage of the web in foreign languages outstripping English, businesses are playing catch-up with their potential customers. They’re rapidly trying to get as multi-lingual and diverse as their current and prospective client base.

In the last ten years, the use of Arabic online has increased by over 2500%, while Chinese and Spanish rose twelve and seven-fold respectively. And English? It didn’t even triple.

Today, 42% of all Internet users are in Asia, while almost a quarter are in Europe and just over 10% are in Latin America. These stats shouldn’t sway businesses towards targeting one region over another, though — Latin American countries account for over 200 million people on the web.

However, the vast majority of all online searches are in a language other than English. English is losing its online market share rapidly, which is no bad thing for businesses that recognize and embrace the opportunities on the foreign language Internet.

Optimizing the Non-English Web

The rise of the foreign language Internet doesn’t change the fact English leads the world in terms of volume and depth of content. Whether your industry is car insurance, web design or musical instruments, achieving top rankings for your English-language website for lucrative search terms is getting ever more difficult. The English-language web is saturated and competition for key search terms is tough, which makes increasing your online visibility tough too.

Conversely, the saturation of key search terms on non-English language websites hasn’t reached anywhere near the level of the English-language web. This means that businesses can attain high — and lucrative — positions on search engines far easier on the foreign language Internet.

This also means that it costs less for businesses to achieve prominence on the foreign language web. So the return on your internet marketing investment in Brazil, Russia, India, China — whatever your target market — should be greater than in English-speaking markets.

And the successful web marketer’s advantage when tackling the foreign language Internet is that you already know the essentials to achieve prominence online. You’ve proved this in the web’s toughest language market: English.

Chitika Research found that the difference between first and second place on Google is significant. In fact, a number one spot on Google attracts nearly double the traffic as the number two spot, and about the same amount of traffic as the second through fifth spots combined. For marketers, you’re several times more likely to hit top spot if you escape English-language levels of competition and target almost any other language market.

Going Local

Doesn’t everyone speak English? Although many non-natives of English do, studies have shown consumers are up to five times more likely to buy from a website with content in their native language.

It stands to reason that consumers would rather search for products and services in their own language. Even if a consumer does speak English as a second language, a report by Common Sense Advisory found that 85% of online shoppers required information in their own language before parting with their hard-earned cash.

So to really make the most of the foreign language Internet, you need search engine optimized localization — a hybrid somewhere between what an Internet marketing company and a translation service provider might offer.

Localization involves addressing the cultural and linguistic needs of each of your target countries. When it comes to search, this includes addressing different local search habits. It’s more complicated than simply translating the search terms that work for you in English. In Italy, for example, one of the top terms for low cost airlines is actually half English, half Italian (“voli low cost”). As British and Irish airlines pioneered low cost travel in Europe, it seems their language infiltrated the Italian psyche and made this hybrid term lucrative. Brands really need local knowledge if they’re to take advantage of commercial opportunities like this.

A 2007 paper by the Localization Industry Standards Association(LISA) reported that $25 dollars was returned for every $1 invested in localization. And with e-commerce set to grow by over 10% (CAGR) in Western Europe alone over the next five years, and much faster in so-called emerging markets, businesses should be gearing up for the surge in Internet spending.

Search and Social

Google’s search algorithm uses many aspects of online activity to determine how highly a website is ranked for a given term. Social media is becoming an increasingly important factor. What does this mean for the multi-lingual digital marketer?

The number of tweets a piece of your content receives and the reputation of those tweeters is important. The same goes for “Likes” on Facebook or “Diggs” on Digg. From a foreign language perspective, increased use of social media around the world creates another opportunity to communicate with customers and a way to improve search rankings at the same time.

According to comScore, Latin American tweets are up over 300% between June 2009 and June 2010, followed by 243% in the Asia Pacific region, 142% in the Middle East and Africa, and 106% in Europe. By comparison, North America only increased by 22%.

So the “rest of the world” is actually leading the Twitter revolution. Big, global companies have already taken action. Sony supports twenty international Twitter feeds, while Microsoft, Cisco and PricewaterhouseCoopers all offer Twitter feeds in ten or more languages.

Of course, to succeed locally with social media depends on the prominence of your local websites. A consumer is far more likely to follow your Twitter feed in French if they find it on your French language website. Developing global social media strategies and fully SEO’d localized websites should all form part of the same grand globalization plan.

This plan should also factor what social media platforms are popular locally. According to Comscore, Russia is the biggest country for engaging with social media overall, with Yandex the number one platform. Facebook isn’t even in the top ten most popular websites in Russia. And while Brazil is big on Twitter (alongside Indonesia),Orkut rules the roost there as the mainstream go-to social network.

Similar patterns emerge across the world. Just because one social network leads your home market, this may not be the case in your target market.

Putting the “World” in “World Wide Web”

May 2010 saw a major development for the foreign language Internet — something that will make the web itself more localized.ICANN, the Internet regulator, enabled full URLs in non-Latin scripts. This includes the country code, which means that Arabic and Chinese characters can be used in web addresses.

This is another clear sign that the web is becoming less English-centric. Businesses that have thus far tackled only English-speaking markets online — with perhaps German, French or Spanish thrown in to help support their single biggest international markets — must cater to a more diverse user base.

The foreign language Internet is the low-cost gateway to global success. With online populations growing at a frenetic pace in the non-English speaking world, businesses need to plan how they’ll keep up. Consumers and businesses in the fastest growing markets of the world -– online and offline -– want to talk to you in their languages. And their languages are usually anything but English.

A guest post by Parag Prasad, an award-winning business coach and speaker.

When I was in college, there was one professor that everyone loved. As well as teaching his subject with confidence and clarity, he would end each lecture with a joke or story that would completely captivate his audience. He was voted best lecturer for three years running, and at the end of his final appearance, he received a standing ovation that must have lasted 10 minutes. But why should telling jokes and stories be important in this kind of situation?

The answer is that influencing emotion is just as important a part of public speaking as communicating information. Every inspirational speaker, such as Winston Churchill and Steve Jobs, has used emotion to win over their audience. With a little understanding of the psychology used by these master orators, you can go from competent speaker to someone who receives a standing ovation every time.

1. Show some enthusiasm. There’s a massive misconception in business that you have to be monotone and overly serious when presenting. The truth is that no audience will forgive you if you bore them. This means you must convey some enthusiasm and passion. Not only will your audience feed off your positive energy, but there’s also another massive bonus to showing genuine enthusiasm on stage. Most problems that people have with rate, volume or body language clear up automatically if they genuine believe what they’re saying. Ninety-nine percent of people have natural inhibitions that stop them going over the top, so don’t be afraid to give it absolutely everything you’ve got.

After all, why shouldn’t you be enthusiastic? You’ve got something interesting to say and if people didn’t want to hear it, they wouldn’t be here.

2. Get comfortable. People are extremely good at picking up on body language and vocal intonation. If you stand in front of an audience and say, “I’m so happy to be here” but you look at the floor, hunch over, and your voice is quiet and hesitant, they will always trust the non-verbal signals over the verbal ones.

People don’t want to listen to someone who doesn’t look comfortable or who doesn’t look like they’re enjoying themselves. Whereas, if you radiate confidence and talk to your audience like they’re your best friend, they will instantly warm to you. Partly because they’re impressed by your calmness in a very stressful situation and partly because when someone else is relaxed, it relaxes us too.

Of course, saying “be comfortable” is easier said than done. It’s a fact that people rate public speaking as a bigger fear than death. There’s one obvious thing you can do to help: Practice as much as possible. You can volunteer to give presentations at work, join your local Toastmasters International organization, or get involved with your local amateur theater group. I’m sure you’ve seen comedians on TV chatting and quipping with huge audiences, making it look like the easiest thing in the world. They’ve done this literally hundreds of times before; I can guarantee you the first time they went on stage they weren’t so slick.

3. Be an expert. For an audience to respect you, they must feel that you know more than they do about the subject being discussed. If you get a fact wrong, misquote someone or misunderstand a concept and your audience picks up on it. .. you’ve lost their respect. From then on, it’s unlikely you will win it back. Without that sense of authority, people will start thinking, “I know more than this guy. Why aren’t I up there on stage?”

Unfortunately, there’s no short cut for this. You simply have to do your research and preparation thoroughly. You should be confident that you could answer a follow-up question on anything you mention in your talk. It’s also sensible to ask another expert to hear it through beforehand just in case they spot any howlers. Would you rather find out in private or realize afterward that you said something stupid?

4. Be likable. The likelihood that you agree with someone obviously depends on what they say to you. However, it also depends, to a surprisingly large extent on how much you like them and feel you have in common with them. This isn’t something that most people would admit to and its an effect that most aren’t even consciously aware of.

Luckily, there are certain traits that people find universally likable.  The icing on the cake that will  have your audience nodding their heads, without even knowing why, is coming across as a genuinely likable person.

• Optimism: Optimists raise everyone’s mood and leave people feeling positive and enthused. Nobody wants to be around someone who moans and complains.
• Goodwill: Taking cheap shots at your competitors is never worth the damage it does to your image. Being concerned about others paints you in a good light.
• Sense of humor: You don’t have to crack a joke every 5 minutes, but the ability to poke fun at yourself or share a joke with your audience is a very endearing quality.

I hope these tips help improve your talks and presentations. It’s important to get all the technical aspects correct like your visual aids, structure and timing but remember, it’s appealing to your audience emotionally that will really win people over.

Companies aren’t charities

In poor countries the problem is not that businesses are unethical but that there are too few of them

STEVE COOGAN, a British comedian, once told a joke about David Beckham, a footballer who is unlikely to win a Nobel prize for physics: “They say, ‘Oh, David Beckham—he’s not very clever.’ Yeah. They don’t say, ‘Stephen Hawking—shit at football.’” Successful corporations are like Mr Beckham. Both excel at one thing: in Mr Beckham’s case, kicking a ball; in the corporations’ case, making profits. They may also be reasonably adept at other things, such as modelling sunglasses or forming task forces to solve environmental problems. But their chief contribution to society comes from their area of specialisation.

Ann Bernstein, the head of a South African think-tank called the Centre for Development and Enterprise, thinks that advocates of corporate social responsibility (CSR) tend to miss this point. In her new book, “The Case for Business in Developing Economies”, she stresses the ways companies benefit society simply by going about their normal business. In a free and competitive market, firms profit by selling goods or services to willing customers. To stay in business, they must offer lower prices or higher quality than their competitors. Those that fail disappear. Those that succeed spread prosperity. Shareholders receive dividends. Employees earn wages. Suppliers win contracts. Ordinary people gain access to luxuries that would have made Cecil Rhodes gasp, such as television, air-conditioning and antibiotics.

These are not new arguments, but Ms Bernstein makes them fresh by writing from an African perspective. Citizens of rich countries often fret about the occasional harm that corporations do, yet take for granted the prosperity they create. People in developing countries do not have that luxury.

In South Africa, where more than a third of the workforce is jobless, the problem is not that corporations are unethical but that there are not enough of them. One reason is that South Africa’s leaders blithely heap social responsibilities on corporate shoulders. Strict environmental laws cause long delays in building homes. This is nice for endangered butterflies, but tough for South Africans who live in shacks. Such laws also slow the construction of power plants, contributing to the rolling blackouts that crippled South Africa in 2008. South African labour laws make it hard to fire workers, which deters companies from hiring them in the first place. And a programme of “Black Economic Empowerment”, which pressures firms to transfer shares to blacks, has made a few well-connected people rich while discouraging investment. Ms Bernstein ducks this last topic, which is highly sensitive in her home country.

Sometimes the pressure on business to solve social problems comes, not from governments, but from non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Ms Bernstein cites the example of a pipeline that Exxon built in Chad. The giant oil firm spent six years trying to figure out the best way to comply with the “Equator principles”, an ambitious set of goals for avoiding harm to nature and indigenous people. Exxon strained every sinew to preserve gorillas’ habitat and compensate displaced villagers. Yet NGOs still mounted a furious campaign condemning it. “Many reasonable companies must surely have concluded…that investment in poor countries is not worth the effort,” sighs Ms Bernstein.

Anti-corporate activists sometimes claim that big companies are mightier than governments. This is absurd. Governments can pass laws, raise taxes and declare war. Companies have virtually no powers of coercion. If people do not voluntarily buy their products, they go bankrupt. Business is thus extremely sensitive to public opinion. This is often a good thing. Ms Bernstein cites the example of white-owned shops in South Africa under apartheid. When black shoppers started boycotting them, “it was remarkable how rapidly most white shop owners were prepared to ditch racist practices.” Yet companies can also be bullied into doing the wrong thing. When multinationals bow to pressure from campaigners against “sweatshops” and sever links with suppliers in poor countries, the workers who previously stitched shoes for export may end up scavenging from rubbish heaps.

Accountable to all means accountable to none

Advocates of CSR argue that firms should pursue the “triple bottom line”: not only profits, but also environmental protection and social justice. This notion, if taken seriously, is “incomprehensible”, says Ms Bernstein. Profits are easy to measure. The many and often conflicting demands of a local community are not. A business that is accountable to all is in effect accountable to no one, says Ms Bernstein.

She does not take the absolutist view that companies should strive only to maximise profits while obeying the rules. In poor countries, the rules are often unclear. Multinationals will face choices where what is locally acceptable would be criminal back home. Obviously, they should err on the side of rectitude, but it is far from obvious where to draw the line. In the most benighted areas they will sometimes build roads and schools to keep the locals friendly. They will brag about such acts, but they are simply a cost of doing business, not an instance of corporate altruism.

Ms Bernstein glosses over the innovative work a few companies have done in integrating CSR into their strategy, and she is better at identifying problems than offering solutions. She urges businesses to defend capitalism as energetically as they promote their own products. She thinks companies should provide incentives for market-oriented journalism, films and even novels. Good luck with that. Businesses strenuously lobby for particular favours from government, and chambers of commerce campaign for lighter regulation. But the companies that are so brilliant at selling the fruits of capitalism—from iPads to medicine—are seldom much good at popularising the system that yields them.

Abdus Salam was brainwashed into believing he would be rewarded for carrying out a suicide attack

Islamist militants told Abdus Salam he would go to heaven if he blew himself up. Initially he believed them, and trained to become a suicide bomber. Now 14, he tells the BBC’s Syed Shoaib Hasan how he narrowly escaped a violent death.

“Zahir, Sher Rahman and Zainullah are all older than me. They are all Taliban. Zahir and Rauf are actually from Afghanistan and have fought there.

I have five brothers. My eldest brother works with my father. They run a construction-machinery rental business.

My family has been living in Sohrab Goth, in Karachi, for the last 30 years.

I used to hang out at a local shop run by Zahir. We used to talk about jihad, fidayeen attacks [suicide bombings] and such things.

I have known Zahir for the past three years. One day, he took me aside and told me that he was going away to be a fidayee [suicide bomber].

When I asked him why was he doing this, he replied: ‘I really want to be a fidayee, at least I will get heaven.’

I asked: ‘How is that?’

He said: ‘If, on the day of judgement, I am asked “What did you do for Allah?” If I say I have done nothing, I will be sent to hell.

‘But if I have done something for Allah, if I have carried out a fidayeen attack, then I will be able to say that I had a body and I blew it to pieces as a sacrifice.’

I was then introduced to Sher Rahman. I told him I wanted to go to Afghanistan, I said I wanted to carry out fidayeen attacks on the Americans.

He said he wasn’t in touch with Afghanistan, but he was in contact with Waziristan.

He started praising the Waziristan Taliban in front of me. I told him I didn’t want to go to Waziristan, I wanted to go to Afghanistan to kill Americans.

Sher Rahman told me I wouldn’t be able to cross into Afghanistan, because I don’t have a beard.

‘You should carry out a fidayee attack in Pakistan, in Karachi. Whether you carry out an attack in Afghanistan or in Pakistan, you will receive the same heavenly reward,’ he said.

Sher Rahman told me not to mention the conversations we had had to anyone. I said I definitely wouldn’t.

He said if I told anyone, he would cut my head off. After he threatened me I was so scared I felt faint.

I told Sher Rahman that I would blow myself up wherever he told me to, that I would become a fidayee there.

He told me that he would try his best for me, and said some people would come and he would introduce me to them.

A few days later, Sher Rahman introduced me to Zainullah. Zainullah asked me whether I was committed to carrying out the act, or if it was all just talk.

I told him: ‘Even if you call me in the middle of the night to carry out an attack, I will do it. I am ready to be a fidayee. I want to go to heaven. Few people get heaven, I am lucky to be a fidayee.’



Dozens have been killed or injured in recent suicide attacks in Pakistan

Zainullah said to me: ‘You shouldn’t be a suicide bomber – you are too young. You should make jackets for the suicide bombers. You will get heavenly rewards for the people who blow themselves up using your jackets’.

But I told him that I didn’t want to do this.

He also said that I could not go to Afghanistan, that they would not let me cross over because I don’t have a beard.

Then he left, after warning me not to repeat our conversation.

Zahir returned after fighting in Afghanistan and I became friends with him.

He would tell me such incredible stories about jihad. He would say: ‘When you put on a fidayee jacket and walk to your target, you will see the gates of heaven open up for you.

‘You will enter into heaven and feel nothing, while the people will blow up in the background.’

I told him this was very good – that I would enter heaven and would stay there for ever.

Later, Sher Rahman and Zainullah were both arrested.

They never told me where I was to carry out the attack, but they recently told me to be ready for it on any day.

If you met them you wouldn’t be able to tell what they were really like – they appear to be normal, straightforward people.

During this period, every waking moment, all I thought about was being a fidayee.

I thought I would carry out a fidayeen attack and go to heaven.

When my teacher used to come for lessons, and while I was working, all I could think about was being a fidayee.

Twenty-four hours a day I would think: ‘Heaven, fidayee, fidayee, heaven.’

My father is diabetic and his health has got worse since he learnt about this. Now he can’t sleep at night.

But now Allah has given me a new life. I want to concentrate on my studies and I want to work hard and join the Pakistan army.”