Ethical entrepreneurship Doing well by doing good

when i was 12

i moved from england to switzerland

by the time i was 18 i’d been to eight

different schools in two different

languages

and i think having had to start off

eight times in a class when you don’t

know anybody

including being thrown into a school

where you don’t speak a word of the

language

gave me a certain confidence in my sense

of survival

early on i realized i’d never fit in so

i just developed my own style

my own values well my only passion at

school

was maths so in what was to become a bit

of a

pattern with me i chose passion over

rationality and i studied pure

mathematics at university

well the only job i could get afterwards

in i.t so i went to work for a

multinational

dupont well life

as the only professional woman in a

group of 70 men

was actually quite fun one day

my boss called me into his office he

said jane we have an amazing opportunity

for you

i said wow thank you what is it and he

said we’re going to replace

all the typewriters with word processors

i want you to manage the project and

train all the secretaries

to say i was astounded is an

understatement this was nothing like

anything i had done before

so i said well why did you think of me

he said why because you’re a woman of

course

well i decided to sleep on just in case

i really was missing out on the

opportunity of a lifetime

but i refused it next day and this was

the first time

my principles my sense of what was right

or wrong would come to determine the

course of my career

and the energy i put into showing him

just how wrong

he was and all his colleagues actually

put me on what dupont called the fast

track

a special program reserved for people

who have the potential one day

to become the ceo well when a couple of

years later they

asked me to move to paris to become head

of i.t

i jumped at the opportunity

moving to paris at the age of 26

head of it for a large multinational

well that was an opportunity i grabbed

the fact that i had

no management experience that the data

center in france had the worst

reputation in europe in terms of

reliability

the fact that i have to build a new data

center and move it live

from one side of paris to the other

didn’t determine

on the country what fun it would be

and it was fun well two years later

my principles were again to be tested

this time

in the form of a champagne reception in

a fancy hotel in paris

the managing director of dupont france

called us all in to announce record

results

and he said next year is going to be

even better

because we’re going to fire 15 percent

of the workforce

and with that he opened the champagne

buffet

i thought what am i the only one who

thinks there’s something seriously wrong

with this picture

well clearly i was all my colleagues

were happily chatting

and consuming free champagne

and i thought can i really work for a

company

that treats its employees as mere

commodities

to be disposed of to increase

shareholder value

well i realized i had two options i

could either go and work for another

multinational

but would i find one that was better

or i could just swallow my principles

and stay where i was

and i might even make european director

by the time i was 40.

well what would you have done

well the answer came that night in the

form of a vivid dream

i dreamt of a company where everybody

was equal profits were shared equally

decisions taken collectively and clients

suppliers employees were all treated

with respect

the next morning my decision was taken

if i wanted to work for a company

that shared my ideals of respect and

fairness

i’d better create it and i resigned

i had no idea what i wanted to do just a

passion to show the world

it was possible to treat people fairly

and

do well as i t manager in paris what i

really needed

was somebody who understood my business

and who could write a computer system

to run it i also wanted an i.t

partner who was honest and who delivered

what they said they would deliver

well eureka that was going to be my

product only i had no clients

no employees and a small detail no money

i started calling prospects trying to

get an appointment

and some people met me curious to see

who the newcomer on the block was

a woman and i kept on at it

day after day week after week

month after month

without making a single sale

it takes a lot of perseverance to keep

going

now i was determined to show the world

it’s possible to do good

and do well well the people i met

listened to me politely and gave me

coffee and as soon as i left

they threw my card into the bin or so i

thought

one day i was sitting in my basement

office all by myself

and the phone actually rang it never

rang gave me a real fright

it was the head of it from the swiss

federal avs office

he said jane we are going to

replace all our computers and we would

like you

to help us rewrite all the systems do

the project management and the training

i said absolutely we can looking around

my empty office and panicked as soon as

i hung up

i jumped to hard people and somehow he

managed to do

what he wanted us to do

entrepreneurship is about believing in

yourself

it’s about saying yes i’m wondering how

afterwards i’d even argue that’s why

it’s the exact opposite

of management well after two years

we were breaking even and

i s 20 people in the company and i

finally started to pay myself

a small salary our reputation for

honesty and fairness was growing

helping with client acquisition and with

recruitment

it turned out that treating people as i

had always wanted to be treated

not only felt right it was making pretty

good business sense

i kept my initial dream 50 of the

profits were distributed equally

to everybody in the company and 50 went

on to fuel our growth

every wednesday evening we offered free

training

to anyone who wanted to come and they

came in large numbers

pizza and beer included and people did

come

it just made sense to help people

improve their skills

and they didn’t all leave in droves to

join the competition who paid a better

salary than us

they stayed and it helped us attract

some of the best talent in the world

we had 27 nationalities for 120 people

in the company

staff turnover was about half the net

the industry standard

despite us paying nothing like the best

salaries

well one rainy day the phone rang by

that time i was getting quite used to it

and it was vertical the champagne

company and said jane congratulations

you’ve just been nominated swiss

business woman of the year

well then i almost fell off my chair i

thought poor switzerland

am i the best that you could possibly

find i soon recovered

and it was an excellent opportunity to

look up from peddling flat out

and to rise we had grown and we were

quite big

and people were talking about us

each year at christmas we would have a

party for the employees

and for their partners well in the

beginning it was of course one small

table

two three small tables pretty soon we

were taking over the whole restaurant

and as i looked out over the sea of 200

faces looking up at me

as i told them where what we’d done last

year what we were planning to do next

year

i measured the extent of my

responsibility

those 200 people depended on my

decisions

for their financial well-being and i

think that’s what kept me grounded

despite

all the publicity we were getting at

that point in time

well by then we actually were quite big

we were by far the biggest market player

in switzerland

more than twice as big as the nearest

competitor

and people were saying we love you but

we don’t want to put any more eggs

in the same basket well that was a tough

one

the only way to keep growing would be

international expansion

and i had two wonderful preschool

daughters and i was a single mother

after much soul searching

i decided to sell the company

the challenge now would be to find

someone who could respect

our employees and our ways

on the 10th anniversary of the company

the employees all got together and

organized an amazing day out

and they wrote songs they wrote poems

about the company

and ten days later i signed the back of

the share certificates

and sold the company

it was an amazing journey

already there’s no thrill like founding

your own company and seeing it grow

but when you found it on principles and

ideals

there’s nothing more satisfying in the

whole world

over the course of the years employees

went on to found

over twenty different companies and to

me

possibly this might be one of the

biggest signs of success

they chose to replicate what they’d

experienced

well i’ve done many things since then as

you can imagine

i’ve advised the federal council on

innovation and technology

and i’ve sat with young entrepreneurs

founding their first company

i’ve been on the board of some of the

largest companies in switzerland and

i’ve been on the board

of some of the smallest startups in

switzerland

but what i mainly do is social

entrepreneurship

making a difference to other people’s

lives that’s where my passion lies

and whatever i do big or small

i try and infuse it with a sense of what

is right

and i ask myself each time is this the

way

i would like to be treated

thank you very much

you