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