Category: Business

Deregulation – an expert’s view.

Once again, not everything is as it seems!

Focus warning! This is a longer piece that usual but also a more important piece than usual. Please find the time to read it and explore the links. Thank you.

Many, many years ago I lived in Tamarama Bay, just East of Sydney,

Australia. It was a very short walk to Bronte Beach which was much better experience than the famous Bondi Beach about half a mile North of where we lived.

Thus when I saw the name Bronte Capital it caught my eye because of old resonances from the word “Bronte”.

OK, to the point!

John Hempton is a principle at Bronte Capital, an Australian fund manager. John is no slouch having been in his past a Chief Analyst for the New Zealand Treasury and Executive Assistant to the CEO of ANZ Bank in New Zealand. John’s CV is here.

Bronte Capital have a Blog – well who doesn’t – and it was a link to that Blog from Naked Capitalism that caused me to read a recent article from John about deregulation.

Despite me not understanding many of the technical aspects, it struck me with some force, so much so that I wanted to reproduce chunks of it on Learning from Dogs. John was gracious enough to give me written permission to so do! Thanks John.

The article is called A Deregulation Conundrum.

John opens by writing:

I have just read Daniel Amman’s excellent biography of Marc Rich – the oil trader notoriously pardoned by Bill Clinton. I don’t want to get into the politics and ethics of the pardon other than to note that few things in it are black-and-white when you finished reading the book.

and a couple of paragraphs later explains that Marc Rich has a rather appropriate surname – well this is how John writes:

Marc Rich exploited price fixing/import/export controls to make simply unbelievable profits trading oil. Marc Rich & Co (the Swiss vehicle) was started with just over $1 million in capital and a couple of years later was making in excess of $200 million in profit. This level of profitability exceeds – by far – any other trading operation I have ever seen – and was probably the most profitable trading operation in history. Marc Rich & Co (since renamed Glencore) is possibly the most valuable business in Switzerland within the lifetime of its founder.

Just stop here for a moment.

This man, Rich, goes from one million dollars in capital to two hundred million dollars in profits in 2 years, give or take! Read on:

A typical Marc Rich & Co trade involved Iran (under the Shah), Israel, Communist Albania and Fascist Spain. The Shah needed a path to export oil probably produced in excess of OPEC quotas and one which was unaudited and hence could be skimmed to support the Shah’s personal fortune. Israel – a pariah state in the Middle East – wanted oil. Spain had rising oil demand and limited foreign currency but was happy to buy oil (slightly) on the cheap. Spain however did not recognise Israel and hence would not buy oil from Israel – so it needed to be washed through a third country. Albania openly traded with both Israel and Spain. Oh, and there is an old oil pipeline which goes from Iran through Israel to the sea.

So what is the deal? The Shah sells his non-quota oil down the pipeline through Israel and skims his take of the proceeds. Israel skim their take of the oil. Someone doing lading and unlading in Albania gets their take and hence make it – from the Spanish perspective – Albanian, not Israeli oil. The Spanish ask few questions. The margins are mouth-watering – and they all come from giving people what they really want rather than what they say they want. We know what the Shah wanted (folding stuff). We know what Israel wanted (oil). We know what Spain wanted (cheap oil). Who cares that Spain was publicly spouting anti-Israel rhetoric. [Similar trades allowed South Africa to break the anti-Apartheid trade embargoes.]

John explains:

It also helped that Marc Rich & Co was a (highly) multilingual firm. Rich is fluent in Spanish (it is the language he talks to his children in). He speaks English, German, Yiddish and presumably Hebrew. His business partner (Pincus Green – pardoned the same day as Rich) speaks Farsi amongst many other languages. They could do this deal because they could negotiate it and – deep in their heart they hold the Ayn Rand view that trade is a moral virtue and hence they do not need to be concerned with other morality. [The only line that matters is the law – and then it might not be the law of his adopted country – Switzerland – rather than the United States where he was resident.]

My italics, by the way. Just stay with me for a short while longer to ‘get’ John’s important message. Here’s John again:

The regulatory regime for domestic American oil was also perverse. Old oil (meaning wells drilled before the first oil crisis) received one price. New oil (wells drilled after the crisis) received a higher price. Squeeze oil (oil that was extracted from wells that ran less than 10 barrels per day) received a higher price still. The oil could be chemically identical and the price difference over $20 per barrel. Obviously a trader with a method (any method) of changing the oil source could make a fortune. Again I am not commenting on legality or morality. That was just plain fact. Ayn Rand applies – you give a value and you receive a value.

What all this regulation did was that it allowed people to make simply grotesque profits by thwarting regulation. The regulation thus worked less well and it was socially unfair. Pincus Green was good at negotiating in Farsi. He was astoundingly brave going to Iran immediately after the Shah fell. He was good at organising shipping. He worked really hard – but he did not invent something that changed the world and he wound up a billionaire. Traders make money by intermediating real business solutions – but these were real business solutions to problems made by legislation. Bad regulation, moral indignation about “trading with the enemy” or “trading with Israel” or with racists in South Africa made people with Ayn Rand morals exceedingly wealthy because you could arbitrage your way around any of these regulations.

OK, you are probably getting the drift of this important article from John. If any of this ruffles your hair, then read it all – it’s a very important message. This is what John is saying:

As a plea then I want a debate about the right form of regulation – a regulation that controls agency problems but does not allow arbitrage opportunities to people with “Ayn Rand morals”.

We are not going to get that from the current Tea Party Republicans. They simply argue that regulation (they say but do not mean all regulation) impinges on “freedom” (something that is clearly a good but hard to define). However many of the same people want planning regulations to ban a mosque in downtown New York because it is an insult to the victims of 9/11 (and banning mosques is not a restriction on “freedom”).

If that is the level of debate we are not going to get good re-regulation – we are just going to get pandering to whichever lobby group manages to garner most support. And that is a real risk because we will leave agency problems in place (they benefit the rich and powerful) and we will introduce the same sort of (dumb) regulation that made Marc Rich and Pincus Green astoundingly wealthy. That sort of regulation also benefits the rich and powerful – especially those with “Ayn Rand morals”. [The rich and powerful – if you have not noticed – are good lobbyists. Unless we are careful many amongst them will get their way.]

You didn’t rush those last three paragraphs, did you?

John concludes thus:

I don’t know how to do this well – but I thought I would state the obvious. The most obvious things that need regulation are things with a government guarantee (implicit or explicit). If you have an implicit guarantee (as we now know almost all large financial institutions have) then regulation really matters. If there are large agency problems (small shareholders, large management) then regulation should be deliberately biased to put power in the hands of shareholders not managers (eg banning staggered board elections).

Likewise other agency problems should be strongly policed and the regulation should be of the form that allows that policing. When Elliot Spitzer found that Marsh – a large insurance broker – was participating in bid rigging against schools buying insurance that was shocking – and is precisely the sort of thing in financial markets that should be policed strongly. But it took Elliot considerable effort to find and prove his case. The rules should be established so that sort of behaviour is really difficult to hide.

And I do not think that I need to explain to anyone how much mortgage brokers contributed to the crisis by (a) deliberately misleading borrowers about conditions on their mortgage and (b) participating in the faking of borrowers income/assets/education level when they on-sold the loans to Wall Street. Agency problems were at the core of the crisis.

On the other side if there is no agency problem then deregulation should remain the order of the day. Trade restrictions create arbitrageurs – and the arbitrageurs ensure the trade restrictions don’t work anyway.

There are obviously going to be extensions to this rough rule – and this post is really to garner discussion. But for a start I expect agents who benefit from their agency (and the abuse of their agency) to join the Tea Party.

It is difficult to get policy right. And when and if the policy is got right we are in for a very long fight to implement it.

I take my hat off to Mr John Hempton. He’s in the ‘finance’ industry, probably doing well, and yet he has the courage to hold a mirror up to the desperately immoral happenings going on around him.

It’s a real pleasure and honour to publish this Post.

Let me close with a short piece from the Sydney Morning Herald of the 2nd January, 2010.

john-hempton — John Hempton ... blog locally, act globally. Photo: Domino Postiglione

WHEN John Hempton started a blog as he recovered from pneumonia, he did not expect to send shockwaves through the finance industry.

But that is exactly what the 42-year-old fund manager did through his Bronte Capital blog. His exposé of an unrelated US hedge fund would eventually lead to $426 million in investments being frozen and authorities seizing control of the Albury fund manager Trio Capital shortly before Christmas.

Fabulous! I salute you, Sir.

By Paul Handover

Working dogs!

No surprise really! Want to increase office productivity? Bring a dog to work!

Once again, this Blog is indebted to Naked Capitalism. There in the list of links was a story originally published in The

Economist about some tests to see the effect of dogs in the office. Here’s the link to that Economist story.

http://www.economist.com/node/16789216?story_id=16789216.

Here’s a snippet:

THERE are plenty of studies which show that dogs act as social catalysts, helping their owners forge intimate, long-term relationships with other people. But does that apply in the workplace? Christopher Honts and his colleagues at Central Michigan University in Mount Pleasant were surprised to find that there was not much research on this question, and decided to put that right.

And the article concludes:

Mr Honts found that those who had had a dog to slobber and pounce on them ranked their team-mates more highly on measures of trust, team cohesion and intimacy than those who had not.

But do read the article in full because the conclusions are quite significant. Once again, the link is below:

http://www.economist.com/node/16789216?story_id=16789216.

By Paul Handover

The Verdict!

A nearly 30-year old film has real relevance for today!

Those of you that read yesterday’s Post right through to the end will have picked up on the fact that after completing that article last Friday, Jean and I watched the movie The Verdict.

Amazingly, this powerful film was released on the 8th December 1982.

So why the connection between the film and the Post written yesterday?

Well yesterday I wrote about two recent examples of, at best, a terrible lack of integrity, or, at worst, blatant examples of powerful institutions lying to us. It troubled me greatly and I found no adequate way of closing the Post expressing my troubles in a succinct and fitting way. Stay with me for a few moments.

In the film The Verdict, Paul Newman plays Frank Galvin – here’s the synopsis from the IMDb website:

Frank Galvin is a down-on-his luck lawyer, reduced to drinking and ambulance chasing. Former associate Mickey Morrissey reminds him of his obligations in a medical malpractice suit that he himself served to Galvin on a silver platter: all parties willing to settle out of court. Blundering his way through the preliminaries, he suddenly realizes that perhaps after all the case should go to court: to punish the guilty, to get a decent settlement for his clients, and to restore his standing as a lawyer.

As one might have guessed, Galvin wins the case against all the odds, which doesn’t in any way reduce the power of the film. Newman was brilliant.

verdict — Tackling a medical malpractice case that could revive his once glorious career, attorney Frank Galvin (Paul Newman) questions a key witness, Dr. Thompson (Joe Seneca), in the compelling courtroom drama The Verdict.

At the end of the hearing Galvin rises to give his summation. Technically the case appears utterly lost to his side. Galvin slowly stands, hesitantly looks as his notes, cast the sheet aside and reluctantly addresses the jury.

You know, so much of the time we’re just lost.

We say, “Please, God, tell us what is right; tell us what is true.” And there is no justice: the rich win, the poor are powerless. We become tired of hearing people lie.

And after a time, we become dead… a little dead. We think of ourselves as victims… and we become victims. We become… we become weak. We doubt ourselves, we doubt our beliefs. We doubt our institutions. And we doubt the law.

But today you are the law. You ARE the law. Not some book… not the lawyers… not the, a marble statue… or the trappings of the court. See those are just symbols of our desire to be just. They are… they are, in fact, a prayer: a fervent and a frightened prayer. In my religion, they say, “Act as if ye had faith… and faith will be given to you.” IF… if we are to have faith in justice, we need only to believe in ourselves. And ACT with justice. See, I believe there is justice in our hearts.

Now go back and read my Post of yesterday. Read of the Citi executives paying token fines for lying to investors. Read of the allegation that the 2009 data set in the US GDP report was a “bald-faced lie”.

Now read again, aloud to yourself if you can, the first few sentences of Galvin’s summation. Here they are again (my emphasis).

You know, so much of the time we’re just lost.

We say, “Please, God, tell us what is right; tell us what is true.” And there is no justice: the rich win, the poor are powerless. We become tired of hearing people lie.

I firmly believe that this is where millions of ordinary, hard-working, caring citizens of many countries have arrived today because of the lack of integrity, the lack of honesty and the lack of grace shown by so many in positions of power and privilege.

But do not despair because if we do that, then all is lost. No, believe in the power of good men. Back to the summation from the film:

In my religion, they say, “Act as if ye had faith… and faith will be given to you.” IF… if we are to have faith in justice, we need only to believe in ourselves. And ACT with justice. See, I believe there is justice in our hearts.

Exactly!

By Paul Handover

Is thinking going out of fashion?

Another Yves Smith special!

Many will know that Naked Capitalism is a wonderful Blog and what Yves does is truly amazing. (And a big ‘thank you’

to Richard Smith who so ably stood in for Yves on her recent European trip.)

On the 29th July this year, Yves reran an article that she posted on May 11th, 2007. It’s spot on, in my opinion.

Here’s how Yves starts the Post:

I am beginning to suspect that many are reacting to the over-stimulation of the modern world – the accelerating pace of change, data overload, time pressure, work and relationship instability – by turning off their brains. The rise of fundamentalism and the “family values” push, both efforts to turn back the clock, is one set of responses.

Another is the rise of sound-biting, of using pithy communications to cut through the clutter of the daily information assault. But sound biting is inherently reductionist. It doesn’t permit nuanced argument, or pointing out fuzziness in data, or shades of grey. Sound bites are great for simple, emotional appeals, lousy for policy development (which is one reason why this country seems incapable of having an intelligent discussion on important topics like health care. The public has been trained out of having a long enough attention span to listen to alternatives).

That is so true. Just re-read the sentences, “But sound biting is inherently reductionist. It doesn’t permit nuanced argument, or pointing out fuzziness in data, or shades of grey.” (My italics.)

We live in such a complex world that reducing any important idea or concept to a headline or to an executive summary is, in its own way, significantly short on integrity.

That article from Yves concludes thus:

Most businesses operated in competitive environments far too complex for a terse phrase to be a useful guide to action. Yet a magic incantation, a talisman, a battle cry is terribly appealing. But those who can resist the temptation of relying on a simple playbook and face the complexity and uncertainty of their environment are likely to steer a better path. But understanding risk and adapting also demands far more courage that trusting simple ideas.

Ironically, if one reflects for a moment, that closing sentence is a pretty good executive summary! “…… understanding risk and adapting also demands far more courage that trusting simple ideas.”

Precisely!

By Paul Handover

Anniversary message from Paul

Learning from Dogs has been running for one year.

On July 15th, 2009 a post called Parenting lessons from Dogs started what has now become a bit of a ‘habit’. But more reflections tomorrow.

Today I want to voice something that has been running around my mind for some time. It is whether we give in to the mounting doom and gloom at so many levels in our societies (and it can be a very compelling draw) or whether we see this as a painful but necessary period where slowly but surely the desires of ordinary people; for a fairer, more truthful, more integrous world are gaining power.

And I’m going to use Richard Branson to voice it for me!

(Now this is an unusually long Post so I’ve inserted the Read More divider to prevent the Post visually swamping your browser.)

Read the rest of this article

The Two-sided Coin of the World Cup

Football’s World Cup – a review

It is probably a bit non-PC [PC = politically correct, Ed] to say anything negative about the World Cup, but I sense that the importance of being PC is beginning to wane; not that it ever bothered me anyway.

Let’s look at the positives, since almost everything has some positives somewhere; Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot and the North Korean regime being obvious exceptions.

They built world-class stadia on time.
The foreign visitors who were there generally got to venues on time and the matches all started on time.
Inside the stadia (despite the obvious occasional sillinesses for which we can blame FIFA), everything went tickety-boo. According to some pundits, the atmosphere was “the best ever”, despite (or because of?) the hideous vuvuzela.
There was no major crime wave, no terrorism, no significant disasters of any kind.
The South Africans were reportedly very hospitable.
Opposing fans celebrated together; the England fans totally restored their reputations; reports of drunken English mobs were distinguishable by their absence. (they probably couldn’t afford to get there.)
South Africa took pride in its ability to put on the World Cup, which many had suspected it incapable of.
For a month the nation forgot all its problems; most people had a big party, even if the South African team (and Africa in general) was made to realize the enduring gulf between its standard of football and that of the other continents.

So, all’s well that ends well, then? Unfortunately not ….

The country paid around 10 billion rand to put the event on, three times more than original estimates. Where did all the money go?
The country is left with giant stadia that may never again be filled, the so-called “white-elephants” typical of almost all these major events. Apparently even the wondrous “Birds-nest” stadium in Beijing used for the opening ceremony of the Olympics has only been used once since 2008.
Only half the number of expected foreign tourists came, as the organisers over-priced everything. Organisers claim the extra income generated will pay for the costs, but nobody believes them …..
Preparations for the World Cup provided jobs, but those workers are now back on the street. The ordinary people of South Africa benefited little from the event, except in terms of “national pride”.

And there of course is an interesting animal; “national pride”. In a grown-up world, you’d have hoped that national pride would be best achieved through one of the following:

the building of suitable housing for the population
the setting-up of an affordable and accessible national health system (fat chance, even the USA hasn’t got that!!)
the diminution and ending of corruption
the creation of a fair society
the development of the economy to provide jobs and create wealth to allow ordinary people to live decently and comfortably

Any of these and other things could be seen as deserving of “national pride”, but the ability to put on at vast expense a four-week jamboree that mostly benefited the political elite, other nations, FIFA and the international television networks is a dubious contender for “pride”.

But of course it depends which side of the coin you are looking at. For some, all the expense justifies the “putting of South Africa on the map.” The politicians as usual will have been the most happy; four weeks in the spotlight strutting about on the world stage, loads of media coverage, hundreds of journalists hanging on their every word …

As for the real ethos behind the World Cup, the bits that don’t hit the glitzy headlines, two in particular struck me as symbolic of Man’s capacity for self-delusion; Africa’s attitude to its poor and the obscene power of international non-governmental monopolies such as FIFA.

These have been variously described in excellent articles written by proper journalists. The first example is from Globalpost. I find it pretty depressing.

Green Point Stadium, Cape Town: In Cape Town, Green Point Stadium is covered in a sheath of woven fiberglass so that it glows at night like a floating bowl. But its location on six city blocks in a prime real estate area has also created controversy. In 2006, the city’s government published a study that found the stadium’s location offered the least amount of economic gain to Cape Town’s resident. In fact, repairs to several older stadiums in the surrounding area could have led to savings that could have paid for 250,000 new homes for the city’s poor, according to researchers.

But FIFA wanted a stadium that would sit between South Africa’s iconic Table Mountain and Robben Island, according to reports, causing the football federation’s president, Sepp Blatter, to come under fire.

“I really think that we’re going into Green Point because Sepp Blatter says: ‘I like Green Point,’ not because it is the best thing for South Africans,” Cape Town’s then-mayor, Helen Zille, said in 2006.

Sepp Blatter will take his $2 BILLION profit away with him to some lush office somewhere, while the ordinary residents of Cape Town pick up their lives as before. How long “national pride” will sustain them is a moot point.

Roadside waterseller in Gabon, West Africa

The Marketing Bonanza: If you’ve been to Africa and driven around a bit, you’ll know that there are street traders everywhere. These are desperately poor people who will try to flog you anything and everything. They wander up and down lines of cars carrying their pathetic wares. In the ferocious midday heat women often carry large heavy buckets full of water bottles on their heads. Many do this all day every day to earn a pittance.

But of course, like beggars in the big city, they don’t really create the right “image” and “ambiance” for a major international event with its glitz and invasion of well-off foreigners. So, as reported in “The Guardian” they were simply banned whenever the authorities considered it appropriate. So much for the World Cup “improving the lives of ordinary Africans”.

But not just anyone will be allowed to participate in what President Jacob Zuma calls “the greatest marketing opportunity of our time“. Informal traders – a significant part of the working poor – are subject to a verbatim “exclusion zone” from the bonanza in the fan parks, fan walks and stadiums. For them, the World Cup may as well be happening on another continent.

I have personal experience of something similar in Gabon. When the wife of President Bongo died, the whole country was ordered to do a week’s mourning. Street trading was banned. This of course did not affect the elite, but for many of the rest it meant the difference between eating and going hungry. When a few daring and desperate people dared to try to sell their pitiful produce in some locations the police confiscated it and trashed their stands.

And FIFA? It is reported to have made $2 BILLION in tax-free profits. Who controls this money? Why is it tax-free? How will it be spent? To whom is FIFA really accountable? Ah, to national Football Associations? You mean like the British one, which pays £6 million per annum to a failed manager, which is three times more than the German Coach gets?

These vast sums swilling about leave a nasty taste in the mouth. Of course, any organisation’s primary concern is usually to its own self-aggrandizement, so nothing new there. Even the European Union refuses to get its accounts signed off properly, so what faith the common man can have in the honesty of these vast international organisations is questionable.

Well, the World Cup has come and gone and it provided much entertainment for those watching the games. The long-term legacy for the ordinary people of South Africa (43% of whom live on less than $2 per day) is another matter, so forgive me if my rejoicing is muted.

PS The Vuvuzuela …. nothing to me more clearly illustrates Man’s stupidity. The sound output of this instrument is 113db, which can apparently become harmful to the hearing after only 90 seconds. Those in the stadia (including the players, by the way – did anyone ask THEM what they felt?) were subject to nearly TWO HOURS of continuous multiple vuvuzuelae. Many of those people will have had their hearing IRREPARABLY DAMAGED. This will only become clearer to them in LATER YEARS.

For me it is a symbol of our stupidity. All the above health risks are clear and known. Did FIFA ban the damned thing? OF COURSE NOT!! That would have diminished the “local colour” so vital for the international media, which gives Blatter his $2 billion profit. Who gives a damn about ordinary people’s hearing? I doubt whether Sepp Blatter exposed himself overmuch to the bloody things, though he seems pretty deaf already. Once again, for a transient thrill or benefit we do ourselves lasting damage, no different from the way we often treat the planet of course.

By Chris Snuggs

Integrity – aviation fashion!

The brilliance of fine engineering

The BBC have been started a series on how things are made! The first episode was on the making of a nuclear submarine – perhaps not something that touches most of us!

But the second episode was much more the ‘touch of the common man’ as it was about the building of a commercial jet engine, the Trent engine built by Rolls Royce of Derby, England.

Anyway, I’m not going to natter on other than to say that not all regulatory bodies are bad in this world. Indeed, the aviation industry has shown how splendid both engineering and the certification processes can be in giving us a incredibly safe form of transport.

There are plenty of YouTube videos on the Trent engine but here are two that I found of great interest. (Thanks to Simon H for the pointers.)

Rolls Royce Trent Engine Certification video

A380 Loss of Blade test

By Paul Handover

Gulf Oil Spill – that feeling of déjà vu!

Rachel Maddow on how we have been here before.

(Thanks to Peter Nauman for this tip.)

Well done the Rachel Maddow on MSNBC-TV.

Watch this YouTube video of a recent show and run out of words!

By Paul Handover

That oil spill

Visualisation of data

I can’t recall how but I came across a web site that focuses on ‘translating’ data into pictures. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. The web site is called Information is Beautiful.

Anyhow, they have attempted to graphically portray the scale of the BP oil spill. (A thumbnail is below but please click on the link, or here, to see this as it was meant to be shown.)

But this image is an update of an earlier one here that is really powerful. Because it attempts to put the scale of the oil spill into context with global oil consumption.

If the Purdue University estimate of the oil spill is correct at 48,500 barrels a day (a barrel is approximately the equivalent of two car tankfuls of gas/petrol) and the spill is contained in 90 days then the total oil spilled will be:

90 x 48,500 = 4,365,000 barrels

That is an enormous quantity.

But have a guess as to how much that would represent in terms of hourly global oil consumption?

Any idea?

Well global oil consumption is 3,500,000 barrels an hour.

So 90 days at 48,500 barrels a day represents just 1 hour 15 minutes worth of global consumption!

If there was ever an argument for the world to wean itself off oil then this would appear to be it.

What has happened so far is tragic – tragic beyond measure. But if it turns out to be a ‘tipping point’ for nations to reconsider how we find and use energy then, perhaps, it will have been a horrible lesson that we all had to take.

And if the USA puts all it’s collective back into leading the world out of our addiction to oil then the damage and hardship will not have been in vain.

By Paul Handover

Feeling safe!

Safe, as in psychologically as well as physically, has its rewards.

I had a very interesting session recently. I did some coaching work with a client company who managed a small team. The day was split into two – the morning with the client and the afternoon with the whole team.

What struck me about the day was the power of good leadership and the importance of leaders who are aware of how they come across and are capable of forming a relationship with their teams.

My client was struggling with her team because she was unaware how she was communicating, not only with her team but with other people in the organisation.

Unfortunately, becoming aware of how we are in a relationship with others brings us face to face with ourselves and requires a willingness to accept ourselves, warts and all, before trying to change anything.

After we all had lunch together and broke the ice a bit we focused on what was working (not what was not working), what was missing, what inspired and what was possible. By examining these areas and so creating a safe environment, everybody was able to reveal more of themselves and what they needed to have a satisfactory, safe working relationship with each other.

By Jon Lavin

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90 x 48,500 = 4,365,000 barrels

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