The Ethos of Creative Leadership - Creative Capitalism and Social Business

The Davos World Economic Forum 2008 had as its theme a call amongst business, government and civil society leaders for a new brand of collaborative and innovative leadership - a very similar theme to the one the Creative Leadership Forum has chose to explore this year.

As I scanned the digital commentary on this event from Google News alerts, You Tube, blogs etc in the hope of some powerful insight, I felt a deep cynicism arise in me. I was reminded of A Map of the World a play I worked on as Associate Director of the Sydney Theatre Company in the early 80's. Written by David Hare, who is best known for his film script Plenty, A Map of the World is essentially a running debate pitting Vicktor Mehta (played by Roshan Seth, best known for his role as Gandhi) against Stephen Andrews (Zeljko Ivanek), a young, idealistic English journalist who's reporting on a Unesco conference for a ''left-wing literary magazine.'' Their battle is as much personal as ideological, and each man accuses the other of shaping his beliefs to serve his private neuroses. ''You use the poor as a prop to express your own discontent, which is with yourself,'' says Mehta to Andrews, before going on to explain that man's enemy ''is not poverty, but self-delusion.'' The journalist counters by accusing the novelist of projecting his own ''loneliness and despair'' into his disdainful, detached world-view. ''You will never understand any struggle until you take part in it,'' says Stephen.

So you can imgaine my delight when I stumbled on an excellent article in the Huntington Post entitled Davos 2008: Bill Gates' Creative Capitalism and Muhammad Yunus' Social Business. This article captures the basis of a philosophy, a pedagogy and a practice for truly creative leadership. Whilst much has been written about Gates, litle is still known about Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank. Muhammed is a worthwhile receipt of the Nobel Prize and somebody you could speak of in the same context as Nelson Mandela!!

Here is his story. It reveals how a conviction and a curious mind can recognise and harness the power of a single mundane idea that emerges accidentally to reshape and contemporise our understanding of global business models and to democratize the way we work.