Michelle Long recently cofounded the Transparency Center, a nonprofit organization focused on facilitating transparent, stakeholder-inclusive models of trade.

Sunday, 6 May 2001

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.

Hello. Welcome to my world and my work. Opening my day to all of you presents an interesting opportunity — and also a challenge. In the challenge of reducing what I do each 24 hours to the incidents, thoughts, and conversations I believe are most worthy of sharing, I also have the chance to reflect on what I see as most important. In a way, this is really an opportunity to make sure I’m working day-to-day to get closer to my vision. My goals for the week are to share why I am so passionate about what I do in order to arouse passion and action from you, and to make myself available for thoughtful critique and advice.

I’m typing this Sunday night from the San Francisco airport, waiting my flight home to Seattle. I’ve spent the past four days at two meetings.

This morning and yesterday, I spoke to a crowd of about 600 members of the San Francisco World Affairs Council at their 55th annual conference at Asilomar, south of San Francisco on the Monterey Peninsula. The topic of the conference was “Globalization — Going Global in the Information Age.” The conference grounds were lovely and the audience was engaged, but while there were several academics presenting gently alternative views, the general theme from business executive presenters was, “Globalization is good for business, and since business represents progress and wealth creation, and since those things mean a higher standard of living, globalization is good for everyone.” In fairness, I believe the World Affairs Council did try to represent opposing perspectives — certainly Jane Wales, their executive director, recognizes the two-edged sword that is globalization — and it’s possible that the few cancellations skewed the whole. However, by this morning, I couldn’t help but remember some of those 1950s commercials where kids sit at picnics on the farm under the spray of DDT clouds. At the end of those commercials, the big, fat, happy corncob and tomato sing, “DDT, good for you and me!”

Recently, Thomas Friedman, a well-known analyst of globalization and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of such books as The Lexus and the Olive Tree, wrote an op-ed in the New York Times, in part about our work at the Transparency Center. I had the opportunity then to speak with him for several hours, and I agreed completely when he said, “Anyone who thinks globalization is either ‘good’ or ‘bad’ doesn’t understand globalization.” Globalization is, more simply, the system of our time. For as long as people have existed, they have conducted trade to the maximum abilities of their transport and technological tools. Now those tools allow us to trade and communicate globally. The real question is, what rules of globalization should we choose to follow? The 10,000 pages of rules in the WTO’s guidelines are merely one possible set of rules.

When it came time for my morning plenary talk, I’d spoken with enough of the conference participants to recognize their dissatisfaction with the sunshine speak. The participants represented an above-average cross section of wealth, age, and education, but the unrest brewing across our land of plenty was alive and noticeable within these people. Therefore, when it came my turn to speak on a panel alongside Kevin Warner, senior director of worldwide education at Cisco; Suhas Patil, founder of Cirrus Logic; Jane Wales of the World Affairs Council; and moderated by Elizabeth Farnsworth, senior correspondent on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, I spoke to this unrest. I addressed the feeling that, if we continue in the direction we’re headed, we’re going to get where we’re going … I spoke to the growing sentiment that our spirit is being co-opted and that as the individual-to-individual communication possible via the Internet allows us to pull back the curtain behind the singing corncob, we’re … strongly concerned.

We (to be broad and sweeping) want “consumption options” but not at the real expense of people and planet. The term “sweatshop” is … not pleasant, the environmental degradation taking place where regulations are lax is … bothersome. We’ve heard globalization as it stands — free trade — is good for newly employed workers. So why then do we learn that factory workers in the newly privatized south of China make less in pay and benefits working in the factories where Wal-Mart and Kmart source than they did in factories under communist rule?

I recently clipped an ad in an airline magazine because the tag line was “the reason you work so hard every week” and the photo was … a mall! Pottery Barns and Banana Republics line a corridor with happy shoppers milling about, after “working hard” most of their life that week to be there. This advertising opiate is beginning to lose effect for more and more people. In a recent Business Week poll, half of all respondents said, “What’s good for business is not good for them.” Yet as we look around groggy-eyed, we realize that under the current rules of globalization, a nation doesn’t have the sovereignty to choose based on collective principles because those moral sentiments interfere with trade — and we’re starting to fear that “we the people” aren’t in charge anymore.

However, to jump ahead, I also spoke of the potential opportunities of a globalization scenario done well — for and between individuals. We can’t separate the term globalization from the Internet, and the Internet can be used for amazing liberation. (Look at my ability now to freely share thoughts with you online through Grist.) You’ve heard it before, but for emphasis, just as the printing press enabled information to be exchanged amongst all classes and populist organizations for a democracy of the people, the Internet can bring precious information to those currently disenfranchised and exploited. I’ve seen it time and again in my work. We’ve used the Internet as a tool to get information to artisans and farmers in developing communities that allows them to participate in opportunities directly and fairly. We’ve worked with people in small villages that have seen the market for their skills dry up — for example, metal workers who, like their great-grandfathers before them, create hand-hammered copper water jugs, but whose skill is now not valued because of cheaper imported plastic buckets. Many of these people have left their villages for megacities to look for work as taxi or tuk-tuk drivers, living in polluted squalor. Using the Internet to communicate new design ideas with the metal workers, as well as information on export and import restrictions — where their products are going, what people are looking for, and how they respond to their products — we were able to find new markets for old skills. The Internet allowed them to preserve a skill, bring people back to the village, and engage in continued self-ownership with dignity.

I believe that the best solutions, the ones that will actually save us all, will come from communities where people live more sustainable lifestyles — where they already ride bicycles, eat plant-based diets, and reuse more commonly than not. When our trade interactions move from viewing developing countries as “low-cost labor” to collaborating and engaging brains, we will find sustainable solutions to our challenges and see the next generation of positive potential through globalization.

And the Internet and global communications allow us to mobil
ize and transparently share the information we need to make better decisions as citizen consumers … but I’ll talk about this later. To conclude, let me just say that the response I had at this conference was one of gratefulness. People are relieved to hear their concerns aired, as it seems to give them the reassurance of their own power to act.

It’s a ripe time for making change; people are ready — they just need credible information with which to make decisions. I have faith.

Tuesday, 8 May 2001

SEATTLE, Wash.

Good morning. Today I’m up early writing this diary, as I have a 7:30 a.m. meeting with a former business associate. He is both a smart person who always has great advice and a potential investor/donor to the Transparency Center. (An aside: As my organization is new and my former organization was a for-profit corporation, I still struggle a bit with the term “donation.” Our organization has adopted the language of the Fourth Sector Alliance in calling ourselves “For Benefit” as opposed to nonprofit. As a 501c3, we still care about working toward a self-sustaining model; it’s just that our end goal is maximizing social benefit rather than profits. Our investors are investing for social returns.)

When I left off yesterday, I said the Internet and global communications allow us to mobilize and transparently share the information we need to make more informed and responsible decisions as citizen consumers. Our work at the Transparency Center is focused on this issue.

The president of Consumer Reports, Rhoda Karpatkin, asked last year:

Can a corporation prosper if it’s seen by the public as threatening health, safety, or environmental values? … The Internet may be stimulating more responsible corporate behavior. Witness the incredible speed with which citizen viewpoints can traverse the globe, sharing information, connecting critics to each other, and transforming the magnitude and intensity of civil society’s impact on business conduct.

Anyone who has participated in one of the university student campaigns against sweatshops has certainly seen this power firsthand. The number of emails flowing from Singapore to Canada to France to Taiwan to the U.S. on the campaign lists is immense. Without the filter of a media or editorial body, people are able to communicate their perceptions and photos in real time! The World Resources Institute’s global forest watch program website is another great example. Here, using a unique combination of satellite imagery, geographic information systems, mapping software, and on-the-ground observation, accurate information about the world’s forests is available to citizen consumers. This information could potentially enable one to make different decisions with regards to wood use or purchase.

In my own experience introducing artisan and farm products to retailers in the U.S., we introduced the voice of the product creators to consumers — a connection that led to more informed purchasing decisions. We created elaborate “digital stories” that were meant to be shown at the point of sale — on an in-store monitor, or on a website for an e-commerce purchase. These stories transparently showed the potential product buyer how and where the products were made, who made the products, the artisans’ opinions on their work, the perspectives of others involved in the supply chain, and the indicators and progress toward sustainability by which the production process was measured.

But for a large corporation to try to communicate transparently with consumers, there is a credibility challenge. With so much hype and gimmickry these days, it’s hard for people to really know what to believe. There are some very interesting corporate initiatives going on that — if we could truly separate them from advertising — could and should be rewarded. For instance, B&Q (sort of the Home Depot of the U.K.) has been a real innovator. The company decided to look at all its supply chains, start with some of the most egregious problems, and work its way through fixing the list. Obviously, the huge selection of products it carries meant an almost insurmountable effort. But, as the saying goes, “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”

One problem B&Q tackled early was with the Chinese factory making its brass door hinges. B&Q found the working conditions to be so horrible that people regularly missed work due to injury! But B&Q worked with all the stakeholders in that supply chain — the workers who had many thoughts on safety and sustainability improvements, the factory managers and owners, other stakeholders, and eventually the Chinese government. End result — changes and morale improvements were so significant that the factory became a role model. The Chinese government gave it an award, and now other factories are competing to try to get that award. Imagine if consumers could contribute further to the improvement of this situation by rewarding the output of this factory versus its competitors. Imagine that race to the top!

There are two primary challenges in making all this information transparently available to citizen consumers. One — making it quickly understandable for even the busiest people. And two, making sure this information is absolutely credible and inclusive of all relevant stakeholder positions in a supply chain. As soon as one organization owns the information, suspicion can be raised as to its accuracy and the incentives for presenting certain viewpoints. Who can own the truth?

This dilemma has led us at the Transparency Center to explore the concept of facilitating the creation of an owner-member organization of participants drawn together by shared principles and a desire to find solutions to problems bigger than any one organization. My partner, Alistair Jackson, most recently spent seven years as the director of values and vision for the Body Shop, and has been quite involved in various top-down supply chain monitoring and certification efforts. Alistair introduced me to the Chaordic Commons, where we’ve found solutions to many problems. I’ll talk more about this tomorrow. Enjoy your day.

GNP measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.
— Robert Kennedy

Wednesday, 9 May 2001

SEATTLE, Wash.

Good morning. It’s another beautiful morning in Seattle. Sun pouring through my window, good cup of coffee here by my laptop. I’m looking forward to today.

Yesterday was a good day as well. My morning meeting was fruitful — the Transparency Center now has another investing charter supporter. In fact, I spent much of yesterday connecting with various potential investors. I took a break in the afternoon, though, and headed over to the University of Washington to be a judge in the first investment round of the business plan competition that the Program in Entrepreneurship and Innovation sponsors.

For the PEI competition, MBA and undergraduate student teams from UW and other Washington state universities compete for $90,000 in cash and prizes. The first-prize team takes home $35,000 to seed their new business. The first step for the students is to submit a business plan to be read and reviewed in a screening round. The winners of this round — only 30 teams — are advanced to an investment round, where they compete in an investment fair. Each team sets up a booth, where they can be very creative with demonstrations of their plan — prototypes, photos, anything that they think best shows the judges that theirs is
the most viable and exciting business in the room.

The judges represent Seattle and the Northwest’s top entrepreneurs, venture capital firms, angel investors, and business professionals. All judges are sent executive summaries of the 30 plans in the mail, but to be honest, I think few read them. It’s mainly up to the students to aggressively get the attention of the judges and convince them with a five-minute pitch — basically, why their business idea is needed in the world, what their competitive advantage and revenue models are, and why they are the team to pull the business off. The judges each have 1,000 “PEI dollars” to spend anyway they’d like for their favorites, as long as they vote for at least five teams. The results are tallied immediately, and at a reception held an hour-and-a-half later, the teams are whittled down to the 16 that will advance to the long presentation.

I couldn’t stay for the reception, but I just checked the results and was happy to see that all the teams I voted for are among the advancing 16. In the upcoming long presentation, the teams will be matched against their peers in four breakout presentations to panels of highly qualified local judges for a half-hour presentation each. The winner of each of these four competitions advances to the final four round, where they will present to a final panel of judges in an auditorium open to the public and press.

The competition brought back many memories. Two years ago, I was an MBA student in the competition, and my team made it to the final four. The prizes were a little lower then, but we won $10,000 for seed money to help us start our business (good for legal fees and some early travel and office supplies). Because of our visibility as a final four participant, we were introduced immediately to the local investment community. My business — then (Small World) World2Market, later Viatru (like Via the Truth) — had a mission “to open opportunities for the growing population of conscious consumers to shop with their values and thereby stimulate more sustainable economic development.”

At work on a laptop in a Nepali home.

Immediately before attending the MBA program, my husband, Derek Long, and I had spent several years overseas and had seen firsthand the inequities in global opportunities. I met (and continue to meet) people in developing countries that, given equality, should be my boss. Extremely intelligent, good, hard-working people who live in the kind of poverty where choices in basic health care and education just aren’t there. These unique individuals live very much without a voice — lumped into the “low-cost labor” pool without access to the information that could empower them or the capital (even loaned capital) that could help them take a little step toward controlling their own destiny.

After the experiences Derek and I had, our choice was either to forget about all those people and just move forward, smug in the random luck of the opportunities we were born into, or to do something about these inequities. One of the best quotes I’ve heard is “Imagine the world the way that it should be … then start making it that way.” I think that’s our responsibility. I came back to the U.S. after traveling, determined to do something through the major system of our day — business. I recently spoke with a woman from India who told me, “Ask a rich person in India what the poor need and they’ll say a better education. Ask a middle class person and they’ll say the poor need better health care. Ask a poor person and they’ll say they need a job.” People everywhere are the same; they want the power and pride of self-determination.

My work during the last two years has led me to a more clear understanding of the challenges faced by people in emerging communities, as well as the challenges of citizens in our country that want to contribute to a more sustainable economy. That is why I formed the Transparency Center. Our mission is “to use innovations in technology and governance to enable individuals and organizations, bound by a common purpose of creating a more sustainable economy, to share credible and relevant stakeholder perspectives on the social, environmental, and economic impacts of commerce in ways that ensure the integrity, authenticity, and power of those perspectives. Basically, we get information to those who most need it and are least likely to have it now — individuals in developing countries and individuals here — so we can all make more informed decisions and stimulate positive competition.

An example from yesterday: Two years ago, mine was the only team with a “triple bottom line” (social, environmental, and economic) business plan. This year, there is a separate prize for a “socially responsible” business plan, and four of the 16 advancing teams fit the description. Positive competition.

Thursday, 10 May 2001

SEATTLE, Wash.

Can’t believe how the week is flying by! I need to hurry through today’s journal entry, as I have an early appointment with a potential technology partner. Our work at the Transparency Center would not be possible without the innovations in technology we’ve seen over the last five years … I can scarcely wait for the new stuff to come out. Certainly, the ideas for applications are much more advanced than the systems available. Hence, a big objective of this morning’s appointment is to understand better how much of what they offer is ready and usable in the market now and how much is “vapor-ware.”

Our purpose of the Transparency Center is to connect the two ends of production-supply chain, a connection that has slowly disappeared over the last 50 years. People used to know who they were buying from — this carrot is a good carrot because Farmer Bob always grows a good, safe, tasty carrot. We at the Transparency Center intend to use new technologies to bring that kind of assurance back to people in a way that they can make better, more informed, and more responsible purchasing decisions. And we use technology to bring the values and desires of the growing population of conscious consumers back to producers in emerging communities. These farmers and farm workers are usually unaware of where their carrots are going and just how much you appreciate carrots grown in ways that are safe for the land, safe for the farmer’s family to grow, and safe for you to eat for lunch. (Carrots are a simple example, but probably not the best example, as we can easily grow local carrots for local consumption.)

Yesterday was mainly spent fund-raising. I’m on a countdown to a 25 May close date for this round of investments/donations. I have a big white board in my office where I’ve drawn a large May calendar. Every day that’s passed has a big red X through it, leading up to a big red star on the 25th. The names of supporters and potential supporters line the rest of the white board. People who have agreed to be charter supporters have black stars by their names, likely charter supporters have green stars, and all have the most recent contact date in red. I received some good advice from an executive director at another nonprofit: “You don’t want anyone to invest in you that doesn’t want to. They should feel it deeply, and believe in this opportunity so much that they are thankful to be revolutionaries putting their names on our future legacy.” I liked that piece of advice. I know I’m grateful to work on this every day; why shouldn’t our investors be just as grateful? People need to feel that their life here on earth matters and that because of their birth, things are just a little bit better.

Today there will be more investor meetings, plus a two-hour team planning session. We’re a “virtual team” in that we don’t all work in the same location. Therefore, it’s critical to meet for at least a few focused ho
urs every couple weeks to make sure we’re all on the same page.

I also mentioned on Tuesday that I had just arrived home from the first meeting of the new trustees of the member-owned entity the Chaordic Commons. (I won’t go deeply into the premise of the organization, as Donella Meadows has already written a summary of the concepts for Grist.) But for quick summary … Dee Hock, the founder of the Chaordic Commons, was the founder of Visa and is one of 30 living Laureates of the Business Hall of Fame, and in 1992 was recognized as one of the eight individuals who most changed the way people live in the past quarter century. In his book Birth of the Chaordic Age, Hock writes “The worldwide success of Visa International is due to its chaordic structure. It is owned by 22,000 member banks, which both compete with each other for 750 million customers and cooperate by honoring one another’s $1.25 trillion in transactions annually across borders and currencies.”

Hock makes the case that all organizations are fundamentally based on flawed 17th-century concepts that are no longer relevant to the vast systemic social and environmental problems we experience daily. Three questions have torn at him throughout his life: “Why are organizations, everywhere, whether political, commercial, or social, increasingly unable to manage their affairs? Why are individuals, everywhere, increasingly in conflict with and alienated from the organizations of which they are part? And, why are society and biosphere increasingly in disarray?” In developing chaordic concepts that harmoniously blend chaos and order, cooperation and competition, Hock has shown us a path to a new way.

I had been struggling philosophically with a different — but very similar — problem to the challenge originally faced by Visa. Like Visa, which needed competing interests to cooperate on Visa standards and which would have had to have been an enormous organization to attempt central control over all banks, stores, and restaurants that accept Visa, the problem of transparent, stakeholder-inclusive supply chains is immense. What would be the best way to credibly present the truth, if we could imagine anything as possible, what would truly meet the purpose and needs? Given any scenario, would it be best for a central location/organization to be in charge? It would seem that as soon as one organization claims to be the central body for this information, motives could and should be scrutinized. Second, the issue is just much too big … and there are too many experts. In fact, much of the challenge is in moving information from “the experts” to people in a way that is relevant to their decisions. Such an organizational “member-owned” and freely owned infrastructure doesn’t exist today. Chaordic Commons entering my life became (to me) part of the answer.

I’m now a trustee of the Chaordic Commons, but just for the first year. Next year, the trustees will be voted from amongst all the members. I just attended the first trustee meeting, and it was one I wish would have been recorded and webcast so that people everywhere could have participated. The trustees represent an amazing blend of wisdom, idealism, and pragmatism. The combined intensity of brainpower so concentrated on shared purpose gave me huge hope. I was joy-filled for much of the meeting, because I see in its vision a real opportunity to wipe clean, break down, and turn inside out what is broken. If you care to join this community of change makers, to give wholly of your energy because you want to participate in making the world the way it should be, I encourage and welcome you to visit the Chaordic Commons.

Friday, 11 May 2001

SEATTLE, Wash.

Good morning on the last day of my “shared” week. Though I do usually work some on the weekend as well. A new organization takes more time than what the five days of the workweek allow — it tends to take all that you have to give. And, as this is what I care about, what I’m passionate about — even if I try to have a Sunday with no Transparency Center — my mind tends to wander back as I hike in the mountains or garden at my cabin. Fridays and weekends actually tend to be my favorite days of the week to work because these three days and four nights (Thursday through Sunday), my husband and I live at our log cabin by Mt. Baker, Wash., just half an hour south of the Canadian border and 30 minutes east of being able to set down kayaks in Puget Sound and explore the San Juan Islands.

I love to wake up early on Fridays, as I have today, and head out to explore what new season changes have brought, before heading back in to the laptop. Every week brings significant new changes. This week: blooms on the apple, pear, peach, plum, cherry, and hazelnut trees; the wisteria and bulbs all are now big bright flowers; the ferns are shooting up; and the peonies and hosta have pushed their way up from underground. Fridays are when I can do my best thinking — no meetings and long, quiet hours to focus. It’s good for my perspective to be here — to be in nature when thinking about “organic” organizations that are meant to work harmoniously for people and planet.

On my final day with you, let me tell you what we do today at the Transparency Center and how anyone interested in working together toward our vision can participate. We are a nonprofit organization that is working to maximize quality of life benefits for individuals worldwide. Our shared vision: “A world where the social and environmental impacts of products can be compared alongside price and performance, reversing the ‘race to the bottom’ symptomatic of global trade, and enabling all people to participate in catalyzing a more sustainable economy.”

If you’re an individual that would like to do your part, start asking more questions of the retail establishments that you frequent. Ask where your products come from. Think about the ways you spend your money. Choose local and choose quality as often as you can. Add recognize to the “reduce, reuse, recycle” mantra. Push for transparency — it is your right. Reward businesses that do things better. Pay attention to policy issues and use your time to educate others. “We the people” are the ones that should be making the rules both about how we trade and about who should bear the brunt of damages to people and planet that result from manufacturing, production, and trade. (For more on this, check out the International Right to Know Campaign.) And if you want to be part of a bigger group of people working to make things the way they should be, check out the Chaordic Commons and consider joining. If you’re an individual that is seriously thinking and working on these issues as well, let’s start an email dialog. I’m just a person that is trying to do something about these issues; I certainly don’t profess to be an expert on anything, but if you’d like to share ideas, teach me something, or even to ask me questions, I’m here.

If you represent an organization that is working to get better, more sustainably created products out into the marketplace and need a partnership with the public so that citizen consumers can use their dollars to reward your efforts versus those that aren’t so sustainable, the Transparency Center can work with you. We will help you to bring together all the relevant and affected stakeholders in your particular production chain, facilitate collaborative solutions, and then help you with the necessary technology platform so that the dialog can continue. We can also help you to transpar
ently share these collaborative solutions and the joint progress of all stakeholders with the public in a way that differentiates your initiatives at point of sale — either through helping you build interactive multimedia digital stories, or through an interactive search engine tool. An informed citizenry is necessary for more responsible decision-making. You need to openly share with people in a way that is quickly comprehensible and convenient.

As I wrote on Sunday, globalization is the system of our time — people have always traded and communicated to the maximum of our abilities; new technologies allow global trade and communication. It’s the rules of the system that we should be debating and correcting. It is true that globalization managed one way means widening gaps between the North and the South, cultural erosion, and further exploitation of people and the environment in less developed countries.

Managed another way, it could mean a huge leap forward. People have historically used their control of information to exploit those who have less information. We have had slavery, racism, and exploitation of women throughout history. One hundred years ago, there was slavery in this country; a 40-hour workweek and a minimum wage were considered ridiculous because of their negative potential impact on the economy and competition; and women couldn’t vote. Even in my mother’s early years, newspapers divided their “help wanted” sections between men- and women-focused jobs! We are making progress.

And now, the potential win-win effects of globalization between individuals are many. New technologies can be used to widely connect people to the information they need to make better decisions. Increased information sharing can be an opportunity leveler, increased communication can mean more peaceful relations, and increased transparency can force those that perpetrate evil — be it a government, an individual, or a company — to be found out and ousted, and can highlight those that do good for reward. I believe the next decade represents a time of great promise — if we collectively continue to fight the good fight, as those before us have done for progress. There is reason to have great hope.