I am in day 2 of the Schwab Forum in Zurich before heading to Davos. They have brought together their network of social entrepreneurs worldwide with academics, business people, and funders or investors in a fairly standard conference format. The social entrepreneurs keep agitating for a less structured environment since I think most of us feel that we learn most from peer dialogue and engagement and as in most conference contexts find that the most meaningful conversations are happening during breaks. As a new Schwab Advisory Council member, I will bring this up in our forthcoming meeting.

That being said, there was a presentation I found interesting yesterday given by Axialent which focuses primarily on the for-profit sector. They talked about cultural archetypes within organizations that they have worked with and categorized them in 5 different ways:

1. Achievement

2. Customer-centric (and in a non-profit context the customer can too often become the foundation rather than the client or intended beneficiary)

3. Innovative

4. One-Team (ie work is done by the group, on behalf of the whole etc)

5. People First (ie a focus on supporting and caring for the people within the organization)

They said from their experience that an organization generally only has one or two dominant characteristics at a time, and the break out discussion revealed that different stages of organizational development may demand different models at different times. I would guess my staff would describe our dominant culture as achievement oriented although I hope and feel they would recognize elements of all the other archetypes as well. I am curious to have the conversation.

Looking forward to Davos, I've emailed the team at WITNESS to let them know I have been invited to a high level but informal breakfast meeting on "Natural Resources, Investment and Development" in Africa with Irene Kahn (Secretary General of Amnesty International), several other leading NGOs and some major multi-nationals involved in the extractive industries including DeBeers, Anglo American and Unilever. As most people are probably aware, natural resource exploitation such as diamond mining in Africa has been the catalyst for many human rights abuses and environmental devastation. I'm looking forward to a frank dialogue about a more productive way forward! Insights welcome.