In a recent post, I discussed how the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the resultant chaos exposed just how fractured our global food supply is. However, it has also given us an unprecedented opportunity to reimagine and redefine the age-old concept of food diplomacy. We need to move from using food as a weapon and using it as a tool to build economies, resiliency, and connection — all of which will be critical as we move further into the 21st century.

Such an opportunity must acknowledge the realities of our food and agriculture systems and embrace the fragilities and fluidity that define our world. So, in a world defined by the convergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, geopolitics, panicky markets, and protectionist trade policies, how do we stop using food as a weapon and begin making food diplomacy part of the proactive planning and futureproofing we must do in an increasingly unpredictable world?

At the core of this new era of food diplomacy, are six building blocks that, if scaled properly, have the power to transform our global food system so that it will be more resilient and better able to meet the needs of a growing population in a connected yet resource-strained world.

• Rethink Humanitarian Aid. As World Central Kitchen founder José Andrés has pointed out, food is the fastest way to rebuild our sense of community. He’s proven his hypothesis time and again. However, we can’t depend on José Andrés to solve every logistical aspect of humanitarian aid. One of the big pieces of the puzzle that the Russia-Ukraine war has highlighted is shipping. Though global leaders planned and acted decisively on many fronts, the humanitarian plans that were developed before the war didn’t seem to factor in how to get much-needed grain out of the warzone and into markets that depend on it. In a global food marketplace that is dependent on food imports and hampered by extreme climate events, humanitarian aid can’t just be about feeding refugees; it needs to encompass feeding the world in times of uncertainty and disruption.

• Keep Markets Open. We need to discourage protectionist policies that harm market stability, smallholder farmers and global consumers. While bans may help politicians by keeping prices down, they don’t always help the people who need it most. The problem is worsened by burdening domestic producers and creating a domino effect in the global marketplace. It’s well known that global grain markets are even more concentrated than energy markets, and even less transparent.  More must be done to encourage and incentivize markets to stay open. If restrictions are imposed, they need to be applied more transparently, and the WTO needs to enforce timely reporting of such bans so markets can plan and react accordingly.

• Re-invest in Crop Science. Even before the war started, the WFP warned that 2022 would be a difficult year. In 2021, China, the world’s largest wheat producer, experienced rains that delayed planting and forecasters predicted the crop would be the worst-ever; the Horn of Africa experienced its worst drought in four decades; and the lack of rain threatened other wheat-growing areas such as the U.S. wheat belt and the Beauce region of France.  As the world warms and the weather becomes both less predictable and more volatile, we need wealthier economies who haven’t had to think about wheat shortages since the early 1970s to harness, invest in and apply the technologies that have been developed, so we have early warning systems that can predict where help may be needed and anticipate the need for — and implementation of — pre-cautionary measures.

• Incentivize Upcycling. One-third of the food produced for consumption is lost or wasted each year. Upcycling, which allows the food industry to get more from less by creating two or more products out of the resources that would have produced one, harnesses the nutritional value of by-products that would have otherwise gone to waste. With Del Monte launching products made with reused pineapple juice and EverGrain using AB InBev’s barley waste to make a protein-rich isolate, upcycling is quickly becoming a reality for both food ingredient and product producers.  And, in addition to enhancing nutrition, products can be used to improve flavor and function. As our global food system continues to struggle under climate, political and economic volatility, upcycling offers producers the ability to reduce carbon emissions, enhance nutrition and recoup the nearly $1 billion FAO predicts is lost each year to food loss and waste. We can do this by incentivizing and supporting the upcycling movement so that upcycled ingredients and food products can disrupt the “take-make-waste” behaviors that define our current food production and consumption patterns.

• Fuel the Forgotten Foods Movement. Humans have cultivated about 7000 plant species as crops, but just three – wheat, corn, maize, and soybean — provide over half of our food supply. The shift towards more genetically uniform, high-yielding crops has threatened the biodiversity of our planet and left people malnourished. In several markets farmers have begun re-introducing crops such as cassava, amaranth, moringa, fonio, bambara groundnuts, kernza, and millet, which helps to diversify crops and nutrient supply. The forgotten foods movement needs to be further supported so that smallholder farmers are exposed to, and can learn from, successful modeling and capacity building, farming, conservation, seed exchange and sharing strategies. Food entrepreneurship needs to be encouraged around forgotten foods and chefs and nutritionists need platforms on which they can highlight the use and benefit of these crops.

• Put Sustainable Agriculture and Finance Tools in the Hands of Smallholder Farmers. Smallholder farmers are particularly vulnerable to the ravages created by geopolitical uncertainty, climate change and market instability. Yet, we have a food system that is dependent on 600 million smallholder farmers who are working on two hectares of land each to produce about 30% of the total crop production and about 32% of the world’s total food supply. For far too long, this critical group of producers has not had the tools or systems to prove their existence and fully participate in the supply chain. While agricultural technology can open access to weather- and crop-forecasting tools, sustainable financial inclusion — including the use of block chain and AI models — shows the promise of unlocking smallholder farmers’ full involvement in our global food supply, by providing the ability to record work histories and participate in credit and contract models that have been absent until now. Sustainable agriculture and finance, including models that are based in Web3, offer the opportunity for smallholder farmers to fully embrace and participate in the circular food and agriculture economy and be at the core of these solutions.

We are now living in the world we have been warned about for years. Climate change is here, pandemics remain as relevant in the 21^st century as they were in the 20 previous ones, markets remain vulnerable to politicking and emotion, and geopolitical unrest makes our food supply chain even more vulnerable than ever. As frustrating and overwhelming as it all feels, let’s embrace the transformative opportunity we have before us to reimagine our global food system and welcome a new era of “Food Diplomacy 2.0.”

Towards the end of 2022, the world breathed a collective sigh of relief when Turkey, Ukraine and the UN managed to get a convoy of ships from the port of Odessa to safer Turkish waters. People living in food-strapped regions could once again get the grain they needed to feed their communities and the world could avoid a much-feared famine. 

It’s easy to be lured into thinking that our worries are over. However, if we do that, we risk losing one of the most important lessons learned since Russian invaded Ukraine a year ago: it’s time to stop using food as a weapon and begin making food diplomacy part of the proactive planning and futureproofing we must do in an increasingly unpredictable world.

The problems highlighted by Ukraine’s inability to ship grain were not just the result of the war, but rather a perfect storm that is impacting our broken global food supply. The convergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, protectionist trade policies, panicky markets, and the ensuing chaos that followed the invasion saw prices soar and millions, mostly in already food-strapped regions such as the Middle East and Africa, facing the dire consequences of famine. 

Prior to the Russian invasion, Ukraine and Russia supplied 28% of globally traded wheat, 29% of barley, 15 % of maize and 75% of sunflower oil. Ukraine’s food exports alone fed 400 million people. During much of 2022, it’s estimated that 25 million tons of Ukrainian corn and wheat – the equivalent to the annual consumption of the world’s least developed economies – was trapped in Ukraine due to Black Sea blockades. 

Before the war, the pandemic wreaked havoc on our global food supply, with labor shortages and shipping disruptions. The war only made the situation worse. For months, the World Food Programme (WFP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) sounded the alarms about the situation. The numbers were staggering, but the impacts of hunger go far beyond empty stomachs and lost lives. Bloomberg reported that boys in Kenya were being prioritized for schooling, while girls as young as nine-years-old were being married off for dowries that could ease economic burdens on desperate families. 

The market reaction was head-spinning. The International Food Policy Research Institute reported that by May, over 23 countries imposed limits on exports. At the peak of export bans, 17% of global food and feed exports were impacted.

As we see far too often, the ripple effects of our broken global food system are more likely to impact poorer economies. Households in emerging markets spend 25% of their budgets on food. In sub-Saharan Africa, that figure is as high as 40%. In poorer markets, governments can’t afford the subsidies needed to increase the help for those facing famine and death, especially if they are reliant on imported energy, another sector that was caught in global turmoil. 

The concept of food diplomacy is not new. Throughout history, states have competed and fought for control of food access. In the 1990s, we saw the rise of “culinary diplomacy” where countries (several through government sponsored programs) use their foods to “win hearts and minds through stomachs.” It’s a powerful concept. However, the war in Ukraine and the ensuing chaos that it placed on our global food systems has taught us that it’s time to take that concept a step further. It’s time to usher in the new age of food diplomacy. 

This new age requires solutions that:

• Address both the fluidity and fragility of our global food supply and marketplace.
• Reflect the efforts of governments, businesses, NGOs, and broader stakeholder communities who are working collaboratively to fix our food system at local, national, regional, and global levels.
• Transform our food and agriculture system so it is more resilient and more accessible than ever before.
• Enable us to use food as a strategic tool that can help stem the potential chaos that comes with future political, humanitarian and climate crises.  

As we move towards the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, let’s welcome the new age of “Food Diplomacy 2.0,” one that recognizes the certainty of climate change, stems the impact of hunger and famine, acknowledges the realities of geopolitics, stabilizes markets, and de-weaponizes nutrition security. 

When we started Climate & Capital three years ago, we knew one thing for sure: We were not going to name it after some bizarre acronym like ESG or use the terms Impact and Sustainability, words so vague that they can be stretched and twisted into any form, Gumby-like.

Our instincts proved correct. ESG is dead.

All this is the best news possible for the climate crisis. A snowballing coalition of skeptics has called out ESG as a failure — it does not help the environment, society or governance. It’s not a good investment and does no “good.”

Why? ESG was largely greenwash before the term was even invented. In fact, the term greenwash was created when people started to see the first wave of ESG rhetoric embraced by governments, companies, banks and foundations. It was a framework of all carrots but no sticks. What CEO, what board and what climate NGO or academic they funded would disagree with this one-size-fits-all label of responsible corporate citizenship? Companies could have their cake of corporate goodwill and eat the cake of business-as-usual prosperity.

Talk, like money, was cheap in the ESG era. It was incredibly lucrative to those holding large pools of capital — companies, pensions, governments. ESG incentivized delay in confronting the real risk of climate, gross income inequity and a breakdown in civil governance.

The ESG party is over

All this is coming to a crashing end. On Wall Street, management consultants are sharpening their pencils and quietly advising companies to rethink all those new sustainability hires as the end of cheap credit begins to trickle down to the bottom line.

But on a deeper societal level, there is a growing realization that every element of ESG has deteriorated since the term first came into vogue. You don’t need esoteric metrics anyway to understand that every ESG signal is flashing a bright red.

Environmental risk is more than obvious as extreme weather events wreak continuous havoc around the world. Socially, democracies are under stress. Autocracies are hardening in Russia and China.

The rise of real impact

We are now in a new world defined by continental war in Europe, the emergence of the most important non-Western global power in 1,000 years — China — and societies are reeling from exponential jumps in technology and knowledge. And, finally, the greatest common denominator of all — climate change — is deadlier than ever.

But humans have proven to be amazingly resilient. Over the next generation, we will see unprecedented efforts of resiliency and survival.

The Radical Center

In America, we will see a convergence to the center. Radical because its supporters preach pragmatism, not divisiveness. Pragmatism, resiliency and impact are the new buzzwords. This new center will be defined by political outcasts like Republicans Mitt Romney, Liz Cheney and Democrat Joe Manchin.

The resurgence of the American dream and European social democracy

Values that have made Europe and America great are now reasserting themselves. Europe is moving ahead with a fascinating experiment in collective social democracy and state industrial policy — a regime guided by regulation with teeth and a regional social contract based on universal human rights. In the U.S., the fog of ESG has lifted, and we are seeing the re-emergence of a brutal but powerful economic model in which inequality will only get worse but economic opportunity will never be greater.

The war in Ukraine has touched us all; whether it’s the constant 24/7 news reports showing the brutality and inhumanity of conflict, the increasing pressure on key resources such as staple food ingredients, oil, gas or the fragility of economic and political stability. Even the difficulty in maintaining essential support for the many other global conflicts in places which once topped the headlines and front of mind like Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria and Myanmar. What we cannot lose sight of is the need to continue building for the future, creating businesses that will develop and sustain new economies, populations and hope within the chaos. I have been talking to fellow fluid-collective member Tish Van Dyke about the implications which will impact us all.

A driving force for the future is the ever-increasing number of entrepreneurs and founders who are focused on finding solutions to problems across industry sectors, communities, territories, and cultures. Many will fail, but from every failure there are lessons learned and experience gained that can power the next idea, the next new solution.

Last week I had the privilege of hearing from one of the SEA Executive Academy alumni, Anatolii Maslov in one of our regular SEA Circle calls. Anatolii is based in Lviv, Ukraine and has been working to build his company, ElifTech who offer software development and solutions. We asked Anatolii what it takes to keep his business on track during a time of war when his staff have been depleted by many leaving to join the Ukrainian army, the constant threat of air raids and the shock of how fast stability and safety can be torn away at the whim of a distant dictator. He replied that at the core of keeping the team motivated and productive was their shared values and commitment to them. As CEO and founder Anatolii always had a clear idea of what kind of company he wants to build and what values and beliefs are important to success both professionally and personally. At the centre is a shared pride in being Ukrainian and supporting their fellow citizens whether it’s converting empty offices into emergency accommodation, donating profits to the army or continuing to build a solid business which will grow and provide jobs and hopefully a secure future.

In my work with founders one of the first principles we tackle is the fundamental elements of vision and mission and how these elements form the backbone that supports brand, identity and the narrative that are so essential to a successful company. Without this strong foundation it’s easy to lose sight of what’s important not just for the business but the company as a whole. Almost every start-up will experience a crisis at some point, hopefully not the extreme of war but strengthen that backbone of your values, mission and vision and ensure it is firmly embedded in company strategy, embraced by the team around you and it will keep you upright during testing times

When I first arrived in Asia in the 2000s, the continent was on the rise and yet back in Europe and the US, Asia was a rather peripheral topic. In many ways it still is, or at best the conversation is limited to China. That’s a mistake. One only needs to look at the successful strategies on display in many Asian countries to contain Covid-19 and manage the economic fallout. They are founded in a tremendous confidence in a unique, homegrown approach that has been gaining strength for many years. What we’re witnessing is just a foreshadowing of the leadership role Asian societies, governments and businesses are poised to take in this century.

What does this mean for doing business with Asia and in Asia?

To understand that, it helps to understand the 20th century, which, in many ways, was the Western century. In 2016 77% of all international students at US universities were from Asia. In 2007 44% of highly skilled Chinese professionals preferred working for a western multinational to working for a local Chinese company. English is a prevalent business language in many countries. These are all indicators of intense adaptation.

And it means that the Asia that Western businesses dealt with was in many ways adapted to them.

This momentum is now moving in the other direction. Parag Khanna, author of ‘The Future is Asian’, puts it like this: as Asia is globalizing, Asia is also Asianizing. How does this manifest itself?

Asia’s ability to innovate is growing by the day. In some sectors like e-mobility, Chinese companies are getting ready to compete at a global level. Countries like Vietnam are taking a sandbox approach when it comes to new technologies, providing the framework for companies to innovate fast with regulation shaped as the market develops and consolidates.

Local champions beat multinationals, combining rapid innovation with a deep understanding of market trends. After pioneers like Samsung, Alibaba, Huawei there is already a new generation of smart, fast-growing companies on the rise. Many of them are turning into regional and global players, like Indonesia’s Go-JEK, Vietnam’s FPT, China’s Byton.

In line with this development, there’s a renewed interest from top local talent to work for local companies. A survey from 2017 shows that a third of executives in Chinese companies moved from MNCs during the previous five years – and only 10% moved the other way. This talent pull will increase as Asian companies go global and send their nationals abroad.

Politics and political speech are increasingly focused on the national and the regional, from Indonesia to Malaysia, from China to the Philippines. Existing regional alliances like ASEAN are strengthened and new regional initiatives are formed – like RCEP, a free trade agreement being negotiated among 15 countries in Asia-Pacific.

These changes to the environment multinational businesses operate in, directly impact the most important stakeholder relationships that determine business success. And they raise a number of questions:

• How can businesses better understand and successfully engage with Asian markets?
• How can they thrive in a changing global competitive landscape?
• What do products and services need to look like to wow local consumers with local experiences, in line with local values?
• How do employers add value to a fast moving talent pool and provide both short-term gains as well as long-term career opportunities to compete with a myriad of other opportunities, including entrepreneurship?

Solving these is key for businesses to thrive in this new world.

But if mindsets of leaders and teams are stuck in the Western century, they will fail.

The critical success factor will be a change of mindset that leaves the Western century behind and focuses on the intense adaptation and collaboration required when operating in Asia.

Six ways to better equip your business for the changes the Asian Century brings:

1. Local trumps localized. Respect and harness the power of local insight, understanding and action to arrive at powerful local solutions. Empower local teams to make new connections and enable innovation to come from any part of the world, taking advantage of different perspectives to strengthen your proposition to customers, consumers, partners and talent.

2. Find your place in the ecosystem. To succeed, go beyond the customer. The eco-system has a tremendous role to play in the success and failure of a foreign business in an Asian market. Ignore it or deprioritize it at your own peril, and you may end up like the many companies that have exited markets they weren’t able to truly connect to.

3. Take a value-based approach. The days where investment, job creation and high-quality products was all that was expected from MNCs are behind us. To be relevant, build talent programs according to what matters to local talent. Connect with consumers based on their values. Talk to partners and governments about contributing to societal goals. Understand the national narrative and weave your proposition into it. The return will be loyalty, purchase, and license to operate.

4. Partnership at eye-level. Global teams win when they collaborate at eye level, taking local mindsets, cultural context and perspectives into account. This takes empathy and an ability to respect each other’s experience. The same goes for interactions with external stakeholders.

5. Diversity is now business-critical. Only truly global teams bring the best of all worlds into the room to find the right solutions. Break the hierarchy that runs from headquarter market to local market, move key positions to Asia and promote talent from local markets in Asia to leadership positions.

6. Lead with a global mindset. Leaders that can change perspective and see the world through the eyes of people with radically different backgrounds will be the glue to achieving both local impact and global consistency to enable their businesses to thrive in this new environment.

Sources:

[1] Source: Forbes Magazine (https://www.forbes.com/sites/anismuslimin/2017/11/30/why-asian-countries-are-investing-so-heavily-in-the-english-language/#27c312665e85)

[2] Source: Harvard Business Review (https://hbr.org/2011/03/the-battle-for-chinas-talent)

[3] Source: Fast Company (https://www.fastcompany.com/90301632/the-definitive-guide-to-asias-global-influence-in-the-21st-century)

[4] Source: Nikkei Asian Review (https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Multinationals-risk-defeat-in-China-talent-war2)

Cover image by Duy Nguyen https://unsplash.com/@duykhuongxyz

A little before COVID-19 struck, my wife and I decided to spend three months travelling roughshod through Thailand, Vietnam and South Korea with our two small children. Many of our friends and family thought we were nuts. Children need structure, they’re fragile, they need constant hand-holding and attention, they’re selfish, overly sensitive and are known to throw tantrums at the worst possible times. ‘Good luck!’ They said seriously and sarcastically.

But I’ve always believed that it is actually us adults who crave structure and that children are great at seeing rainbows in spite of the rain. We hold legacy ideals and impose them on children. Kids, however, are spongy, malleable, adaptable to their situation. Like water, they fill the shape of their container and when encouraged, very often overflow it.

While recently browsing through our photos from that trip, I couldn’t help but think about the current situation with COVID-19, the new realities of our lives and how businesses must behave to survive and thrive in a world that seemingly changes daily. The shifting climate. Globalization. Pandemics. The acceleration of technologies designed to replace us. It used to be that we travelled the world to submerge ourselves in change. Now the change comes to us.

And so businesses and the leaders of those businesses should take this opportunity to relax some of the structure and rigidity that they have become comfortable with. This new world is more fluid and less predictable but it is not soft. Like a river that carves through rock, now is not the time to be rigid. In a fluid world, businesses need to be fluid also, to go with the flow. And maybe to do that, we should remember when the world was new, magical and every experience was a chance to learn, react, grow. Maybe to be fluid is to be child-like. Here’s a few thoughts on how:

Focus on what really matters

Try holding a kid’s attention for any amount of time. It’s hard. Children know how to focus on what’s important to themselves. They have a singular goal to squeeze every ounce of fun out of their day and little patience for anything else. This a good lesson for companies pivoting into the new realities of the economy. Company’s like Walmart are increasingly turning to AI to automate parts of their processes, like negotiating with their vendors, so that they can optimize and focus on their core business. Fluid companies will increasingly outsource iterative and transactional components of their business to algorithms and specialists so they can focus on what’s important to their success.

Be curious

Kids are curious. And curiosity is an imperative for businesses and leaders in a fluid world. Organizations of all sizes and from all industries need to adopt lean mindsets, trial new software, pilot new projects and reward out-of-box thinking, not as fringe projects but as a strategic pillar designed to breed a culture of curiosity across the organization. Research from Harvard Business Review shows that curiosity is vital to company performance. Leaders need to be accessible and encourage employees to ask questions, not just of themselves, but of their industry and of other industries in other countries. In a dynamic world, there’s lots to learn, and companies that make learning part of their culture will be successful.

Be open-minded

Children recognize skin-colour, accents and religious dress. They don’t judge. But they do ask questions and try to understand the context. It’s ironic that Artificial Intelligence and marketing theorists are doubling down on developing contextual models, yet we humans more and more are trapped in our own personal echo chambers that blind us to other viewpoints. Companies must force themselves to have rich and diverse perspectives, and leverage context as a lens through which to view the world, themselves and their customers. This will open up new ideas and revenue streams. It will help build resiliency when there are major shifts in the market. As Deepak Chopra said, “See the world as if for the first time; see it through the eyes of a child, and you will suddenly find that you are free.”

Imagine!

Children see magic. It’s a shame that society discourages this trait in adulthood but it is only through our sense of wonder that we’ve landed on the moon, cured diseases, built amazing structures and enjoyed relative peace and prosperity. In a world with unimaginably big challenges, a sense of wonder can be transformational, steering businesses to something bigger than purpose. We need to give ourselves the time to be creative, to imagine the possibilities and innovate towards a better future. Companies and leaders that do this will build trust and loyalty in their brand while inspiring their employees and customers.

Be observant

Ever notice how even the most confident kids, when first entering a new setting, become shy, quietly taking stock of the environment and the people, soaking it in? Only once they’ve assessed the situation and terms of engagement do they jump in feet first. Fashion-tech startup Choosy leads by listening and then doing. The disruptive upstart is leveraging technology to monitor, assess and react to real-time trends from their own audience, then creates limited runs of items, which are then snatched up by their community with zero overstock ending up in landfills. Businesses have been taught to believe that thought leadership means taking strong positions and then adding their point of view to the overwhelming noise. In a world that always changes, leadership will now come from being quiet, listening, assessing and picking moments of clarity and opportunity to act.

Be tender

Kids love unconditionally. They cry when you cry. They laugh when you laugh. There are deep biological reasons for this related to the brain’s development and the concept of ‘mirroring’, which many believe is directly associated with empathy. It’s also the reason why engaging friends through Zoom and other video conferencing solutions doesn’t leave people feeling fulfilled. And while many companies have demonstrated empathy during the current pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests, it will be an essential component of organizational culture, communications and even product development from here on in.

Have fun

Fred Rogers said that, “play is really the work of childhood.” But in a world where employment is becoming fluid, play will become the work of adults too. If there’s one thing I’ve taken away from being at home with my family during the pandemic, it’s that work isn’t everything. Having time to reflect on our priorities in life, the post-Covid-19 economy is going to be less focused on driving financial gain for faceless investors and more about driving value for society, for employees, for everyone’s well-being. To bridge this change and ensure employees are still engaged in their work, companies that embrace play will be more successful. Play helps with understanding others and helps to form stronger relationships. In fact, research shows that play also helps people be more innovative, which in a fluid world, is essential.

“May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back, the way it is with children.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

As the world and the economy pivot to new ways of living and working, perhaps children provide us with the blueprint for successfully managing and adapting to change, and to do so with imagination, open minds and a sense of wonder. Companies and leaders that reflect these traits will find they are better able to adapt, grow and lead in a time when people crave true leadership.

Sufficed to say, on that three-month trip, the kids did amazing. They ate strange foods, climbed to the tops of mountains and the depths of caves, played with stray cats and chickens, rode in tuk tuks, on motorcycles, on bamboo rafts and on my shoulders. They made new friends and new memories, gained knowledge and perspective. They went with the flow.

Whether as businesses or individuals, to succeed in a world where the only certainty is uncertainty, we should all be so fluid.

(Editors note: this article is about being childlike and is not giving permission to be childish, as demonstrated by certain global political and business leaders. Tantrums, selfishness and bullying are always inexcusable and in my household result in the revoking of privileges.)