TAKING THE RISK

by Dr. James W. Jackson

Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist

The very fact that you are alive tells me that you are encountering risks. Leo Buscaglia, the late inspirational speaker known as “Dr. Love,” claimed, “The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing, and becomes nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot learn, feel, change, grow or love. Chained by his certitude, he is a slave; he has forfeited his freedom. Only the person who risks is truly free.” We usually describe risk as being a state of uncertainty where there are possibilities of loss, catastrophe, or other undesirable outcomes. Of course, the other side of risk includes the possibilities of gaining something of value to you.

When I was young and starting out in business, I always felt that I could well afford to run the risks of failure, because in failure I really didn’t have that much to lose. I could take the lumps, count the costs, pick up the pieces, and start over again. I didn’t mind going out on a limb, because that was where the fruit was growing. My attitude was that if I pushed to the very brink, I would be shown a way to proceed on the ground, or else I would be taught how to fly. After all, how was I to know how far I could go in a venture if I hadn’t run the risk of going too far?

But the more I accumulated, the more the idea of risk became an issue. The more I had to lose, the more I seriously considered my options, choices, and consequences. I learned several times that I was very vulnerable and had a lot to lose. That prompted me to start developing some skills of risk assessment and some practices of risk aversion. I was discovering that in my business dealings I was developing a risk attitude, and I began measuring my decisions against a rather clumsy gauge of rate of gain vs. rate of ruin. Somewhere in the adventure, I was being exposed to concepts like fear of loss and regret.

When I became involved in international business and traveling with Project C.U.R.E., I was glad I had learned some things about risk-taking. There were situations in Afghanistan, India, Iraq, Palestine, Russia, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, and even Kenya, where the risks involved my very life and safety. It was God’s protection, some carefully made decisions, and the help of many friends in over 150 countries, that averted the serious consequences of some of those perilous risks.

In one of my Project C.U.R.E. offices, I had a map of the world affixed to the wall. One day I made a statement to the people visiting me: “If you were to stand on this side of the room and throw a dart at the map, providing the dart did not land on water or snow, within a three inch radius of the dart I would have a friend who would be willing to risk his life to help me out of danger.”

That was a rather audacious statement, I know. But it was based on the fact that I had worked in nearly every corner of the world, and the unusually positive influence of Project C.U.R.E. had enabled me to develop many deep-rooted relationships with people who would have put themselves in harm’s way to come to my rescue.

Taking a risk is an interesting concept. It includes the possibility of loss, injury, or at least the inconvenience of an imposing circumstance. And there is a notion that choice has something to do with whether or not the outcome is altered. Risk-taking can get complicated. The consequences of my risks can splash over into other people’s lives around me and affect their lives and well-being. We are hardly ever isolated, stand-alone objects in situations that include risks. The consequences set into motion by our choices will usually invade the lifestyles of our family and friends. In reflecting on my statement regarding the map in my office, I realize that I probably would have been in a high-risk circumstance, or there would have been no need for someone to come and help me. The willingness of my friends to come to my rescue would imply that they would be placing themselves in a risk-taking situation because I was already in trouble.

Our culture teaches us to seek the position of safety and security, but as Mark Twain used to say, “Necessity is the mother of taking chances.” And I am in theologian Paul Tillich’s corner when he says, “He who risks and fails can be forgiven. He who never risks and never fails is a failure in his whole being.”

I personally believe that no noble thing can be accomplished without taking risks, and ordinary people can do extraordinary things if they are encouraged in the confidence to stand tall and fully engage those calculated risks.

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson. 

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com

ALL THAT IS NOT GIVEN IS LOST

by Dr. James W. Jackson

Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist

One of the universal principles of stewardship is that I can hold on too tightly and lose everything, but it is possible to give away and become richer. The spirit of selfishness and hoarding trumps wisdom and blocks me from the subtle insights as to what and when I should let go. The tighter I grasp on to something, the more I squeeze it right through my fingers and it is gone. This principle is equally true for corporations, institutions, and individuals. Stewardship and benevolence just make good sense and good business.

By watering other people, and reaching out to meet their needs, we actually water ourselves. What we hoard we lose; what we give away and plant in the lives of others returns to us in multiplied measure. And in the final analysis, all that is not given away is lost. Project C.U.R.E. is one of the best examples of how this principle works out every day in the real world.

In the business model and operations of Project C.U.R.E., we are dependent upon donations from other people and institutions. The thousands of lives that are saved through the efforts of Project C.U.R.E. are a direct result of the benevolence of others. We go directly to medical manufacturers, medical wholesale businesses and end users of medical goods, and work with them. In a joint effort we collect, process, inventory, warehouse, and distribute those medical supplies and pieces of medical equipment to needy hospitals and medical clinics around the world. We openly explain the benefits to them and their businesses by our working together. Then we ask them directly to donate to us from their inventories. They believe in us and the cause we represent, and for the past twenty-five years they have generously given to us.

The medical industry is very special and unique in that it deals with extremely time-sensitive inventories. The majority of items we receive are marked with an expiration date. When we receive the donated inventories, we do not have the option or latitude to take our jolly-good time to process and deliver the goods to the needy international recipients. We are always under the time gun, and we must be good stewards of what we are given in order to maximize the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people.

It would be absolutely and criminally ridiculous for us to receive those donated inventories, put them on our warehouse racks, and say, “Oh, look at us and see how very wealthy we are with all the millions of dollars of goods we have in our warehouses.” Those goods were given to us to distribute to those with imperative need. We accept the responsibility of being trustworthy stewards. If we hoard the things that were given to us, and we simply sit on those valuable gifts, and they go right past the expiration dates for usefulness, we have then breeched our fiduciary responsibilities, and we are accountable.

It is not a whole lot different with the valuable inventories of our personal lives that we have so generously received. And, like the time-sensitive medical inventories in Project C.U.R.E.’s warehouses, our personal talents and possessions are likewise time sensitive. All of our clocks are ticking—just in case you hadn’t noticed. Your personal inventories are overflowing, even if you don’t feel so wealthy today.

What I hoard I lose. All that is not given away is lost. What I grasp too tightly, I squeeze right through my fingers and it is gone. But what I give away and plant in the lives of others returns to me in multiplied measure. As much as Project C.U.R.E. gives away each year, every time I walk through our warehouses there is more there than before. By watering other people and reaching out to meet their needs we actually water ourselves. We can hold on too tightly and lose everything, but it is possible to give away and become richer: richer in relationships; richer in quality of life; richer in personal expression, experience, and maturity; richer in wisdom; richer in more than money, but in true wealth, in the things that matter most in this life.

Author, Oswald Chambers reminds us:                

Whenever you get a blessing from God, give it back to Him as a love gift. Take time to meditate before God and offer the blessing back to Him in a deliberate act of worship. If you hoard a thing for yourself, it will turn into spiritual dry rot, as the manna did when it was hoarded. God will never let you hold a spiritual thing for yourself, it has to be given back to Him that He may make it a blessing to others.

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson. 

Problem Solving

by Dr. James W. Jackson

Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist

It seems to me that the true mark of wisdom is being able to see miracles in what everybody else sees as problems. That requires a new set of eyes. Norman Vincent Peale used to say, “How you think about a problem is more important than the problem itself – so always think positively.”

Problem-solving is, in reality, only one part of the larger problem issue. Before you can arrive at the problem-solving function, it is necessary to correctly identify the problem and then accurately define the problem. Without the identification and clear definition of the problem, you will not be able to move from a given state to a desired goal. Most people would agree that problem-solving, sometimes referred to as a higher-order cognitive skill, is one of the most complex processes of the intellectual function. It is a skill, indeed, and we usually are required to concentrate and work hard to acquire that skill because our normal tendency is to get so busy trying to mop the floor, we ignore simple acts like shutting off the running faucet.

I’ve been encouraged by an adage of the old philosopher, Voltaire: “no problem can stand the assault of sustained thinking.” Perhaps that philosophical approach inspired Albert Einstein in his problem-solving: “It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”

People sometimes ask me about what I was doing in Brazil before I started Project C.U.R.E. I was engaged in the exciting adventure of economic problem-solving. My prior economic commitments in the countries of Zimbabwe, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela acquainted me with the concept of Debt for Equity Exchanges, sometimes referred to as Debt Swaps.

When I went to Brazil, I began working directly with Brazil’s president, Jose Sarney, and his chief economist, Antonio Bacelar. Brazil was experiencing runaway inflation of 3,000%. They had borrowed millions of dollars from US banks and were incapable of repaying those loans. They were in real trouble. Our first two steps in problem-solving were to identify the problem, then to clearly define the problem. Once we had accomplished that, we could start on solving the problem.

Many of the US banks had been coerced by our government, the World Bank, and the United Nations to make sizable loans to foreign countries as economic relief measures. Instead of our government simply handing over large sums of money to the United Nations who, in turn, would hand out the monies to foreign countries, they pressured our banks to make the loans directly to those needy countries. That sounded like a great problem-solving strategy to bypass the inefficiency of the United Nations and the World Bank.

The banks, following prudent underwriting procedures, insisted that the sovereign countries sign promissory notes guaranteeing the repayment of the loans. Perhaps the United Nations or the World Bank could have allowed the foreign countries to default on the loans by just writing them off as “bad debts.” But individual banks in America were under the tight scrutiny of the US Federal bank examiners and federal agencies like FDIC, and could not just write off their bad loans.

Under the Nixon administration in the 1970s, when the US economy was cut loose from the gold standard, banks were allowed to use foreign sovereign debt instruments as credits toward their necessary fractional reserves. But it was considered high risk to make foreign sovereign loans, and it was utter disaster for the US banks should those foreign loans ever go into default.

Not surprisingly, by the mid-1980s, many of the foreign countries were in default to the US banks. Some South American governments simply shrugged their shoulders and said, “Sorry, we can’t make good on our loan repayment commitments.” Once the foreign loan instruments were declared non- performing loans, the US banks had to start writing them off. If they had counted them as part of their fractional reserves, the bank’s total lending ratio would shrink by approximately twenty times the amount of the non-performing loan. Their assets and lending powers would begin to implode.

The other part of the definition of the problem included the fact that the US banks could not accept and hold foreign assets to satisfy the loans.

Now for solving the problem: We poured our efforts into putting together the Libra Proposal for Brazil that utilized the concept of Debt for Equity Swaps. An outside group of individuals, or an entity, would agree to purchase the bad loan at an attractive discount from the US bank, and their new note would heal the bank. Thereupon, the new holders of the foreign note would take the note to Brazil’s government that owed the debt and agree to swap the note for some of the country’s assets to settle the debt. Those assets could include government-controlled exports; natural resources like oil concessions, mineral rights, and raw land; real-estate, government-owned buildings, fishing rights, rights to ports and harbors; or any other service or commodity of equally agreed-upon value. Simply, the indebted country could use their own assets to settle the debt where they could not come up with cash to make the payments . . . everyone was better off.

The key seems to be to focus on the identification and the definition of the problem with new eyes of creativity until the solution of the problem becomes apparent.

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson. 

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com

Adjusted Thinking

by Dr. James W. Jackson

Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

-- Albert Einstein

The vast majority of the 150 countries in which I worked in the past thirty years were in dire financial straits. There were observable and definable reasons why those financial problems existed. Long-standing traditions of economic and cultural abuse remained as impediments to financial growth and the easing of poverty. Nearly all dictators promised free health-care and rural electrification for the masses; none sufficiently delivered on those promises. As a rule, most constituents were held to subsistence farming and the lack of access to markets. In order to break the restraint of such dictatorial bondage, a different kind of thinking was required.

In the past two decades, some very creative ideas have been applied to those age-old problems. The implementation of cottage industries and micro lending programs made a significant impact upon market access, individual involvement in enterprise, and the alleviation of poverty.

Prior to my founding of Project C.U.R.E., I was involved in the investment and real-estate development business. My success in earlier business ventures had partly resulted from a childhood understanding and use of basic concepts of old-fashioned counter-trade and barter techniques. The fundamental principle at the heart of a successful barter transaction and, in fact, the basis for all successful free market endeavors is that everybody in the deal must end up better off. Based on the barter and trade concepts I had included in my first book What’cha Gonna do with What’cha Got?, I received an invitation to speak at an economic gathering at the Ambassador West Hotel in Chicago on April 17, 1984.

The purpose for the closed meeting was to explore ways to increase market share into lesser- developed countries by use of international counter-trade and barter. We hoped that as a result of our deliberations we could find a way to bypass the unfair manipulation and corruption of the dictators and their cohort governments, who were skimming revenues off the top of the countries’ economies by means of exorbitant inflation and phony currency exchange rates. In attendance were top US leaders of commerce and international business. I shared with the group what I knew about the subject, but as the others began to discuss their experiences and needs, I listened very carefully. There was such a great need for what we were trying to accomplish in the global economy! We were endeavoring to solve problems by using a different kind of thinking than had been used when the economic problems were created.

Many of the issues we were trying to resolve reminded me of what Armand Hammer, one of my entrepreneurial heroes, had encountered as an international businessman. Creativity and ingenuity would be the answer to working around the greed, corruption, and bureaucracy of the Third World markets and governments.

About half-way through the guarded sessions, I began to realize that I was not there so much because I had a lot of magic bullets to offer, but I was there because there were things being said and concepts being proposed that I needed to hear. My thinking began to change during and after that Chicago meeting.

Shortly after that meeting, and because I had been a participant, I was invited to attend a special economic focus meeting held in Indianapolis, Indiana, sponsored by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. In the welcoming speech of the gathering, we were told “You are all economists and we have brought you together to brainstorm how to develop practical economic models for lesser-developed countries. You are asked to be just as creative as possible, using such economic components as counter trade, barter, cottage industries, micro lending, incentive credits, or anything else you can think of. There are no holds barred as you put your economic models together.”

The meeting leaders went on to explain that the people living in the Lesser Developed Countries (LDCs) would remain in bondage as long as they were controlled by the economic practices of repressive and manipulated governments. Changes would need to take place to free them from the systems of closed and oppressive economies. In other words, we can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

We were divided into teams and seated at large round tables and instructed to get to work. We began by reviewing such classical economic concepts as scarcity, choice, and cost; land, labor, capital, and the entrepreneur; supply and demand; methods of fiscal responsibility; closed economies vs. free markets. We discussed the need to have a responsible government that could guarantee the enforcement of contracts and agreements. We included the necessity of having exclusive rights of private property to hold or transfer, and free enterprise with the possibility of personal incentives and profits. At our table, we included anything else we could think of to work into the mix.

The result of that meeting in Indianapolis was extremely significant, not only in its application to future programs in the LDCs, but it became one of the touchstones in the developing economic philosophy of the organization that eventually became known as Project C.U.R.E. And even to this day we are realizing, in even a greater measure that, we can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson.