Go Lean…Caribbean

Go Lean Commentary

This book Go Lean…Caribbean was written in Omaha, Nebraska. The timeframe of being in this Mid-Western American city has now come to an end.

The Great Recession is now over… from the experience of enduring the crisis. It is now only the paperwork that needs to be completed. The paperwork is the Go Lean book: a composition of lessons learned and a roadmap to effectuate change based on the lessons.

What is so special about Omaha?

Well, one thing: The Oracle of Omaha…

… Warren Buffet.

The foregoing article/photo highlights the adoration that the community has for Mr. Buffett.

By: Lance Ulanoff

Title: Nebraska Kid Takes Selfie With Paul McCartney and Warren Buffett

Sixteen-year-old Tom White of Omaha, Nebraska, stumbled upon a scene that could only happen in the movies or a New Yorker cartoon: Paul McCartney and Billionaire Warren Buffett sitting on a bench. He did what comes naturally to his generation: took a selfie.

McCartney, who recently recovered from a hospital stay is back on the road, with a touring stop in Lincoln, Nebraska on July 14. The photo was taken on the evening of July 13.

Buffett lives in Omaha, and the bench break apparently came as part of a lengthy evening of dinner and ice cream, according to Omaha.com. In fact, White’s photo is just one of many captured by Omaha locals as McCartney and Buffett did an eatery crawl through the Dundee section of Omaha.
Mashable.com Social Media Site (Retrieved 07/15/2014) – http://mashable.com/2014/07/14/nebraska-selfie-warren-buffet-paul-mccartney/?utm_cid=mash-prod-email-topstories&utm_emailalert=daily&utm_content=buffer75200&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Why is Warren Buffett such a great role model for consideration, especially for the Caribbean to emulate?

His entrepreneurship. His commitment to community. His concern for the Greater Good.

Warren Buffet is a good example/sample of someone who prospered where he is planted.

He was born in Omaha, Nebraska (1930), raised and educated there, attending the University of Nebraska. Now as one of the richest men in the world, (# 1 on the Forbes List for 2008 and # 3 since 2011), he has the resources to live anywhere in world. But he chooses to prosper right here in Omaha, where he is planted.  Mr. Buffet is widely considered the most successful investor of the 20th century. He is called the “Wizard of Omaha”, “Oracle of Omaha”, or the “Sage of Omaha” and is noted for his adherence to the “value investing”^[a] philosophy and for his personal frugality despite his immense wealth (See photo of his home). Mr. Buffett is also a notable philanthropist, having pledged to give away 99 percent of his fortune to philanthropic causes, primarily via the Gates Foundation.

In 2012, American magazine Time named Mr. Buffett one of the most influential people in the world.

On April 11, 2012, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, for which he successfully completed treatment in September 2012.

Despite his great wealth, power, and influence, Mr. Buffett is very much human, and humane. His capacity for charity is as compelling as his wealth generating prowess.

Many of the lessons/insights from the role model Warren Buffet and the community of Omaha align with the book Go Lean… Caribbean. The primary focus of this book is the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The following 3 prime directives of the CU are explored in full details:

• Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
• Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
• Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines.

While the Great Recession may be over in Omaha in specific and the US in general, the effects continue to linger in the Caribbean. The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the CU. This commences with the assessment that the Caribbean is still very much in crisis, and that this “crisis would be a terrible thing to waste”. As a planning tool, the book goes on to detail lessons learned from the 2008 Crisis (Page 136) and the City of Omaha (Page 138). This roadmap accepts that the problems of the Caribbean are too big for any one member-state to effect change alone, but rather there should be an interdependent solution. This point is detailed in the  Declaration of Interdependence at the outset of the book, pronouncing this need for regional solutions (Page 10):

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to unite with others so as to connect them together to collaborate, confederate and champion the challenges that face them, we the people of Caribbean democracies find it necessary to accede and form a confederated Union, the Caribbean Union Trade Federation, with our geographic neighbors of common interest.

The Go Lean strategy is to confederate all the 30 member-states of the Caribbean (Page 44), despite their language and legacy, into an integrated “single market”. Tactically, this will allow a separation-of-powers (Page 71) between the member-states governments and federal agencies, allowing for efficient economies-of-scale for delivering the benefits of a technocracy to the region.

This is the example of Omaha, personified!

It was practical, providential and inspirational to write this book in this city; see VIDEO here:

The metropolitan area of Omaha had been prominently featured in previous blog considerations:

Now is the time for all of the Caribbean to lean-in for the empowerments described in the book Go Lean…Caribbean. There are benefits for all to consider in reviewing all aspects of the metropolitan area of Omaha: people, students, patients, governance, institutions and community organizations. These are all a part of the eco-systems of society. So from Omaha’s society, it is time now to apply the benefits in Caribbean society.

The methodology of this assignment was to look, listen, learn, lend-a-hand, and then finally: lead!

The Omaha assignment is now complete! Now the publishers are moving on, back to the Caribbean.

Time to lead!

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

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Referenced Citation:

a.   Value investing is an investment paradigm that derives from the ideas on investment that Ben Graham and David Dodd began teaching at Columbia Business School in 1928 and subsequently developed in their 1934 text Security Analysis. Although value investing has taken many forms since its inception, it generally involves buying securities that appear under-priced by some form of fundamental analysis. As examples, such securities may be stock in public companies that trade at discounts to book value or tangible book value, have high dividend yields, have low price-to-earnings multiples or have low price-to-book ratios.

High-profile proponents of value investing, including Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren Buffett, have argued that the essence of value investing is buying stocks at less than their intrinsic value. The discount of the market price to the intrinsic value is what Benjamin Graham called the “margin of safety”. The intrinsic value is the discounted value of all future distributions. However, the future distributions and the appropriate discount rate can only be assumptions. (Graham never recommended using future numbers, only past ones). For the last 25 years, Warren Buffett has taken the value investing concept even further with a focus on “finding an outstanding company at a sensible price” rather than generic companies at a bargain price.

Source: Retrieved July 15, 2014 from; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_investing