so my name is Alex connect I’m the chief
financial officer of Bali seafood and
North Atlantic
we spent the past 10 years developing
the first commercially sponsored
to underline my talk today to guide us I
want to use three images the first is
the sifting pan the second a carrot and
third a coin sifting pan carrot coin for
those of you less familiar with
old-school mining technologies sifting
pan is what we use to separate dirt and
mud from golden or and this is an
excellent metaphor for how difficult it
is to uncover what someone really wants
self-interest it’d be amazing if when we
walk down the street to people that come
at us they have badges on their forehead
that says I feel like a cheeseburger for
lunch or I need a new girlfriend but in
reality that’s not the case imagine if
we were trying to sell something in a
sales practice prospect was sitting
across the table from us and they had a
thought bubble above their head and said
I won’t pay more than twelve thousand
dollars for this for those salespeople
in the room I bet you could make that
sale and reality self-interest is hard
to uncover we have to ask questions
engage in conversation we have to
understand social constructs we have to
understand so different relationships
and some sociology to triangulate what
people actually want just like with
panning for gold we have to continue
trying hypotheses and shaking them out
to find those golden nuggets of truth
let’s look at this and a specific
example from my life so we work in
fisheries in Indonesia and Indonesia
unlike Singapore has a specific
reputation for public service some
people might say that politicians or
bureaucrats in Indonesia can be corrupt
sometimes secret seeking bribes graft
now Indonesia is not unique in this
situation almost all countries face this
problem in fact my birth country the
United States we have a bunch of issues
with this you’ve probably heard about it
the news recently but I do a lot of work
with the Ministry of Fisheries in
a couple of years ago we needed to get
in front of a very important person in
the ministry to ask for some to generate
some regulation and I couldn’t get in
front of this gentleman the only access
point I had was with a Junior bureaucrat
we’ll call a goose now I don’t when I
approach the goose to ask for the
meeting
he asked for a consultant fee of $2,000
now frankly I didn’t have the money to
spend on the meeting but even if I did I
wasn’t sure that if I paid it I would
get the meeting and second if I got the
mean I wasn’t sure that I was gonna get
what I needed so it wasn’t really an
option I asked the goose if he would
negotiate I asked him if he would had
some other things that he might find a
value that I could provide I asked my
friends if they could call in a favor
and set the meeting for me I asked
friends that knew a goose if they could
call in a favor
nothing worked we were stuck for six
months let’s put a pin in a goose we’ll
come back to him in a minute what did we
need we from a goose we needed to talk
to his boss about regulating
establishing the framework for
regulation around coops
for small-scale fisheries in Indonesia
now to understand what I’m talking about
I need to give you a little background
about my business
so traditionally seafood in Indonesia is
processed in the infrastructure centers
mostly in Java Surabaya and Jakarta
typically fish from the eastern
archipelago which is the Fertile fishery
where all the fish live in Indonesia
move across the land bridge back to
Jakarta or Surabaya in the case of
sumbawa where our factory is this
process takes five to seven days in this
process the fish often time is subject
to heat low ice diesel fumes any number
of things we’ve commissioned two
independent studies that have
demonstrated that between 40 and 60
percent of the value of the fish is lost
in this process so our strategy has been
instead of moving the fish back to the
infrastructure centers we take the
processing and move it to San Bao ah now
this concept is a pretty good business
practice right you take the 40 60 % and
that’s
profit increase but what’s interesting
and more important is that if if we use
the traditional model for Fisheries and
processing in five years there’ll be no
more fishing subala when we come by this
honestly our business was started thirty
years ago but my father in the northeast
of the United States the time he had
five fishing boats in a small factory
there for the first 15 years business
was fantastic and then slowly piece by
piece the fishery started to decrease in
the mid 90s the US government stepped in
and shut it down completely and he was
forced to go other places first starting
in Central America then South America
looking for another fish the same thing
happened there the stock started to
collapse the government stepped in
looking for new options until we came to
Asia and by that time we kind of decided
you know I think we’re not doing
something right there’s got to be a
better way to do this and was to help
with some other smart people we came up
with this idea of the commercially
sponsored sustainability model typically
in Western countries governments create
institutions that support fisheries
management to create sustainability but
in developing countries like Indonesia
like consume Bawa the top-down model
doesn’t work what we talk about is
enabling the loke the from the bottom up
we call it a community-based fisheries
model so we work with the local
villagers and the local fishermen and
so in order to understand the
self-interest of fishermen and Sumbawa
let’s look at one particular example
this gentleman will call him June 80
June 18 is from a small village in north
northwest zoom-zoom Bawa called domme
Phu Junaid II has a wife and two
daughters he inherited his boat from his
father June 18 2002 rest of the time
when it rains
he tends a small corn crop by his house
June 18 ever finished middle school in
fact he’s he’s illiterate and all he
wants is for his children to have a
better life in he had Janie has a wife
she’s been having stomach problems she’s
not really sure what’s what’s going on
his kids are still in middle school but
he knows that when they get to high
school which is 45 minutes away
he needs his motorbike to take his fish
the market instead of taking his kids to
school he’s not sure what he’s gonna do
some days June 80 can buy chicken and
goat for his family to eat at for dinner
and sometimes it seems like there’s not
even enough for rice leftover June 80 is
one of 800 fishermen that we work with
in San Bao WA now we talked a little bit
about the community and co-op or
organization of our fisheries fleets but
what’s important is we need June 80 to
do things differently if we’re going to
harvest fish sustainably in San Bow Wow
we need him to use ice on his catch so
we lock in the quality of the fish we
need him to only catch big fish and let
the little fish go we need him to throw
back fish that have eggs that are going
to have new fish and we need to not fish
certain seasons when the fish are
reproducing all of these things pull
money out of JD’s pockets if nothing
else is done but what we do is we take
that 40 60 % value loss in this cold
chain by moving our factory to San Bao
and we reinvest it partially in paying
donating more money for the big fish
yeah we pay him less money for the small
fish but he can make more money in the
big ones but that’s not enough what we
have to do is talk to Jen ADEs wife and
his family and his community understand
what they need right maybe we can
provide tablets at discounted or free
prices for his his wife’s stomach
infection maybe we can provide him
enough access to small small loans that
he can buy a motorbike and his kids can
go to high school so these are the kinds
of incentives that we think about when
we address self-interest we think about
what he truly needs
and try and match the incentives with
those needs so in this process what we
do is we don’t just address June 18 we
address the social circles around him
because if we provide an incentive for
genady alone he may change his behavior
but what’s way more effective is if we
address his family and build trust with
his community and then his wife is
asking him and suggested that he follow
what we’re suggesting that he do to be
more sustainable and his community is
engaged and supported and enriched by
him using more sustainable efforts and
all of this pressure together creates
change so we go back to our friend a
goose the bureaucrat now we did the same
thing we asked him what was important to
him we tried to triangulate through his
social network what he might be
interested in it turns out a goose is
worried about his pension he’s in his
late 50s his wife has an expensive
shopping habit his son just dropped out
of university he’s worried about how
he’s going to maintain his lifestyle on
a pension that’s what he was asking the
money for so we had a different idea we
said you know what maybe we can use
notoriety to change his behavior so what
we did we went to all the news rooms we
went to the newspapers we talked to
other officials all we did for six
months was talk about how great a goose
was how without his help we could never
have been successful in Sumbawa and in
fact without his guidance we wouldn’t
have even invested money in soon Bawa
soon he was noticed by not only his boss
but his boss’s boss a goose was in line
for a promotion
his promotion would be in a bigger
pension and he was happier than he’d
ever been in fact we had no problem
scheduling the meeting with the gooses
boss he presented our business as his
idea to his boss and we got our coops
formed and so the dream became a reality
and we were able to create this
community that supports a fishery that
creates long-term livelihood improvement
for the whole community
so not just fish today but fish tomorrow
so when we think about aligning
incentives and we think about using our
sifting pen to try and understand
self-interest so often incentives are
used only with money and yes they work
and they’re fairly that they address
things like ability to make choices or
improve security but money’s ubiquity is
also its downfall because it’s not
specific enough in these two cases we’ve
talked about understanding deeply what
is important to someone and addressing
those things directly and the power of
that is way more impactful than just
throwing money at a problem in our case
incentives have to work for both the
giver and the receiver if we had given
money that we didn’t have we would have
opened ourselves up for more asks for
more money we could have even been
extorted for not following the law but
we tried to identify ways that we could
address specifically the self-interest
monetarily and not monetarily to get the
people the stakeholders in our business
to change their behavior to support a
common goal and by doing that we created
value so I used the coin as a indicator
of value and so often we think of you
know Scrooge McDuck diving in his vault
of gold coins right and this is often
times thought about as greed I would
argue that greed is good I know that’s a
bit provocative but greed is good let’s
go back to the beginning of our
beginning of our conversation we talked
about helping your children demonstrate
yeah maybe if your kids have good
character and they grow up to be
successful they can provide for you in
your old age and that’s vaguely a
financial incentive but more importantly
if your kids have good morals and have
good character demonstrate moral fiber
they’re probably going to be happy and
that makes you happy and so your greed
has improved the value of everyone’s
experience in your family and I’d argue
that maybe if you think about it a
little bit larger you engage in the same
behavior with community your community
maybe you donate time or you give away
old old clothes for people that are less
fortunate you’re thinking about how to
solve and address the self-interest of
others you cast a wider net so in our
case we engage with the community we
engage with the Fisher’s we engage with
our employees we asked how can we
address what you need so we can also get
what we need and in the end by
addressing the self-interest of each of
these people we can create more value in
aggregate than we can on the individual
level so individual greed often looks
like extraction
it looks like exploiting someone else to
get ahead yourself but communal greed
casting a wide net thinking about what
everyone can how everyone can benefit
but we’ve done we think sustainability
sustainable for supply chains can work
in fisheries we’re looking forward to
replicating our model throughout
Indonesia but this has application in
your lives as well as you think about
how can I cast a wider net how can I
listen to understand self-interest and
how can I apply incentives to address
that self and just directly and create
collective value thank you very much [Applause]
financial officer of Bali seafood and
North Atlantic
we spent the past 10 years developing
the first commercially sponsored
to underline my talk today to guide us I
want to use three images the first is
the sifting pan the second a carrot and
third a coin sifting pan carrot coin for
those of you less familiar with
old-school mining technologies sifting
pan is what we use to separate dirt and
mud from golden or and this is an
excellent metaphor for how difficult it
is to uncover what someone really wants
self-interest it’d be amazing if when we
walk down the street to people that come
at us they have badges on their forehead
that says I feel like a cheeseburger for
lunch or I need a new girlfriend but in
reality that’s not the case imagine if
we were trying to sell something in a
sales practice prospect was sitting
across the table from us and they had a
thought bubble above their head and said
I won’t pay more than twelve thousand
dollars for this for those salespeople
in the room I bet you could make that
sale and reality self-interest is hard
to uncover we have to ask questions
engage in conversation we have to
understand social constructs we have to
understand so different relationships
and some sociology to triangulate what
people actually want just like with
panning for gold we have to continue
trying hypotheses and shaking them out
to find those golden nuggets of truth
let’s look at this and a specific
example from my life so we work in
fisheries in Indonesia and Indonesia
unlike Singapore has a specific
reputation for public service some
people might say that politicians or
bureaucrats in Indonesia can be corrupt
sometimes secret seeking bribes graft
now Indonesia is not unique in this
situation almost all countries face this
problem in fact my birth country the
United States we have a bunch of issues
with this you’ve probably heard about it
the news recently but I do a lot of work
with the Ministry of Fisheries in
a couple of years ago we needed to get
in front of a very important person in
the ministry to ask for some to generate
some regulation and I couldn’t get in
front of this gentleman the only access
point I had was with a Junior bureaucrat
we’ll call a goose now I don’t when I
approach the goose to ask for the
meeting
he asked for a consultant fee of $2,000
now frankly I didn’t have the money to
spend on the meeting but even if I did I
wasn’t sure that if I paid it I would
get the meeting and second if I got the
mean I wasn’t sure that I was gonna get
what I needed so it wasn’t really an
option I asked the goose if he would
negotiate I asked him if he would had
some other things that he might find a
value that I could provide I asked my
friends if they could call in a favor
and set the meeting for me I asked
friends that knew a goose if they could
call in a favor
nothing worked we were stuck for six
months let’s put a pin in a goose we’ll
come back to him in a minute what did we
need we from a goose we needed to talk
to his boss about regulating
establishing the framework for
regulation around coops
for small-scale fisheries in Indonesia
now to understand what I’m talking about
I need to give you a little background
about my business
so traditionally seafood in Indonesia is
processed in the infrastructure centers
mostly in Java Surabaya and Jakarta
typically fish from the eastern
archipelago which is the Fertile fishery
where all the fish live in Indonesia
move across the land bridge back to
Jakarta or Surabaya in the case of
sumbawa where our factory is this
process takes five to seven days in this
process the fish often time is subject
to heat low ice diesel fumes any number
of things we’ve commissioned two
independent studies that have
demonstrated that between 40 and 60
percent of the value of the fish is lost
in this process so our strategy has been
instead of moving the fish back to the
infrastructure centers we take the
processing and move it to San Bao ah now
this concept is a pretty good business
practice right you take the 40 60 % and
that’s
profit increase but what’s interesting
and more important is that if if we use
the traditional model for Fisheries and
processing in five years there’ll be no
more fishing subala when we come by this
honestly our business was started thirty
years ago but my father in the northeast
of the United States the time he had
five fishing boats in a small factory
there for the first 15 years business
was fantastic and then slowly piece by
piece the fishery started to decrease in
the mid 90s the US government stepped in
and shut it down completely and he was
forced to go other places first starting
in Central America then South America
looking for another fish the same thing
happened there the stock started to
collapse the government stepped in
looking for new options until we came to
Asia and by that time we kind of decided
you know I think we’re not doing
something right there’s got to be a
better way to do this and was to help
with some other smart people we came up
with this idea of the commercially
sponsored sustainability model typically
in Western countries governments create
institutions that support fisheries
management to create sustainability but
in developing countries like Indonesia
like consume Bawa the top-down model
doesn’t work what we talk about is
enabling the loke the from the bottom up
we call it a community-based fisheries
model so we work with the local
villagers and the local fishermen and
so in order to understand the
self-interest of fishermen and Sumbawa
let’s look at one particular example
this gentleman will call him June 80
June 18 is from a small village in north
northwest zoom-zoom Bawa called domme
Phu Junaid II has a wife and two
daughters he inherited his boat from his
father June 18 2002 rest of the time
when it rains
he tends a small corn crop by his house
June 18 ever finished middle school in
fact he’s he’s illiterate and all he
wants is for his children to have a
better life in he had Janie has a wife
she’s been having stomach problems she’s
not really sure what’s what’s going on
his kids are still in middle school but
he knows that when they get to high
school which is 45 minutes away
he needs his motorbike to take his fish
the market instead of taking his kids to
school he’s not sure what he’s gonna do
some days June 80 can buy chicken and
goat for his family to eat at for dinner
and sometimes it seems like there’s not
even enough for rice leftover June 80 is
one of 800 fishermen that we work with
in San Bao WA now we talked a little bit
about the community and co-op or
organization of our fisheries fleets but
what’s important is we need June 80 to
do things differently if we’re going to
harvest fish sustainably in San Bow Wow
we need him to use ice on his catch so
we lock in the quality of the fish we
need him to only catch big fish and let
the little fish go we need him to throw
back fish that have eggs that are going
to have new fish and we need to not fish
certain seasons when the fish are
reproducing all of these things pull
money out of JD’s pockets if nothing
else is done but what we do is we take
that 40 60 % value loss in this cold
chain by moving our factory to San Bao
and we reinvest it partially in paying
donating more money for the big fish
yeah we pay him less money for the small
fish but he can make more money in the
big ones but that’s not enough what we
have to do is talk to Jen ADEs wife and
his family and his community understand
what they need right maybe we can
provide tablets at discounted or free
prices for his his wife’s stomach
infection maybe we can provide him
enough access to small small loans that
he can buy a motorbike and his kids can
go to high school so these are the kinds
of incentives that we think about when
we address self-interest we think about
what he truly needs
and try and match the incentives with
those needs so in this process what we
do is we don’t just address June 18 we
address the social circles around him
because if we provide an incentive for
genady alone he may change his behavior
but what’s way more effective is if we
address his family and build trust with
his community and then his wife is
asking him and suggested that he follow
what we’re suggesting that he do to be
more sustainable and his community is
engaged and supported and enriched by
him using more sustainable efforts and
all of this pressure together creates
change so we go back to our friend a
goose the bureaucrat now we did the same
thing we asked him what was important to
him we tried to triangulate through his
social network what he might be
interested in it turns out a goose is
worried about his pension he’s in his
late 50s his wife has an expensive
shopping habit his son just dropped out
of university he’s worried about how
he’s going to maintain his lifestyle on
a pension that’s what he was asking the
money for so we had a different idea we
said you know what maybe we can use
notoriety to change his behavior so what
we did we went to all the news rooms we
went to the newspapers we talked to
other officials all we did for six
months was talk about how great a goose
was how without his help we could never
have been successful in Sumbawa and in
fact without his guidance we wouldn’t
have even invested money in soon Bawa
soon he was noticed by not only his boss
but his boss’s boss a goose was in line
for a promotion
his promotion would be in a bigger
pension and he was happier than he’d
ever been in fact we had no problem
scheduling the meeting with the gooses
boss he presented our business as his
idea to his boss and we got our coops
formed and so the dream became a reality
and we were able to create this
community that supports a fishery that
creates long-term livelihood improvement
for the whole community
so not just fish today but fish tomorrow
so when we think about aligning
incentives and we think about using our
sifting pen to try and understand
self-interest so often incentives are
used only with money and yes they work
and they’re fairly that they address
things like ability to make choices or
improve security but money’s ubiquity is
also its downfall because it’s not
specific enough in these two cases we’ve
talked about understanding deeply what
is important to someone and addressing
those things directly and the power of
that is way more impactful than just
throwing money at a problem in our case
incentives have to work for both the
giver and the receiver if we had given
money that we didn’t have we would have
opened ourselves up for more asks for
more money we could have even been
extorted for not following the law but
we tried to identify ways that we could
address specifically the self-interest
monetarily and not monetarily to get the
people the stakeholders in our business
to change their behavior to support a
common goal and by doing that we created
value so I used the coin as a indicator
of value and so often we think of you
know Scrooge McDuck diving in his vault
of gold coins right and this is often
times thought about as greed I would
argue that greed is good I know that’s a
bit provocative but greed is good let’s
go back to the beginning of our
beginning of our conversation we talked
about helping your children demonstrate
yeah maybe if your kids have good
character and they grow up to be
successful they can provide for you in
your old age and that’s vaguely a
financial incentive but more importantly
if your kids have good morals and have
good character demonstrate moral fiber
they’re probably going to be happy and
that makes you happy and so your greed
has improved the value of everyone’s
experience in your family and I’d argue
that maybe if you think about it a
little bit larger you engage in the same
behavior with community your community
maybe you donate time or you give away
old old clothes for people that are less
fortunate you’re thinking about how to
solve and address the self-interest of
others you cast a wider net so in our
case we engage with the community we
engage with the Fisher’s we engage with
our employees we asked how can we
address what you need so we can also get
what we need and in the end by
addressing the self-interest of each of
these people we can create more value in
aggregate than we can on the individual
level so individual greed often looks
like extraction
it looks like exploiting someone else to
get ahead yourself but communal greed
casting a wide net thinking about what
everyone can how everyone can benefit
but we’ve done we think sustainability
sustainable for supply chains can work
in fisheries we’re looking forward to
replicating our model throughout
Indonesia but this has application in
your lives as well as you think about
how can I cast a wider net how can I
listen to understand self-interest and
how can I apply incentives to address
that self and just directly and create
collective value thank you very much [Applause]
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