We are not strangers to each other. We have met before.  It was March 2000 the month marked as the collapse of the Dot.com firms dragging with them the whole ICT industry.  At the time I was a Director of Operations in a Dutch software firm with great products but wrong timing. 

For those of you that joined the rat race after 2000, I can tell it was an amazing time back then, whereas just anyone could get an investment for any technology idea or a concept for a Dot.Com firm.  The new firms were traded in much higher values they represented and a catastrophe was inevitable.

When the IT bubble exploded, the NASDAQ that have reached above 5132, collapsed, avalanching the industries of IT, investment and global economy into a deep recession. And if that wasn’t enough, September 11 came the next year and did the same to the Travel, airlines and insurance industries. It took years for the economy to recover.

The world economy took a steep dive and I found myself with no job, just like many others. It was right after, in 2002 that I established my company Endeavour Enterprises N.V. against the advice of my lawyers and accountants. They were right, it was not the time to start new enterprises nor it was the time for bold Endeavours, however I preferred that than just waiting.

It was back then when I looked into the economic crisis straight into its eyes. I was just hoping it would take more than just few years before we meet again.

Let’s admit it; we all are taking economic growth as a given fact. We plane life accordingly, assuming growth in sales and increase of our investments’ value. No wonder we are so helpless when being hit by a major recession. The damage is enormous and is visible in our daily life: people losing their jobs, not buying many of the things they planned to, losing their savings and even their houses.

It is my opinion that we should deal with the human factor, the one that is partially responsible for this misconduct. If irresponsible managers and brokers contributed to the creation of the fall, we should hold them responsible and more importantly, create a better, more balanced and secured brokerage system.

What do we do now? Here are some thoughts:

Last week I found myself looking at my favorite shoes, half priced at a local store. I was just about to buy the shoes when a thought bothered me: in the middle of the worst world slowdown, I am buying shoes which I really don’t need just because they are on sale…

I can’t blame our surplus society and culture cultivating purchasing as a hobby or even leisure. I am guilty as one can be. When supermarkets are selling none-food, cheap merchandize at the entrances, they have people like me in mind… I can’t take that corner without buying something. I call it Buy-me corner.

Nevertheless, I was standing in the middle of the shop with the fancy shoes in my hand, pondering what to do. I took an unprecedented decision not to buy it. I thought that it would be extremely immoral to buy half priced shoes I don’t need at this time. Funny, I resisted my shopping urge because of the time we live at. My secretary would be proud of me. She knows better than to send me for office shopping.

Walking back home empty handed, my beaten shopping urge tried its last attack and another bothering thought came up: ok, great. 12 points for morality but did I actually helped someone by not buying the shoes? What happen if the rest of the world will do that on the macro level? We all actually contribute to the recession, not eliminating it.

Looking around me, we are already doing it. Everybody is just waiting for the recession to pass. On the professional level we stopped hiring long ago, we fired the unnecessary employees and  we did not sign the suppliers contracts. In the personal consumer level, we buy only what we really need. Well, most of us… and by doing so, we are helping the crisis to hold tighter to our economy.

Increased governmental investments & spending is the answer economists and heads of countries are giving us. The idea is to inject enough investments & spending to move the wheels of the economy forward. You can imagine an old coal train needing a major push forward or a jet engine rotating on its electric power before it catches up. So is the economy which is built for speed but need the injections of investments to move these giant wheels forward. It is only a question of time before that happens. Never before in the documented history, amounts of such scale where invested and deployed by countries and organizations in order to change the tide.

What we feel now is the fear and hysteria that is a byproduct of that crisis. The fear that we did not even reach the bottom is the strongest one and I admit it is not easy to live, let alone manage, in such scenario.

Here is what I am going to do as a consumer: I am going to make sure I spend some money on things important for me in places I like. I am going to make more lunch meetings at my favorite restaurant and have more time spending outside the office. I have few restaurants and bars owners here that have been friendly to ma and hence have direct responsibility to the few extra kilos I gained. This time I am refusing any free meals and food, I am paying also for the last few good years. I can’t save all of them but I can help a few.

To other manager I call to think it over once again before dismissing people. I remind you that not all costs related to dismissal can be quantified. Demoralization, training of new people, stress and other associated actions are mostly not being assigned to the cost of dismissing people.

This is the time to find people other tasks within the organization even reduce positions  to part-time, encourage people for study part-time, anything but layoffs.

Some of the public firms that I am a member in their board of directors decided this year to avoid paying any bonuses to management and all directors voted for a cut of 10% in their own salary. This is a clear message sent to some Dutch and American financial firms but moreover, it is the right thing to do.

Whatever happens, do not lose hope. Economy is the strongest drive known to mankind. It brought us so far, it will take us further.

David Dekel, CEO

Endeavour Enterprises N.V.

Endeavour VS. Belasting

Dutch Tax refuses to speak English

To our regret, about two years ago, the Tax authorities in the Netherlands have taken the decision not speak any language than Dutch while speaking to local taxpayers. The decision includes all communication with taxpayers even and especially if the Tax employee is able to express himself in other language.

This one-sided harsh decision was coming as a surprise to most non Dutch speaking people in the Netherlands and has caused a major frustration among individual as well as companies.

The Netherlands is characterized by hosting hundreds of foreign firms and thousands of expatriates living and working locally. Some governmental authorities such as the NFIA are concentrating their efforts on attracting foreign firms to invest in the Netherlands.

Ironically, the same Tax authority that grants the ruling 30% as an incentive to expatriates, is the very same authority that refuses speaking even English with them.

With all the empathy we have towards the Dutch society, facing major immigration to the Netherlands with all its negative implications, we find this decision hurting the expatriates’ community that lives in the Netherlands, working and paying its taxes just like everyone else.

Naturally, these Expats would not expect the local authorities to invest in educating their employees to speak more languages, however, while employees are fluently speaking other languages and willing to help the calling expats, it does not make any sense to forbid usage of other languages in such strict way.

So, why did they take that decision? I am told that the Tax authorities could not guarantee given information’s accuracy and cannot be held responsible for any info it is generating unless it is in Dutch. Since this blog entry is only the beginning of the process, we will send the Tax authorities a letter requesting an explanation for the above mentioned decision and will publish their answer here.

For comparison purposes, let’s look west at the UK for a moment and see how their tax services deal with residents who cannot speak English. Surprisingly, the HM Revenue & Customs service publishes on its internet site that not only they are willing to assist taxpayers in other languages; the CRM team in Nottingham is holding a list detailing employees who are fluent in other languages than English. Impressive, isn’t it? It is especially kind since the Brits could easily claim that English is the only official international language and they are expecting everyone to speak it. As it appears, we would need our own Lady Godiva in the Netherlands in order to change the language decision.

We have other examples for English tolerance, this time in the Netherlands: the Dutch court is able to legalize English written papers without the need to translate it to Dutch. That is amazing, isn’t it? The court is dealing with official and accurate information, but can easily tolerate English in some levels and definitely allows its employees to use it when needed. Since the Dutch court is willing to speak other languages than just Dutch, the Tax claim for information accuracy looks more like an easy excuse than a real reason.

I can testify as for a positive experience I had regarding English tolerance in the Netherlands, when I needed to pay a small traffic fine to the CJIB the Dutch collecting agency. When I got their letter, l felt it was wrong and wrote them about it. I also paid the fine at the same time and when they rejected my appeal, I thought the case was closed.
Reminders were sent to me again and the fine amount was increased. At that time I wrote an English letter to the CJIB explaining the situation. A week later, I have received an official letter in English explaining me that I actually switched two digits on CJIB bank account hence the payment was never done. They gave me again their correct bank account and reduced the fine to its original amount. Now, doesn’t that worth a medal for good service? Someone there actually took the time and efforts to sort this issue in a language I understand. If the CJIB can, why the Tax can’t?
As for the decision itself:
Is it legal? We have no idea but we will surely have a local law office taking a look at it. If we are lucky, it conflicts with a higher law or civil servant standards and therefore vulnerable.
Is this a case of a governmental agency that “forgets” it is here to serve people, not the other way around? Doesn’t this agency adhere to common standards of civil-servant policies or simply can take controversial decisions such as this one only because technically they can?

In terms of management, it seems as if the solution to the precision and accountability issue is by far exaggerated. If this is the problem, the Tax authorities could state that the information they give in any other language, is general and only the Dutch version of the info is official. That would easily solve the problem. Easy.
In practice, most of taxpayers’ inquires are very simple and so are the answers. There is no need to make so many people affected negatively by such decision.

We are calling the Dutch Tax authorities to reconsider their decision forbidding their employees speaking any other language than Dutch.

We are calling everyone that identifies with our cause to support our quest by spreading it and linking to it. We might be able to change it.

Cheers,
David Dekel, CEO
Endeavour Enterprises N.V.
www.endeavour-eu.com

We did not expect that. We expected something in line of the sea crush of the Hijacked Ethiopian Aircraft back in 1996. This was a remarkable landing that was a direct result of high professionalism and a little luck. The air traffic controller who was talking to the pilot, testified later on that when he heard of the captain’s decision to land on the Hudson, he was convinced he is the last person to talk to this flight.

When you saw the passengers standing on the aircraft wings waiting for rescue, you must have noticed few of them with their laptops on. There must be more than just one rule against that, but you need to be a corporate manager or a techi to understand that these guys will never leave without their laptops, crush landing in river, or not.

The Airline industry being a sub category of the travel industry is unique by itself; although very popular among most of us, the industry is characterized by being extremely dynamic, accurate in nature and catastrophic when things go wrong.

In terms of management, this industry revolves around precision of minutes mostly when dealing with landing and take offs while in contradiction to long range planning of months when it comes to purchase fuel or years when ordering new aircraft.

The successful landing of flight 1549 on the Hudson River is only the tip of the iceberg visible to us, but definitely a result of procedures and regulations traced back to operations manuals, productions and mainly: hard training.

The airline industry has more than one face. It has the common pleasant one that handles customers and smiles at you when boarding an aircraft or checking in, but can change in an instants if needed into efficient, military-like operation when things go wrong.

So, next time you are flying, don’t forget to be nice to the stewardess as she is the one to save you if anything does go wrong