Holiday Greetings

Gifts of Innovation

Grace Boone, Marketing Manager & Newsletter Editor

The holiday season is considered by many to be a time to give to our communities and to those around the world who are less fortunate. At Barnes & Conti Associates, we support many different organizations throughout the year and have a tradition of making a larger gift to a global organization in lieu of holiday gifts.

This year we have focused on organizations that are innovating in the non-profit landscape. We have great respect for long-standing charities such as Habitat for Humanity, the Salvation Army, the Red Cross, and others. However, as we developed our Managing Innovation™ program, we became interested in new ideas that respond to changing conditions and issues in the world.

We are particularly captivated by Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank’s work on poverty. Yunus is a pioneer of micro-credit. His foundation, the Grameen Bank, extends small loans to groups of entrepreneurs, particularly women, who are too poor to qualify for conventional loans. In 1976 he made his first loan of $27 to 42 women in Bangladesh so they could purchase bamboo to make furniture they could sell. This first loan showed Yunus that the poor would repay loans, thus creating both a needed and profitable business model. As of July 2007 Grameen (Village) Bank has issued US $6.38 billion to 7.4 million borrowers. As a result of his work Yunus and his foundation received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.

While conventional thought says that poor nations need billions of dollars, Yunus found that giving small groups of borrowers small amounts of money would make a substantial difference. Said Yunus, “Here we were talking about economic development, about investing billions of dollars in various programs, and I could see it wasn’t billions of dollars people needed right away.” Another innovation of Yunus’: helping individuals did not have to be charity; it could be business—a business with a social objective—but a business all the same.

Of course Yunus is not the only person changing the way that we think of and address poverty. Heifer International (www.heifer.org) uses a similar concept of creating opportunities—rather than hand-outs—to move people out of poverty by giving livestock to families in impoverished communities. Heifer International’s innovative approach is based on “…the notion that it’s better to teach a man to fish so he can feed himself than to give him a fish that will feed him just once. One animal could eventually benefit an entire community” (Associated Press). The gifting process begins by including the community in deciding what animals are best for their situation in the present and the future. Then Heifer International provides the recipients with husbandry classes and training. Finally, recipients are required to pass on the benefits from the gifts—milk, eggs, offspring, etc.—to other farmers.

Another innovative organization is Kiva (www.kiva.org). Kiva brings micro-lending to an individual level, allowing socially-minded individuals to give as little as $25 to entrepreneurs throughout the world. Kiva partners with existing micro-finance institutions who are experts in identifying qualified borrowers. These partners upload borrower profiles directly to the Kiva site and share periodic updates with lenders. A more-or-less typical Kiva partner is Microfund. Microfund “provides financial and technical assistance to the economically active poor in rural, peri-urban and urban environments, who are unable to access the formal financial sector (most notably banks), by offering them high-quality financial services through autonomous and local cooperative structures.” Barnes & Conti will be contributing to several entrepreneurs through Kiva. We are excited about this project and invite you to check our blog (http://barnesconti.blogspot.com) to see what ventures we sponsor. Or perhaps you’ll visit Kiva.org and finance a project yourself.

Muhammed Yunus said, “My greatest challenge has been to change the mindset of people. Mindsets play strange tricks on us. We see things the way our minds have instructed our eyes to see.” Our mindsets can limit us. Whether our minds tell us that there is only a certain way of doing business or that there is only a certain way to change the world, we must struggle against seeing the world only through that lens. In the past year of offering our Managing Innovation program, we have been working to provide new mindsets for leading innovation and change. These new mindsets are just as powerful in addressing the needs of the impoverished and disenfranchised as they are in producing new revenue streams and profits for our clients.

Our hope for the new year is that more mindsets are changed, challenged, and replaced with those that encourage moving ideas—particularly those that help others—into action. We are grateful to our clients, partners, trainers, and friends who have supported us in 2007 and look forward to working with you in 2008.

In This Issue:

“On Giving and Receiving,” by Kim Barnes

Introducing our New Account Coordinators

The Seventh Annual Barnes & Conti Virtual Feast

News Items:

Just for Fun

Featured Art (above): Foulard for the Mondial Festival of Youth and Students for Peace, 1951, by Pablo Picasso

On Giving and Receiving

B. Kim Barnes

I remember a Christmas holiday many years ago when I was a young teacher. The mother of one of the children in the school was very thin and pale and seemed very depressed. She let the school staff know that she was a widow with no money, and that she and her child were not going to be able to have a holiday celebration.

Several of us decided to surprise her and on a Saturday before Christmas, one teacher offered to take her shopping for her child’s gift (on the teacher) while another took the child to a movie; in the meantime several of the rest of us brought Christmas decorations and a tree.

We had a wonderful afternoon decorating her small house and anticipating her response when she saw it. When she arrived she looked at the tree and said, “It’s pretty small, isn’t it?” That was it. No thanks, nothing else!

Shortly thereafter she and the child disappeared from the school and we later learned that she was on the run from the police—there was a warrant for her arrest as a confidence trickster! She was not a widow and for all I know the child was not hers. We had been conned—but we had built friendships with one another and experienced a day of giving in the holiday spirit.

I think we all learned something that day about doing what seems right without expecting to be rewarded for it. That was a holiday gift I have never forgotten. As Mark Twain once said, “Always do right. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.”

Reprinted from our holiday newsletter, December 2002

Introducing our New Account Coordinators

We are pleased to announce that we have recently brought on two new account coordinators to work with clients on program implementation and logistical issues. Dineen Digiacomo will work with Lauren Powers out of her Massachusetts office and will support the Eastern Region accounts. Jamie Freedman will support the accounts managed by Carter Serrett.

Previously, Dineen worked in a similar role as an account coordinator at a management training and consulting firm for approximately seven years. From there she went on to work for Exhibitgroup/Giltspur for four years as an account manager coordinating pharmaceutical tradeshows and conventions. Dineen has a bachelor’s degree in management science. She keeps herself busy as a mom to three young children ages 6, 5, and 2.

Jamie Freedman comes to Barnes & Conti fresh from Austin, Texas and graduate school at the University of Texas at Austin where she recently completed a master’s degree in ethnomusicology. Interested in music and education, Jamie is a trained vocalist and has taught and performed everything from Nigerian Afrobeat to early European choral music. Jamie is drawn to Barnes & Conti because of its international relationships and her artistic co-workers.

Jamie and Dineen look forward to getting to know our clients and learning more about how to best support them.

Virtual Feast: Our Holiday Gift to You

This is our seventh annual holiday “virtual feast”! We started the tradition in 2001 because we couldn’t invite all of you to our annual holiday potluck. This year’s virtual feast is more streamlined than usual, perhaps reflecting the trend for low-carbs and low calories. Of course we had to give this an international flair, and Kim’s recipe for Hainanese Chicken Rice, while hardly traditional, is festive enough for a rather untypical holiday meal.

Delicata Squash Stuffed with Mushrooms and Goat Cheese

Joel Kleinbaum, Information Systems Manager

This versatile dish can be served as an appetizer, vegetarian entrée, or side dish. Delicata squash, with its oblong shape, is relatively easy to stuff. Acorn squash works well, too.

Delicata SquashIngredients:

For the stuffing:

Method:

  1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
  2. Prepare the squash by cutting in half lengthwise so you have two long halves. I use a little saw (hack saw or pruning saw) to do this.
  3. Scoop out the seeds and stringy pulp from the center of the squash.
  4. Roast (skin side down) for 35-50 minutes, until the flesh of the squash is very soft when pierced with a fork. (It helps to use a baking dish, about 9 x 12 x 2.)
  5. When the squash is done, melt about a teaspoon or so of butter on the flesh of each half of the squash and sprinkle with grated nutmeg.

Preparing the stuffing:

  1. While the squash is roasting, sauté the onion over medium high heat in the olive oil until it begins to soften and caramelize.
  2. Add the minced shallot and sauté for another few minutes, until the shallot begins to caramelize.
  3. Turn up the heat to high and add the diced mushrooms and the salt. Stir and sauté until the mushrooms lose much of their liquid and begin to brown.
  4. Add the parsley to the sauté and cook for a couple minutes more.
  5. Transfer the mushroom mixture to a mixing bowl and allow to cool slightly.
  6. Mix the chèvre in with mushrooms; it should melt right in.
  7. Grate in 2 oz or so of the other cheese.
  8. Mix in the nutmeg.

Assembling the dish:

  1. Mound the stuffing in the hollow of each squash half. You should have extra stuffing that will need to be mounded in a heap.
  2. Sprinkle the remaining grated cheese on top of each squash half.
  3. Put the squash back in the oven and bake for 15-20 minutes, until the cheese on top is melted and bubbly.
  4. Slice into serving portions.

Serves 4 as an entree and 6 as a side dish or appetizer.

Strawberry Salad with Poppy Seed Dressing

Lauren Powers, Eastern Regional Director

Here is a family favorite for all holiday meals: winter, summer, fall, or spring, shared with me by a friend of mine a number of years ago. It has been making its way to all our celebratory meals. Its red appearance makes it particularly festive around this time of year and it adds a light, refreshing touch to a heavier holiday meal.

Hope you and yours have a delectable holiday... Enjoy!

Strawberry SaladIngredients for Salad:

For Dressing:

For Topping:

Method:

  1. Place salad ingredients in bowl.
  2. Mix dressing ingredients in separate container. Shake well.
  3. Lightly dress salad. There will be lots of dressing leftover. Refrigerate excess and keep on hand for many more meals.
  4. Add nuts and toss.
  5. Add crumbled goat cheese after tossing so cheese does not break down into dressing.

Feeds 4 with one bag of greens.

Hainanese Chicken Rice

Kim Barnes’ contribution this year is an international recipe for an unusual version of what is arguably the national dish of Singapore. This version is somewhat unusual because the chicken is roasted instead of steamed. The chicken is served with the rice and the chili sauce on the side. The chili sauce can be used for dipping, or poured over the chicken, rice, or both. Other dipping sauces could include: a paste of ginger and garlic thinned with lime juice and chicken stock or water, or light soy sauce thinned with stock and seasoned with sesame oil and pressed garlic.

Kim says that we knew next to nothing about Malaysian food until we began working with Antioch Consulting, our global partner in Singapore.

Hainanese Chicken RiceFor the Chicken
Ingredients:

Method:

  1. Prick the skin of the chicken with a fork.
  2. Blend garlic, shallots, ginger; mix with other ingredients, rub into chicken.
  3. Marinate 4 hours or overnight.
  4. Roast in hot oven (450 degrees) about 20 minutes or so.
  5. Cut into serving pieces, garnish with green onions, sliced cucumber, and sprigs of cilantro (optional)
  6. Serve with rice, chili sauce, clear chicken soup.

Rice Ingredients:

Method:

  1. Melt the butter in a heavy saucepan. Add the garlic, and sauté until the garlic begins to turn golden.
  2. Add the rice and stir over medium-high heat, until the rice is well-coated and turns slightly golden.
  3. Add all the other ingredients and bring to a boil. Let the rice boil for 3-4 minutes, turn heat to low, cover, and steam until all the water is absorbed.
  4. Remove the cloves, cinnamon stick, and pandan leaves, if used. Garnish with the shallots.

Chili Sauce:
Ingredients

Method:

  1. In a food processor, process the ginger and garlic to a fine paste.
  2. Add the chopped chilies, rice vinegar, sugar, and salt, and process to a chunky paste.
  3. Just before serving, squeeze in the lime juice.

Serves 4

Janne’s Amazing Sweet Potato Latkes

Janne Rochlin, Chief Learning Officer

As many of our readers know, Janne Rochlin has been bringing her potato latkes to our holiday potluck since the very first potluck. This year, Janne surprised us and made—in addition to the traditional potato latkes—these delicious latkes made from sweet potatoes. (For our new readers, potato latkes are traditionally eaten at Hanukkah. You can find Janne’s recipe for potato latkes in one of our past holiday newsletters).

Sweet Potato LatkesIngredients:

Method:

  1. Shred one sweet potato and set it aside. Puree the other sweet potato in a food processor and add eggs, sugar, flour, and spices and mix thoroughly.
  2. In a large bowl combine the puréed mix with the shredded potatoes and raisins.
  3. Heat oil in large, heavy skillet to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
  4. Using a large spoon, drop the mixture onto the skillet and form into small pancakes (about 3 inches in diameter) and fry in hot oil. Flip cakes after 2 to 3 minutes (when bottom is browned) and brown other side.
  5. Drain on paper towels and serve piping hot with sour cream and apple sauce

Janne says that the sweet potato latkes will burn easily if not watched carefully. You can get them almost as crispy and crunchy as regular potato latkes, but they require your attention.

Bourbon Balls

Grace Boone, Marketing Manager

Grace has treated all of us to these delicious bourbon balls at least a couple times. She was kind enough to share the recipe, which is destined to become a Barnes & Conti classic. Grace says she got this recipe from her friend Catherine Miller. By the way, Grace’s bourbon balls are pictured at the bottom left of this plate. The recipes for the other goodies can be found on the Barnes & Conti blog.

Bourbon BallsIngredients:

Method

  1. Stir 1/4 cup sugar and the corn syrup into the melted chocolate.
  2. Add bourbon (it will seize—it’s okay, just keep stirring) until well mixed.
  3. Add vanilla wafers and walnuts.
  4. Mix well. Let stand 30 minutes to absorb.
  5. Shape mixture into 1 inch balls.
  6. Roll in granulated sugar (to keep them from sticking together).
  7. Store in cookie tin or other airtight container.

Grace says, “They should be very strong at first, because the bourbon flavor will fade over time. Well, at least my family likes them quite strong.”

Wine Recommendations

Delicata Squash Stuffed with Mushrooms and Goat Cheese: Try a smooth, fruity red such as an Oregon Pinot Noir, a Dolcetto, or even a lighter Merlot.

Strawberry Salad with Poppy Seed Dressing: Wine is not recommended because of the vinegar in the dressing.

Hainanese Chicken Rice: Dry Riesling or Gewurtztraminer are perfect with Asian food. Even semi-sweet (“half-dry”) work well.

Sweet Potato Latkes: Riesling and Gewurtztraminer work well with these too, but the wines can be a little on the sweetish side because the latkes are sweet.

Bourbon Balls: Bourbon is the obvious choice here!

Barnes & Conti: 2007 in Review

2007 was a year in which Barnes & Conti continued to develop our global influence. Our new-for-2006 program, Managing Innovation: Optimizing the Power of New Ideas, continues to develop, and is doing quite well in the global marketplace. Managing Innovation debuted in Australia, France, and Lithuania during the past year.

Our globally popular Exercising Influence® program was presented in 17 countries other than the United States, including: Australia, Austria, Canada, China, France, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Japan, Korea, Lithuania, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Taiwan, Turkey, The United Kingdom, and Vietnam. Exercising Influence has been in revisions for most of 2007, and the revised version will be ready in January of 2008.

We added several new global partners in 2007 including Entheo (United Kingdom), SPM Group (Note: as of Sept. 2010 SPM Group is SPM Learning Ltd.) (Canada), Momentum (Israel), and UAB Funcode (Lithuania).

We’ve also made a few changes in the way we are servicing accounts and have brought on two new account coordinators to work with clients and streamline processes for program implementations. Be sure to read about our new account coordinators in this newsletter.

We look forward to telling you all about our new developments. Please watch for our upcoming newsletters in 2008!

Events, Trade Shows, and Happenings

Training 2008 Conference and Expo
February 4-5, 2008
Atlanta, GA

Barnes & Conti will be an exhibitor at Training Magazine’s annual conference. For information about the conference, please go to the Training Conference website. We will be at booth 219.

SHRM Global Forum
March 31-April 2, 2008
Boston, MA

Barnes & Conti will also be at the Society for Human Resource Management’s Global Forum. Please watch our website, as we’ll be posting information as it becomes available.

ASTD International Conference and Expo
June 2-4, 2008
San Diego, CA

Barnes & Conti will be an exhibitor and Kim Barnes will be presenting a workshop, along with Nelson Soken, who is one of our co-trainers of the Managing Innovation program.

The Society of Pharmaceutical and Biotech Trainers (SPBT):
Annual Conference
May 19-22, 2005,
Orlando, FL

Watch our newsletter and website for more information.

SHRM 60th Annual Conference and Exposition
June 22-25, 2008
Chicago, IL

Watch our newsletter and website for more information.

Upcoming Public Programs

Managing Innovation

Exercising Influence

Strategic Thinking

Constructive Negotiation

Constructive Debate

Inspirational Leadership

To view the complete schedule and register for one of our public programs, click here
or go to: www.barnesconti.com/ppsched.php

Just for Fun

Roast TurkeyDon’t Overstuff that Bird!

Eric Beckman, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, tells the following story:

An old roommate of mine proudly cooked his first turkey for me and some friends quite a few years back. We were all waiting for the turkey to cook, and an hour or so into the roasting, one of us asked the inevitable, “When will it be done?”

“When it starts smoking, or explodes,” was his quick-witted reply.

At the word “explodes” we all heard a clear but muffled “kaboom” from the general direction of kitchen. Our friend uttered few expletives, to which his date added, “Maybe it’s done now!” The novice chef scrambled into the kitchen and removed the turkey from the oven.

Nothing looked wrong, on the outside at least. On closer examination, he realized that the giblet bag—which he hadn’t removed from inside the turkey—had burst. Out went the giblets and back went the turkey; within a couple hours, the bird was beautifully cooked. But from that time on we questioned our friend’s abilities, both in the kitchen—and with explosives.

Reprinted from our holiday newsletter, December 2002

Holiday Influence?

It was the holiday season and the judge was in a merry mood as he asked the prisoner, “What are you charged with?”

“Doing my holiday shopping early,” replied the defendant.

“That’s no offense,” said the judge. “How early were you doing this shopping?”

“Before the store opened,” countered the prisoner.

Star-Struck Santa

“I stopped believing in Santa Claus when my mother took me to see him in a department store, and he asked for my autograph.”

— Shirley Temple

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