If you haven’t seen it, this might be the best use of statistics to give a persuasive presentation I’ve ever seen: Hans Rosling on the democratization and analysis of world statistics on health and wealth.

This talk is good throughout, but what strikes me most is the inhomogeneity in homogeneity in each cluster of countries. By that, I really mean the spread in the economic strength among these groups, specifically the continent of Africa. Considered as a continent, Africa is in poverty, but contrary to the opinion of the average American, there is much wealth in Africa as well, and not just in the form of blood money for diamonds.

Wealth that comes from trade, that comes from countries exchanging on even parity in the global market with every other nation.

Without becoming too long-winded, I just want to say it outright: campaigns to SAVE AFRICA, even to just SAVE DARFUR are misguided and extremely harmful. An injection of capital (aid) into a country without either accountability or marked return on investment (improvement of infrastructure, facilitation of trade) will only result in the use of these funds to line the pockets of politicians and further their reach as they oppress their constituents.

“The improvement of the world must be highly contextualized,” says Rosling, and this is perhaps his most salient point. Where we can reduce barriers to trade, we ought. Where we can make humanitarian efforts to make a genuine change at the regional-or-lower level, we ought. What we cannot do is shout ineffective platitudes, send aid into a black hole, or consider the world as a homogeneous lump to be pitied instead of dissected, analyzed, and elevated.

That’s my soapbox, and since I’m not currently in a position to do more than talk, I’ll try to apply the principles I’ve just mentioned to an area where I will soon be operating: managing a business. I’ll talk about more details of the business itself ad nauseum at some later time, but for now, here are three principles which I hope my business embodies.

(1) Understand the Needs of the Market. This really is the job of any business: to observe an unsavory aspect of everyday life and seek to improve it in a way that makes economical sense. This can be a new screwdriver, a new organic food, or a new TV show.

(2) Understand the Needs of Your People. But more than improving everyday life for people outside our walls, I regard my job as a company leader to include responsibility for the comfort of the people who work for me. Awhile ago, when I was at Microsoft, I spoke with a very dynamic fellow intern from marketing who told me I’d have a hard time maintaining an even mix of men and women at my company; I had told her that I felt like this was one way to greatly reduce certain tensions. Maybe that’s misguided, but as an student, I observe plenty of instances where women leave engineering majors for “softer” degrees, even if they’re still in science. I firmly believe that if there had been more women to offer support to counteract the exclusionary and chauvinistic tendencies of males in these fields, some (not to say all) of these women would have stayed with their first choice.

I also hope to consider somewhat more radical approaches like needs-based sliding salaries (which may be standard fare for all I know, despite their utter lack of financial sensibility).

(3) Whole-Community Accountability and Reward. Unfortunately, as Brooks pointed out, organizations become less able to communicate effectively within themselves as they grow. This seems inevitable, but doesn’t reduce the responsibility of company leadership to hold each member of the company responsible to work diligently toward the end result.

What’s overlooked far more often, is really giving employees a sense of accomplishment (a levitas in gravitas, if you will, or just “pride in a job well-done,” if you won’t): if people feel removed from the effects of the end product, they will remove themselves from the end product, by withdrawing and reducing their contributions and impact.

The point then, in all this, is to yield ownership to everyone in the appropriate measure. After all, as Don Box once said, “[The product] is like Soylent Green; they’re both made of people.” I hope always to remain mindful of the importance of my partnership with each and every individual who works with me to create the future.

By the way, another orgasmically good TED talk is Erin McKean’s presentation on the limitations and future of the dictionary.

Also, as far as kick-ass presentations go in general, Dick Hardt’s OSCON 2005 presentation on ID 2.0 is probably better than anything you’ve ever seen.