Sustainable Seychelles 'Business as UNusual' co-creation Summit Insights - uncovered

We were in Seychelles in April for the World Creativity and Innovation Week celebrations in Victoria, Mahé. The three-day event was about Creative Collaboration and building a Creative, Sustainable Economy for Seychelles. The first day was a conference day followed by our 'Business as UNusual' workshop on day 2 and VIP hot seat session on day 3.

The workshop 

Our Workshop takes attendees through the Me2We Framework in a hands-on co-creation experience. Since most people operate from a place of ME, thinking first about what they want and how they can get it, and selling ideas outward, we begin by looking at core strengths and setting ourselves up for success.

Through hands-on work on a real project, we move beyond Me thinking but with own strengths in mind to consider THEM. By thinking about who the client is and what they want, we introduce a strategy businesses integrate into the client ecosystem. Then we teach how to mitigate risk and co-create value with your clients by inviting them into your world to become part of your US team and become your “sustomers” (sustainable customers).

Finally, the WE portion of the event shows how to build a mutually supportive ecosystem that consistently produces irresistible offers, and how to iterate for reliable results.

In Seychelles, we encountered a powerful crowd with people from diverse industries including education, students, tax-advise, organic agriculture, carpentry, UN advocacy, politics, hospitality, fishing, conservation and coral restoration, construction, recycling, local farming, car rental, fashion, pet trading, yoga teaching, sewing, business development, mentorship and coaching.

The event saw some powerful presentations, which we touched on last week, powerful conversations and an exchange of ideas, which we will discuss more next week when I share the workshop outcomes.

As an attendee, Peter Sinon said, ‘The event presented opportunities to network and raise awareness on a number of critical issues. It touched both the personal and wider setting within which we operate and through the sharing of experiences one leaves the workshop hungry of more.’ 

This week, I want to share with you some of the collected insight from the workshop and our time in Seychelles.

Insights

The following insights are based on observations and conversations and represent the perceptions of the people we encountered during our visit. They are not negative judgments. In fact, as you will see next week when we talk about the opportunities and outcomes of the workshop, there is huge potential for the country.

A culture of hospitality 

We had the opportunity to get to know many local people during our stay outside of the main tourist areas. We came to understand something of the local character through talking to local business owners, being invited into the homes of local people and sharing real food cooked the way they do for themselves.

As a result, we know there is a strong culture of hospitality and accommodation. At the grassroots level, there is a strong community with myriad opportunities in this amazing country.

A belief in poor customer service

Despite this, we often heard variations on the theme ”We are not good at customer service.” when talking to business owners and others. I'm sharing here a few striking sentences and insights I have learned from this experience.

No sense of urgency

”We live in Paradise.” We heard this many times from the local people. A few speakers at the conference repeated this sentiment, mentioning that people are not hungry, or used to thriving. The country is beautiful, with beautiful beaches and mountains for hiking and rich biodiversity.

Local people know that tourists will come. They don’t need to do anything to attract tourists, because the tourists will come to paradise anyway

Poor timekeeping

We know from psychology that there is often a gap between knowing and doing, and saying and doing. In Seychelles, a relaxed attitude to timekeeping prevails.

For example, the conference was due to start at 10 am. And yet few were on time and were expecting 200 people in the room. People started to drift in from around 10:30 with some technical issues. When I arrived there were only a few people. Coming from a country where time is taken very seriously and the stated time is the starting time, not five minutes on either side, this came as a bit of a surprise. But from a cultural perspective, there was no sense of urgency to start on time. I was told, ”No worries, it’s normal. We are having a coffee and we will start later.”

We said we would start the second day at 9:00 am to give people more time. Instead of arriving at the same time to start on time at 10 am, people came later, and we started later - which also was pointed as the local relaxed style. 

This relaxed approach to time is catching. On the third day, we were running late, and driving in a hurry to get to the conference, when I said ”it's okay no one will be there.” 

If I did that in a different country it could be more challenging. Different countries have different cultures, and therefore different expectations. That also means there is a huge opportunity for those who show up when they say they will and do what they say they will.

Employment paradox 

This relaxed attitude to integrity expands beyond timekeeping, though, and creates an employment paradox. The local newspaper had sixteen pages, and 14 of them were positions vacant.

Business owners told us, ”We love local people but we don't want to hire them,” or,”We don't want to do business with them”

Some of the reasons business owners said they don't want to hire local people were that they don't show up on time, they don't do what they said they will do, and they also take what doesn't belong to them.

We were told there were so many job ads in the newspaper because businesses only want to hire experts, creating a situation where there are plenty of people searching for plenty of jobs, but no one wants to hire the available workforce.

An unreliable workforce

One local business owner shared with me that during the pandemic when everyone was at home, he had little difficulty hiring staff for a delivery company. However, when the tourist industry reopened, and people returned to employment, he found it very difficult to find workers. One advert attracted fifty applicants, but only one showed up for the interview.

Fear of immigration 

There is also rising fear that the Indian population are having more and more influence on the economy of the country. The fact is there are many Indian immigrants working in different roles on the island.

Export mindset  

Businesses are attracted by export more than to fulfilling the needs of Seychelles. There is a lot of future vision around exporting products and services, even though the main challenges are about sustaining the island economy. Products and services are not being designed for the local people.

I took a little liberty and RE-designed the shelf in the local supermarket, just as on the picture below.

Import mindset 

Strikingly, most shops also focus on selling imported products, which also creates inflation and increases the price of those products. It’s hard to find local products.

During the workshop, I asked, ”Do you also import coconut oil?” They do. The most abundant resource on the island is also imported, as is tea.

Digging into this, we discovered a belief that local food would be more expensive, and that all local products would be more expensive than imports. In reality, those imports are very expensive, so there is a huge opportunity there.

Visibility 

A side-effect of heavy imports is that there is no visibility of Seychelles tradition or local products. So many tourists will come and go without ever being exposed to that amazing culture. There’s a separation between tourists and local people.

Promoting own culture 

One of the reasons for this is a lack of promotion of the local culture. We stayed in several places during our visit, moving four or five times, so we experienced various places, people and services. In none of the places did we find a travel guide. There was no promotion for local businesses or things to do. We had to ask for everything to learn more about what is happening in the culture and the tradition of the country

In one shop, I noticed a lot of big brands' products and not many local products. One shelf was entirely taken up with the same product apart from three locally produced products at one end. So, I did a little bit of redesign and reshuffling on the shelf and created a full line of all the local products and just one line of the import. 

There is a massive opportunity for promoting sustainability in the mindset of promoting your own people and seeing the value in them.

Competition over collaboration 

One of the reasons this isn’t happening is the culture of competition over collaboration. Local people don't necessarily want to do business with each other. There’s a prevalent fear of having one’s ideas stolen because copying and undercutting other businesses is common. People are reluctant to share ideas but keep them secret.

Behind-the-scenes business

Another aspect of the competition culture is that business is happening behind the scenes in one-on-one meetings. It’s a small country made up of islands where everyone knows everyone. From what we observed, it's standard practice to take each other’s clients the same way they take each other’s ideas.

Lack of support ecosystem

This lack of trust and transparency in the local economy means there's no ecosystem of businesses supporting each other, sharing clients and growing together. Because when you learn that someone is taking away your clients it does not create a good business relationship. There is a massive opportunity for businesses that choose to create connections.

The blame game

There’s a blame game between business and government. Entrepreneurs say government favours foreign investors and immigrants, so the same idea proposed by local and foreign businesses would be awarded to foreign interests.

On the other hand, the government says they do a lot for the entrepreneurs: “We organise training/workshops with big-budget, quality trainers. We organise meetings and we pay for everything. We spend lots of time promoting that event. However, at the event, entrepreneurs don't show up. They say they will show up, they signup but then they say it is not aligned they never come back to us.” So, the issue of integrity and timekeeping rears its head again.

Inaccessible banking

There is more trust in the banks because the banks supported people and postponed mortgage payments during Corona. Unfortunately, some business owners shared with us how difficult it was for them to open even a simple bank account and the inaccessibility of business banking. 

Those are the main issues we uncovered during our visit. Next week we will look at the outcomes and opportunities from the workshop. In the meantime, I would love to hear your ideas about how you might tackle some of them.

World is full of opportunities and it is much easer to uncover them together - join us for face to face event here or contact me for more info on online version coming just after this one.

Click the link below to experience it yourself.