The vast majority of business lenders begin their working lives as employees. It is confidence - self-confidence and confidence in the enterprise upon which they are about to embark - and the willingness to take calculated risks that launch them on their careers as business leaders.

When I gave up a very lucrative job as manager of North American Life and took the maximum mortgage on my family home, and sold all my personal belongings to enable me to start LOJ, I was doing exactly the same as countless others, before and after me, who have gone on to reap success in business.

Note that when I mention risk-taking, I qualify it by speaking of 'calculated risk'.

I did not just decide to form LOJ. I did my homework before taking the plunge.

I had all the relevant feasibility studies done and got advice from actuaries and other experts from the best in the business. I emphasise that. Calculated risk is not the same as reckless risk.

In 1968 when I decided to form LOJ, I reckoned that the wave of nationalism that followed our achievement of political independence in 1962 would work in our favour six years after that event, and so it did.

Sometimes a business fails to take off and has a disappointing outcome not because the idea was bad but because the timing was wrong.

In our case it was absolutely perfect.

If I had launched LOJ before independence or a couple of decades after, we might not have had the dream run that we had. Things did go our way because the timing was right.

LOJ's success was due, more than anything else, to the fact that we had at peak 2,000 employees all of whom believed in the company and knew that its management cared about them and would do anything they could to help them.

For example, we encouraged and facilitated home ownership and were proud of the fact that one of every three employees owned his or her own home.

Our employees knew that the company loved Jamaica and was committed to making it a better nation. Indeed, our slogan was 'Life of Jamaica for a better life'.

They knew that we were always fair to them. In any dispute in which the treatment of an employee appeared to be unfair or unjust, I would ask of the manager or supervisor involved: "How would you like to be treated if the situation was reversed?" I always held the view that if a manager or supervisor didn't treat people right, he or she had no place in LOJ.

We were early subscribers to the notions that best investment is in people and that leadership is as strong as the team it assembles and builds.

We organised training for our workers.

Our employees were aware that, as a matter of policy, we paid our taxes on time; our accounts were audited on a timely basis; we complied with statutory regulations; we conformed with the highest standards of public health and public safety; and we were honest with our policyholders, our shareholders and all others with whom we did business.

We did not keep secrets from those who had a right to know the facts about our business.

We made honest and timely disclosures, whether the news was good or not so good.

In our recruitment policy, we tried to cream off for ourselves the best on the job market.

We looked for ability, intelligence, background, training, experience, compatibility with our organisation, and the likelihood of the candidate fitting in with our standards, but more than anything else the would-be employee's attitude - his or her attitude to other people, to other employees, to his or her associates, to life; and, in particular, we looked for an all-important aspect of attitude, the applicant's tendency to be positive and optimistic.

We had no job for the negative or pessimistic person.

The leadership of LOJ set out to create an environment in which creativity could flourish. Everybody knew that, whether messenger or vice-president, anyone with an idea could bring it forward. I had cleaners push my door at 7 p.m. because they had an idea and wanted to share it with me.

We paid bonuses when employees came up with ideas that could be implemented to the benefit of the company.

We made everybody understand where the idea came from.

We deliberately gave full credit and recognition to the originator of the idea. As a result, our employees were always prepared to come forward with new ideas.

Employees want to feel involved and know what's happening in the company. They feel a sense of ownership when they are part of the decision-making process, which is an inevitable result of an effective communication network.

In LOJ, appropriate board decisions were communicated to the management, then transmitted to other employees by managers reporting at departmental meetings.

In their turn, the departments had their feedback and their suggestions relayed by their managers to the management meetings and, where appropriate, to the board.

I would recommend to every head of a company that you find time to meet with people at different levels within the organisation regularly and that you treat communication with your staff as a priority.

In addition to the obligatory business plan that is a prime requirement of every enterprise, there must be a well-documented plan for every programme and project that the business undertakes, no matter the size of the programme or project.

The plan must set out the rationale, objectives and activities to be pursued, as well as budgetary and cash-flow projections and anticipated outcomes.

The very act of committing thought to paper provides security and, of course, clarity and consistency in application.

The documented plan is a reminder of an intent and a point of reference.

Among the elements of a company's efficient administration must be a succession plan to secure the company's future and to put you in a position to change stride or, indeed, to make changes that may be required to refresh the organisation.

But a plan is not simply a document on paper or, in modern terms, a digitally recorded formula. Everything we have so far discussed was part of a master plan.

The environment that we created at Life of Jamaica didn't happen by accident or by chance. It happened because we planned to make it happen that way, and we remained steadfastly focused in developing and sustaining that environment.

Business is not a 100-metre dash. It's more like a marathon. Some of the attributes of a business that are most attractive and conducive to genuine, lasting success take a considerable time to establish.

I'm referring here, for instance, to a reputation for high ethical standards, which takes time to impact on the public and the world of business.

Of course, there are those who seek instant gratification, to get rich overnight, breaking the rules, riding roughshod over everyone perceived to be in the way, ignoring or being insensitive to conflicts of interest, and indulging in questionable activities and relationships.

Some short-term rewards may come their way, but generally, before long, situations will occur, in which - to use modern Jamaican vernacular, 'dem wi haffi tek weh demself'.

In contrast, there are hundreds of Jamaican businessmen, women and families, who by dint of hard work, honesty and unfailing integrity and adherence to the highest principles, have done exceedingly well for themselves over the longer term and who sleep well at night.

I'll round off my 10 rules with two overarching ones.

It's a self-evident truism that success is not normally achieved in business without investment in the ingredients that are essential to success.

For example, farmers have to prepare their land by fencing, ploughing, fertilising, weeding, applying pesticides, sowing, pruning, securing their crops against praedial larceny, harvesting, transporting the produce to market and performing a myriad of other functions.

Every type of business has its own particular challenges and requirements. But it is the organisation that invests the appropriate inputs in the appropriate measure that enjoys the best rewards.

When I was growing up, the word 'legacy' meant possessions that passed on the death of an individual to his or her heirs and successors.

Indeed the first definition of 'legacy' in the Concise Oxford Dictionary is still 'a gift left in a will' or, as we would say, 'dead lef".

In recent times in our society, and indeed internationally, that would seem to be a secondary meaning of the term 'legacy', which is now primarily about the quality of one's contribution to society and the virtues and vices for which one will be remembered.

It is perhaps ironically contradictory that this shift from the material to the qualitative should come at a time when our society and the world seem to be becoming even more materialistic.

Successful men and women appear to be more and more concerned about their legacy these days. The pity is that for many the concern has come too late.

Those who are just starting have a much better prospect of leaving a positive legacy.

My advice to the young businessman or woman would be that in defining your business environment, you start laying the groundwork for a positive legacy from day one.

That means that you will adopt the highest ethical standards, or best practices, in your business from the very beginning. It is not something you can ignore and then pick it up when it is convenient to do so.

PARTING WORDS

I hope that the specific issues that I was asked to address have indeed been addressed. I emphasise that a business that is designed and sustained to meet the highest standards of probity within its internal organisation and in its dealings with its customers, suppliers, policyholders, share-holders, partners, government authorities, whoever, is one that will institutionalise good investor relationship and mine gold from its best practices in corporate disclosure, because of its credibility and the confidence that others will have in its fairness and honesty.

The converse is of course true: that businesses and organisations that don't embrace these best practices will be left behind.

As to the question of whether we should consider a standardised code of ethics, my answer would be in the form of a question: why not? Such a code would provide guidance to those who need it and be a yardstick by which all companies and organisations would be able to measure themselves.

business@gleanerjm.com