News

ESE LONDON


19 April 2009

LONDON

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George Koukis, Founder and President of TEMENOS, is a self-made man who started his great entrepreneurial career having in mind to challenge the aphorism; “you can either build a Successful Company or an Ethical Company“.

A Greek who immigrated first to the UK and then to Australia, Mr Koukis set out to prove that you can build an Ethical AND Successful Company OR, even more, a successful because its ethical. He bought a small failing company and attracted some Venture Capital money to create TEMENOS. In 20 years under his guide not only did TEMENOS become the Premier Banking software company in the world but also one of the top five of listed companies in Corporate Governances.
Dr. Terence Kealey, Vice
Chancellor University 

Welcome

It is indeed an honour and a privilege to be here with you today.

I can tell you that I do not give interviews, speeches or seek publicity. I was introduced to E. DʼAnna. I read his book “The School for Gods” in the Greek version and I asked to meet him. After our encounter in London I would like to thank ESE for asking me to be here today.

I would like to give you the salient points of how I built a successful enterprise and then I will share with you my private thoughts on “Integrity” or a Dreamer’s Approach to Absolute Equilibrium.

Prior to TEMENOS

I was born into a very poor family, 1 of 4 children.  Parents illiterate. In 1967 with my wife we came to London, got married but could not get a work permit. Migrated to Australia.  2 daughters. I redid my studies because when I saw them my Greek qualifications the Australian people said “ we do not recognise these, it’s all Greek to us”.  I went to university and did a 7 year part time degree and after that I did a Computer Studies and then enrolled myself to do Actuarial studies.
I was not fortunate to have attended a school like ESE. My school taught me: Accounting, Algebra, Statistics, Commercial Law. In a way, they described me a fishing road but no one told me how to fish.

I was working at Qantas, the National Airline of Australia when in 1973 my then boss was in panic because a project that was vital to Qantas, could not be done on time.  With my limited language skills, I completed the project in a record time.
The first thing you must do is to free yourself of fear.

In July 1987, 3 squash friends persuaded me to invest in the Stock Market all that I had. 20 years of work in Australia and about 2 million dollars. On 19 October 1987 I was left penniless.
I pursued money as an objective. Probably the best lesson of my life.

In 1993 I found a Swiss company near to bankruptcy, the actual Temenos, I wanted to acquire it. Four advisors told me it could not be done. Also I asked a very good friend of mine, an expert, and he also said that I should not do it.
Do not listen to experts, the only expert is you, your heart, your soul. Do not abdicate the responsibility to decide what is important to you.

When my Investment Banker wanted to take me public they told me that I had to move the company to the Silicon Valley, then NYC, at minimum London. I chose Geneva. I was the last IPO in Europe because recession set in the following day.
You cannot win something if you are not prepared to lose it.

And finally I read an aphorism in a book that said that you can either build a successful Company or an ethical one!
The impossible doen’t exist. I am motivated to challenge it and prove it is otherwise.

TEMENOS

TEMENOS develops Software for Banks only. The company started in London in 1984.  Run out of money a few times and then it was sold to a Swiss entrepreneur. In 1993 the company that owned this rather good but immature product was almost bankrupt, the banks and creditors took control, the management was fired and the consultants started selling assets. I bought the company (with Venture Capital) for $948k and renamed it TEMENOS.  Zero revenues, 2 offices, 34 people. Soon after the acquisition my funding partner experienced financial difficulties and I was funding him by repaying the loan (not part of the original agreement). Sometimes I could not pay salaries on time. On my first meeting with the staff I unveiled my plans. “Il est fou” – he must be creazy – that’s what they said.

          I was born with some defects:
          I regard sleep as a waste of time.
          I am not jealous.
          I do not fear anything.
          I do not believe in Luck.
          I am not superstitious.
          I am not revengeful, an eternal optimist and a believer in human intellect. 

Fast forward: TEMENOS today, 44 offices, 500 millions, 3000 staff, more than 10,000 people are affected directly by what we do. Low turnover of staff; none of the original people left the company, still with me today, no client has replaced my products, none was fired this year. Best product, best innovation, best functionality, best among the 5 top companies in Switzerland and Europe. Year after year. At IPO all had shares.
How did I do it?

First of all I had a 20 year Business Plan when I started TEMENOS Actually I have a 20 year rolling Plan, Eternity. 
For the first 5 years, I had no Financial Objectives. Armed with a) The name: TEMENOS b) the logo c) the TEMENOS KEY d) the Value system and e) no money.

My Value System included:
•    We will have FUN at work
•    We will target success as an Objective
•    Profitability will be the result of Happy Clients
•    We will act with Integrity in everything we do
    o    Products (warranty – quality ), Services, Client Treatment
    o    Contracts (designed not to go to court - Penalty v. Reward)
•    Forget about Democracy

So that you can have a yardstick of measurement, I bought the Swiss company for 948k; IPO 1.4 billion.

These are impressive statistics but I am more proud of what is behind these results.   I build TEMENOS on philosophical values which are a reflection of what I believe the world needs or should be.

What is Behind TEMENOS

Firstly, we need to agree on what SUCCESS is. 
If Success is money then the people who steal and are not caught are successful.  If you were an Executive at ENRON and stashed away 1bn, if you created the SUBPRIME con while the poor farmer in Finland lost his money; if you are an executive of AIG and got your bonus while you bankrupted the company, RBS, FSA, if you were one of whom bankrupted the largest economy in the world, if you were the Investment Banker who made billions during the .com era by taking public companies with no product, then would you regard yourself as a great success?

Secondly, we need to agree on the notion of TIME.
When you look around you, you will see that decisions are made with a short term mentality.  Religious leaders measure Marriages, Births and Deaths, Politicians make decisions for the new election 3-5 years later. Commerce Leaders make decisions for this quarter only, maximum 12 months.

No matter what you are or dealing with (business, politics, private) when you make a decision that is serious, you must decide your timeframe. The longer the timeframe the better the decision.  The shortest your timeframe you set to achieve a serious goal the more “criminal” the action.  If you asked me to make you a multi-millionaire today I have to resort to something criminal.  If you asked me to make you a millionaire in 20 years then it is feasible.

Finally, MONEY and POWER.
Money and Power corrupt people.  Seneca raised the question, Does Man make money bad? or Does money make Man bad?
The purpose of industry is to serve the public by creating services and goods to meet its needs. It is not to make profits. Profits are necessary conditions but not its purpose.
Money, everyone wants it. It is considered the panacea to everything. Yet, what exactly will it do to improve who you are

       • Hans Frick: I named the company TEMENOS because I read the article that Hans Frick wrote about money.  As a Banker, he chased money all his life.  Yet he gave his land away to wine growers; he made more money than at any point in his life.

       • TEMENOS fired no one during the Financial Crisis. Instead we decreased Management Salary and Bonus and exchanged 3% decrease of everyone salary for no job losses. All staff agreed. 3.000 people, 100 Nationalities living in Harmony.

       • The early days I used to go to the local Unemployment office to hire people.  I was given a cheque equivalent to one month salary for 5 people that I hired. I refused it.

       • I made a lot of investments the last few years and I enjoy seeing new entrepreneurs handling the issues, I enjoy seeing them grow and seeing their dreams materialise.  I provide finance and direction. It is not for the sake of a Return on Investment “IRR”.

Today it is a special day for you as you graduate from the ESE.  You are armed with age, idealism, knowledge and hunger for life and I want in the shortest possible timeframe that I come in contact with you to add to this wonderful moment. A word, a notion, an idea, something that will make you think in the immediate future.

Suppose we all agree with all the steps and we document the best possible 5 year plan and we distribute it to all of you?  Will you all be successful?  The answer is no!  Why?  What is it missing?
If I provide you with the Finance you require and you acquire a company like I did, how do you go from Bankruptcy to Dominance? 
The most important thing in Business is the same as in Life and it is what the world is lacking in today; that is INTEGRITY.

What the world suffers from today, is Lack of Ethical Leadership. I am apolitical and a-religious so all my observations are personal of course but objective. The 4 evils are: Religion, Politics, Extreme Nationalism, Extreme Consumerism. You will enter this world as of today, you will get a job and face the same as I have experienced and you will have to decide.

The result of lack in Integrity in all walks of life is the cause for today’s ills.  I can guarantee you that unemployment will increase, crime will increase, quality of life will decrease and your taxes and that of your children will increase dramatically.

Let me state a few examples, of lack of INTEGRITY:
The first Boom and Bust was in 1720 and was created in France by a convicted murderer from Scotland, John Law where he persuaded Louis 14 to set up the Mississippi company, sell shares, the shares went from 500 FF to 10,000 and then of course bankruptcy and indirectly responsible for the French revolution.  Also the first PONZI scheme.  1929, 1987, 2002, now!! Don’t we learn from history?
We have no Ethical Leaders today. 

Come with me in one of my trips and see the misery that we have inflicted on other countries like Africa, Asia, Middle East, Latin America.  It will make you weep.

We badly need the School for Gods. We badly need you to stand up and create an environment of dignity and become an example to others.

EQUILIBRIUM

The brain is a very powerful organ, its power is still not understood fully. Open it up like a parachute and fill it up with positive thoughts. 
The mind shapes my life, we become what we think.

At an early stage I realised that Change does not come from a System of Belief, Groups of people, Political Parties.  Change only comes through the Personal Effort of a Single Individual. After significant reflection I decided that: it is impossible for me to build an Ethical way of life if I am guided by Fear
If I have to do something because the penalty is to avoid whatever I Fear (avoiding Hell for instance). Then I am likely to become a hypocrite rather than a positive contributor to my world.

So, to attain equilibrium I had to free my brain, empty it of all data that I had stored at that time. I have been indoctrinated since birth by different systems of belief, different level of expectations about basic things that are part of my very existence, like Right and Wrong, True or False, Happiness, Role of Government, Police, Justice, National Security, Being of Service, Quality, Love, Marriage, feelings, etc. I then had to rebuild from scratch a different way of looking at the system as it should be. I rebuild George Koukis from a positive standpoint.  It is not easy to do but we all do it to a certain extend.  The trick is to marshal enough strength to go all the way.

I took all the positive things that I knew I possessed and I did not worry about the not so strong points of myself.  Like dead leaves they will wither away once I started growing new ones. 

I made some very serious decisions about many things that have become for many years the foundation for my very existence; they have become instinctive, second nature, I do not have to waste any time in analysing/paralysing the issue on hand.  Each day I feel blessed, I feel grateful, I feel powerful,
it feeds my self esteem with positive thoughts and my other self, my Dreamer, has been fairly quiet for some years now.

Free yourself from all the Dont’s, get rid of all negativity
that you have experienced and discover your real self, the one inside you that sometimes is scared to confront and resigns to a life time of conformity.  Discover and Agree with yourself that you have a Dream, a realistic dream, that you can do something and do it well.  Not everyone can be a Leader and there is nothing wrong with that, but once you decide what the Dream is put all your energies into it and you will be pleased with the result.
And if your calling is to be a Leader, just remember that you have to forego things like happiness or comfort or haves: Rather you realise that the secret is to achieve Harmony, and in order to achieve Harmony you must achieve Freedom and to achieve Freedom you need Absence of Fear. Equilibrium means whatever you say, whatever you do and whatever you think are in Harmony. And to Achieve Equilibrium you need a Dream. People with Dreams do not set out to serve a spiritual cause, but they approach their business as if they were serving a cause with competence, efficiency, honesty and a sense of responsibility.

This state of perpetual equilibrium is the duty of everyone and at whatever level you decide to operate, it is as fulfilling as nothing else that I have experienced in my life.  The practical side of my personal experiences are significant:

•    I do 184-186 flights a year – No Jet Lag
•    I do not have any illnesses, headaches, all my analyses are 100%; I have no time to get sick.  Kazantzakis story
•    I have never raised my voice with my employees or anyone else
•    No one and nothing can upset my equilibrium
•    If I set my self a goal and you put a brick wall in front of me I will go through it.
•    I enjoy immensely seeing my people successful
•    I share ideas with anyone, even my competitors – I feel like a fountain
•    I get motivated by the impossibility of the challenge; the more difficult the challenge the happier I am

You must feel that you are the centre of the Universe, and even though the Universe is large and each of us is such a small part of this immense Universe, we are nevertheless the most important part. 
If we can harness this power that our creator has given us and direct it positively then I feel that it becomes such a powerful force that it is unstoppable. Not only you can achieve things easily; also you can positively affect others because they feel it in their heart that it is working.  

Not only you can build a successful company, actually one can move mountains.
I will keep all your names and follow you throughout your life development.  If one of you can be positively influenced by today’s interaction then it was all worth it.
Do not be frightened by your Dreamer.

Malraux said that the 21st century will be spiritual or it will not be. That is why the message of Temenos is so important, to re-introduce the sacred not only into Art, which is a means of communication to people, but into the innermost being of everyone. Our real treasure lies where our heart is. With these words I wish to conclude, but before doing so let me quote Inayat Khan, an Indian mystic of the early 20th century, and attempt to translate his citations on money.

Money, you can be a blessing and a curse at the same time. You turn friends into enemies and enemies into friends. You free us from our worries and you return other worries to us at the same time.

Money - what are your thoughts?
I am the seal of the heart - a heart sealed by me will love me exclusively.

Money - what will become of the one who loves you when you leave him?
I print a mark on my lover’s heart which will remain a wound forever.

Money - what do you love most?
To change hands.

Money - where is your place of abode?
In the heart of the one who adores me.

Money - whom do you seek?
The one who seeks me.

Money - whom do you obey?
To the one who has elevated himself above me, I shall become his slave and lie like dust at his feet.