*Another great lesson from an article in SUCCESS MAGAZINE.
Here’s how Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Prize Winner, Founder of Grameen Bank and the entire Micro Finance Industry, Banker to the Poor, tells his story:
“People always ask me how I figured out how to do this kind of thing. It’s very simple, really.
Whenever I needed a rule, a procedure for doing this (lending to the poor), I just looked at the conventional banks, what they do, how they do it, because they’ve been in business in a long time.
Once I learned how they did it… I JUST DID THE OPPOSITE.”
Yunus says that the banks had decided that “the poor were not credit worthy”. Yunus asks, “Are the banks people-worthy?”
The revolution that he started was a huge shift in thinking… the opposite of what existed.
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• Banks lend money to the rich. Yunus reached out to the poor.
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• Banks give loans to men. Yunus focused on women.
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• Banks do business in the city centers. Grameen would focus on the remote villages.
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• Banks require collateral. Grameen would offer loans without collateral.
*And without lawyers or reams of legal documents.
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• Banks are owned by the rich. Grameen would be owned by the borrowers… with profits going back to them as dividends.
WOW! Edward De Bono, Lateral Thinking, do the opposite, at its best!
