Summary message

This book is written by an engaged entrepreneur, Phu Tran Van.
It is a real open letter to French, and especially to young people, not only those in France and in Europe, but also to the whole world.
 

This is not just another book on the analysis of the crisis. This book, itself, proposes a way-out, based on the author’s own experience. It is for everyone, and especially for the young generation whose positive energy is much needed by our aging societies for setting off again.

Phu Tran Van believes in the Voluntary Democracy to build in France, where the duty is put in the center instead of the personal or category-specific rights. He believes in the mobilization of fundamental values by the exemplarity of leadership, so that the collective commitment prevails the individualism which erodes the heart of our societies. The word “voluntary” reflects the strength of this collective commitment.

Only the exemplary leadership could engage the large adhesion to this new social project that implies the beneficial efforts and courage. And this applies to any community, whether a nation or a company it is. And there, Phu Tran Van has a conviction: in France, Europe and even beyond our borders, the society is mature and ready to welcome many new leaders coming from the civil society who are free to improve the current system towards a system of values because the current one is not issued from them. They will undertake by vocation, will not make the politics a profession, working with existing structures rather than refuting them from outside. They will be credible for their capability of being heard and followed, for they represent the core values personally. This exemplarity is the key factor for the renewal: the new voluntary democracy will be at first an exemplary Democracy.

It is through this new border that France, becoming lighthouse and conscience of the world again, will guide Europe and other nations.

The way out of the current slump is not the fruit frozen by an intellectual reflection.

 
Phu Tran Van has taken this way since many years in his life and his activities. He knows how difficult this experience is but he knows foremost and above all that it is possible. Arriving in Paris from Saigon penniless at 20 years old, at the end of the last war in Vietnam, Phu Tran Van built, from nothing and on this basis, an industrial group employing 10 000 people throughout the world in the lingerie industry.

Phu Tran Van is convinced, because he experienced it, that the social performance, enabled by efficient and demanding system of values, is, within every community, the source of economic performance, and that ultimately these two performances feed off one another.

The book by Phu Tran Van proposes some early stages of solutions and the well-ordered deployment of values in the French society.

One value that coordinates all others is the Barrier Breaking Value. One of the challenges of the new era is to succeed in pulling down the masks, breaking the barriers, to open definitively the society, giving back to this society fluidity and dynamism. This willingness leads us especially to the Social Capitalism which breaks down the barriers between capital and labour. In the future company and SME, no longer there will be the employer side and the employee side. There will be the members-shareholders of the company, the salaried shareholders at a large scale, the salaried members becoming entrepreneurs, guided by a leader and a management team being themselves shareholders.

These internal shareholders may be accompanied by the external shareholders who believe on the company’s project. It will not be a “to hoot and dia” cooperative pulled in different opposite directions: it is desirable that the internal shareholders hold the majority of the company, the management team holding the majority of this internal capital part, guaranteeing a clear course and direction for the company. The merger between capital and labour will permit to pass, not without pain, from a culture of sterile confrontation to a demanding and imaginative cooperation one, spreading out progressively the collective commitment and energy for the service of the development of the companies and the SMEs.

In total, Phu Tran Van wants, through his book, to convey a message about optimism, not a blind one but the one which is fed grown up by willingness and challenges.  He wants to contribute without further delay in making the social organization evaluate towards modernity and exemplarity, without whom the revolt which is brewing already at the gate of our society will be a real movement. The revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and the developing one in Libya, of which the dynamics is spreading, are the early warning signs.

His daily practice of values allows him to assert with convictions that the leadership by exemplarity can move ahead these values, everywhere, and contribute to relaunch France and Europe.