Klaus Schwab´s GLT Coup d´etat and the Creation of the YGL s

I joined the World Economic Forum, in 2000. I left this year. During 5 years I had the opportunity to work and collaborate closely with Klaus Schwab both in the sessions that developed the Davos Agenda and within the GLT community, now dismantled. My conclusion? Klaus Schwab is a man with a tremendous desire to control every minor aspect of his organization. This posture clashes with an organization that relies mostly on people´s volunteerism. None of the speakers that you see on the WEF web site are paid at Davos but the Davos style has annoyed so many that many people who were associated with Davos in the past stopped going. The result is high turnover and general unhappiness among people associated with Klaus Schwab. In the 5 years I attended the WEF over 80% of the employees who were at WEF resigned or were fired. But not only does Klaus Schwab create an environment among his employees that results in his organization holding a resignation/firing rate record. This behavior extends to other WEF´s communities including the one that used to be the most important of all: the GLTs or Global Leaders of Tomorrow. Every year, the Forum selected 100 outstanding young leaders from academia, business, politics and civil society. This community used to include over 500 young global leaders including people such as Michael Dell, Larry Page and Tony Blair. The story of how Klaus Schwab destroyed the GLT community is another example of his flawed management style.

WEF is known for promoting democracy and economic growth around the world. Inside WEF however, any attempt made by communities to self organize in a democratic fashion is met by strong resistence from Klaus Schwab. In the case of the GLTs the response to our attempt to self organize was brutal. At the beginning of 2003 a board was constituted among GLTs in order to self organize. I became one of the board members. Klaus Schwab´s response? In a quick coup d´etat Klaus Schwab fired all GLTs, all 500 of them, and created a new community, the Young Global Leaders or YGLs, to which he invited GLTs whom he believed would not self organize. The GLT distinction, the GLT prize became worthless. Moreover Klaus appointed his daughter to run the Young Global Leaders in order to prevent self organization to ever happening again. What happened to GLTs? We reorganized and continue meeting among ourselves and with the YGLs. Many YGLs however fear letting their activities be known. Indeed, contradicting Klaus means being expelled from the Davos Annual Meeting. In the meantime it was nice to see that so many GLTs attend Clinton Global Initiative. President Clinton´s Annual Conference is shaping up to be like a more democratic, hands on response to Davos (full disclosure: I am a trustee of the Clinton Foundation)