LB 1 : Everybody is Brilliant!

THE LEADER (9): Reform and Lead for Posterity

Matthew Ujah-Peter

When I was a boy growing up I listened to good and well-meaning people talking about leaving one’s foot prints on the sands of time. But as thought-provoking as that idea may sound, it often left question marks in my head. The amusing question that popped in my head in those days and even now when I hear such statements (and people use it profusely today than ever) is, ''don't sands get washed away by rains and winds?'' In my own estimate, sands aren’t always good materials to build lasting investments on, especially when it has something to do with posterity. So I preferred saying that I'd like to carve my name on the rocks of times. That sounded more concrete to me. But that was then.

The point is not about carving one’s name on stones or leaving ones footsteps on the sands of times. Those are by-products. Those aren’t what you seek. Those aren’t even the end-results. The quest to make life comfortable for oneself and family is a honourable one but also an easy route to becoming self-centred and missing the path that leads to creating a lasting legacy beyond the boundaries of private achievements.

When Henry Ford ventured into mass production of the T-Model Ford cars he wasn't about it for just himself, otherwise the face of the automobile industry would have been a little different today. His aim for mass production of cheap affordable cars was to make sure that everyone can afford cars. He put a program in place for his staffs to own their own cars at the time when owning a car was the exclusive privilege of the few wealthy upper class citizens in his country. By making it easy for the ordinary man to own a car, he created the catalyst for infrastructural development such as roads, fuel stations, more mechanic workshops and service stations, etc. The commercial and economic life of his city and nation began to improve on the account of those amenities. With improved infrastructures social amenities improved, villages developed into towns, and towns into cities.

The men who first thought of mass-producing shoes and clothing; those who thought of mass housing, those who first thought of electricity in every home; those who first came up with the idea of connecting telephone to every home, gas to every home, television and radio for every home and so on - whether their names are known and remembered or not - are the ones who helped in making life more easier to live today. These are people who thought of the good of others.

If our desires and thoughts are focused on helping to make life better for others, Providence would give us life-saving ideas. But what we do from ancient generation to date is to use what we have to dominate, exploit and oppress others. This is why despite our huge reserves of natural resources; Africa is still impoverished and struggling. Yet a country whose population is no more than one of the smallest African countries with little or no natural resources could come into our midst and take our men and women slaves to their country and colonize the rest of us for years. African is rich in resources and culture; strong in body, numerous in numbers but weak against a nation as small in population as the Great Britain. The British didn’t colonize us because they’re more in number; it was because we didn’t value our fellow men's lives. And do we today?

How were they able to buy slaves from Africa? You could argue that that was the past and that we should put the past behind us. So I used to think. But as I observed our leadership system and the general condition of the continent with all the educational institutions, educationists and educated people, I fear we have not learned much. Let’s assume that there’s no law against slavery today in the west, do you think our people and our leaders would stop slave trade with the way things are today? You could argue that the ones that bought slaves were guilty. Granted! But what value did we place on ourselves to tell outsiders that we weren’t for sale?

Africans weren’t the only people colonized by the British. America was, too. So were India and other nations. But I never read or heard these sold their own kinds to the British as slaves as we did. Prior to their coming we were killing our twins, calling them bad omens. We were sacrificing our fellow men to deities. We were and are still calling some people outcasts. Some people pride themselves in the culture of burying certain dead in the evil forest. Thus we gave the West the impression that we are inferior humans by the inhuman ways we treated ourselves

They were the ones who stopped slave-trade on their own, not us. We did not stop selling, they stopped buying. They made a law against it in their own land. Mary Slessor went on a crusade and successfully stopped the killing of twins. Missionary introduced schools and hospitals. And all we could say to that is that they brought foreign religion and supplanted our culture and religion. Some people tenaciously held on to the old degrading ways. Yet we haven’t given ourselves any better systems. The Chinese gave themselves an educational system that experts says helped the Chinese learn mathematics better and faster than even the western system. The Indians too, have gone ahead to fashion out better systems for themselves. We have not given ourselves anything better than the west gave us. Not even the way we govern ourselves.

Why is it so with them and not so with us? I think it’s the eye they have for values. Their value system gave them their economic systems. The price they place on human being is the result of the worth they believe humans have. When you value human being you will want to do the best for them. So, it is not a question of whether you are remembered. No. It’s about solving human problems with the investment of your abilities, gifts and skills on the bases of what you think people are worth. When you are dead you will still live. When you are gone you will still be here. It’s not about fame or name. It’s about your good work born out of a desire to meet humanity's need. This is how great leaders outlived themselves: They carved their names on the hearts of men.

MAXIMUM RESPECT!

THE LEADER (8): Leading in an Era of Mental Giants

By Matthew Ujah-Peter

From the time men began to learn to keep records through the use of wet clay when symbols where used to represent information on wet clay in about 1,900 BC ancient Mesopotamia to about 1,200 BC ancient Egypt, when images were carved or drawn on walls and on papyrus for the purpose of record keeping, to this modern time, mind boggling details of inventions, discoveries and inspirations are already well captured in books and other modern systems. And today, we live in a world where information and knowledge rule all aspects of life. To be a voice in any terrain in life, one must have expertise. As a wise man once put it, ‘’it takes your head to be ahead.’’ A leader therefore, is the man who searches for information and knowledge as one who searches for precious merchandise.

It's  a fact that individuals and  nations that have the most information and knowledge in this world and who further take the pain to have them recorded had always dominated and ruled the ones with less information and knowledge, hence the saying, ‘’information is the commodity of kings’’. Again, it's said that ‘’ ...people perish due to lack of knowledge’’. In our present world academic knowledge alone, as important as it is, is no longer enough. This is evidenced by school drop-outs that had gone ahead to become giants in their chosen fields. Continuous self- development through incessant reading holds a major key in helping to challenge and agitate the human minds to develop and rise beyond its status quo.

We are living in the information age and the volume of information coming at us on a minute- by-minute bases is enormous. The Internet, the print media and other electronic media attest to the fact that it is indeed the days of increased knowledge. Information is flying at such high speeds as if the world is in a hurry to get somewhere, and indeed it is. These information ranges from scientific to spiritual; political to financial and from entertainment to business. Everyone can and should benefit from these torrents of information flow. They are flowing past and around us constantly and will only settle in minds that are prepared for them, even as many of them are captured in books.

It's not very surprising then that the most powerful people in our world today are ‘’book people’’ – they’. Not only are they ardent book readers, they also write books and set up platforms to encourage reading. Dr.Myles Munroe of blessed memory once said that books are people and not just papers. ''When you rob minds with great books you're robbing minds with great people", he said.

To think qualitatively you need good sources of thought stimulants. Books are good thought stimulants. The most brilliant men in history and in our days are men of great thoughts. A man's contribution to life is a sum total of his knowledge and thoughts. A marriage between deep good thought and good information will always give birth to quality ideas and innovations. What are the things that provoke your thoughts? Just as it is said in the good book, ''...iron sharpeneth iron''. When you gain access into great minds you will get seeds planted into your own thoughts through their writings. This is the secret that makes great minds. Isaac Newton once said that to see further he needed to stand on the shoulders of giants. Standing on the shoulders of giants translates to rubbing minds with them, and the best avenue for that is reading their books, especially if one has no privilege of learning under them live.

In the Scriptures we are told that ’’in the last days (i.e., our days) knowledge shall be increased...'' and this is evidenced by the obvious increased amount of information that is available to us today through the media and the internet. More books are being written in our days than in any other times in history. More discoveries are being made in our days than any other times in history. Inventions are easier today than ever before due to records of previous discoveries. Innovations are daily being made as more products are being improved upon.

We are living in the days of mental giants and how fortunate we are. This to me is the best time to live in the history of man. We are indeed fortunate to see and experience the things our world has to offer today. Minds are catching life changing and history making ideas more than ever before. What was only accessible to the privileged few in time past is now open to one and all. The secrets that used to be thought in special schools in ancient times are now in our days published in books and life is more than ever before an open school. Are you prepared to learn? If you are, then the teacher is nearby.

Life is an open book. But just because the book is open doesn’t mean that everyone will read it. It takes a hunger for knowledge to read. If that hunger is not stronger than other priorities in one's life, there’ll be excuses not to read. There's a place at the top for everyone but if it’s easy to get to the top I guess everyone will be there. It indeed takes discipline to read for personal growth as a leader in this present time of distractions from entertainment and other voices calling for one’s attention. Entertainments, in many cases, are the products of those who had taken the time and the pain to develop themselves. But if you are hungry enough for knowledge - hungry enough to climb on the shoulder of giants, the top is yours.

MAXIMUM RESPECT!

THE LEADER (7): Loneliness and Sacrifice

By Matthew Ujah-Peter

Here's part of an article from http://www.forbes.com/sites/work-in-progress/2012/02/23/if-mark-zuckerberg-is-lonely-heres-my-solution/#3e65ac2e26f4

 that fits into today's discussion perfectly well:

Do You Feel Lonely As A Leader? Study Says You're Not Alone.

by Kristi Hedges

Kristi Hedges, Contributor . FEB 23, 2012 @ 10:45 AM

This month, Harvard BusinessReview featured a story about how lonely it is to be the CEO. The article echoed what anyone who’s been a leader or run a company knows well — it’s isolating at the top. Especially for new leaders, the issue can be surprisingly unsettling.

The authors cited survey findings that “half of CEOs report experiencing feelings of loneliness in their role, and of this group, 61 percent believe it hinders their performance. First-time CEOs are particularly susceptible to this isolation. Nearly 70 percent of first-time CEOs who experience loneliness report that the feelings negatively affect their performance.”

Your first reaction may be: cry me a river.

Corporate CEO behavior and lavish salaries haven’t exactly instilled empathy. Should we care if billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos aren’t reaching the top of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs?

I would argue, any leader’s isolation has negative ramifications on others. And it’s not just CEOs who experience this kind of loneliness — it’s team managers, entrepreneurs, and community leaders too. In fact, anyone who finds themselves peerless can feel isolated. This isn’t good for decision-making, culture, or performance.

The best leaders have confidantes who can give it to them straight, speak truth to power, and keep them in the know. Stanford management professor Robert Sutton warned against the “toxic tandem” of leadership, where those in charge become more self-absorbed and less attuned to others’ perspectives precisely when they need outside information the most.

Many times those in leadership positions don’t feel they have a right to experience loneliness. After all, they worked hard to land their coveted position. But it’s a near universal human response to experience times of isolation in a leadership role. As I discussed in The Power of Presence, relatedness is extremely important to our well-being and effectiveness. Neuroscientist researcher David Rock has shown that it’s “hardwired” with biochemical roots.

Because the leader’s actions reverberate, one person’s isolation becomes a larger problem when it leads to poor decision-making, negativity, fatigue and frustration. And who wants to work for an unhappy person?

If you’re in a leadership role, you can guard against being isolated by making connection a priority. Don’t feel bad about it; view it as a necessity.

The foregoing article aligns perfectly with what I want to discuss today. And they're some of those easier-said-than- done advises that work.

It is Lonely at the Top

You don’t want to always lock yourself up at the top, because, I tell you the top is lonely. Apart from the loneliness you experience for daring to be different as a leader which you can’t really control, withdrawing from the people just because you feel superior is never going to help you in your leadership quest. Leadership is not superiority mindset. You must make friends. Leaders are friendly people. But the kind of friends you make counts. You will need to fill your court with intellectuals, visionaries and mission-oriented people, while you work to help the mediocre and the defeated member of your people rise above their plights.

As said above, the day you discover yourself as a leaders, a temporal loneliness will come as you will become sort of strange to those you use to rub shoulders with prior to your new discoveries. This is true for leaders in established positions and those leading from non-authority positions.  It's not easy to stand alone and not many people can stand alone, let alone doing so for the long term. Some friends may leave you.

But if you know what you're doing prove your staying power, soon enough like minds will find you out. But choose your friends, and do so wisely. You're not called to stand with the majority. If the majority is right, of course, you are with them. If they're wrong you are not going to join them because they are the majority. Leaders are not politicians. Politic is only a vehicle, not the only vehicle, though. But leaders are people with the power of ideology that brings genuine progress. A leader doesn’t look for bandwagon to join. He's not looking for trend to identify with. Leaders are thinkers and change agents who cast better visions. This is what causes the unavoidable loneliness for leaders, especially at the beginning of their quests. Most people won't, on their, own initiate or advocate the right values and stand by it unless they see someone else who can provide the leadership for which they can give support. So your loneliness has an expiring date. You must first prove your resilience and staying power.

If you can bend easily, especially due to opposition and loneliness, you won’t carry weights as a leader. But if you prove yourself with the passage of times you'll surely gain torrents of supporters. Another source of loneliness for leaders (and this is a strength, actually) is that they must separate themselves often for personal study, mediation, prayer and reflections. A leader who doesn’t do so often is like a car going miles day in, day out without refuelling and servicing. The strength of the leader is new knowledge and new inspirations. And he needs regular personal time out for just that.

Sacrifice is the Core of Leadership
You're not a leader so you can be loved; you're a leader because you love your people. Hence, that love must be strong enough to make you ready to put your life on the line for your people and purpose. If your love is not strong enough to cause you to stick out your neck for your calling and followers, if the need arises, don’t venture into visible leadership; the people won’t need you, trust me. Of course, there're numerous other leadership roles you can assume, if you really, really want to serve, but don’t want to make a sacrifice that measures up to your own very life. Such leadership role abounds and many don’t like it because it doesn’t attract fame, accolades and applause. 

Every action from a leader, whose role is visible, will immediately transmits across the entire fabric of the society or group he represents; therefore, it is wise and honourable not to venture into such position of leadership with halfheartedness. It is unfair to hold leadership position and send wrong signals to your people. A leader who risks his very own life and reputation for his people will doubtless raise an army of courageous and fearless followers who will stand with him in times of trouble. Your acts of selfless bravery will inspire such excellence spirit in them that, they too, will willingly risk their own lives, reputations and luxuries to support you. Your acts will surely have multiple effects on your people. If you go a mile for them, they will go more miles with you, fighting by your side. A single but simple act of selfless bravery of a leader can turn the must feeble member of the society into a gallant fighter. Act of example work, and pay. It pays long terms and it pays short terms. It pays, all things being equal, it pays, all things not equal.

What most followers need and are looking out for is example. Acts of example is contagious, both in the negative and in the positive. A negative example, if not checked, is the society’s undoing. Your people want a man who can provide a point around which they can rally. This is your calling as a leader. It's your life. It's your purpose. You must forge your people into an army. Discipline, sacrifice, hard work, purposefulness, honour and dignity are your watch words and theses must be instilled into your people. Resistance will rear it head at the beginning. But with tact, consistencies and personal examples, you will succeed.

You must continually fan into flame the fire of bravery, heroism, honour, discipline, excellence and sacrifice. Be a man of tough words but back it up with acts of examples. Of course, you can’t show practical example in all things but your example must be at a level particular and peculiar to your office. Never give place to fear, indolence and pessimism.  Make them take genuine pride in what and who they are. Build self-confidence in them. Never let any one of them feel defeated by life’s challenges. Never let any one of them exhibit the victim mindset. This is not to say the leader mustn’t admit and exhibit a sense of humour and humaneness. Of course there’s a need for balance.

MAXIMUM RESPECT!

THE LEADER (6): A Business Mindset of Filling Needs.

by Matthew Ujah-Peter

The Thresholds of Opportunities

A man named Walter once invited his friend Arthur to go for a ride through some undeveloped land in Southern California. They drove through some groves of trees and passed some ramshackle buildings before they arrived at what looked to Arthur like a barren wasteland. Walter began telling his friend about the exciting plans he had for his uninviting parcel of land. Walter’s express purpose of the drive was to give Arthur the opportunity to become an investor in his dream. Arthur was not impressed, and declined the opportunity. And so Art Linkletter turned down the opportunity to buy up all the land that now surrounds Disneyland, the dream-turned-reality of his friend Walt Disney. (As told by David Jeremiah, MasterWork, Fall 2012).

Opportunities rarely appear in labels. What you’re not looking for, you may not be able to make sense of or connect with when it is even tugging at your shirt. When you’re passionate about anything, you see it everywhere. Your passion is a light to your path to opportunities. What inconveniences other people may be exciting to you.  A leader is a business oriented person with a strong sense of foresight, vision...and yes, passion! Passion is the highest form of human desire. It is a desire rooted in the heart and soul. Passion is an undying fervour and enthusiasm. Much had being said about the word enthusiasm. It originated, we are told, from two Greek words: en and theos. En means in, while theos means God. The actual greak meaning is God inside or to be entered into by God or God’s power. So, enthusiasm which is a synonym of the word passion is an energy that a person has from within him which is, in reality, a divine force.

As said elsewhere [see Passion and Purpose], passion is the product of, or an indication of your life’s calling. Passion is not just any desire [see 5 levels of Desire]. Passion, though a desire, is not a cheap desire. It is, in my observations and opinion, the highest form of desire. Passion is the level of desire that helps you recognize and connect with your life’s duty post with unmistakably accuracy. With passion, a person makes connection with a problem that he and his gifts, skills and experiences are meant to solve. It is passion that gets you going in the face of hunger, lacks, pains and ridicules. But we are not going to linger too much on passion and purpose today. For more on that, please, see Passion and Purpose, and 5 Levels of Desire.

The Entrepreneurial Spirit

Being a businessman or an entrepreneur is not like holding a job. Holding a job in an organisation means that you are given a post with responsibilities or job descriptions attached. Everyday’s task in the line of your duty is delineated by your boss. You do your duties and wait for salaries or wages at month end. But an entrepreneur is the visionary, idea generator, structure designer, fund raiser, chief marketing officer, etc. At the beginning, he could be the cleaner, messenger, office clerk, etc at the same time.  What carries him through all these is the energy within – enthusiasm.  But enthusiasm needs an organized environment and atmosphere to thrive and excel. Models, structures and systems must be designed to serve as machinery that can work without him being everywhere for the business. He will surely need intellectual, administrative and financial muscles to accomplish this. While I must not spare words in encouraging you, I must tell you that where those things are lacking, enterprise suffers.

The only genuine source of strength in doing business is passion – red hot passion – that is behind your motive for the enterprise. Genuine and lasting motivation that can weather storms that often comes against business ventures comes from passion. The hotter the passion, the stronger the motivation. I have always believed that motivation is motive for action, while passion is power for action. It is very common and easy to give up in business. There are different types or levels of desires that takes people into business. Passion is a drive and a driver that supplies daily energy for the venture you are undertaking.  In the case of Walt Disney’s example (and stories of Disney’s passion about his dream-turned-reality Disneyland abounds), he saw things that made his family and friends thought he was hallucinating. Eventually, even after he’s gone his dream is still alive and thriving. A leader must re-evaluate his quest and the drive behind it.

As Rev. Tope Popoola puts it in his book, Living Intentionally, ‘’You are either driving something or something is driving you’’. So, what is that thing that is driving you as a leader? Certain level of motivation will wane in the face of challenges that surface in business ventures (or any venture for that matter). The quality and / or quantity of passion driving the enterprise must be, at least up to the challenge coming against it. What keeps your motivations going is the energy called passion.  The quality of passion that motivates you will determine how long and how well you stick with the venture. People venture into businesses because they are propelled by one or more of the following: Desire to make ends meet, Desire for Security, Desire for social relevance, Desire for monetary or financial rewards and Desire to make a difference. These are the energies that carry an entrepreneur through storms and trials that arise in businesses. These 5 drives correspond with 5 levels of needs in the popular Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs.

1. Desire to Make Ends Meet:  This drive is engendered by the basic physiological needs of man such as food, clothes, air and sleep. At the base of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, are the physiological needs which are the needs or desires to meet life’s basic needs. If there is no alternative means of employment, people go into business just to make a living and most businesses started this way. When this needs are met, usually most people begins to look forwards to addressing other needs that naturally exist but hidden from the surface by the immediate physiological needs. When the desire to meet basic need is met, some may choose to be satisfied with this subsistence level of operation in business due to a number of factors such as fear of losing the business if expansion( that is a natural result of business growth) is introduced.

2. Desire for Security: human needs are in layers like an onion. Pill the first layer and the next surfaces. When the needs for air, food, cloth, shelter and sleep are met, the next usually is for security. Security is a big deal for man. He want to be secure from natural and man-made dangers and as well be sure that what he acquired from level one (food, cloths, shelter, etc) are not lost.  Drives to make end meets and for security hardly expand beyond its founder. Out of the desire or a need to create security around the business, the owner may leave it and maintain it at a subsistence, small or at most, medium scale. Business of such nature usually remains in small scale so that the owner can have control over it.

3. Desire for social acceptance: in Abraham Maslow’s theory of needs, the next need on the pyramid is the need for social relevance, love and belonging. We are all social being and want to belong in the society. Sometimes what may drive an enterprise could be this need to be socially relevant and loved. But a business that continues on these bases may not grow as a business ought to. The selfish tendencies of man could hijack the impact of such business. Since it is built around the owner, structures and systems that should give others the platform and opportunity for growth will surely be lacking. Everything is done to feed the yearnings and ego of the owner. Workers in such an organisation, if any at all, rather than being seen as partners and given power and freedom to operate and excel, will be seen as threats or competitors to the owner.

4. Motive for power and monetary rewards: Next is power, or according to Maslow, self-esteem and respect.  They want to be appreciated, rewarded or awarded for their achievements. Many want to gain higher positions; hence they need more power, more money and resources to advance that ambition. Many businesses are born or built to make the owner a dominant force in his terrain. A common feature of such business, if this desire is not checked, is a tendency to be manipulative, fraudulent, and greedy for gains; deceptive in dealings and ruthless. It is not uncommon to see such business pushing fake and substandard products into the market.

5. Desire to make a difference: Finally, this is usually the yearning of the human soul. Everyone has a secret but sacred longing for self actualisation. Self actualisation, according to Maslow, is the peak of human drive that most humans, though eager for and desire to, never get to achieve. But a few individuals, if not many, have being able to. Many go into philanthropy or ‘’social responsibility’’ (community service) while at the esteem needs level, to achieve this, but by and large the quest for self actualisation eludes most. But setting up business models around making a difference from the beginning is a key to attaining this noble quest. In reality this level of desire or need is what is really qualified to be called passion.

With the foregoing in mind, every one going into business must determine from the start why he /she is going into business. The foundational structure of the business will be designed and built for the purpose. Of course, the last purpose for business above, which is the pinnacle of human needs, usually at the end takes care of the first four purposes, needs or desires. It need be emphasised that while this last drive is more or less a spiritual passion, the first four are mostly physiological and psychological or emotional needs. The lines from the Scriptures credited to Christ, sum it all up:

Seek ye first the kingdom of God and its righteousness and all other things will be added to you. Matthew 6:33.

MAXIMUM RESPECT!