Open Letter to Anybody Who Wants to be President of Ghana in January 2025 by Prof. Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng

Ghana has not done as well as it should have done since President Kwame Nkrumah was unconstitutionally ousted from office through a military coup by the National Liberation Council on February 24, 1966. Ghana has had three other interruptions of governments. The present 4th Republic, dominated by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP), has not brought the transformational change that will put the country on path of sustainable development and prosperity for its people.

I dare say that the fight ahead of Ghana is greater than the fight for political independence and its people cannot be won with leaders who lack the zeal, commitment, conviction to confront their own demons and other forces and headwinds that are against the development of the country.

It is always said that one cannot re-invent the wheel and I believe in that old adage. I present here examples of what happened elsewhere on this planet not too long ago. I personally believe that the country can make progress when we get leaders who exhibit the qualities in the examples that follow.

The first example of transformational leadership is from Singapore. When the government of Lee Kuan Yew took office in 1959 it set out to have a clean administration. The Prime Minister said that “we were sickened by the greed, corruption, and decadence of many Asian leaders” and “We had the deep sense of mission to establish a clean and effective government”. This was a solid commitment from the newly elected Prime Minister. With determination and a credible program committed to scientific and technological development, Lee Kuan Yew and his team were able to live up to their good intentions and Singapore, which in 1819 was a village with 120 fishermen without natural resources and hinterland, propelled itself from third world squalor to first world affluence in just 35 years. This was commitment and a sense of mission personified.

The second example is from China. The economic development taking place in China is the result of an initiative taken by four scientists. On the 3rd of March 1986, four of China’s top weapons scientists: WANG Daheng, WANG Ganchang, YANG Jiachi, and CHEN Fangyun, jointly sent a private letter to Deng Xiaoping, the leader of the country, with a warning that decades of relentless
focus on militarization had crippled the country’s civilian scientific establishment. They recommended that China must join the world’s “new technological revolution,” or it would be left behind. They called for an élite project devoted to technology ranging from biotech to space research. Mr. Deng Xiaoping agreed, and scribbled on the letter, “Action must be taken on this now.” This was China’s “Sputnik moment,” and the project was code-named the 863 Program, for the year and month of its birth. In the years that followed, the government pumped billions of dollars into labs and universities and enterprises, on projects ranging from cloning to underwater robots. The program initially focused on seven key technological fields: Biotechnology, Space technology, Information technology, Laser technology, Automation, Energy, and Advanced Material Sciences.

Two more fields were brought under the umbrella of the program: Telecommunications (1992) and Marine Technology (1996).

In 2006, Chinese leaders redoubled their commitment to new energy technology; they boosted funding for research and set targets for installing wind turbines, solar panels, hydroelectric dams, and other renewable sources of energy that were higher than goals in the United States. China doubled its wind-power capacity that year, and then doubled it again the next year, and the year
after. The country had virtually no solar industry in 2003; five years later, it was manufacturing more solar cells than any other country, winning customers from foreign companies that had invented the technology in the first place.

Korea transformed itself from a stagnant agrarian society into one of the most dynamic industrial economies of the world within 40 years. In the early 1960s when Korea first launched its industrialization efforts, it was a typical poor developing country with poor resources and production base and small domestic market. Korea’s Gross National Product (GNP) in 1961 was only $ 2.3 billion (in 1980 prices) or $87 per capita which came mainly from the primary sectors. The manufacturing sector’s share of GNP remained at a mere 15%. International trade was also at a very infant stage: in 1961, Korea’s export volume was only $55 million and imports $390 million. As late as 1970, the three top exports were textiles, plywood, and wigs. South Korea now has established world prominence in such technology areas as semi-conductors, Liquid Crystal Display (LCD), telecommunication equipment, automobiles, shipbuilding, and many more. Indeed, it has emerged as one of the key international players in the global economy and is considered the 13th largest economy and one of the major trading countries of the world.

The last example is from the United States of America. When the 56 signatories of the Declaration of American Independence met in the State House of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia on the 4th of July 1776 to append their signatures to the famous document on declaration of America’s Independence this is what they said: “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor”.

The signers of American Declaration of Independence, twenty-three lawyers, fifteen merchants, five plantation owners, four physicians, three scientists, two land speculators, one farmer, one military man, one lawyer/musician and one Minister, showed tremendous courage and bravery by willingly putting their names on that document. They knew full well that they were committing treason against England and they knew the penalty was death. Their commitment to the United States of America led to the creation of what is still the richest and most powerful country in the world. Ghana has not yet seen the type of closed, united, committed, focused, and dedicated leadership that is ready to sacrifice for future generations of Ghanaians. We have not had leaders who see beyond the next elections and plan for future generations. If a few leaders of this country, relying on the protection of divine providence, would mutually pledge their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor for the development of Ghana, there would be a palpable change within 2 years. May be there is no sacred honor or fortune to pledge on.

The political corruption that is gradually gaining root in Ghana is very disturbing. When it comes to choosing leaders to run the political parties and the nation it is no more a question of looking for selfless and competent individuals who have what it takes to move the nation forward. It is more of who is loyal to powerful individuals who want their interests to be served after the power
is won.

I expect anyone who wants to lead this country to tell the nation now how things are going to be done differently so that young people would begin to have hope and stake in this country.

Our leaders have devalued themselves to the extent that they think only foreigners can help us out of our misery. How can someone tell us that he is waiting for a loan from some other countries before roads, schools and other infrastructural projects can be executed?

Our leaders seem to know it all and can develop this country without Ghanaians. After all they do not need Ghanaians to travel around looking for loans, grants, and handouts. They do not need Ghanaians to build the infrastructural projects. As it is, those who give out the loans also provide the highly qualified and skillful workers from their country to get the work done.

Our leaders’ understanding of development seem to be only the provision of infrastructure. No country ever developed by borrowing to build infrastructure. ‘Something’ else must be built on the infrastructure. That something is the true development.

As far as I am concerned the many roads, interchanges, schools, hospitals, wells, electricity, and other infrastructural projects, erroneously called development projects, do not alone determine the success of a Government. Rather the success of true leadership is measured by what extent the people can be mobilized to lead independent lives: to feed, shelter, clothe, heal, and defend themselves, and also produce tools, implements, spare parts and machines they require for daily living, so that if for one reason or the other ships and airplanes are unable to access the country the citizens can stand on their own and survive.

We need attitudinal change. We should realize that the overall development of the nation, including the economic, social, cultural, and technological development is the responsibility of the Ghanaian. Mr. Future President, the men, and women to solve the myriads of problems facing us are here at home and in the diaspora. They have to be found and encouraged to perform. The task of political
leadership is to unearth the actors needed to transform the nation. If we say we have the men, let us use the men and not the boys.

We should exorcise the ‘beggar mentality’ from our lives and accept that our poverty is self-inflicted and it is absolutely unnecessary.

We pride ourselves as having been endowed with abundant natural resources. That is true but it is also important to know that natural resources have no natural owners. The real owners are those that have the technology, skills, and the financial power to exploit those resources. They are the ones that take 90% of the mineral and other resources and leave a mere 10% for the host country.

It really beats my understanding that our leaders do not seem to realize that the real difference between the developed countries of America, Europe, Asia and the Far East and the underdeveloped countries of Africa lies in their technological capability. This capability has been defined as the extent to which countries access, utilize, and create science and technology for the solution of socio – economic problems. Technology has the track record of solving developmental problems. Our modern world is driven by technology. Energy, agriculture, medicine and health, clean air and water, transportation, sanitation, management, utilization, and conservation of natural resources — all are based ultimately in science and technology. So, it is obvious that to be a part of that world, there must be science and technology elements in the development process.

Despite efforts to alleviate poverty, Ghana still exhibits chronic inability to alleviate poverty. Poverty alleviation means, for many people, being able to afford nutritious food, access to clean water and sanitation, energy, safe shelter, education, and a healthy environment. Since science and technology have a historical record in providing solutions to poverty problems, any efforts to alleviate poverty will not succeed without innovations in food production, water, energy, and health provision and in general economic growth. We must understand that Science, Engineering and Technology will give us the capacity to manufacture machines, develop processes and materials and exploit our abundant natural resources for national development. If we do not develop the capacity to manufacture machines that will work for us, we should as well forget about any dream of developing the Nation. No country ever developed without the capacity to manufacture machines. If we characterize Ghana as an agricultural nation, we do so by default because we cannot do anything else. We will continue to run the Adam and Eve, Cain, and Abel economy: planting yams and rearing animals. We have not advanced to Noah’s economy. He built a sophisticated ship that saved humanity and other forms of life. About 2200 years ago, the Chinese built the over 6300km Great Wall of China, without any assistance from the World Bank but we in the 21st Century have closed our minds to technology and need assistance to construct everything, including toilets. We need to constantly remind ourselves that the POVERTY GAP is a TECHNOLOGY GAP.

Again, our development should be driven by our ability to understand, interpret, select, adapt, use, transmit, diffuse, produce, and commercialize scientific and technological knowledge in ways appropriate to our culture, aspirations, and level of development.

Ghana needs a new brand of leadership. It is unacceptable that about 80% of inputs into agriculture, education and health are from foreign sources. It is a shame that a major thrust of our economic policy is to try as much as we can to attract foreign investors. Good as foreign investments are we just cannot sit down and think that without confronting our problems ourselves we can still be prosperous.

To my mind Ghana is unable to attract significant Foreign Direct Investments (FDI). Any country that does not take the development of her human capital seriously finds is difficult to attract Foreign Direct Investments (FDI). The high-income developed countries with well-developed human capital are not only the major source of direct investment, but they are also the major recipients. China and the United States of America are the major recipients of FDIs in the world.

There is ample evidence that multinationals are more active primarily between similar, high-income countries and that outward direct investment in particular is associated with skilled-labor abundance. Even when a multinational decides to invest in a developing country with low human capital base the type of investment is the vertical one in which the production process is geographically fragmented by stages, the capital-intensive intermediates being produced in the home country of the multinational and the labor-intensive stage produced in the host country. This is in contrast to the horizontal investments in which the multinational carries on basically the same activity in the host country as at home, for example, German investors producing the same cars in the United States of America as they do in Germany. This type of investment is almost non-existent in Ghana.

Finally Mr. Future President, I believe that the greatest asset of a nation is the trust and confidence of its people. This should, however, not be taken for granted. Leadership must also fight for this great asset by working hard with even-handedness for the people in all honesty. This asset has been and still is being squandered through misgovernment and corruption to the extent that leaders are not trusted and citizens do not see that they have a stake in their country and its future.

Most Ghanaians do not see any virtue in working for the future of their country. Our leaders have not been able to invoke in the citizens the spirit of nation building. Mr. Future President how are you going to rectify this situation?

God bless our homeland Ghana and make our nation great and strong.

 

A PELE Note

Prof. Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng is an astute German-trained Ghanaian cardiothoracic surgeon and founder of the National Cardiothoracic Centre whose recent foray into Ghanaian politics nearly marred his otherwise stellar legacy. This Open Letter was written by the good professor on 31st August, 2023. Perbi Executive Leadership Education (PELE) contacted him for his original typed up version on September 20, 2023 to republish here in toto, unedited whatsoever. He is scheduled to speak in-person at the John Maxwell Live2Lead Conference in Ghana on Friday October 6, dubbed Leader Day. 

Behold Kendra Scott–Builder of a Billion Dollar Legacy from a $500 Budget!

Kendra Scott (born March 27, 1974) is an American fashion designer, founder,former CEO, executive chairwoman, and philanthropist. Kendra Scott, née Baumgartner, started her company (named after her) in 2002, just three months after her first son was born, with only $500. Going door-to-door to Austin, Texas, boutiques armed only with a tea box full of her jewelry, Kendra captivated businesses and customers with her vibrant personality and unique eye for design. Known for her dynamic use of color and genuine materials, Kendra’s commitment to innovation, quality and detail has brought her from a small start-up to a billion-dollar business and has won over loyal fans, media and celebrities alike.

With over 2,000 employees, Kendra Scott boasts of a thriving web business and over 100 standalone stores and has expanded beyond fashion jewelry into the categories of fine jewelry, home decor, and beauty. Today, her company continues to operate out of Austin, TX, with their state-of-the-art corporate office complete with design lab and an industry-leading distribution center both catering to her employees’ career goals and family-life balance.

With Family and Fashion as two core pillars of her business, Kendra maintains a focus on her other core pillar of Philanthropy in all she does. Since 2010, the company has given back over $40 million to local, national and international causes. In 2018 alone, the company gave over $5 million in monetary donations, almost $10 million in in-kind donations, over 2,000 volunteer hours to philanthropic organizations, and partnered with more than 8,000 philanthropic organizations nationwide.

Kendra has been awarded with the EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2017 National Award; the Breakthrough Award from the Accessories Council Excellence Awards; named Outstanding Mother of the Year by the Mother’s Day Council; awarded Texas Businesswoman of the Year by the Women’s Chamber of Commerce; listed by Forbes as one of America’s Richest Self-Made Women; Top 100 Entrepreneurs of the Year by Upstart Business Journal; Best CEO by Austin Business Journal; and Honorary Celebrity Chair for the Ronald McDonald House Charities of Central Texas. She is a member of the Council of Fashion Designers of America and maintains her position as Executive Chairwoman of the Board of Kendra Scott, LLC, the 1-billion-dollar company she founded and was CEO of until she passed on the baton. In 2019, Madam Scott became only the 12th woman in her state to be inducted into the 40-year old Texas Business Hall of Fame. Kendra has a 2022 book entitled, “Born to Shine: do good, find your joy, and build a life you love.”

KENDRA SCOTT AT JOHN MAXWELL’S LIVE2LEAD ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2023

Kendra Scott speaks at this year’s annual live2lead Ghana, a brainchild of Dr. John C. Maxwell. As Perbi Executive Leadership Education (PELE), we have been privileged to host it on both sides of the Atlantic, in Montreal, Canada as well as in Accra, Ghana. We are absolutely convinced that leadership is taught; not just caught. Join John and the stellar faculty he’s put together for this year’s Live2Lead conference and up your leadership game.

This year, together with our partners in Ghana, we’ve chosen the theme, “Leading for Legacy.” Here’s Kendra’s take: “Focus on what lights a fire inside of you and use that passion to fill a white space. Don’t be afraid of the challenges, the missteps, and the setbacks along the way. What matters is that you keep going.” Come and find out how, in-person at the Ecobank Ghana Headquarters in Accra or online, wherever in the world you might be!

October 6 is Leader Day this year. Register now through this link. Impress upon your organization to join the Leadership Emphasis Day/Leader Day movement that will transform society by becoming a Patron of Live2Lead. A Patron company or individual is one that sends at least 10 leaders to Live2Lead. Together we can change our world for the better! Yes we can!

Register HERE, NOW.

The Throes & Trajectory of Transformational Impact

Over 500 American-Africans—my way of describing Africans who have more recently in the last one or two generations become Americans—gathered in no less a place than the Lord Baltimore Hotel in the downtown of that Charm City of Maryland which bears the same name as the hotel. One of the interesting trivia that decorated the elevators at the hotel is that Martin Luther King Jnr. held his April 2, 1965 press conference at this same historic venue.

The theme chosen for this biannual national conference of these American-African professionals known as the African Christian Fellowship (ACF) USA was Transformational Impact. Yours truly was one of two keynote speakers, who both happened to be medical doctors who hailed from West Africa, Ghana and Nigeria specifically.

While my first keynote was an hour-long and had seven points about transformational impact—text, tales, theology, tracks, teleological definition, theory and tenets—I only seek to share the crux of the key note with you in this short write-up. I shall share the teleological definition of transformational impact which I came up with after reading many others online and found none fully satisfying my take on the subject. And then I’ll share my theory of change, theory of how transformational impact actually happens.

 

Definition of Transformational Impact

Transformational Impact is the process of deeply internally changing in one’s being and doing in order to have, or participate in an attempt at, external profound, authentic and sustainable positive change. If you are anything like me, when you hear transformational impact you’re thinking about doing some thing to change something or someplace or someone. The paradigm shift in this definition is that transformational impact has two points of change—first, of the person seeking an intervention and then of the circumstance or situation. That brings us to the theory of change.

 

Theory behind Transformational Impact

Why is this definition like this and super important? Because we cannot deeply change anything without being deeply changed ourselves first. Here is the theory of change that goes with the issue of transformational impact: Only deeply transformed leaders can deeply, authentically and sustainably transform society. 

This is not the first time I’ve written on this. I remember bringing it up when there was a massive trending in Twittersphere of the hashtag #fixthecountry in a certain West African state and a counter #fixyourself that was attempted to quench the fire. In the article, I share why both camps were wrong. It goes back to the theory behind transformational impact.

There cannot possibly be authentic transformation when the actor isn’t themselves in sync with what they’re acting upon. Besides, if there isn’t transformation of the protagonist themselves, their intervention wouldn’t last long—either their work will unravel with time or they themselves will be marred in no time.

You might now understand why this definition is important. One’s identity and character (being) and actions and activities (doing) first need below-the-surface transforming internally in a deep manner if the outward impact they seek will also be profound, real/authentic and last.

In fact, without going too much into the theology of transformational impact, let me state that God first shapes the people through whom He wants to shape the world so that they can reflect Him and reform His world by His shaping—in His image and likeness—to His glory.

 

Widening Circles of Transformational Impact

Above is an attempt to illustrate how it’s a DeepLEAD at the core which leads to WideLEAD, from personal transformation to public transformation. We can’t go wrong if it’s first our deep personal transformation that leads to family transformation, community transformation (from church to corporation) and then societal transformation.

Elsewhere I’ve written about how people like William Wilberforce, Zaccheus the Tax Man and Nelson Mandela transformed their societies and world because they had first been deeply transformed. In fact, the title of an opinion piece on Nelson Mandela in the Los Angeles Times which I really enjoyed captured the essence of transformational impact so succinctly: “Nelson Mandela transformed himself and then his nation.”

So did Martin Luther King, who first darkened the doors of the Lord Baltimore Hotel a whole 60 years before I  and the 500 plus American-Africans would a couple of weeks ago. Where any of these transformationally impactful leaders missed a step in the transformational impact process, they too paid for it in their personal, family, community or national life. Principles are no respecter of persons or personalities.

 

 Change First to Carry Forth Change

So now’s your turn. Your time has come. Change first personally to carry forth change societally. Former U.S. President Barak Obama and I differ when it comes to LGBTQI+ transformation but we agree on this: “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” The astute Jewish lawyer who studied under revered Gamaliel once said, “For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed.” The whole world waits to be transformed by a people transformed prior and still transforming in the process. We are transformed to bring transformation. How’s that going?

The Best Promotions are the Worst.

Here’s the worst thing about the best promotion. At one of my organizations, we recently had to let an excellent hire go. Come to think of it, we failed him. We failed him by promoting him.

You would think that all promotions are good but no. One of the worst kinds is being ‘elevated’ to become a leader just because you are an outstanding worker or producer. Working on stuff and excelling is very different from working with souls to excel. The reward for hard work is more work, weird yes, but the latter tends to be more mental work than manual —which most people find as more beneficial—also, more of working with people than working on things.

As one person shared about struggling with leadership upon her first promotion as a telco manager: “Within one month, I went from being the best programmer to the worst supervisor.” I’ve seen this happen to too many people in too many places. I grew up on the University of Ghana campus (both my grandfather and mother were professors there) and I would see time and time again fine lecturers promoted into leadership positions, from heads of department through deanship to vice-chancellorship and flail and fail. How many times have I said that a great chemist or erudite historian doesn’t necessarily make a great leader!

We do the same in the medical world, promoting top surgeons to head departments or if God doesn’t intervene, to head the hospital! When I was promoted to supervise the Military Polyclinic at the 37 Military Hospital in Accra, determining the doctors scheduling and all, in my opinion it was only because I wasn’t a bad doctor and had been around long enough. And no one gave me a minute’s training about leadership. Squat. Thank God I had been a private student of leadership for years prior.

It doesn’t start out as a bad thing; in fact, it is exhilarating at first for the recipient of the promotion. And the giver of the opportunity ordinarily also means well and feels good about it. But organizational leaders need to rethink the notion of making people supervisors, managers or leaders as a reward for diligent or even skillful individual technical work. It can backfire, seriously.

 

A STORY I CAN’T GET OVER

One of the most poignant illustrations of this phenomenon of worker/rewarded-as-leader is told by my mentor Bill George in his book ‘True North.’ It’s about the person who confessed upon her first promotion as a telco manager, “Within one month, I went from being the best programmer to the worst supervisor.” Here are some more details:

“It’s unbelievable how bad I was. I didn’t know how to delegate. When somebody had a question about their work, I’d pick it up and do it. My group was not accomplishing anything because I was on the critical path of everything. My boss saw we were imploding, so he did an amazing thing: He gave me every new project that came in. It was unreal. At 4:30 PM, my team would leave, and I’d be working day and night trying to dig through this stuff.

“Finally, I couldn’t take it any longer. I went to his office, stamped my foot like a 5-year-old, and said, “It’s not fairI have the work of 10 people:” He sad calmly, “Look out there. You have 10 people. Put them to work.” It was such a startling revelation. I said sheepishly, “I get it.”” [1]

If this person hadn’t eventually learned to lead people, she would never have made it to becoming president and CEO of the American Red Cross on June 23, 2008. Prior to that she had also held top management positions at AT&T Corporation and Fidelity Investments. She is a member of the board of trustees of Johns Hopkins University and the board of directors of DTE Energy.

This is Gail J. McGovern we’re talking about here, even recognized by Fortune magazine in 2000 and 2001 as one of the top 50 most powerful women in corporate America. Alas, not all of such stories that begin with such ‘good promotions’ end well, and even when they do, not without significant damage to many.

 

DIAGNOSIS OF LEADERSHIP FAILURE POST PROMOTION

It takes both a different mindset and skill set to move from being an excellent worker to being a good leader, let alone a great one. Yet we come to the world of work with both a mindset and skillset that ill-prepare us for leadership success. Even prior, we are socialized largely to excel as individuals. I concur with Bill George that this unpreparedness is attributable to our upbringing:

“…so much of our early success in life depends upon individual efforts, from the grades we earn in school to our performance in individual sports to our initial work assignments. Admissions offices and employers closely examine those achievements and use them to make comparisons. …As we are promoted from individual roles to leadership, we believe we are being recognized for our ability to get others to follow us…

“To become authentic leaders, we must discard the myth that leadership means having legions of supporters following us as we ascend to the pinnacles of power. Only then can we realize that authentic leadership is serving people… How else can they unleash the power of their organization unless they motivate people to reach their full potential? … Only when leaders stop focusing on their personal needs and see themselves as serving others are they able to develop other leaders.” [2]

 

 

ROAD MAP TO LEADERSHIP SUCCESS POST PROMOTION

If Maxwell’s 5 Levels of Leadership is anything to go by, then when one is promoted from the top echelons of the worker floor (Peak Performer/Worker Level 3 in diagram above), they only end up at Level 1 of leadership: Position. The lowest level of leadership—the entry level, if you will—is position. People only follow if they believe that they have to (otherwise you might use your powers of carrot and stick). If this leader takes the hint and invests in their leadership growth, they can move to Leader Level 2—Permission—which is based on relationship. At this level, people choose to follow because they want to.

You will notice that even what Gail was trying to get done at work, putting the 10 people ‘out there’ to work, is still only mid-level in the Maxwell scheme of things: Production. Good leaders know how to motivate their people to GTD – get things done! And getting things done is what Leader Level 3 is all about. But they’re only good; not great. Leader Level 4 — People Development—can be summed up in another word: Reproduction. One’s goal at this level is to identify and develop as many leaders as one can and investing in them to help them grow. Here (Leader Level 4), you’re producing people as leaders, not producing work through people (Leader Level 3).

The most challenging and highest level of leadership, Level 5, is the Pinnacle. According to Maxwell, it requires longevity as well as intentionality in investing one’s life into the lives of other leaders and organizations for the long haul (while growing yourself as lifelong learner all the while). People follow such because of who they are and what they represent. Their leadership gains a positive reputation, betters still, one has earned respect.

Note that Level 5 leaders develop Level 5 organizations. I will add that in the leader verses institutions debate—as to whether it is strong leaders or strong institutions we need to develop long-term—I would say that it takes Level 5 leaders to build the structures and systems that produce strong institutions. This is the realm of legacy. As a result, Level 5 leaders often transcend their position, their organization, their industry and perhaps even their nation.

And nothing accelerates leaders through these levels, from 1 to 5, like intentional coaching.

 

CONCLUSION

As you can tell already, it’s a long way from being the best worker to being a great leader. There is nothing more painful than a “highly capable individual” (as Jim Collins puts it) thinking that just because they’ve been a peak performer and ‘made it’ onto the supervision, management or leadership floor that they’ve got what it takes to run the ship. One’s productive contribution through individual effort in knowledge, skills and good work habits won’t cut it. As promoters, if we promote people and fail to plan a leadership growth path alongside that, we’ve inadvertently planned to fail them.

Congratulations on your promotion, but to ensure that dream-come-true doesn’t become a nightmare, and the reward a trap instead, you must be aware that it’s a floor and not the ceiling. Top floor workers’ triumphal entry through the golden portal of promotion only lands you as a ground floor leader. Welcome to Level 1 of Leadership: position. Just that.

 

References

[1] Bill George. True North: Becoming an Authentic Leader. Second edition; expanded and updated edition. Jossey-Bass, Hoboken, NJ, 2015, pg. 186-187.

[2] Ibid, pg. 185

The Inadvertent Lid of Political Leadership: My One Regret and Heartache.

It’s been a very busy few weeks. The last one in particular was the kind that Nelson Mandela would call “‘impossible’ until it’s done.” The very morn of the dawn I arrived back in Accra from Kenya, the first day of the work week, I had to be speaking at about 10am at an African Young Professionals Conference. That same week my team at PELÉ and the Ghanaian contingent of the African-wide BCA Leadership hosted the power-packed, two-day Made in Africa Leadership Conference (MLC) from June 13 to 15. Then there was a Youth Rally in the vicinity of the University of Professional Studies (June 15 evening) where l was  billed to speak as well. And then to crown that week, The HuD Group, which I founded with eight of my friends in 2003, held a press launch of our twentieth anniversary and simultaneous launch of three legacy projects.

In all of this business and busyness, one thing that has come through very clearly is that leadership is absolutely important–that everything does rises and falls on leadership. I tried to make that point in my opening remarks to the distinguished ladies and gentlemen convened at the Marriot for the aforementioned MLC 2023. Even this morning, as I was training the executive team of one of our PELÉ clients, a tech start-up, Maxwell’s Law of the Lid came to the fore: leadership is the lid on their personal level of  effectiveness as well as the organization’s impact that it would ever make.

Leadership is so important that every professional must have it, everyone in every sector of the economy must possess it, and everyone at every level of society must have it but especially leadership is too important to leave it to politicians alone. “Leadership is cause,” as one other leadership expert puts it, “everything else is effect.”

As we celebrate 20 years of The HuD Group, we can testify that God has done amazing things in, on, with and through The HuD Group. We started in Ghana, moved to Cote D’Ivoire, then to Nigeria and Canada and now have a presence in 24-25 countries on all continents, having incredible impact on people in every sphere. In fact, at the anniversary launch last week Friday, several VIPs like celebrated, young, award-winning journalist Manasseh Azure Awuni, shared how The HuD Group had impacted them. But I shared with the audience my one regret: that in all this 20 years of The HuD Group we did not give enough attention to the political space in particular. Of course, it is not that we did nothing at all but knowing what l know now and seeing how successes in all these other areas of life have literally been eroded by what has happened in the political space, especially in Ghana, that really breaks my heart.

 

 

THE SKY ISN’T THE LIMIT; POLITICIANS ARE

This has been a season of lots of graduations. I’ve seen flashy photos from Harvard to Fuller, and been physically present at inspiring commencements like Ashesi’s about three weeks ago. First, I’ve been excited about all these amazing graduates bustling with energy and vision and drive, some having done some earthshaking capstone projects and all. Yet all these amazing people formally graduated by our best academic establishments and semi-formally by The HuD Group in the last 20 years—and yes, some of us have been though all kinds of fellowships from Aspen and Eisenhower to Tutu—are restricted by what happens in the political space because everything rises and falls on that leadership. Political leadership is the lid over all our collective effectiveness and greatness.

If anyone told these graduands that the sky is the limit, that isn’t wholly true; our political leaders are. No I’m not a whiner; I am precisely the opposite of that, which is why I’m a serial entrepreneur. So I believe in creative ways around ‘the system’ but as the august chairperson of the HuD anniversary launch, Madam Yawa Hanson-Quao, had earlier said at the MLC, “We cannot entrepreneur our way out of bad governance.” Political leadership is the lid over all our other attempts at leadership.

Political leadership is the lid over all of our collective effectiveness and greatness in all of our fields of work and spheres of influence. We’ve got to get up and take the political space seriously and not let anyone who is not a selfless, authentic, transformational leader make their way there! Because then, it doesn’t matter how the collective brilliance of all of us is, there would be a lid over the rest of us. A good illustration is the proverbial army of sheep led by a lion versus or an army of lions led by a sheep.

At the end of the day, every sector, and every level of our society needs at least good leaders, even better, great leaders! Otherwise like John Gardener aptly puts it, “The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy [or politics for that matter] because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.”

Sans Leadership–So Much to Lose, Too Much to Lose.

The following was shared as a TED-like talk to open the Made in Africa Leadership Conference by BCA Leadership on June 14 at the Marriot Hotel, Accra, Ghana.

 

My uncle died. My mom’s youngest brother. He came over to Ghana from the United States, where he had lived for decades, and fell ill. He died in the very hospital I worked in at the time. In fact, he died on my ward. But I can swear it wasn’t his disease that killed him. It was leadership, or rather the lack thereof. Leadership is too important for doctors not to have it.

Some of the most important things in life are not taught in school, like leadership. When some of my friends from university got into government I did exhort them: “Nobody taught us Jack about leadership. LEARN LEADERSHIP! CONTRACT COACHES! Leadership is not just caught; it is taught.” Did they listen? Ha!

Ironically, communal, national, continental or even global leadership, is a deeply person-al thing. It takes deeply transformed leaders to deeply transform society. Authentic leadership begins with aligning what goes on in a leader’s head and heart with True North. Leadership principles or True North are no respector of persons—red or yellow, black or white.

Two days from now, we will be officially launching the 20th anniversary celebration of The HuD Group, a holistic leadership organization started by nine young Africans in Accra. From one country in West Africa, it now has presence in 24 countries, on all six continents. Out of Africa to the Rest. From a former Rwandan refugee now in executive leadership in Uganda to a former child soldier in Sierra Leone now a high-ranking bank official in his homeland, to a Chinese-Canadian who we trained via Skype when she was an international medical student in Australia, a lot of transformation and impact has been achieved but in Ghana in particular I feel much of our gains have been eroded by not giving adequate attention to political leadership.

So today is the first of two important occasions this week where I will be drumming home this point with all my heart, liver, spleen and intestines: “Leadership is too important to leave it to politicians alone.” AND with 90% of African businesses being SMEs, creating 60-80% of our jobs and accounting for 40% of our GDP, what we do here at MLC this week for African leaders and African leadership is wildly important.

When two 14-year old stowaways from Guinea, Yaguine and Foday, froze to death in the landing gear of an Airbus 330 from Conakry to Brussels, they had on them a hand-written letter labelled: IN CASE WE DIE… to the Messrs. members and officials of Europe.

They said, among other things, “We have the honor and pleasure and great confidence in you to write this letter … we appeal to your solidarity and kindness for help in Africa. …we, African children and youth, ask you to create a great, efficient organization for Africa to allow us to progress. …we want to study and we ask you to help us in Africa to study to be like you.”

You should find and read the whole letter here—it will thaw and tear your heart. And that was 24 years ago. Has anything changed?

It’s time for Leadership Made in Africa that makes Africa work for Africans. BEFORE WE DIE. Yes we can, partnering and collaborating to reimagine and reform the Africa that we want! Twende! Let’s go! Let’s do this!

Introducing PELÉ (Perbi Executive Leadership Education).

Imagine a flourishing global ecosystem of authentic leaders characterized by healthy growth, holistic success and lasting significance. That’s the big dream and eternal hope fuelling our daily tasks at the Executive Education firm that bears my name, YAW PERBI. A couple of years ago, after eight years as President & CEO of a Canadian non-profit in the international education space and having garnered several years of executive leadership experience in the Ghanaian military and medical fraternity, global media, the United Nations in Cote d’Ivoire etc. I decided it was time to serve all of that to leaders of leaders: the C-suite. So I came out of sabbatical and stepped down as President of ISMCanada to do this.

Since according to my mentor of a quarter of a century, John C. Maxwell, by whom I’m officially a certified coach, speaker and trainer,  that “one is too small a number to achieve greatness,” I have been steadily growing a global team of competent, caring, confident and character-based co-leaders on/from every continent in the world beyond myself to make our faith, sight. That journey has culminated in the birth of PELÉ.

 

A Play on Words

In keeping our focus on growing and coaching executive leadership to succeed, ever broadening the authentic relationships and resources we bring to bear on our task, we decided to move away from YAW PERBI specifically and to build Perbi Executive Leadership Education, PELÉ for short. PELÉ is not exactly just a happy coincidence, for as a once-upon-a-time football fanatic and soccer player for my elementary school, I recently engaged in my fair share of arguments about who the greatest soccer player of all time is between the shouts in favour of Lionel Messi after lifting the Qatar World Cup trophy on December 18, 2022 and the incessant calls to hallow the legendary Edson Arantes do Nascimento, better known by his nickname Pelé, who died eleven days later on December 29. As a double childhood hero—both of my dad and myself—I had been pondering a way to honour a Black man who gave everyone so much delight and so many people of his skin hue so much pride.

As I’ve stated before, “I am eager to particularly provide C-level executives of African descent with the paradigms, processes and tools necessary to maximize their potential, to be world class, take the world stage and make their dent in the universe.”

 

A Word In Play

Then came April 2023 when the Pelé Foundation and Sportv launched the “Pelé in the dictionary” campaign to pay tribute and recognise his legacy in other fields beyond sport. Of course his name has long been a synonymous with success and excellence, both of which are values of our Executive Education company, but now the great Brazilian forward and only human to have lifted three World Cup trophies officially had his name in the Portuguese dictionary. The adjective “Pelé” has been added to the Portuguese edition of the Michaelis dictionary to describe “someone out of the ordinary.”

Pelé, the nickname of the late football legend, has officially become tantamount to “extraordinary, exceptional, incomparable, unique.” Pelé is an adjective for something or someone that is out of the ordinary, one who by virtue of their quality, value or superiority cannot be equalled to anything or anyone, just like Pelé. For example, he is the Pelé of basketball, she is the Pelé of paediatrics.

 

 

What’s in a Name?

According to Emily Olson of NPR, “It was in the small, impoverished town of Bauru where he first got his nickname playing in youth leagues.” Apparently, even Pelé himself wasn’t sure where it came from, he wrote in a 2006 piece for The Guardian, but it may have been a play on Bilé, the nickname of a goalkeeper for the team Pelé’s father played on. “I can remember the name really bugged me at first. I was really proud that I was named after Thomas Edison and wanted to be called Edson,” he said. “I thought Pelé sounded horrible. It was a rubbish name. Edson sounded so much more serious and important.”

PELÉ by YAW PERBI is an Executive Education firm that offers authentic and customized relationships and resources to C-Level executives to grow personally, succeed professionally and become significant societally. To this end, the company provides Pelé services in leadership development, management training, executive coaching and publishing. Our Pelé coaching, authoring, speaking, and training are centred on LIFE—Leadership, Integrity, Family, Entrepreneurship.

 

Conclusion

We are PELÉ–extraordinary, exceptional, incomparable, unique–but more importantly, we form PELÉs, who are authentic, out of the ordinary executive leaders in every sector of life and all society’s centres of influence. As a forward-looking, authentic leader, if you want to dextrously dribble through LIFE and exceptionally hit goals like the legendary Pelé, you know where to look for the kind of coaching and training it will take: Perbi Executive Leadership Education (PELÉ). Like begets like.

Tribute to Tim of my Table ~ Timothy Keller (1950-2023).

We first met on a table near the Table Mountain; I hope we meet again, in eternity, at a wedding table on a holy mountain.

 

In an emerging leader-affirming move, typical of The Lausanne Movement, my 32-year old self was appointed a table head at the Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization in Cape Town, South Africa. Imagine that. This was a gathering of the crème de la crème of Christian leaders from around the world, even described by some as “the most representative gathering of Christian leaders in the 2,000 year history of the Christian movement” (Christianity Today).

Each table had about half a dozen members. One of mine was Tim Keller. At the time, I had no clue who he was and quite frankly, couldn’t be bothered. Everyone was somebody. He wasn’t always at the table and even when he was there, he wasn’t quite there.

The Congress was over and everyone received their beautiful certificates of participation. Tim wasn’t there. Again. Apparently he had left back to the United States earlier. So I decided to travel back to Canada with his certificate, do an internet search of his whereabouts and mail his certificate to him in the States.

THAT is when I found out to my shock what a tall figure of a man this was! I eventually did get to speak with a staff and mail his memento to the right address (I would hope) in New York City. Rev. Dr. Tim Keller, founder and lifelong pastor of the 5,000-member Redeemer Presbyterian Church, was über brilliant and very deep—in head and heart. So deep that he had decided not to write any book till he was in his fifties. “Writing a book in your 50s will go twice as fast and be twice as good as if you try the same book in your 30s. It’s just good stewardship to wait,” he told The Gospel Coalition, which he was co-founder and Vice President of.

The other dimension I admired most about Keller was how ambidextrous he was in elucidating the gospel and engaging the culture, simultaneously! Stupendous! That, to me, was epitomized in his invitation to speak on his obviously Christian worldview book, ‘The Meaning of Marriage,’ at Google in Silicon Valley. Check out his presentation and responses to their questions and comments. Dr. Keller mentored many, near and far, in-person, in spirit and via media. Those around the world who were directly mentored through his Redeemer City to City should count themselves fortunate, blessed. I just spotted on Facebook a touching tribute from a pastor friend of mine from Brazil who recently planted a church in Rome, inspired and equipped by Rev. Keller.

As a latter day follower of Tim on Twitter, I admired the way he vulnerably yet resolvedly faced his imminent death, having been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer since 2020, a sequel to his 2002 thyroid cancer battle. All the while incarnationally demonstrating ‘The Meaning of Marriage’ through the dynamics with his wife of nearly 50 years, Kathy Kristy. Tim transitioned into glory on Friday the nineteenth (of May), 2023.

Dr. Tim Keller’s influence on the church and the world for Christ is deep and wide. I hope we share a table, again, at the grand, imminent marriage feast of the Lamb in eternity. Till then, Rest in Peace, champ! #Maranatha!

Of Kanévals, Kanébals & Kanévores.

Co-founders of Perbi Cubs sandwiching Kanéval partner-influencer, Nana Aba Anamoah, media personality & General Manager of GHOne TV/Starr FM.

 

This year, the capital city of Ghana where my wife hails from and where I was born has been named by UNESCO as its twenty-third World Book Capital. Accra takes over from Guadalajara, Mexico (2022) and will be handing the baton to Strasbourg, France come April 2024.  Since ‘kané’ is the Ga word for read—and Ga being the language of the Accra people—Perbi Cubs Library services creatively replaced the near-homophonic ‘carni’ in ‘carnival’ with ‘kané’ and coined the word ‘Kanéval’ to bring fun to reading, which is otherwise unfortunately perceived widely as a bore and a chore.

As official partners of UNESCO Accra World Book Capital 2023 (AWBC ‘23), Perbi Cubs will be organizing Kanéval as a fantastic year-long program, a traveling fun fair transitioning from place to place with lots of amusements intertwined with lots of reading. You will find a fuller history of the UNESCO AWBC’23 partnership and details of the year-long fiesta here.

 

RESCUE FROM KANÉBALS

We are of the conviction that this Kanéval social service campaign needs to involve key influencers from all walks of life, from CEOs to Black Stars players to musicians, to consistently show that reading is fun and leads to success. The campaign will consist of various events in-person and online, including book fairs, storytelling sessions, and community outreach programs. By making reading fun and accessible, we can encourage more people to read and ultimately improve literacy rates in the community.

When we began approaching various influencers to join us on this reading revolution campaign, a massive behavioural change intervention, some of the stories we heard about the generally poor reading attitudes and habits of Ghanaian society were stupefying. We found kindred spirit in Nana Aba Anamoah (photo above), media personality and General Manager of GHOne and Starr FM, who unbeknownst to us had years back initiated a reading campaign known as ‘Raising Readers.’ She too had involved several influencers, including former Ghanaian president Jerry John Rawlings, to read with the children in a certain deprived area of Accra. Book donations in their thousands to the cause were a shot in the arm.

At some point it was clear parental involvement would bolster this behavioural change campaign. Some parent did accompany their children and wards to the reading sessions. Mostly reluctantly. In spite of these mostly illiterate parents sucking their teeth after only a little while, thinking of all the other more ‘productive’ ways they could be spending their time, Nana Aba and team pressed on. In fact, at the height of her intervention they had decided that once a week was not enough for the pace and profundity of the transformation they sought so they decided to leave books with the families and replace them when they returned the week after.

 

 

All seemed well and good until the following week when some medical doctors on the Raising Readers campaign team who had gone down the road to grab some snacks returned with horror on their faces. When Nana Aba relates this story, she might not be aware but her face betrays the pain of the let-down she felt. The snacks that the team mates purchased in the catchment area had been nicely wrapped in freshly torn out pages of last week’s books! Kanébals (do you see what I’ve done with ‘cannibal’ and ‘kané’?) had dismembered the hitherto living literary friends, ripping them from their saddle-stitched and perfect-bound spines and repurposing the cadavers as food packaging. Ah!

When we related this story to another influencer on our bill, Kafui Dey (photo above), author and Breakfast host on GTV, he told us worse. Sometimes it’s pages of even the Bible that are Kanébalized for wrapping food!

 

WANTED: KANÉVORES IN THE KAPITAL

Perbi Cubs, convinced that readers are leaders and leaders are readers, has from inception sought to raise lion-leaders, hence the referral to our 10,000 young patrons as cubs (the young of lions) rather than the typical ‘kids’ (the young of goats).

By the end of the year-long Accra World Book Kapital, we seek to have enrolled an army of at least 100,000 cubs who are voracious readers, Kanévores. If carnivorous lions are the king of the jungle, we imagine that Kanévores rule the world.

 

KALL TO ACTION

According to UNESCO, as of 2021 only 6% of children in classes two and three in public basic schools could read and understand anything they read. Lack of sufficient reading resources and very large class sizes are among the root causes of the problem, but the overarching root cause is that society does not value reading. Reading is seen as a chore, a punishment or even a necessary evil! Yet per credible research, the love for reading is a stronger indicator of a child’s success in school and their future career than even their parents’ level of education and their socioeconomic status.

 

 

Join us in promoting the joy of reading and improving literacy rates in the community, particularly among children in public basic schools, by becoming a partner for Kanéval. Together, we can make a real difference in the lives of our community members and future generations. Let’s celebrate and make the most of Accra’s selection as UNESCO World Book Capital 2023.

 

KONCLUSION

Accra has been selected as UNESCO World Book Capital 2023 and Kanéval is a one-year social service campaign organized by Perbi Cubs, as official partners of UNESCO AWBC 2023, to celebrate this achievement and promote the joy of reading and improving literacy rates in the community.

The success of the campaign depends on a coalition of all stakeholders in the book industry, influencers, and strong partnership with the media. Together, through massive Kanévals all year, we can raise Kanévores and end apathy towards the written word that results in Kanébalism and the like. May readers rise and leaders come to light to transform society and impact the world—from Africa to the Rest.

The Way Up is Down.

At Easter, I threw a challenge to the leaders in my network: lay down yourself for someone else’s uplifting. This challenge was triggered by inspiration I received when I had just returned from a college graduation the week before Holy Week. Although it had been a season of graduation ceremonies in Ghana across many tertiary institutions, this was a special one, a very special one.

About six years ago, our family travelled to Ghana from Canada on furlough. We had planned to stay the entire period at my parents-in-love’s residence in Accra. Being a reasonably big-sized big family (the children weren’t even seven yet!) we obviously needed some domestic assistance. We were glad to welcome a promising young lady, Benedicta, as our new house help after a couple of failed trials.

As we lived with her and observed her initiative, diligence, smartness, humility, kindness and care we took an extra interest in what her ultimate dream was. She had the potential to be like any one of us high income, high impact professionals and not necessarily having to be confined to a vocation of domestic assistance her entire life. We found out about her high school final grades and thought they could be improved. And so we (my wife and I, parents-in-love and other family members) decided to invest in her, everything from extra classes through re-sit examinations. Even when she was finally given a shot at college my mother-in-law would get her books and do mock interviews with her to prepare for the entrance interviews. Long story short, she made it into nursing college.Now, that is the graduation we went for that day.

Today, Benedicta is a nurse. She graduated from the Nurses & Midwives Training College in Teshie, Accra, Ghana. From house help to nurse; and that is what brought me to the Easter challenge because at Easter, we see the ultimate leader Himself laying down His life for the people He saw value in. At the risk of sounding holier-than-though, the previous family she left to serve ours was just about to invest in her to be a fried pork seller by the street.

 

JOHANNINE CHALLENGE

Everybody knows John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” But what a lot of people who are not schooled in Trinitarian theology don’t realize is that this scripture is basically saying that God so loved the world—God so saw value in you and me—that he gave Himself for us, because God is Father-Son-Spirit. The ultimate leader laid down Himself for our uplifting.

 

PAULINE CHALLENGE

This giving of Himself or laying down His life for us is spoken of by St. Paul’s to the Church in Philippi in such humble and humbling terms. He begins in Philippians 2:5 by exhorting that “your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus.” Let’s take Eugene Peterson’s contemporary version:

^5-8 Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion.” [1]

Wow! God becoming a man was not just humbling, it was humiliating. Yet even when formed and found in appearance of a human, he could’ve been a very proud man but no! He was down-to-earth and mingled with tax collectors and ‘sinners’. In fact, it was on the night he was betrayed–during Holy Week–that He washed his own disciples’ dirty and stinky feet and wiped them with a towel around his waist.

The way up is down, for because of this humble attitude and action,  “God lifted him high and honored him far beyond anyone or anything, ever, so that all created beings in heaven and on earth—even those long ago dead and buried—will bow in worship before this Jesus Christ, and call out in praise that he is the Master of all, to the glorious honor of God the Father.” [2]  Even those who are not voluntarily honoring Jesus now will bow one day, compelled. All shall bow to the one who first bowed the lowest and is now raised the highest.

 

YOUR CHALLENGE

As a leader, I want to challenge you to choose one person, choose one thing to do this month (we’re still in the month of Easter) that involves laying down your preference, time, or money, sacrificing something, dying a little so that someone can live, graduate, have a better life etc. I challenge you to do that because that is the essence of ultimate leadership. Leadership is not about us, it is about those who take inspiration, follow, and learn from us who we get to empower and guide;  those around us.

It’s sad to see so many places in the world, especially in Africa, where government official think it is all about them. Unfortunately, even in the church there are a myriad instances where pastors are doing extremely well socioeconomically and there are congregants who are not faring well, at all. Sometimes these leaders are literally fleecing the people, milking them dry till they bleed. That’s not leadership at all, and certainly not servant leadership. Leadership is laying down our lives, laying down our gifts so that others will be blessed. It is going down to pick the downtrodden and lifting them up.

Cecelia Chan poignantly put it this way: “Instead of laying a red carpet for yourself to walk on, lay a bridge and let the young people walk over to you.” This is my challenge to you, at Easter and beyond: lay down yourself for someone else’s uplifting. God bless and honour you too as you learn to lead like Jesus.

 

References

[1] Philippians 2:5-8, The Message

[2] Philippians 2:9-11, The Message