Leader Day, October Day

The world is not in a good place. Leadership is the cause. And when it comes to Ghana’s situation in particular, I have personally been shocked at the number of C-level leaders I have interacted with that have either completely lost hope in the future of the country or nearly have. “How did we get here???” one CEO of a major bank asked me (yes, with three question marks).

If “everything rises and falls on leadership” and “leadership is cause, everything else is effect,” then there is no other way than to attribute the politico-socio-economic state of our nation to leadership (or the lack thereof). In the same way, if there is any one thing that will elevate the conversation, and the nation with it, it is leadership.

 

DO OR DIE TRYING

As one belonging to the tribe of eternal optimists, I have sworn that in my lifetime I will either see the flourishing Ghana that our forebears anticipated on 6th March, 1957 when the modern state was born, or die trying.  When the nascent nation was named ‘Ghana,’ our great grandparents were hopeful it would reflect the prosperity of the old Ghana empire, hence our new name (from Gold Coast). Oh, it bears repeating: our tribe of eternal optimists will see to a prosperous Ghana in our lifetime or die trying.

 

 

“I HAVE A DREAM, I HAVE A DREAM…”

Every true leader has a dream they passionately pursue with their people. I realize there is a day dedicated to almost every cause under the sun and Sustainable Development Goal—women’s day, water day, literacy day, friendship day, founders day …  even toilet day. Yet the one thing that makes each of these causes to rise and fall has no such day dedicated to it to elevate and emphasize it. Is a day enough? Surely not; but it is a good catalyst for the remaining three hundred and sixty four or five days.

My fellow Maxwell-trained and certified collaborators in Ghana and I have a dream that ultimately the first Friday of October each year will become universally known as LEADER DAY. There is nothing special about the first Friday in October per se except that consistently for about a decade now, our mentor and leadership expert, John C Maxwell, has been gathering some of the best leadership minds and hearts on the planet to speak to the issue, and we might as well leverage the opportunity rather than reinvent the wheel. Live2Lead is the name of that event. The name says it all, that’s our purpose on earth: We live to lead.

Gwen Addo, the pulchritudinous CEO of the Hair Centre and speaker at Live2Lead Ghana ‘22 affirms this vision: “I also pray your dream comes true and October 7 becomes a “leadership day” or perhaps October becomes a “leadership month.”” She continues, “leadership is close to my heart … and why not dream it bigger than just a day.”

You and I know the dearth of leadership in our country. We Maxwell certified trainers who are Ghanaian are aiming to get 2,000 leaders at all levels to benefit from the LIVE simulcast from Atlanta. We will organize local content for our context first, sandwiching the global feed. You would want to be with Patrick Awuah (Founder & CEO, Ashesi University), Patricia Obo-Nai (CEO, Vodafone), Uncle Ebo Whyte (CEO, Roverman Productions), Gwen Gyimah Addo (CEO, The Hair Senta), Kathleen Addo (Chairperson, National Council for Civic Education) and Kwamina Asomaning (CEO, Stanbic Bank). The core issue on the table this time, or shall I say by the fireside, is “Leading with Integrity & Inspiring Hope, for the Common Good.”

 

 

STRATEGY

On October 7, we shall convene 2,000 Ghanaian leaders online. At least half of them will be from 100 companies, institutions and organizations which would send 10 of their leaders to Live2Lead as their investment in themselves as well as boldly staking their claim in the prosperity of Ghana by raising the leadership lid in the country, one company at a time. All these companies will be listed as patrons in the event handbook, website and social media (in alphabetical order).

The other half will be made up of executive leaders from the private sector, the establishment leaders (public service) and emerging leaders from our schools and universities, representing the next generation. Companies, institutions and organizations which want to go beyond patron status will be given opportunity to sponsor the establishment and emerging leaders in exchange for significant air time and eyeballs.

This 2,000 is only starters; we shall double in 2023; and double again and again till at least 2% of all leaders in Ghana are connected to this Live2Lead tribe of learners who lead and leaders who learn. That is the exact critical mass need to see a self-propagating movement of leaders worth following in Ghana.

 

CONCLUSION

The feedback from the ground as I’ve gone around is damning. Ruinous to the extent that although the theme we initially chose for our local content is ‘Leading with Integrity for the Common Good,’ we’ve had to come up with a conjoint theme of HOPE. Our people need hope. Leaders are brokers of hope, thus when they themselves are broken to the extent that they have no hope, what shall the rest of the people do?

Arise Ghanaian leaders!, established and emerging ones alike. We are better than this. Yet perhaps we are expecting leadership behaviours, values and attitudes that we haven’t first trained into people. Since we Live2Lead (that’s our purpose) let’s then Live2Learn (that’s the process) so we can all lead better and all make our nation great and strong. When the leader gets better, everyone and everything else does too. So let’s all show up!

One day in October, for starters. Just one day but who knows? Perhaps ‘October Day’ will in my grandchildren’s day be as well-known as ‘May Day’ is today. And for even better reasons, leadership-wise.

 

PS.

An event is not enough for sustained transformation thus there are leadership development and training pathways that will later be shared as a follow-up process between October 7 and the next Leader Day a year hence.

SO YOU THINK YOU CAN LEAD WITHOUT EQ IN A VUCA WORLD?

 

As one of the Pan African Cohort facilitators of BCA Leadership, I just got off a scintillating Zoom call with amazing African C-level leaders from across the continent—East Africa (like Kenya and Uganda), West Africa (I recall Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Ghana), North Africa (Egypt) and Southern Africa (Malawi, South Africa). We talked about Emotional Intelligence and the whole idea of VUCA. The goal of this blog is to summarize the essentials of the topic, which most participants described as ‘intriguing’: “So you think you can lead effectively without EQ in a VUCA world?” Really, this is a rhetorical question because no one in their right senses would say, “Yes, I can lead effectively without Emotional Intelligence (EQ)” in the first place, let alone in a world that’s described as VUCA.

 

WHAT ON EARTH IS VUCA? 

VUCA is a term that came from the military space, especially at the end of the cold world war when without the two clear polarizing forces the whole world was described as Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous.  Guess what? If the end of the last century was said to be VUCA then imagine just how much more VUCA it is now. Look at the volatility of the world today, look at the speed of transformation, the dizzying digital economy. Consider the uncertainty with COVID-19 and this post-pandemic world. Is it even a post-pandemic or rather para-pandemic world as in some places it seems over and in others, COVID is still raging? Look at the complexity of the world. How could a microscopic virus emerge in a small place in some corner of the world called Wuhan, China, and the whole world gets grabbed into this? Some things are just ambiguous right now. It’s a VUCA world. There wouldn’t be enough space to write out all the feelings these VUCA times have generated in people, especially anxiety.

 

HOW ABOUT EQ?

Even before the VUCAness of the world, Emotional Intelligence had been identified as the key thing for succeeding in leadership. It is archaic 20^th century thinking that IQ (intelligence quotient) makes a good leader for a total leader not only has IQ, in terms of book smarts or cognitive intelligence, but also Emotional Intelligence (EI/EQ) in terms of being intelligent about feelings and Global Intelligence (GQ). Humans like to think we are rational people but at the end of the day we are emotional beings. The term was first coined in 1990 by researchers John Mayer and Peter Salovey, but was later popularized by psychologist Daniel Goleman five years later.

We now know that 80-90% of success in Executive Leadership depends on Emotional Intelligence and not cognitive intelligence. Don’t get me wrong, I am not dumb. I am a medical doctor for crying out loud. Intelligence is important but guess what? When it comes to Executive Leadership, IQ only gets you into the door, it takes EQ to play the game. And win. After about 128, IQ doesn’t matter anymore! Given the same level of IQ, technical skills, and competence, it’s EQ that would make all the difference in how much one succeeds (or not).

Emotional intelligence, according to Psychology Today, is “the ability to identify and manage one’s own emotions, as well as the emotions of others.” It is thus made up of the following four blocks:

 

BUT THERE’S PROBLEM

So being the amazing leaders we are, we figured out we cannot just sit idly twiddling our thumbs and watch VUCA happen without responding. In 2007, one Robert Johansen (a distinguished fellow at the Institute for the Future), came up with a behavioral leadership model he called VUCA Prime to counteract each of the four elements of VUCA with a specific positive response which starts with the same four letters. VUCA Prime then is to have Vision over Volatility, to overcome Uncertainty let’s have Understanding, then Clarity over Complexity and to overcome Ambiguity let there be Agility. 

Well, I have been studying this since the pandemic began and was thinking recently how good VUCA Prime is but how so very cognitive it is! Why is VUCA Prime so cognitive and does not take enough emotions into cognizance especially when we know 90% of success will depend on a leader’s emotional awareness (of self and others) and responses? 

 

WHAT IS VUCA EQ THEN?

Consequently, I have designed something called VUCA EQ to provide a more comprehensive and potent leadership response to VUCA beyond the cognitive, one that significantly takes emotional intelligence into consideration. Like VUCA Prime, each of the VUCA EQ responses also begins with the same four letters.

Firstly, V is Verification: we need to be able to decipher what our emotions are and label them correctly. Then we need to be able to do the same for others as well so we can respond rather than just react, and we can manage our emotions and that of others instead of just trying to control them. The world of command and control is gone! 

Secondly, instead of Uncertainty and just responding with the cognitive Understanding that VUCA Prime proposes, we rather respond in Unison. What I mean by Unison is to respond with our three brains. You have the cognitive brain but you also have your emotional brain called the limbic system. EQ is not just a ‘heart’ kind of thing, no! Emotional Intelligence has to do with the brain too. Or even more annoying, called ‘soft skills.’ EQ produces hard results on the balance sheet and cashflow statements! There is the Cognitive brain, Emotional brain, and Instinctive brain and VUCA EQ is about responding with all three in unison.

 

 

For Complexity, not only overcome with clarity but with Conveyance. Powerfully transmit emotional then logical information and carry across values and perspectives, considering emotional data and communicating emotions first. Remember to start with emotional data when decision-making and communicating eg. I feel vexxed about this decision and I’m aware most people in the company feel anxious….  Connect with emotions and convey them in response to complexity. 

Then finally, for Ambiguity, not only thrive with agility but by Automotivity. In other words, learn to move people’s emotions or move people emotionally. Automotivity means containing within itself the means of propulsion or movement. Mobilize people in such consonance and resonance with what they want (motives) and how they want (motivations) that they move in a self-propelling manner. After all, why do you suppose feelings are called e-motions? Feelings move us, they move the world. We may not like to acknowledge it but they do. How do you learn to know people’s motives and their motivations so that you can ride on that to send them (better still, travel with them) to a place where they ought to go?

 

CONCLUSION

Leadership is in the transportation business. We move people from here to there and without the power of Emotional Intelligence to move people (think e-motions) towards a shared, noble purpose, we are going nowhere ourselves in the first place and taking no one with us for that matter. Don’t you ever think you can successfully lead, especially in this VUCA world, without Emotional Intelligence.

PANDEMIC OR NO PANDEMIC, POSITIVENESS IS STILL A FUEL FOR SUCCESS

The following is a snap peak of the preface to the third edition of Dr. Yaw Perbi’s third book, ‘Positiveness: a fuel for success’, first published in 2003 to commemorate his silver jubilee.

 

It took a global pandemic to make this third edition of Positiveness: A Fuel for Success, possible. I have been trying to republish this book for nearly a decade now. The revised manuscript was done in 2012, and I had nearly completed the back-and-forth with a publishing company. All was ready to go, or so I thought. Then life happened and I put this on the backburner. Until now. It took the lockdowns of the Coronavirus pandemic of 2020 to get this going again. 

I have changed a lot since I turned 25 and first launched this book and so have many things too. We didn’t even have smartphones back then, and the internet was still a novelty. But some things have remained the same. After thousands of copies sold and many countries reached, “through all the changing scenes of life, in trouble and joy,” what hasn’t changed is the fact that positiveness is still fuel for success. 

In the past two decades, I have lived and worked for a year or more in three countries on two continents. In doing so, I have needed a whole lot of positiveness, especially in those times when I was geographically separated from my family. I have formally had various occupations and preoccupations ranging from being a medical doctor in Ghana, a military captain with the United Nations in Cote d’Ivoire, a leadership consultant and speaker around the world, pastor of a Chinese congregation in the French city of Montreal, a financial security advisor and investment consultant, to being president of a couple of Canadian and global charities. Positiveness is still fuel for success no matter the field of endeavour. 

You see, this book was only my third book and, back in 2003, I wrote and self-published it with a white cover and silver inscriptions to celebrate my twenty-fifth birthday (silver jubilee). At the time, I was a struggling medical student in Ghana attempting to do ‘what Napoleon couldn’t do’. I was trying to straddle the world of medicine and human development. In May 2003, together with a group of friends, while still in med school, I founded The HuD Group to inspire and empower young people to reach their full potential. Now I am a full-fledged medical doctor who has hung up his stethoscope— after four years of clinical practice—to focus on human development, especially holistic leadership development, because I sincerely believe, like my mentor John C. Maxwell, that “everything rises and falls on leadership.”

The HuD Group began in Ghana but, at the time of writing this, I am feverishly coordinating our global operations in two dozen countries on all continents of the world and currently domiciled in Montreal, Canada. If I thought I needed a daily prescription of positiveness back in 2003, then I might need a thrice daily prescription now. The two-year battle with the Canada Revenue Agency alone to get charitable status for The HuD Group warrants a book on its own. I’ll save that for another day, but it took positiveness to fuel my success. 

When I was much younger and naïve, I dreamed of working with the United Nations. And unlike many for whom that is still a dream, I achieved it. I did that, for a year, in La Cote d’Ivoire. Even while already enjoying that success, I still needed positiveness as fuel when I got car-wrecked on July 21, 2008 and lost two of the military colleagues I was travelling with. It was positiveness that got me back on the road to recovery. My commanding officer, out of rare soldier-sympathy, wanted me to return home (to Accra, Ghana) and recuperate but cheers to positiveness, I was convinced to stay put and serve with grace. I prevailed. Positiveness prevailed. 

So yes, life has changed—a whole lot— and so have I since 2003. Now married to my dear wife, Anyele, and a father to seven amazing children, I certainly have a broader and deeper perspective on life today. But if anything, these changes have only affirmed and confirmed the principles that were penned in this book nearly two decades ago. Positiveness is fuel for growth, success, and significance in any and every endeavour, and at whatever age and stage in life, that hasn’t changed. 

 

THE PRESENCE ~ Part 3 (of 3)

 

Do you know the story about the wealthy arts collector and his son? Eventually when both died the man willed all of his wealth—unbeknownst to the other wealthy art connoisseurs and museums who were eyeing his stuff—to whoever bought the ‘unimpressive’ but deeply precious painting of his son. Usually, this story is told in an evangelistic sense for people to consider Jesus Christ as their Saviour and Lord—“whoever takes the Son, gets it all”—yet this is the same Son who said, “But very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate [THE PRESENCE] will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you” (John 16:7). Friend, whoever takes the Spirit, THE PRESENCE, into 2022, gets it all.

 

THE PAINTING is like THE PRESENCE

Everything you need is in THE PRESENCE; just like every painting the connoisseurs wanted was in that one painting of the son. Moses knew, that everything he and the Israelites would ever need was in THE PRESENCE. And so when God said “I’m not going with you guys any longer,” Moses retorted without skipping a beat, “then we’re not going!”

1Then the Lord said to Moses, “Leave this place, you and the people you brought up out of Egypt, and go up to the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, saying, ‘I will give it to your descendants.’ 2I will send an angel before you and drive out the Canaanites, Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 3Go up to the land flowing with milk and honey. But I will not go with you, because you are a stiff-necked people and I might destroy you on the way.” (Exodus 3)

As I said in the beginning, many people wouldn’t mind such a deal at all, just like heaven without God! If getting to the Promised Land was guaranteed, with an angel to boot, what’s the problem if it’s ‘only that’ God isn’t coming along for the ride? At the various Watch Night/Cross Over services around the world, I dare say that for the majority of people as long as were assured of the promises of God, angelic guidance and protection, prosperity of what to eat and wear and spend (milk and honey) in 2022, who cares about THE PRESENCE?!

12Moses said to the Lord, “You have been telling me, ‘Lead these people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. You have said, ‘I know you by name and you have found favor with me.’ 13If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you. Remember that this nation is your people.” 14The Lord replied, “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”

15 Then Moses said to him, “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. 16 How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?” 

The company you need is in THE PRESENCE, favour is in THE PRESENCE, pleasure is in THE PRESENCE, rest is in THE PRESENCE, distinction is in THE PRESENCE. We’ve all been raised to think how sad it was that Moses never entered the Promised Land. Are you sure? What if I told you he did? What if the Promised Land is God Himself? I’ll leave you to wrestle with that for a bit.

 

SO WHAT? FOLLOW THE CLOUD

I hope I’ve been able to convince you that EVERYTHING you need for 2022 is in THE PRESENCE of the LORD; all you’ll EVER WANT is in THE PRESENCE. Do you then now have the faith to pray, “Dear God, all I need for the New Year is YOU! so All I want for New Year, is YOU!”

Remember, s(h)e who takes the Spirit, THE PRESENCE, gets everything! Lord, LEAD! LORD, your presence or nothing! Will you follow the crowd or the CLOUD? Using ‘CLOUD’ as an a acronym, here’s how to practicalize this message and maximize THE PRESENCE in 2022: Cultivate, (Be) Led, Obey, Unwind, Discern.

 

1. CULTIVATE— Cultivate THE PRESENCE

This year, learn to stop at set times (also spontaneously) during the dam, calm your spirit (breathe in and out deeply) and centre yourself by being conscious of your breathing and God’s presence, saying, for example (with breathing in), “Lord, “I breathe in your Spirit…” and as you exhale, “I breathe out my stress or anger.”

Incidentally, on the very 31st January, prior to traveling to preach this message in the evening, my wife and I were going to look at a piece of property and burst a tyre. She had to continue alone in an Uber. Initially I was getting upset, wondering whether this was an attack on 31^st or whatever… Then the Spirit reminded me of this very message. I stopped, calmed down, centred myself, cultivating THE PRESENCE.

 

2. LED— Be Led by the PRESENCE

“For those who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God…” (Rom 8:14). Let the Lord lead in 2022. Listen & be led.

 

3. OBEY—Obey the promptings of THE PRESENCE

What more is there to say?

 

4. UNWIND—Relax, Lounge, Chill and build intimacy with God

Mark Thibodeaux describes four stages of praying, or relating to THE PRESENCE. By unwind I mean the fourth; not the first three.

o Talking at God—This is simply parroting prayers, whether recited ones like “Bless me, Lord, for what we’re about to receive we thank thee O Lord” or the kind of mindless speaking in tongues

o Talking to God—We become more comfortable finding our own words to speak to God, rather than readymade prayers but still “give me, give me, give me more, Lord.”

o Listening to God—This is when we begin to enjoy a two-way relationship with him.

o Being with God—A final stage is where “finally, we simply enjoy being in the presence of God—who loves us. This is far more important than any particular activity we might do with Him [or for Him]. His presence makes all of life fulfilling.”

 

5. DISCERN—Scripture says we should not be foolish and act thoughtlessly, but understand what the Lord wants us to do, understudy God’s moves and waves and will. Moses said, “show me your ways” as He asked for God’s presence and glory. My favourite definition of discernment is Ruth Haley Barton’s: “the capacity to recognize and respond to the presence and the activity of God—both in the ordinary moments and in the larger decisions of our lives.”

 

CONCLUSION

Let’s thank God for every time you experienced THE PRESENCE in 2021. Confess your eagerness to have stuff and success in 2022 but not necessarily HIM! Let’s pray for a life that follows the CLOUD in 2022. If you’re serious about THE PRESENCE, tell God, in the words of Don Moen’s classic:

If Your presence doesn’t go with us
Lord we don’t want to leave this place
Lord we need You near
As we go from here
To lead us by Your love and grace

May Your presence fill us every day
May Your Spirit lead the way
Lord to You we call
Let Your glory fall
And may Your presence go with us

If we have found favor in Your sight
Show us Your ways O Lord
Cause we want to know You
And live in Your light
For all of our days
Show us Your ways

We have our hopes
And we have our dreams
But we cannot go
Where You will not lead

Lord to You we call
Let Your glory fall
And may Your presence go with us

Rest assured, we have a guaranteed general, guide, guard, giver and glory for 2022, the “Captain of Israel’s Host,” THE PRESENCE.

Are You Aligned with the Mission of God in the Marketplace?

 

Marketplace leaders of faith, it’s time to align. Since returning to Ghana, after several years mainly in Canada, that is a word I’ve heard a lot in my re-orientation: align. “Let’s align, let’s align,” I hear this quite often! CEOs want to align with their boards, other C-level executives need to align with their various teams, sales and marketing must be congruent, and everyone needs to align with the company’s vision, mission and values. All well and good.

Let’s elevate this alignment conversation as I dedicate this particular blog to marketplace leaders who are Christ-followers. The Christ-following marketplace leader does not, and indeed cannot, have the same motives and bottom line as someone who isn’t a Christ-follower. This week, I had the opportunity to speak to a group of emerging leaders on “Man with a Vision on a Mission,” which was essentially about the purpose of life. Dr. Myles Munroe of blessed memory once put it so poignantly, “The greatest tragedy in life is not death, but a life without a purpose.” Purpose is when you know and understand what you were born to be and accomplish, what something was made for. Or as they say in the French city of Montreal my family and I have been domiciled in for over a decade, raison d’être (reason for being). I’ve also held discussions with some of the C-level executives in the Ghana Club 100 from mining to fintech about purpose. (Ghana has christened the top 100 companies as the Ghana Club 100, akin to the Fortune 500 in the United States). These premium companies have profit, for sure, but how about purpose?

 

WHY WE ‘GO TO MARKET’

We are in business for profit, that’s the bottomline—or so we thought until a couple of decades ago, the concept of ‘Triple Bottom Line’ arose (thank you John Elkington) as a result of people pursuing profit at the expense of human well-being and the sustainability of our earth. The bottomline has since been triadized as Profit, People, and the Planet. That’s the triple bottomline. All three come together for holistic prosperity and complete sustainability. 

Profit, is about acing financial performance, generating dollars for shareholders. By People we mean a focus on a business’s societal impact, or its commitment to human beings—within and without the company or organization. People are the other stakeholders beyond the shareholders (who are taken care of largely by profit). We mean people impacted by business decisions from customers and employees to community members. With all the talk about climate change and the like, companies are now tasked to also aim at making a positive impact on the Planet as they seek to capitalize on it to make profit.

Yet while all three are important to everyone in the market—of all faiths, little faith or no faith—I refer to the above treble as the temporal bottom line. There is a timeless triple bottom line, which is what I want to draw the attention of marketplace leaders of faith to.

 

MISSION IN THE MARKET

I’ve realized that we need a reorientation of why we’re in the marketplace, and what our mission is, as Christ-followers. I often tell people that if they don’t have a personal purpose statement, they wouldn’t know which company to work with or for because they won’t know if they are aligned. Your values must be compatible with theirs. Similarly, if you are a Christ-follower, your mission in the marketplace must be aligned with God’s mission.

What exactly is God’s mission? That’s the timeless triple bottom line I refer to. God is on a three-fold mission in the world:

1. Towards Himself—to bring glory to Himself. God gets glory when we reflect His good nature in our being and doing. He desires, and deserves, to receive glory also from the obedience, service and worship of all nations and peoples in every sphere of life, from Archaeology to Zoology. Are your life, leadership and work God-glorifying?

2. Towards creation—to bring a blessing to all created things. God is on a mission to bless all of creation, not just people. People, first and foremost, but all of creation is a candidate for God’s blessing. While the blessing would include the temporal financial profit, people’s prosperity and the planet’s care (triple bottom line), the greatest of blessing is all creation being freed from the penalty, power and presence of sin to be God’s friend once more, to worship and serve Him and reflect His nature lost once-upon-an-Eden again. So, the second-fold mission of God in blessing creation comes through in the 3BL of business, but there is a redemptive element that I dare to say is the most important. I say this because that will outlast how long profit, this planet and this life will endure. Are your life, leadership and work creation-blessing?

3. Against evil—to vanquish evil and establish His Kingdom on earth. Yes, your mission as part of God’s grand mission is to pillage evil to establish God’s righteous, just, and equitable Kingdom on earth forever and ever, as it is in heaven. Are your life, leadership and work evil-crushing and Kingdom-establishing?

 

 

PRAYER AT WORK

We see the above three-fold mission of God in the prayer Jesus taught his disciples:

1. Glory to Himself—“Our father in Heaven, Hallowed be your name… For yours is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever and ever, amen.”

2. Blessing to Creation—“Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts (sins), as we also have forgiven our debtors.”

3. Against Evil—“Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven… And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one…”

Organizing prayer at work with like-minded, same-hearted folk of faith is good but being the answer to the prayer is even better—makes it complete.

 

BOTTOMLINE

Consider this! As a person, am I aligned with God’s mission? Is this what my life, leadership and work are all about: bringing God glory, blessing creation, defeating evil and establishing God’s kingdom? Is that what my company stands for? 

So being an effective agent of God in the marketplace is going for the timeless triple bottom line for God’s glory, for blessing people and the planet in general, but especially the blessing of redemption, and ultimately defeating evil to establish God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven, starting with your workplace. This is the tried-and-true-and-timeless triple bottom line. Is your work and leadership redemptive?

We must all align ourselves with God’s mission because to be with God on his mission is the greatest cause of all time for all people on Earth in any and every era. Oh, that it would be done in our marketplaces as it is in heaven!

WANTED: Intrapreneurs!

 

Have you ever come across a ‘WANTED’ notice?  Have you ever been on one? People can be wanted for good and bad reasons. Today, I’m here to share a WANTED notice with you on behalf of several business owners I get to coach and on my own behalf as a serial entrepreneur, WANTED: INTRAPRENEURS!

This was my passionate call during the final day of a whole week’s orientation and training of two dozen staff of Perbi Cubs Library Services, an evidence-based, cost-effective, literacy-promoting endeavour co-founded by my wife Anyele Perbi and I. This social enterprise has grown to serve 2,000 children in 200 schools and is set to scale some 10 times in the coming new school season (Deo volente) as a result of an innovative digital online library solution we’re partnering with various leading schools to roll out. The ‘problem’ of Covid-19 presented this entrepreneurial opportunity. I challenged our employees to become intrepreneurs. Here’s why.

 

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

First of all who is an entrepreneur?  An entrepreneur is simply a person who sets up a business or businesses, taking on financial risks in the hope of profit.  Investopedia offers an expanded definition of this as follows: “An entrepreneur is an individual who creates a new business, bearing most of the risks and enjoying most of the rewards. The process of setting up a business is known as entrepreneurship. The entrepreneur is commonly seen as an innovator, a source of new ideas, goods, services, and business/or procedures.” My definition is as simple as this: an entrepreneur is a problem-solver for profit.

Entrepreneurship is certainly not a job, it’s not even a profession or career; it’s a mindset and lifestyle. It is a mindset and lifestyle of taking ownership and risk to innovatively solve problems for profit. Hence employees who think and act like entrepreneurs are called intrapreneurs.

 

Intrapreneurs are employees who behave like Entrepreneurs. They have a work attitude and style that integrates response-ability, risk-taking, ownership, innovation (ROI). I like the acronym ROI because intrapreneurs really provide the best Return on Investment for their employers, business owners and indeed all stakeholders.  The first written use of the term ‘intrapreneur’ appeared in a 1978 paper by Gifford and Elizabeth Pinchot entitled Intra-Corporate Entrepreneurship but prior to that the poster child for intrapreneurship had been Art Fry of the 3M company, four years before (I shall summarize his story shortly). The Pinchots’ first book, Intrapreneuring: Why You Don’t Have to Leave the Corporation to Become an Entrepreneur (1985), presented an expansion of the intrapreneurship concept where they defined intrapreneurs as “dreamers who do. Those who take responsibility for creating an innovation of any kind within an organization.”

Here’s a more elaborate definition of Intrapreneurs by Jordan Daykin in Forbes magazine: “A team of competitive, confident individuals who are committed to innovation, passionate about work and producing higher value for their employer [indeed, all stakeholders]. They will need to have an entrepreneurial spirit, be activators of ideas and have a willingness to take calculated risks. In return for their desire to help the growth of the company over financial reward, they will receive support and resources to help make their ideas a reality.”

 

ART FRY THE INTRAPRENEURSHIP POSTER CHILD

Today, it’s hard to avoid 3M products, especially those sticky notes of theirs. The company is worth $5 billion with a recurring spot on the enviable Fortune 500 list but what most people don’t know is that its success is largely one of the power of intrapreneurship. In 1968, a 3M engineering employee called Art Fry attended a seminar given by another 3M scientist, Spencer Silver, on a unique adhesive the latter had developed. This innovation had an unusual molecular structure that gave it the unique characteristic of being strong enough to cling to objects but weak enough to allow for only a temporary, non-damaging bond.  It is reported that the scientific community didn’t take Silver seriously and he himself was still searching for a marketable use of his invention.

As the legend goes, Fry sang in his church choir on nights, and he used slips of paper to mark the pages of his workbook. When the book was opened, however, the makeshift bookmarks often moved around or fell out altogether defeating the whole point. On a Sunday in 1973, it occurred to him that Dr. Silver’s adhesive could be put to use in creating a better bookmark. If it could be coated on paper, Silver’s adhesive would hold a bookmark in place without damaging the page on which it was placed. Being the intrapreneur that he was, the next day, Fry requested a sample of the adhesive and began experimenting with it, coating only one edge of the paper so that the portion extending from a book would not be sticky. Fry experimented with writing notes to his boss, which broadened his original concept into the innovative Post-it Note product. 

In 1978, 3M marketed the sticky notes under the name “Press ‘n Peel.” Two years later, after sampling in 11 states across the country, 3M officially released the first Post-it Notes. They were a massive success right away, resulting in over $2 million in sales after only a year on the marketplace.

 

IF YOU DO GOOD…

The company 3M isn’t the sole beneficiary of Fry’s intrapreneurship. Time and space wouldn’t allow me to list all the accolades and achievements of Art Fry as a result of his intrapreneurship. As the saying goes, “If you do good, you do it for yourself, really.” Things have a way of coming back to us, don’t they? What we sow, we reap. In return for their desire to help the growth of the company over financial reward, not only do entrepreneurs “receive support and resources to help make their ideas a reality” (as Daykin says above and the Fry-3M story shows), they also obtain skills for their own concurrent or future enterprises, they can expect that others would treat them and their businesses the way they treated another’s. Intrapreneurs are singled out for extraordinary opportunities (I’ve done that for several people) and can always come back for referrals and recommendations from their managers/leaders/business owners. Above all, if you do good, you do it not only for yourself but also for your God. Then His kingdom will come more fully on earth as it is in Heaven.

 

“THIS IS MY FATHER’S WORLD”

The Good Book exhorts all and sundry, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.”  That is more than stewardship, I think. That is ownership right there. Taking ownership of the work one does not because they are owner per se, but because their Father in Heaven owns all things. “For everything comes from him and exists by his power and is intended for his glory. All glory to him forever! Amen.”

Sadly, I’ve heard people in Ghana who should know better, questioning a diligent and passionate worker taking risk and ownership and being innovative, an intrapreneur, as follows: “Adɛn? Adwuma no ɛyɛ wo papa dea?” To wit, “Why this hard work? Is this enterprise/organization your father’s?” The answer is supposed to be an apparent “no” but what if everyone of us who calls God “Father” responds, “Ampa! ɛyɛ me papa dea!” Meaning, “Yes! Of course! It is my Father’s. This is my Father’s world.”

 

LET’S DO THIS!

I wish everyone was an entrepreneur like my wife and me since there are enough problems to be solved in our world and profit to be made as a reward. Besides, I encourage people to separate their profession from their business, meaning, the fact that they have some employment or career does not exclude them from owning a side business for multiple streams of income (as long as you’re doing excellently well in your regular job and not robbing Peter to pay Paul). But the reality is that not everyone will be a business owner. Indeed, everyone doesn’t have to be an entrepreneur but everyone can (and must) be entrepreneurial, especially as an intrapreneur.

3 Secrets to Lasting 15 Years in Marriage

 

First of all, my wife (Anyele) and I  humbly acknowledge that “15 years is nothing” compared to our parents’ (both sets) over 40 years of marriage and the 70 years some awesome couples we’ve come across have done! Wow! That’s incredible!  Yet at the same time “15 years is something” considering that we’ve also come across marriages that were done, finished, caput, in months.  In our short 15 years we’ve seen so many do shorter than five years, let alone 10.  Fifteen?  We’ve tried.  We’ve even been used by God to salvage some marriages but have also heartbreakingly seen others dashed right before our eyes despite our efforts.

Secondly, I’m very wary of ‘3 secrets,’ ‘7 keys,’ ’10 ways,’ ’12 steps’ and what have you.  So why am I sharing ‘3 Secrets to Lasting 15 Years in Marriage’?  Well, Anyele and I just clocked 15 years on August 12, 2021.  For us, the bottomline is God’s grace–and right from the start Prof. Kwaku Osam of Legon Interdenominational Church had told us during our pre-marital counselling sessions that “there is a grace for marriage” and we claimed it–in good measure.  Maybe it’s true after all, but the thing about grace is that it works; and it has to be worked.  Allow me to share three means of that grace for marriage that have made us largely survive (and even thrive in certain specific areas).  No, I wouldn’t saddle you with ’15 lessons I have learned in 15 years of marriage’ so be grateful for just three (Lol!).

When we clocked 10 years the main thrust of our marriage lessons thus far was that marriage is the greatest character-forming school ever–even more than med. school.  I’ve been to both marriage school and medical school so trust me, I know what I’m talking about!  We called it the #1 Marriage Lesson That Nobody Talks About Much.  That blog really seemed to resonate with the 50,000 or so it reached within weeks, thanks to social media, and was reproduced on some prominent news agency websites.  It made me realize I shouldn’t play down on these key lessons, no matter how few and unwow, no matter how seemingly insignificant, no matter how humble they may be. You might scorn them; they might be life-saving for someone else.

Between year 10 and year 15, we have seen many people get married. Sadly we’ve not only seen many separations first-hand, we’ve witnessed more finalized divorces than within our first 10 years–real people, not just statistics.  These three things I’m going to share have been a means of grace for us to do 15 years, especially the last five: Caring Counsellors, Close Cohorts, Cool Tools.

 

CARING COUNSELLORS

The most stupid thing I’ve done in marriage has been to not seek professional counselling till after year 10.  We certainly have never brought any marital issue to any of our parents–it’s a no, no for many reasons that warrant a whole blog.  I’ve come to realize, though, that there are certain issues that can never be well resolved between just the couple without a third wise party who is close enough (caring) yet far enough (outside the cleavage of man and wife) to be able to see clearly and share candidly.  The notion, or even culture, that suggests that seeking professional counselling means one is weak or sick is toxic, it kills.  Even if one were weak and sick, that’s fine too (everyone is at some point in our frail humanity and wretched world).  We have seen people reach out when it was too late to salvage a totally hitherto salvageable situation (in our opinion).

 

Whether it’s through our conversations, their conferences or media (from books to YouTube videos), we really want to thank God for giving us the benefit of having Pete & Geri Scazzero (see picture above), Gerry & Kathy Kraemer, Carsten & Linda Pellman and indeed Shepherd’s Heart Ministry.

Apart from the listening ear, emphatic heart and vulnerable sharing of these caring counsellors, the ‘cool tools’ we’ll be sharing shortly have largely been learnt from them. An underlying paradigm that has buoyed everything else has been the Scazzeros ramming into our heads and hearts to lead in ministry and the marketplace out of the strength of our marriage, not out of the stress/strain of it–or even the death of it.

Of every single one of the divorces I’ve witnessed at close range, the couple did not have clear, regular, serious mentoring relationships.  It’s worse when the man especially submits to no one on earth and is a law onto himself. Ha!

 

CLOSE COHORTS

You think the things you’re going through are unique to you until you are vulnerable to share with a close community of others.  This must be a close community you can be vulnerable in because you are contemporaries (all in a similar stage in life), and are all truthful, honest and committed to the institution of marriage and the principles that make it work.

 

On WhatsApp, Anyele and I have labeled that close cohort, “inner circle.”  We inspire, encourage, teach, tease, correct, rebuke and hold each other accountable. On occasion we meet in person (see picture above).  God bless Nana Yaw & Beth Offei-Awuku, Victor & Esi Obeng, Amos & Evelyn Kevin Annan, and Franklin & Amma Eleblu. Franklin is my best friend, was my best man when we got married and soon after became my brother-in-law too!

 

COOL TOOLS

“Love your wife, Yaw.”

“OK, thank you very much. I would like to.”

“Very good.”

“But how?”

“Just do it! Obey the Bible.”

One thing I like about Westerners is their propensity to develop tools to make life a little easier. The Physics I recall says a tool is something to make work easier, any work, but especially hard work. Marriage is work, hard work. How then do we dare think we can make it without tools? There are many marriages that shouldn’t have ended if only the two involved had some of these cool tools.

This year I decided to run Family Foundations Masterminds and share some of these tools like the Community Temperature Reading, 10/10, Genograming Your Family, Family Vision & Mission Statement, Mapping out Emotional Needs & Action Points etc.  Even in fighting, there is a tool to fight cleanly! The Kraemers, Scazzeros and Pellman’s, together with Shepherd’s Heart Ministries have blessed us with all these tools! People, we’ve got to invest time, attention and finances in our marriages to obtain and utilize such tools.

 

CONCLUSION

On this occasion of our 15th anniversary, it’s really a celebration of Ubuntu–we are because YOU are.  Anyele and Yaw will have no marriage but for the community of caring counsellors and close cohorts with cool tools.  We’ve not made it because we’re super smart, über skilled and have impeccable character.  No.  We feel overwhelmingly thankful for the cool tools and community of counsellors and cohorts–three secrets to lasting 15 years (and more) in marriage.

 

PS. You may find a seven-minute video of the essence of this article here.

50 Shades of Coaching

 

Here is a list of about 50 kinds of coaching:

❖ Academic Coaching: Helping One Achieve Academic Excellence

❖ ADD/ADHD Coaching: To Understand the Most Common Learning Disorder – Attention Deficit Disorder / Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

❖ Alternative Lifestyle Coaching: To Get You Motivated, Strengthen Your Commitment and Re-align Your Goals

❖ Athlete Coaching: To Help Athletes Live a Balanced Life, Both Personally and Professionally

❖ Assessment Coaching: Walking Through Behavioral, Personality and Other Assessments Like the DISC

❖ Bereavement Coaching: Walking Through Painful Events with a Like Mind

❖ Business Coaching: Your Way to Business Success

❖ Career Coaching: Your Way to Fulfilling Your Financial Dreams

❖ Christian Life Coaching: Your Way to Emotional Maturity and Spiritual Fruitfulness

❖ College Entrance Coaching: Helping You Attend the School of your Dreams

❖ Communication Coaching: Opening Up the Link Between People

❖ Conflict Coaching: Working One on One to Achieve Balance

❖ Co-Parenting Coaching: Helping Divorced Parents Create a Positive, Workable Parenting Relationship

❖ Couples Coaching: Improving Communication Between Partners

❖ Creativity Coaching: Creative Struggle is Integral to the Life of the Artist

❖ Divine Purpose Coaching: To Re-Identify and Connect with One’s Centre

❖ Divorce Coaching: Helping People Transition to a New Life

❖ End of Life Coaching: Helping Those Left Behind

❖ Entrepreneur Coaching: For More Than Starting up a New Business

❖ Ethics Coaching: Living with Authenticity

❖ Executive Coaching: Moving the C-Suite On an Up  to Take Your Team to the Next Level

❖ Family Coaching: Helping Families Work Through Difficult Issues

❖ Health and Wellness Coaching: Focusing on the Whole Being

❖ Holistic Health Coaching: Finding the Light at the End of the Tunnel  and Balancing the Mind, Body and Spirit

❖ Laughter Coaching: To Bring More Lightness and Freedom

❖ Leadership Coaching: Putting You in the Right Direction to Chart the Course for Others

❖ Life Coaching: Your Way to Personal Success

❖ Men’s Empowerment Coaching: Helping Men Succeed with Excellence

❖ Military Transition Coaching: Helping You Adapt to Civilian Life

❖ Motivational Coaching: Helping One Achieve Personal Excellence

❖ Nature Coaching: Helping to Become One with Nature

❖ New Age Coaching: Self-help and New Thought Modalities

❖ Organizational Coaching: Clearing the Way to Clarity and Direction

❖ Parenting Coaching: Helping Parents Communicate and Understand their Children

❖ Pastoral Coaching: Coming Alongside Shepherds of God’s People

❖ Peer Coaching: Coaches Coaching Coaches

❖ Personal Development Coaching: Centers Around the Aspects of One’s Personal life

❖ Personal Finance Coaching: Your Way to Financial Freedom

❖ Physician Coaching: Helping Physicians Find a New Journey

❖ Recovery Coaching: Your Way to Recovering with Success

❖ Relationship Coaching: Building Personal and Professional Relationships

❖ Retirement Coaching: Transitioning to a New Life Stage

❖ Sales Coaching: Your Way to Increased Success and Profitability

❖ Self-Esteem Coaching: Helping People with Feelings of Value and Worth

❖ Singles Coaching: Helping Singles Find Healthy, Loving Relationships

❖ Special Needs Coaching: Helping Disabled Families and Individuals

❖ Spiritual Coaching: Helping People to Connect to the Divine

❖ Stress Management Coaching: Helping People Identify and Reduce Stress

❖ Success Coaching: Your Pathway to Personal and Professional Success

❖ Transitional Coaching: Helping People Through Big Life Changes

❖ Transpersonal Coaching: Finding Your Greatest Potential

❖ Weight Loss Coaching: Discovering New Healthy Lifestyles

❖ Women’s Empowerment Coaching: Encouraging Women to Embrace Their Talents

❖Youth Empowerment Coaching: Encouraging Young People to Discover and Fulfill Their Potential

 

This list is an adaptation of a list of 52 Life Coaching Niches Working Miracles Everyday by our coaching partner Barbara Wainright. You may go here to download a free copy of the book to discover which coaching niche is right for you!

TEAMS | Together Everyone Achieves Most Success

The story is told of an anthropologist who introduced a game to the children of an African tribe. He placed a basket of delicious fruits near a tree trunk and told them: “The first child to reach the tree will get the basket.”

When he gave them the start signal, to his astonishment they were walking together, holding hands, until they all reached the tree.  They simply shared the fruits and happily ate them! So baffled, with a furrowed brow he asked them, “Why did you do that when any one of you could get the basket only for yourself?”

They answered with glee, and to his amazement, “Ubuntu!”

“How can one of us be happy if all the rest are miserable?”

“Ubuntu” in their civilization means “I am because we are.” It is Xhosa from the African continent. The venerable Archbishop Desmond Tutu explains:  “Africans have a thing called ubuntu. It is about the essence of being human, it is part of the gift that Africa will give the world. It embraces hospitality, caring about others, being willing to go the extra mile for the sake of another. We believe that a person is a person through other persons, that my humanity is caught up, bound up, inextricably, with yours. When I dehumanize you, I inexorably dehumanize myself. The solitary human being is a contradiction in terms. Therefore you seek to work for the common good because your humanity comes into its own in community, in belonging.” 

 

TEAMS THEME LIKE A BROKEN RECORD

Together Everyone Achieves Most Success. The theme of teamwork just won’t go away! To those around me, I must’ve sounded like a broken record over the period. Ah! But broken record will soon take on another important meaning. Read on. It began a couple of weeks ago as I was finishing a write-up for our 4D assessment (image above) at YAW PERBI. The TEAMS portion of the assessment posits that TEAMS should consist of at least one each of a Theorizer, Executor, Analyzer, Manager and Strategist, that idea itself also forming another acronym for TEAMS. No one has all six. Even if they did, they wouldn’t be able to function optimally when all are needed simultaneously. Whatever you don’t have, the Creator has put in someone next to you in your ecosystem. A network is about nextwork, basically a net of next workers. 

This became very apparent to me when over these same couple of weeks I happened to be reading the old jewish book of Nehemiah, the guy in diaspora who returned to Jerusalem to lead a rebuilding campaign. The dominant word in the text about the rebuilding is “next.” An array of people, from priests to perfume-makers, male and female, built the next session of the broken walls of the city, some right in front of their house, until walls that had been down for over a century were rebuilt in only fifty-two days! Indeed, teamwork makes the dream work!

Former U.S. President Lyndon Johnson put it another way, “There are no problems we cannot solve together, and very few that we can solve by ourselves.” Going east, the Chinese have a proverb too that says, “Behind an able man there are always other able men.”

 

 

BETTER TOGETHER, FOR SURE!

Again over these same couple of weeks, my mother-in-law forwarded a video to me, featuring a passionate speaker who was emphasizing the power of building together. Incidentally, I happened to know the man–pastor Forbes of The Gambia, whose church in Banjul I had the privilege of speaking at about a decade ago. I quickly sent him word that he was trending. And he was. Forbes made a terrific point about how the fastest man in the world remains Usain Bolt of Jamaica, with a 2009 world record he set at 9.58 seconds remaining unbroken by any other human being for a dozen years now. Yet the 4 x 100m relay record by Bolt and three others stands at 36.84s, meaning an average of 9.21 seconds per runner. Get that? That’s a whole 37 seconds better than the best man in the world! That’s the power of team work, of synergy. All of us together, are better than any one of us, even the best of us, any day!

Take the game of soccer too. It doesn’t matter what a great goalkeeper one is, no one wins the game without good strikers who score goals (not to talk of the rest the complimentary forwards and midfielders). In the same way, one may be the best goalscorer in the world but without a strong defence, including goalkeeping, you will be outscored and lose the game. Great leadership assembles a great team of diverse people in gender, ethnicity, age etc. but especially in thinking styles and task orientation.

Every team member has a place where they add the most value. You don’t want to put the best goalscorer as a goalkeeper or vice-versa. You’ve got to know yourself and where you have most value, in order to know where you lack and who to bring on board. Likewise, everyone else on the team should know their niche. In The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork, John Maxwell puts this essential need to have the right people in the right places well on TEAMS as follows:

• • • • The Wrong Person in the Wrong place = Regression
      • The Wrong Person in the Right Place = Frustration
      • The Right Person in the Wrong Place = Confusion
      • The Right Person in the Right Place = Progression
      • The Right People in the Right Places = Multiplication

 

IN THE END…

All of us together are better than the best of us, any day, every time! Even better than a Usain Bolt! Ubuntu! I am because we are. What is the Theorist without an Executor? What would an Analyzer do without a Manager or Strategist? TEAMS is the way to go. The children of Africa know it. Do we? Together Everyone Achieves Most Success!

It’s Mid-Year. Time to Close Growth Gaps.

 

One of my goals at the beginning of the year was to record a short video each week to pep people up in LIFE–Leadership, Integrity, Family, Entrepreneurship. Although speaking-wise I am an award-winning Toastmaster and have been on various media, including hosting television programmes even way back in my medical school days and early professional life, somehow I couldn’t bring myself to starting a YouTube channel and recording something ‘short and sweet’ regularly for my colleagues and coachees.

If today the January goal can now be marked as “done,” having recorded something every single week between then and now (June), it is because I had accountability to close a certain growth gap. The accountability I got was first from my Growth Mastermind group where I shared by goal at the beginning of the year. Exactly on January 15, one of the members, a U.S.-based consultant with Accenture, sent a group WhatsApp message reminding me of my action point to start recording that day. Did I feel ready? No. But to keep my word, I did it anyway! Apparently, we hardly ever ‘feel ready’ for anything. At some point we’ve got to “just do it!” It was Bruce Springsteen the musician who once said, “A time comes when you need to stop waiting for the man [male or female] you want to become and start being the man you want to be.”

 

 

MY GROWTH GAPS

In the very opening chapter of his masterpiece on personal growth (Maxwell 2012, 3-9), Dr. John C. Maxwell lists eight growth gaps people get trapped by:

1. The Assumption Gap–“I assume that I will automatically grow”
2. The Knowledge Gap–“I don’t know how to grow”
3. The Timing Gap–“It’s not the right time to begin”
4. The Mistake Gap–“I’m afraid of making mistakes”
5. The Perfection Gap–“I have to find the best way”
6. The Inspiration Gap–“I don’t feel like doing it”
7. The Comparison Gap–“Others are better than I am”
8. The Expectation Gap–“I thought it would be easier than this”

What had been keeping me from shooting my video snippets and starting my own YouTube channel were the Mistake and Perfection gaps. Those two, I find, are actually two sides of the same coin. There was a ton of information online about how to/not to shoot videos. Now, having 10,000 friends and followers on FaceBook and being well-known and respected in certain circles I didn’t want to come across as a jerk! I was being paralyzed by lighting issues, how my little home office should be arranged, which background would be the best, whether my phone camera was good enough etc. etc.

In fact, I look back with a bit of embarrassment at my first YouTube video which I shot in my decade-old comfy sweater with a Covid-19 bushy hair look, yet I’m so proud that I took the dive. Mistakes and failures are the price ticket to improvement and innovation. No price, no prize. My parents’ generation used to ridicule ‘Made in Japan’ products. My generation has high respect for everything Japanese, from Toyota and Honda through Yamaha to Sony. The Japanese were ridiculed as copycats with poor quality products but the kaizen principle of continuous improvement has brought them this far. Today’s generation has no paradigm of a bad Japanese product. They’ve constantly closed their mistake and perfection gaps. Now, some laugh at China the same way. China would laugh last if they too continually close their growth gaps because guess what? “A mistake is simply another way of doing things,” according to author and professor Warren Bennis. After 10,000 hours of practice, you and I can become geniuses at anything, as my fellow black Canadian, Malcolm Gladwell, asserts in Outliers, largely based on his interpretation of Anders Ericsson’s research.

 

TO MY FELLOW MISTAKE-AVOIDERS

The desire to find the best way and to be the best is good but I learnt from my mentor John Maxwell looking for the best way can actually be getting things backward. We rather have to get started if we want to find the best way. He says, “it’s similar to driving on an unfamiliar road at night. Ideally, you’d like to be able to see your whole route before you begin. But you see it progressively. As you move forward, a little more of the road is revealed to you. If you want to see more of the way, then get moving“ (Maxwell 2012, 7, emphasis mine).

 

 

I once met the American Christian televangelist, pastor, author and motivational speaker Dr. Robert  H. Schuller (picture above) in the mid 1990s. As a World Vision Youth Ambassador, my cohort had the privilege of visiting his ‘all glass’ Crystal Cathedral, singing there (oh the acoustics!) and appearing live on his weekly Hour of Power television programme which be began hosting in 1970 until his retirement in 2010. He is noted for many famous quotes but one that has most gingered me to overcome my mistake and perfection gaps has actually been this poignant question of his: “What would you attempt to do if you knew you wouldn’t fail?”

 

CONCLUSION

So! Half of the year has gone. If you find there’s a gulf between your year-start goals and your mid-year achievements, it’s a growth gap. Ask yourself: “how do I need to grow to close this gap?” If we would resolve to grow and close the assumption, knowledge, timing, mistake, perfection, inspiration, comparison and expectation gaps, we will end the year smiling. Focus on your growth, not so much on your goals. Then you will grow to hit them. I have, in my video-shooting goal. Now off to the rest!

 

Reference

Maxwell, John C. 2012. The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth. New York: Center Street.