Riding The Storm

Life throws challenges at you from time to time. You cannot control what happens to you, but you certainly can control your response to what happens to you. This is the essence of personal mastery– an ability to make conscious decisions about how to chart the course of your life and navigate through the challenges. The tree of life challenges and tragedy produces different fruits – you only need to choose which fruits to pick. Fruits of bitterness, discouragement, bitterness or fruits of learning, experience and encouragement? It’s your choice. Victory is not always clothed in the purple of royal pageantry, sometimes it comes in the blood caked clothes of gallantry. True peace is not living in perpetual calm, but having faith throughout the storms.

I would like to share with you the story of a young 27 year old British lady who passed away a few days ago. Jade Goody discovered about a year ago that she had cervical cancer. The doctors tried chemotherapy and surgery, but it was too late. They told her she had two months to live. Her response to this was remarkable. She decided there and then that she was going to make the most of the few remaining months of her life. As a single mother of two, she realised the need to leave a decent inheritance to allow her two young kids a decent education and raise cancer awareness. I want to share a few points from this true story.

Face The Facts

Jade accepted the reality that she had a terminal illness. There is a different between self denial and faith. Faith does not deny the facts. Faith believes in spite of the facts. There is a faith to resist the conditions, but there is also a faith to go through the conditions. Your condition might not be a terminal illness; it could be a cancerous financial problem, a haemoragghing business, a hypertensive relationship, a rickety marriage or an arthritic career.

The first step to addressing the problem is to identify the problem by its name. The longer you stay in self denial, the more the problem multiplies and the less you focus on addressing it. Jade accepted she was terminally ill, and took immediate steps to put her life in order.

Certainty in Uncertain Times

The storms of life are periods of uncertainty. Inaction is the riskiest response to the uncertainties which storms bring. But rash or scattershot action can be nearly as damaging. Rising anxiety and the growing pressure to do something often produces a variety of uncoordinated moves that target the wrong problem or overshoot the right one. A disorganised response can also generate a sense of panic. This can easily distract you from seeing the often hidden but significant opportunities nestled in the storm. You create certainty by taken action. This action is through taking a defensive or offensive positions.

The position you take in the storms determines whether you weather or get swept away by the storm. Jade chose to take a position in her situation of uncertainty by creating certainty. She even planned the details of her own funeral. Her final two months were days of specific and certain progressive actions.

Redeeming The Time

Jade was told she had two months to live and she decided to make the most of that little time. In those two months she had a wedding and went through the marriage ceremony heavily sedated by morphine to ease the pain. She fulfilled a lifelong dream to be a bride and marry her boyfriend. She also organised for herself and her two sons to be christened in church. In between the pain, she also had paid interviews with magazines and made hundred thousands of pounds for her kids. She could have easily chosen to pity party and wallow in crippling sympathy but she chose to make the best of her worst time in life. In the last two months of her life she made enough money to see her children through school. The lesson is that you must allow the storms of life to strengthen your resolve and not cripple you. Maximise the moment and savour the opportunity to make a difference.

Ride The Storm

What do you do when clouds gather and storms come? Run for cover? Lets learn from the eagles. Eagles love the storm. When clouds gather, the eagles get excited. The eagle uses the storm’s winds to lift it higher. Once it finds the wing of the storm, the eagle uses the raging storm to lift him above the clouds. This gives the eagle an opportunity to glide and rest its wings. In the meantime all the other birds hide in the leaves and branches of the trees. When life gives you clouds, make some rain and gives you a storm, ride on it! There is an opportunity in every opposition. There is a testimony in every test. The darkest clouds yield the greatest rain. Your breaking point is your breakthrough moment. When life gives you lemons, make some lemonade. When life throws hard stuff at you, use it to make a firm foundation for your future success.

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as if everything is – Albert Einstein

A Time To Reflect

The ability to reflect on your experiences is a key ingredient for success. I have been observing our 5 year old boy’s learning abilities. He is very artistic and is always drawing stuff and building models. He likes to come and share with me his “works of art” To challenge his thinking and help him grow I always ask him to reflect on his “work” and tell me the story. Each time I ask him to reflect, he will self correct his work, add interesting detail and come up with fascinating abstract artistic creations. The “reflecting” helps him think possibilities and get a better grip on his “work”
In learning and development psychology, reflecting is based on concept of meta cognition or metacognitive ability. Meta cognitive ability is the skill to adjust to suit changing demands and contexts. In organisations the process of strategic planning and review is a “reflecting process” This process can also apply to your life. I would like to share a few insights about the importance of reflecting.
Get Your Bearings Right
Is there strategic alignment between your purpose, goals and your current actions? Although at the beginning of the year, you set clear goals, at this time of year, you might now be lost in the clouds of details of execution. It’s time to take a step back, reflect and see if you are still on course. You might be busy going in the wrong direction. Sometimes the young boy, who sets out to draw a car, ends up drawing a meaningless piece of art, if he doesn’t reflect on his original intention.
Check Your Tool and Skills Set
Is your execution methodology aligned to your strategy? When organisations do not do well, they first check strategic alignment. If the strategy is right, they then reflect on their processes and methodologies. A great strategy will not produce the right results if the execution methodology is wrong. The young boy uses pencil, colours, ink and oil pastels for drawing. If he uses oil pastels where he is supposed to use pencil, the result is a bad “drawing” The same goes if he decides to use black ink to colour tree leaves.
The reason why you might not experience the results you want is because your execution methodology might not be the right one for what you want to achieve. If the tool is not the right one for the job, you will soon develop frustration, and you need to put extra effort. Change your tools and skill set to ensure goal alignment.
Deal With Distracting Stimuli
The pursuit of your goals is not always a smooth ride. You may encounter detours, obstacles and distractions along the way. This is perfectly normal. The important thing is how you respond. You cannot change what happens to you or the context of your goals, but you can determine how you respond. A time to reflect like this is a time to identify these distractions and position your responses. Reflecting gives you an opportunity to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Change Your Course
Is the strategy for pursuing your life purpose the right one in the first place? Let me share with you a story about French water company, Vivendi. In 2002, it made history by becoming the first European company to make a loss of 23.3 billion Euros. The reason was very simple – what on earth was a water company doing in telecoms? They had been lured into telecoms during the 90s telecom boom. This was a wrong strategy.
Changing course might mean leaving that job, profession, industry and pursuing something in line with your strengths.
At the beginning of the year I shared about the importance of Operating in Your Strengths Zone. If you are busy pursuing something that is not in line with your strengths and wiring, you may need to reflect and change course. The young boy who draws, still battles to draw 3 dimension drawings, and what’s best is for him to stick to single dimension drawings for now. You build your strategy around your strengths.
As you reflect, I encourage you to get a grip on your purpose, refuel your motivation tank, fire up your striving instincts and continue with your special assignment to this generation. Do not wait until the end of the year to reflect – that’s the work of under takers – the year will be dead! Reflecting now is being a good caretaker of your goals. You can prune, irrigate and fertilise your goals now.
Quote Of The Week
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.- Mark Twain

Merchants of Ideas

I had a meeting this week with my friend who has just negotiated with a leading cellular company to roll out an innovative telecommunication solution. I congratulated him, because he is a well experienced IT and telecoms expert who could easily start his own business. Only a few weeks ago he had been looking for a job, and I was challenging him to start a business. This is exactly what Africa needs – more entrepreneurs and fewer employees. We need thought leaders and merchants of ideas.

I have traversed the greater breadth and width of Africa and made some observations. The number of traders and hawkers while reflective of the hardworking African ethos is also indicative of the fact that Africa is still at the bottom of the economic food chain. The majority are still consumers and need to move up to become producers. The majority of Africans cannot continue to be hewers of wood and drawers of water even as the world has moved into the information age. We need to rise to a new level of consciousness where we create things.

There are treasures in the secret places of the earth, waiting for the entrepreneurs to discover them.
The greatest fortunes are made in times of recession. The global recession offers more opportunities than threats depending on how you see it. The barriers to entry for most industries are very low at the moment. This is the best time to set up an entreprise for yourself if you don’t already have one. The solution to the global economic crisis is not in printing more money as is already happening. It is in encouraging entrepreneurship.

If a country like Zimbabwe could invoke genius spawned inventions like the one which created the Great Zimbabwe City in the 1400s, there will never be a need to look to the East or to the West to repair that economy. Those ancient Zimbabwean people did not go to school of architecture or civil engineering. They consulted the great within! The best solutions come from the great within. Thank God for books, but books can create idea strait jackets killing invention. Make no mistake I read lots of books, but the best books are those inside of me. Invention is ‘out of the book kind of thinking’. To invent is to write your own book.

There are two levels of entrepreneurship – invention and innovation. Invention is about creating a new product or process. Innovation refers to the introduction of an invention into a use that has economic value. Bill Gates is an inventor. He invented Windows and he will have annuity income for the rest of his life from sales and other Microsoft patents (Intellectual Property) IP related income.

Richard Branson of the Virgin Group is an innovator who has packaged cellular technology to provide telecommunication service. MacDonald brothers invented the fast food concept, but Ray Kroc innovated and developed the MacDonald franchising concept. Invention is the highest form of entrepreneurship. Innovation translates inventive genius into the production of goods and services that improve people’s lives.
Inventions and innovation is not about making money. It is about changing the world. Can you just imagine some of the inventions which changed the world – light bulb, penicillin, mobile phones? You can add your own invention to this list. I want to challenge you to think solutions, think possibility. See what no one has ever seen. Imagine what no one has ever imagined.