Why Lead?

When organizations are confronted with a lack of diversity, be it gender diversity or racial diversity or generational diversity-mindset/idea diversity you know the young vs older ratio. When this happens, some organizations tend to respond or need I say, react to the issue by opening the door for a token person, by offering a seat at the table to a token person. You know, that one woman in the C-suite, that one young person in a position of leadership, that one minority leader-racially speaking in the directorate. Tokenism is the practice of making only a symbolic effort to be inclusive to members of minority groups, in order to give the appearance of equality within a workforce. Today we will be exploring the perils of tokenism and how it is ultimately bad for business. 

Many organizations across the world were forced to adapt and pivot in the last 15 months. And some organizations died because of their failure to pivot and adapt. The ability to adapt and pivot is critical in the survival of an organization. Max McKeown says, “All failure is a failure to adapt, all success is successful adaptation.” So it is in all of our best interest as leaders to learn how to adapt and how to build a culture of pivoting and build adaptable organizations.

Being ALL IN means being fully committed to something, dedicating cognitive, social, and material resources sacrificially and consistently towards an idea, a business, or a cause you’re building. Some of the people who have been associated with this mindset include Nelson Mandela, Apostle Paul of Tarsus, Mother Teresa, Malala, Miriam Makeba, Steve Jobs, Dr. Victoria Kisyombe, Robert Sobukwe, Elon Musk, Joyce Singano just to name a few.

“We need to resist the tyranny of low expectations. We need to open our eyes to the inequality that remains. We won’t unlock the full potential of the workplace [And I add to that society] until we see how far from equality we really are.” — Sheryl Sandberg

Many of the duties of a leader require her or him to be a good storyteller and salesperson. In essence, a leader is always trying to sell something. Whether it is trying to get everyone to buy into their vision, trying to get everyone to buy into a change the organization is executing, trying to get buy-in on an initiative from key stakeholders, trying to inspire and motivate their teams, trying to get their people to give their utmost effort. A leader is always trying to sell something and get buy-in from their teams. Leadership to a large degree is about salesmanship.

Innovation is a process of creating new sources of value. Innovation is not a product, it is a culture. It is not a destination, it is a process. So how do we build this culture of innovation within our teams and organizations, especially in our Tanzanian and African context? To have this conversation I am joined by Firas Ahmad

If decision making is the cradle of leadership, then change is the sustenance of leadership. Change is what keeps us moving forward into new frontiers. Words like innovation, trailblazing wouldn’t exist without change. Change is the new normal for leadership success. But change doesn’t just happen, someone has to initiate it.

One of the common problems facing organizations, teams, and leaders today is a lack of clarity. Clarity of vision, clarity of strategy, clarity of goals, clarity of purpose, clarity of plan. If at any given time you ask your team the following questions and they don’t have answers, you have a clarity problem. The questions are; Why do we exist as an organization? Who do we serve? What’s our goal? What’s our strategy for achieving that goal? What’s our step-by-step plan? As a member of this team, what’s your exact role to play? Which steps of the plan are you responsible for? Which decisions do you have the authority to make? And, perhaps most importantly and most overlooked, why are we trying to achieve this goal in the first place? And on and on and on. Clarity is a critical component of success.

I believe that one of the cradles of leadership is decision making. Our ability as leaders to make decisions will determine the quality and the course of our leadership. I think the year 2020 has been a wonderful illustration of this. We have judged, we have labeled, we have categorized many worlds, corporate and religious leaders because of their decision making. Now since decision making is one of the cradles of leadership, It is in all our best interests to elevate our ability to make decisions that move us, our people, and the organizations we’re leading to the agreed-upon destination. Now, good decision making is not easy. And one element of decision making that was given a lot of attention by intellectual observers in the year 2020 is BASIS FOR DECISION MAKING. What are you basing your decisions on? Are you basing them on your own intuition or you basing them on actual data? And this led me to ask probing questions, can intuition and data collaborate to make better decisions? Does every decision need to be based on data? Are you supposed to abandon intuition altogether? When are supposed to lean on data and when are supposed to lean on our intuition in making decisions?

Having integrity is one thing. Keeping it is something else. Keeping it at all costs is almost unheard of. In this episode, we look at the life of a leader who kept his integrity at all costs.