Reset button is neither reform nor transformation

it is a leader in the military space, they know each and every weapon produced in the world and go beyond to know how lethal such weapons are and who the manufacturers are, they even know who is manufacturing Okapi knives that are used by bandits in our streets and houses to kill other people. It is therefore a charade to hear institutions beaming to be world leaders in x or z while little or nothing is available on their corporate intelligence faculty, such statements are therefore mere false prophesy. Looking at the reset agenda I strongly agree with the idea that mind set is pertinent to the agenda as should be the case with other agendas because mind set is about responsive change. Change needs a clean environment that has been sanitised for the change. In this country we have seen changes or reforms at public institutions being carried out only for captains of the same industries to remain in offices while only foot soldiers are being shredded off yet it is the same captains who would have failed to steer the entity in the desired direction despite contractual obligations to do so. This is typical of our parastatals where for every shake up, CEOs and their management teams only change their titles and remunerations while organisations sink deeper into despair despite umpteenth bail outs. At times CEOs would work until retirement within the ailing entity. I will submit that in my opinion, a CEO should not serve a second term because on the one side he would have performed as expected by moving the organisation to the desired level of strategic position, the next level should be for another CEO as the aspirations, mandate and priorities would have changed. Leaders should not work hard to seek second or third term but rather work hard or ( smart) to meet their contractual obligations, to upgrade their profiles and to sustain high callings and professionalism of corporate leadership. On the other hand if she/ he has failed to perform as per contract in the first instance, that’s the obvious receipt for exit instead of prophesying good fortunes by mere changing designation and remunerations for umpteenth trials.

Change needs a clean environment that has been sanitised for the change.

For me these are issues that seek new thinking to gear into mind set drive. Change is a derivative of mind set and mind set is a function of leadership. No amount of instructions, directives, memos, workshops, conferences nor retreats will ever drive change. Change is at the leader’s seat, Period! A chameleon is a champion of change, whenever it encounters a new environment, it changes its colours to blend with the new emerging challenges, this is in contrast to most creatures including human beings where the tendency is to try and manoeuvre into the new environment or ( criminally manipulate systems,) while remaining the same and as obvious, disaster is always imminent.

In conclusion all issues mentioned in the government RESET agenda are valid and key to taking this country to the next level provided the will to do will reign supreme through consistency, resilience, transparency, fair play and not through shilly- shallied intentions. I opine that issues in the reset agenda are more of transformative and reformative drives to get Botswana where government aspires rather than reset which ordinarily would mean normalising the situation. Unless we as a country do admit that things are way out and therefore we need to normalise them which would make RESET more meaningful. Remember our IT gadgets would occasionally prompt us to reset passwords, reset factory setting etc. meaning “boela ko marakanelong” which is different from updating, upgrading, enhancing and reconfiguration for better optimisation and efficacy.