Think and build your life
Madam,
As we end the year, what have you achieved? How much do you have in your savings? How much have you invested? What business did you make, create or excel in? If this year was not different, it means it has been just like other previous years. Are you ending the year broke? Are you regretting that you didn’t do much in 2022? If we don’t think and change, nothing might change ahead of us besides the weather and our age. We need to make a conscious effort to make a better life.
I was speaking to friends and asking how much they have in their bank accounts. The answers I got were fascinating. After the discussion I showed them them the 52-Week Financial Challenge. Fifty-two represents the number of weeks in a year. You bank an amount based on the number representing the week.
DISCIPLINE
For example, week one means you bank one Lilangeni, week ten you bank 10 Emalangeni till week 52, where you bank 52 Emalangeni. It sounds simple, but that takes discipline. As you start, the money looks little, but it takes discipline. At the end of the year you will be having E1 378. To some, that sounds little, while to others that sounds big, but that is not important. The important question is: Do you have that amount in your account? Take time and think about that for a moment.
To achieve such a goal you need accountability partners. These are people that will check if you are managing your goals. These are good friends. They are hard on you so that your life becomes easy. They understand that they should help you become better so that you are not a problem to them in the future.
The year 2023 won’t change until you change. Be agile. We can’t sit on our laurels and expect to win. If you don’t change, nothing will change in your life.
DISRUPTIVE
We cannot even bank on linear thinking, we need non-linear and disruptive thinking. Corporate, church, and country leaders should now be thinking of what 2023 will come out like. Most institutions have the same way of doing specific things, and it’s hard to tell them that their year-to-year template is no longer relevant. Management guru Peter Drucker wrote: “People in any organisation are always attached to the obsolete — the things that should have worked, but did not, the things that once were productive and no longer are.”
In some institutions, you take a report that was written three years back, there are still clauses that are still being used, but with little success. For example, some years back, I tried to convince an organisation that they should adopt new means to retain their customer base.
APPROACH
They told me there was a way or methodology that they were supposed to work with and they continued in their snail-pace approach. Up to today, they are using that system, but it’s unfortunate that they are on the verge of collapse. This is the case with most companies; they use template planning. They plan, but they use irrelevant and wrong methodologies, tools, and techniques.
There are four major things that can shape the future. These are hindsight, insight, foresight and intuition, (the gut feeling or sixth sense). Some leaders follow the old plans which at times work, but this is the time to review and realign our dreams for 2023.
Loizos Heracleous and Claus D Jacobs said: “Strategy development in most organisations has been dominated by routinised processes of strategic planning as well as structured, functionally oriented managerial debates without an obvious or explicit component of creative strategising.”
IMPOSSIBLE
The greatest means to being successful or great is being future-minded. It’s impossible to achieve anything worthwhile without a plan. Failure to plan might mean the death of the future. In reality, by failing to plan, you have already planned to fail. Some corporates and even individuals are on auto-pilot. They just wait for fate to drop their success someday.
Earl Nightingale, in his radio talks, once said: “Successful people are self-made and only the successful will admit it.” All success is born out of deep thought, routine and efficacious rituals.
As we end the year, it would be ideal to do a self-audit. As a leader, ask: Where am I? What have I been doing in 2022? Where are my results? What do I need to change to improve my life, the life of others and the future of the institution? What education, leadership, or self-development programmes should I engage in?
Have a clear idea of what you want to achieve. State specifics; have timelines and state who should be in charge for the plan to be a success.
Jonah Nyonix