Monday, May 22, 2017
BREAKING THE
FOUR-MINUTE MILE BARRIER
Prof. PLO Lumumba who is well known for his oratorical
excellence and probably Africa’s best voice on Pan Africanism pointed out that
what fails Africa is that we want things that require effort without putting in
the required effort. Malawi is no exception, we want a bumper yield and bumper
harvest yet we do not invest highly in Agriculture. We are lost in the
primitive way of farming, relying on the rain at the time that Israel uses drip
irrigation. We want first class medical treatment in our public hospitals yet
we are the very same people that steal medical drugs and other amenities for
sell to private hospitals. We want a country that is corrupt free yet we are
the ones rushing with khaki envelops when tendering and bidding for projects.
We certainly do the inverse of the dream we want to live.
If we are to reach our potential then we have to work extra
harder, to push everything to the edge, to break the barriers. It is possible
for Malawi to shake itself out of the dungeon of poverty. What sticks us in the
quagmire of poverty is that we put limitations on ourselves on how much we can
achieve. Robin Sharma was right; the life that you see this very moment is not
necessarily the life of your future. You might be viewing things through the
eyes of fears, limitations and false assumptions. Once you clean up the stained
glass window you see the world through, guess what? A whole new set of possibilities appears. We
see the world not as it is but as we are.
We have been seeing and measuring our country through the
stained glass windows of poverty and we believe we are meant to be poor. It is
not surprising therefore that we celebrate poverty, that our language confesses
that we are a hopeless poor nation, even our actions lean towards begging and
we are not ashamed. We celebrate donations and have no courage to implement
policies that can make us self-sustainable. We want free things: education,
medical services, farm inputs, land. No wonder therefore that even property grabbing
is entrenched in us. We want things that require effort without putting in the
necessary effort.
We have conditioned ourselves to believe that politics is
the philosophy of ensuring that winners fail so that those that failed take
over the reigns of power. We are yet to start practicing developmental
politics. Our corporate sector is conditioned in calling for more and more
concessions and tax breaks and tax exemptions on almost all imports than
looking at how best they can penetrate international markets and become
dominant market leaders or market challengers. It is not amazing that their
financial underperformance will always be blamed on rising inflation and
weakening kwacha currency. But why is it that in the very same harsh economic
environment other players are doing well economically? Why is it that
Burundians and Asians and Chinese are competing brilliantly and dominating the
business side? It is all just because they do not put limitations on themselves,
they believe in breaking records that were set previously.
It is on record that before 1954, it was believed that no
runner could ever run a mile in under four minutes up until when Roger
Bannister did it. Within weeks many people replicated his feat. It is all
because he showed that it is possible, he set a new reference point.
If the corporate world has to be vibrant then it has to live
in the post 1954 record breaking world. As long as they consider the
environment not to be conducive for business they will never break their
four-minute mile. There is flourishing business in tough environments in
Mogadishu, Baghdad, Tripoli and even other war torn cities. Even when there is
just a day long cease fire in Damascus, you see markets opening. These people
do not put limitations on themselves, they look at maximizing on every upcoming
opportunity no matter how short lived it may be. They are always there to break
the four-minute mile barrier.
Eleanor Roosevelt was right; the future belongs to those who
believe in the beauty of their dreams.
It is worth realizing that the success DNA entails that we
develop in ourselves the leadership that begins on an extra mile. Robin Sharma
teaches us again, ‘leadership is shown when a salesperson makes extra phone
calls at the end of an exhausting day – not because it is the easy thing to do
but because it is the right thing to do. Leadership is shown by the manager who
finishes a report that has taken the very best from him, then gets back to it a
little later to polish and improve it even more. Leadership is shown by a team
that delivers on their value promise to a customer and then digs even deeper to
wow them.’
Nothing beats hardwork. We have the mediocre appetite of
spending fruitful time with endless conversations on whatsapp and uploading
self-praise profile statuses and pictures on facebook than working hard to
achieve our dreams. We treasure our suffering from the diarrhea of words. We
have mastered the art of criticism and yet we that criticize more do nothing
that can lead to progress in our lives, our communities and our beloved
country. It is not a spectator that makes a team win, it is the player that
risks every limb to score that makes a team win and it is him that makes a
difference.
