Infrequently Asked Questions

This past weekend some women CEOs, and a few good men, convened under the auspices of the WCEO Academy (the Women’s CEO Academy) to enjoy an evening of fine dining, shared wisdom and collective learning with Roshi Motman, the CEO of Tigo Ghana.

We gathered to celebrate and learn from Roshi in particular, but more especially we gathered to celebrate CEOs like Roshi who have dared, who have gathered courage and who have boldly pursued their career and business aspirations, and in the process mutely asserting purpose, asserting resolve, and asserting an idea, a way of thinking and a way of doing that forcefully combines the multiplicity of their personal and business convictions. In effect, making a courageous and intrepid statement of their personal and business brand in a way that is distinctive and special.

The full and whole object of the WCEO Academy is to raise extraordinary female business leaders in Africa. The simple ways and means that we have chosen to do that is to initiate programmes that provide an opportunity for today’s emerging business leaders to engage with and learn from today’s established business leaders from across Africa in informal yet instructive ways.

Simple enough, right? Well, seemingly.

Gathering business leaders is in of itself an enormous undertaking. The best of them are incredibly focused, incredibly busy and quite rightly want to enjoy their free and spare time with the friends and family whose company they very often have to trade-off because of work commitments. Gathering the finest of business leaders also conjures the need to make a compelling case and value proposition to them on the merit of your initiative, your brand, and your invitees – for they also need to see an alignment with their own personal and business brand in that imitative or idea you have asked them to be part of.

Having done that, and created an ambience in a fitting environment that is aligned to the business and personal brand of the business leader, it becomes easier for all parties to settle down and deliver a programme that will unearth the business lessons and lessons in living that have made them the business leader that they are today.

What #AnEveningWith Roshi achieved and did for many that were present for the event was to provide an intimate dinner setting of candid, pleasurable, and satisfying business conversations. It provided an opportunity for genuine, valuable dialogue between like-minded, engaged and engaging individuals to share business stories, share business lessons, and to also learn from one another in an instructive yet relaxed manner.

You see, emerging business leaders are not going to emerge as business leaders if they are not challenged and engaged to think and to do in an unusual way. Emerging business leaders are not going to emerge as business leaders if they think and do as the status quo does. Emerging business leaders are not going to emerge as business leaders if they are discouraged from doing different in a society where your compelling business idea is deemed to be weird and unworkably eccentric.

This amazing, amazing continent of ours is, I believe, on the edge of something greater. At the economic, social, financial level, there is so much that needs to be done to leap frog Africa to the next stage of her development – and it will take compelling novel ideas and thought leaders to get us there – and in the same vein, showcase Africa’s intellectual capital.

But if those emerging business and thought leaders are dissuaded in the uniqueness and weirdness of their ways of thinking and doing, if they are dissuaded by a majority that says ‘this is the way that things have always been done’, if they are dissuaded by a team of staff that are living and thinking in today, unable to envision a tomorrow that is entirely different and more advanced than today, then we are all lost.

The frequently asked questions of ‘#AnEveningWith Roshi Motman were not ‘what does it feel like to be woman in telecoms?’ – a question I am sure Roshi often gets asked. The frequently asked questions were more related to: what her personal drivers are; the one piece of childhood instruction or advice that continues to influence and drive her today; how she fosters creative and innovative thinking in her organisation on a daily basis; how to create and build an organisational culture.

In his seminal work, The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho wrote: “Don’t give in to your fears. If you do, you won’t be able to talk to your heart.” Perhaps what makes a leader a true and good leader is their ability to listen to their heart so reverently that they allow themselves to live a uniquely valuable life – despite their fears.

Our convictions separate us as much as they distinguish us. And in creating tomorrow’s business Africa, we call for a compelling coming together of today emerging business leaders with today’s renowned business leaders so that when tomorrow comes, Africa can truly emerge as a continent with intellectual and business capital – and intellectual and business capital that yields.