Minding Your Own Business – the Strategic and Leadership Responsibility

Leaders of any kind have three fundamental responsibilities – crafting a vision, building followers, and championing execution. Whether you are a celebrated musician, entertainer, actor, politician or business person, you become a leader the day your vision starts to gain following and people start paying real and deep attention to what it is that you are doing.

And that is where the responsibility of leadership actually begins – in continuing to gain the wilful interest and attention of followers (clients, business partners, staff) through the art of your work and business, even as you champion execution in original and remarkable ways. That whole process is what I call minding your own business. Minding your own business in the sense of paying attention, deep attention, to the way that you operate, direct and lead your business so that the end game can be a masterpiece.

Fanciful? Not so. The most successful businesses are led by CEOs who are usually distinctly atypical in the way that they think and do – and that is what gains them recognition, that is why the world begins to pay attention. These CEOs think deeply about their business service and or product, they think laterally about the potential outputs and products of their work, and they do different through their thought leadership.

Many years ago I participated in a two-day strategic planning workshop for the management team of our wider Africa group in Nairobi, Kenya. It was probably about a decade and a half ago and we had been tasked to imagine a new future. We were tasked to image who our clients would be in 5, 10 and 15 years time; what kind of clients we would want and need to respond to our thought leadership ambition in 5, 10 and 15 years time; and we were tasked to think on how we could engage with those clients in subtle yet impactful ways today.

We also had to complete the same exercise for our staff – what competencies, skills, disciplinary expertise would we want and need in our staff – and then consider what it would mean for the operations and administration of our firm today. We needed to think about the implications for today because we wanted to create a future, not to arrive at a future that we had not created or imagined.

I remember being completely mind boggled by the exercise. The projected disciplinary expertise requirements some members of our team were coming up with seemed improbable and fantastic as they did inspiring. From renewable and clean energy consultants, to sustainable agriculture experts, to corporate responsibility consultants. All of these may seem obvious now, but 15 years ago it was not. Consulting involved business process reengineering, financial management consulting, human resource management and the likes – no one was really thinking of concentrating consulting in these ‘new age’ disciplines.

But therein lies the strategic and leadership responsibility of minding your own business. The amazing thing was that even though the process started slowly as we all trembled at the thought of thinking so far ahead, some ten minutes into the exercise a new electrifying energy filled the room. As one person dared to imagine, we all started to imagine. Even as we imagined what the business might look like in years to come, we all also got excited about the part that we individually would play in that new future – and I think that was what really stirred the energy, for suddenly everyone’s work and contribution becomes meaningful. Our leader had stirred everyone in meaningful execution. He had started the process of championing execution.

Effective business leaders set aside time to imagine and examine new possibilities, even though they may not immediately know the ‘how to’. It is the process of imagining and being committed to new possibilities that is actually the most critical part of being strategic as a leader. We don’t reject an idea just because we are not sure of ‘the how’.

Eight years ago in Lagos, Nigeria we sat as a consulting team to the then Governor of Lagos State, Babatunde Raji Fashola, consulting him and his Commissioners on their respective medium term sector strategies.

We imagined a Lagos where we place priority on adherence to the rule of law and on a culture of proactive service delivery. We imagined a Lagos exemplified by physical, artistic and cultural attractions with international appeal; a clean environment of aesthetic beauty and serenity; a Lagos where there is security of life and of property.

Where was this Lagos? It was in the mind of our future.

The whole consulting team got an even bigger inspiration as we watched the then newly elected President of the United States, Barack Obama, on the podium in Capitol Hill to give his inaugural speech. A few sentences shouted at us:

“The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history… we understand that greatness is never a given…it must be earned. Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less… Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things.”

The best of business leaders are risk takers, doers, and the makers of things.



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