The Pursuit of Pursuit

I started off this blog as a way of recording my unstopping stream of thoughts.  As part of my work, I travel a lot and travel gives me many hours of solitude, on long drives and long flights and in hotel rooms alone.  Solitude gives me many hours of thought and reflection and I completely and totally enjoy it. Focusing on a specific question helps me keep focused thought – since my mind would rather wander off somewhere else.  As I write, it has turned out that most of my blogs so far have been about pursuit of one thing or the other.  My observation is that human existence is driven by pursuit. At this rate, I may have to rename this blog to PursuitPursuit.

So, what are we all busy pursuing?  In an earlier post, we started with the discussion of the pursuit of starch, which if we do not achieve, we will be counting down hours do our death. Within this pursuit is hidden the fact that the pursuit of starch does not cease, because as soon as you quench the current fix, you start counting down do the next fix.  And so it is with all other pursuits.  Unless you have achieved a certain level of enlightenment, you may end up stuck in an unending cycle of pursuits.

I visited my vavorite (sic) brother recently and he put in my hand the most amazing book – The One Thing.  This book starts with a story about how the secret of life boils down to just one thing – and if you don’t know what that one thing is, then your (first) one thing is to find it!  The bible says that we should seek first the Kingdom of God, and everything else (all other pursuits) will be added unto us.  Solomon, the most successful man in Biblical history achieved his by knowing and asking (when he was given the opportunity) for his one thing.  Abraham asked for wisdom and it is recorded that on top of becoming the wisest man of all ages, he also became the richest in gold, livestock, wives, concubines, and all that was defined wealth and success in his time – Never mind the fact that after all his success (and wisdom), he declared that all is vanity, and the vanity of vanity is vanity. Maybe this blog should be named WisdomPursuit! Incidentally, wisdom is the power to perceive the best ends to aim at and the best means for reaching those ends.

If you ask a young person what his desire is, he may name a prestigious career, several year later, he may name desirable items like money, cars, houses, technological tools and so on, and he may desire bigger and better and faster ones five or ten years on.  He may desire to be enjoined with a spouse, have children, and bring them up around bigger and better items.  Yet, fifty years later, when he has gone full cycle, and if he has picked some wisdom along the way, he will figure out – as Solomon did thousands of years earlier that vanity of vanity is vanity.  It is Steve Covey who noted in his book, first things first, that no one on his death bed wished they had worked longer.  Most wish they had invested more in relationships, loved more, and ‘stopped and smelt the roses’.

So, as we review and look out for pursuits, what is your pursuit?  Will it stand the test of time that Solomon and Steve Covey discovered?  If not, what is your one thing?  Until you figure what your one thing is, your one thing is to find it.  Good luck!

There are bad people

I had the privilege to visit Cambodia just over a year ago on a working trip.  While on a short break, I managed to visit the magnificent King’s Palace and a few temples, and appreciate the deep cultural and spiritual roots that we all associate with the Eastern peoples.  At the same time, I visited the museum of the Cambodia genocide of the 1970s.  The Cambodian Genocide refers to the attempt of Khmer Rouge party leader “Pol Pot” to nationalize and centralize the peasant farming society of Cambodia virtually overnight, in accordance with the Chinese Communist agricultural model. This resulted in the gradual devastation of over 25% of the country’s population in just three short years. It is estimated that nearly two million people died in the genocide (http://worldwithoutgenocide.org/genocides-and-conflicts/cambodian-genocide). The Genocide museum that I visited is set in a former prison compound that was the central ‘slaughter house’ of the genocide. 

I left the genocide museum with a sick feeling in my stomach and the words that kept echoing in my mind were – there are bad people in the world!  I have spent time in Rwanda that was also subjected to genocide in 1994 and even visited several museums there.  But none of my previous experiences left me with such an effect.  I concluded that it must have something to do with the story that is told of one of the leaders of the Cambodia genocide.  The story goes that there is a guy who was the chief of the prison that was at the centre of the genocide.  Apparently, at the end of the genocide, the guy disappeared and found a job as a driver in a rural relief organisation. He worked in that setting for eighteen years before someone suspected him and blew the whistle on him.   He denied the accusations and it was until they took him back to the prison site and replayed some of the recordings of the time that he broke down and confessed.  I found that absolutely unbelievable – there are indeed some very bad people in the world.

I had completely forgotten this story until a few weeks ago when the African Union voted to petition the United Nations on some matters that are currently being handled by the International Criminal Court (ICC).  While the process of how these matters ended up in the court are not the focus of this article, I noted the blanket condemnation of the ICC.  In my understanding, the ICC is the instrument that the world has collectively created to handle ‘bad people’.  There are bad people in the history of our civilisation who need to be kept in check by systems that go beyond their own countries’ laws and judicial systems.  There are bad people who will corrupt the minds of large populations to cause immeasurable death and destruction.  There are many countries whose internal systems and institutions are not mature enough to push back these bad people.  And it is true that a good number of these countries are in Africa.

My concern is that as the Africa Union trashes and condemns the ICC, it does not offer any credible substitute to put bad people in check.  My concern is that as Kenyans cheer the African Union in this episode for their own patriotic reasons, they compromise the only institution that shields them, and others, from the possibility of bad people arising from their midst.  There is a song that goes: bad boys bad boys, what you gonna do, what you gonna do when they come for you!

There are bad people out there.  Who are you gonna call when the bad people come out?

Parenting made 'Complicated"

One of the most privileged duties of our human existence is parenting. Indeed, one of the duties that I have most enjoyed is parenting, and not just parenting but parenting of boys. Where I grew up, being a boy was a natural hazard.  You are expected to be hardy, self-driven, self-dependent and if God was on your side, you were expected to emerge and transition into a man.  A boy pretty much grew up on their own – much like the bushes and trees, and the birds.  The transition of a boy to a man should qualify as one of the greatest wonders of the world! This makes bringing up boys a most amazing privilege.  As it happens, we are now in a different age, a different space in time – in which we are to bring up children, (including boys); as opposed to letting them grow.

One of the more common challenges of parenting is whether to bring up children the way you were brought up, or whether to find some other (sometimes ‘modern’) way in which to bring up children.  I am involved in many parenting conversations and I find there are generally two types of parents.  There are those who want to bring up children the same way they were brought up with the same (sometimes tough) values that they were brought up with, usually because, they reason, that they came out just fine.  Then there are those who want to bring up their children in the way they wish they would have been brought up – with generous easy going rules, no hardships, and where the parent is a ‘buddy’.  Some of these parents have had some ‘traumatic experiences in life and somewhere in their history, they promised themselves that their children would never ‘suffer’ the same ‘hardships’ that they suffered.  So, if they did not like boarding school, they will ensure that their children do not go through boarding school; if they did not like certain meals, they will ensure that their children do not have to eat the same meals.  If they did not have enough pocket money, they will ensure that their children have more money than they need.

It gets even worse if one parent is from one school of thought and the other parent of from the other.  The constant conversation then becomes defending the children from one another’s perceived ‘tyranny’.  Regardless of the school of thought that each parent subscribes to, the bottom line is that successfully bringing up the next generation – into independent, progressive, self-driven, adults - is (or should be) the most important priority of parents.  Many times, parents get carried away in building their own success and forget to invest in the success of the next generation.  In Africa, you generally refer to people by their parents – son of or daughter of xyz.  The implication of this standard reference is that no matter how successful you will become, your success will always be attributed to your parents.  Wisdom therefore dictates that as you build your own successes, you also get ready to invest in the success of your children and the next generation – as a way to build your own legacy.  History will judge you by how successfully you brought up your children.

In many parts of Africa, many ‘successful’ – read wealthy, people have had their legacies destroyed because they did not successfully hand over the baton to the next generation – because they did not prepare the next generation.  Many parents of teenagers who detested ‘mom’s way’ find themselves going back to mom to ask for advice on how to manage these ‘wayward’ fellows.  I for one believe that mom’s way works best – even with the new techno-filled, friendly-parent, hurt-no-one environment.  I feel that today’s parent is struggling to find the necessary firmness required for successfully raising the next generation, and the young ones are having a ball of a time – oblivious of what it will cost them in the long term.  Good Luck, Happy parenting!

The Pursuit of World Class

I have just returned from another trip – this time from outside Africa – and as it often happens, trips like these leave you with more questions than answers.  On the one hand, these trips are long – very long and they leave you with lots of time to think and reflect on many aspects of life.  On the other hand, one has occasion to see many different things at work.  The one word that has been on my mind a lot on this last trip has been ‘world-class’.  I spent a few days in New York City, a few days in Washington DC and a day in London.  In each of these cities, I had many occasions to see many world class companies, delivering world class products and services to their world class demanding customers.

On one occasion, I took a long interstate bus ride, and even on such a mundane event, had the occasion to observe world class at work.  One simple constant element on this trip was time management.  The bus departs from the side of a street and not some glorified bus terminal – but even so, the bus arrives just five minutes ahead of departure time, passengers board by showing prepaid online tickets, and the bus leaves perfectly on time.  There is a ten minute break to the four hour trip and again, the bus stops for precisely ten minutes and onward to an on time arrival at its destination. This is over and above the high quality customer service, high quality buses that are also very well driven, on very well built and very well maintained roads.

The thought that has been running on mind therefore has been – what makes a world class service?  What make a simple business like an interstate bus service provide a world class service?  What creates a world class service that is evident from a bus service to the road the bus runs on, to the airport it transfers you to. What creates a world class culture? What makes people demand a world class service?  For the record, I know and observe many world class organisations in Africa.  In my view, Kenya Airways, for all its woes, provides a world class service in a highly demanding world class industry.  I know great schools in Kenya that provide world class education that matches any in the world, and whose students join their peers in world class universities across the world.  I know many hotels and restaurants, across the African continent, which provide world class accommodation and meals that can match any in the world.  There are many banks and telecommunication companies across Africa that have world class innovations and customer care that can match any in the world.

My concern is that while we have many world class pillars in Africa, the links that connect them are not anywhere close to world class and therefore killing any hope of an all-round world class experience.  When we create a world class highway, we fail to provide it with world class maintenance and world class constant improvement and therefore, the world class status is short lived.  One final example:  When Heathrow airport unveiled terminal four, some fifteen years ago, it was hailed as the top, world class, airport of the time.  However, the creators also knew that that status would not be valid into eternity and while they have maintained terminal four at the initial world class condition, they have seen the need to create a terminal five that then maintains the airports status as world class in the current time.

What will it take for more and more organisations and systems in Africa to be world class, maintain world class standards and provide world class good and services?  What will it take for the African customer to demand and receive end-to-end world class service? How do I mobilise my team to rise to world class?