Strenght Grows From Weakness

A jobless man applied for the position of 'office boy' at a very big firm. The HR manager interviewed him, then a test: clean the floor. "You are hired" he said, give me your email address, and I will send you the application to fill, as well as when you will start. The man replied "I don't have a computer, neither an email". I am sorry, said the HR manager, if you don't have an email that means you do not exist. And who doesn't exist, cannot have the job. The man left with no hope at all. He didn't know what to do, with only $10 US in his pocket.

He then decided to go to the supermarket and buy a 10 KG Tomato crate. He then sold the Tomatoes in a door to door round. In less than two hours, he succeeded to double his capital. He repeated the operation 3 times, and returned home with $60 US. The man realized that he can survive by this way, and started to go everyday earlier, and return late. Thus, his money doubles or triples every day. Shortly later, he bought a cart, then a truck, and then he had his own fleet of delivery vehicles.5 years later, the man is one of the biggest food retailers in the US. He started to plan his family's future, and decided to have a life insurance. He called an insurance broker, and chooses a protection plan. When the conversation was concluded, the broker asked him his email. The man replied: 'I don't have an email'. The broker replied curiously, you don't have an email, and yet have succeeded to build an empire. Do you imagine what you could have been if you had an email? The man thought for a while, and replied: an office boy! Lol!

The most frustrating part of every trip outside the country for me is my return trip back to Nigeria. Especially when you are travelling in a flight filled with Nigerians, it is always dramatic. From the overweight loads we carry, the banters we throw in the plane, the unnecessary claps when the plane lands (this is really very annoying!), the rush to get out of the plane when it touches the ground, even when it has not fully stopped, the rush through passport control and then the long wait for your luggage! You will be lucky to spend less than 2 hours at the airport between arrival and when you finally leave! There is always one question uttermost on my mind “Why are we the way we are”? The sad truth is that most of us are getting so used to it. People excuse these things away as our “weakness”. They give reasons why it won’t work here. We focus a lot on these “weaknesses” and never think of how to turn them into strengths. Most developed nations of the world became great by actually turning their biggest weaknesses into their greatest strengths. I will leave this discussion for another day and time. However, this theory is as true for nations as it is for individuals! We can turn our weaknesses into our greatest strengths.

Consider the story of a 10-year-old boy who decided to study judo despite the fact that he had lost his left arm. The boy began lessons with an old Japanese judo master. The boy was doing well, so he couldn't understand why, after three months of training the master had taught him only one move. "Sensei," the boy finally said, "Shouldn't I be learning more moves?". "This is the only move you know, but this is the only move you'll ever need to know," the sensei replied. Not quite understanding, but believing in his teacher, the boy kept training.

Several months later, the sensei took the boy to his first tournament. Surprising himself, the boy easily won his first two matches. The third match proved to be more difficult, but after some time, his opponent became impatient and charged; the boy deftly used his one move to win the match. Still amazed by his success, the boy was now in the finals. This time, his opponent was bigger, stronger, and more experienced. For a while, the boy appeared to be overmatched. Concerned that the boy might get hurt, the referee called a time-out. He was about to stop the match when the sensei intervened. "No," the sensei insisted, "Let him continue." Soon after the match resumed, his opponent made a critical mistake: he dropped his guard. Instantly, the boy used his move to pin him. The boy had won the match and the tournament. He was the champion.

On the way home, the boy and sensei reviewed every move in each and every match. Then the boy summoned the courage to ask what was really on his mind. "Sensei, how did I win the tournament with only one move?" "You won for two reasons," the sensei answered. "First, you've almost mastered one of the most difficult throws in all of judo and second, the only known defense for that move is for your opponent to grab your left arm." The boy's biggest weakness had become his biggest strength! "

I like the way Ralph Waldo Emerson summarizes it. “Our strength grows out of our weaknesses.”

Get Organized. Get More Done

Setting clear and committed goals won’t work if you can’t organize your resources towards achieving them. How you organize your goals and how often you are reminded of them play a key role in their success. If your goals are collecting dust in a filing cabinet or a folder, they won’t influence your actions. Similarly, how you organize your physical surroundings can give you much greater productivity towards your goals. A messy, disorganized house, office or computer waste valuable time. How you organize your time is probably the greatest factor, and without the ability to control and allocate time to your goals, they will fail before you even start.

Organize Your Goals

So you’ve written out your goals on paper. You have described them in objective terms and written a paragraph or two about why you want to achieve them. Below them you have set the deadline for which you feel is both realistic and challenging. Now what? Do you store this file in some obscure folder in your computer? Do you take the sheet of paper and put it into some binder marked ‘goals’ and put it into the dark and cobwebbed realm of your attic?

The organization of your goals and how often they serve to remind you are critical to their success. If you never see your goals, they become easily forgotten and they lose whatever significance or meaning they held when they were written. Creating a system where you can see your goals a few times per day and getting organized so you can track the past goals you have set will ensure they stay meaningful.

The first step to organizing your goals is to find a system to store them. If you store your goals on a computer, or you prefer a more complex or simplistic scheme for storing your goals, go ahead. If you use a computer a lot, you may want to turn your desktop wallpaper into a goal reminder sheet. This can be a little time consuming if your goals change rapidly, but if you are using your computer frequently, this can be an excellent reminder.

Organize Your Environment

Always losing your car keys? Seem to have a lot of stuff just lying around? Being disorganized will damage your productivity, increase stress and make staying on track with your goals more difficult. Organization is a skill anyone can learn and it can save you a lot of time, energy and frustration. Most importantly, being organized creates an environment of productivity and achievement that serves to reinforce your goals.

The main culprit in being disorganized is simply that the your items don’t have a home. Whether it is your home, your office or even your computer files, if the items don’t have a specific place they should be stored, they will be pile up in clutter. Losing your car keys is a sign that you don’t have a specific place to put them.
If you are already disorganized, reorganizing everything is a huge task that will take a significant time investment. This is an example where an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Once you are organized and place things where they belong, only minor reorganizing will need to be done to keep everything operating smoothly. You may need to split this task up into several pieces if you have a lot to organize, but the benefits of being organized are well worth the time required to get there.

Start by mentally getting an idea of how you want to organize everything. Chances are you have an idea about where things should go, but by sitting down and thinking about where you want to put things, you can create an effective organizing system. Next go through every single item. Decide whether you want to keep it or throw it out. Unless it is a legal document or holds sentimental value, I’d recommend tossing out anything that you haven’t used in a long time and you can buy again. When you are going through all your items, sort them into the rough groups they will be put into when they are re-organized. Finally take those organized groups and put them back into the place you designated at the start.

Organizing your environment may seem costly and unnecessary if you feel that you are just as efficient with some clutter, but it serves an even more important role. An organized environment sends a strong message to your subconscious telling you that you are productive, hard-working and efficient. A cluttered area tells your subconscious that you are lazy, unmotivated and wasteful. As we talked about in the last chapter, the environment you have sends a strong signal to your motivation and your ultimate success towards your goals.

Organize Your Time

Time management is an extensive subject that has been written about in many books. There are many different styles of prioritizing and organizing your time for the greatest effectiveness. This program is not designed or equipped to teach everything there is to know about time management, but it is important enough to warrant a general overview on methods to increase the organization of your time.

The first step in time management is deciding what is important. Your goals should already be doing this step for you. If your goals aren’t telling you what is most important, or worse, the objectives of other people are placed on a higher importance than your goals, then your goals won’t work. Ensure that your goals have been broken down until the next action step at any stage in their progress is always apparent. Secondly, make sure your goals are loud enough that they demand your action now.

Once you’ve decided what is important, the other step in time management is actually doing what is most important. In this area there are many methods for doing what is important more effectively and efficiently. Depending on your personal style, you might work best by scheduling work in advance or you might work better with a to-do list style that allows you to choose when to work on your goals in the spur of the moment. Experiment with different techniques and styles. If your goals are strong and compelling enough, this phase becomes a lot easier to optimize.

I once heard that a successful venture is, “5% plan, 95% execution.” Whatever the actual percentage is, how you execute the progress towards your goals will ultimately make more difference than the planning you use towards them. Having an organized system for reminding you of your goals will allow you to be more motivated and productive and ensure a superior execution.

See you at the top!

Living On The Coke Side Of Life

About this time last week, while on vacation in Atlanta Georgia, I had the opportunity of following the story of one of the world’s biggest and most popular brands. Several things interested me about this brand. This brand has travelled to more places in the world than the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. It’s in more hands than the Bible. It has penetrated into cities, towns and villages that the gospel has not dared! It is perhaps the largest consumer of glass in the world today. This brand is sustaining several glass factories and sugar plantations around the globe today – perhaps the largest consumer of both. I am sure you can guess the brand I am talking about now. I am talking about Coca-Cola. Coca Cola sells 1.4 billion servings each day. You could show someone a Coke can and they'll be able to tell you what it is, even if they live in Tokyo. No other brand is as recognizable as Coke is.

This brand has travelled to more places in the world than the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. It’s in more hands than the Bible

A visit to the World of Coca-Cola Centre will be inspiring for anyone. You will practically see how this dream, and this product evolved to be a world brand and then you ask yourself – why not me; why not now? A friend of mine always put it in a nice way – if not now, when. If not me, then who!

It was in 1886, and in New York harbour,workers were constructing the Statue of Liberty. Eight hundred miles away, another great American symbol was about to be unveiled. Like many people who changed history, John Pemberton, a civil war veteran, and Atlanta pharmacist (yes, pharmacist!), was inspired by simple curiosity. He loved thinkering with medicinal formulas, and one afternoon, searching for a quick cure for headaches, he stirred up a fragmant, caramel-coulored liquid in a three-legged pot. When it was done, he carried it a few doors down to Jacob’s pharmacy. Here, the mixture was combined with carbonated water and sampled by customers who all agreed – this new drink was something special. So, Jacob’s pharmacy put it on sale for five cents a glass. Pemberton’s bookkeeper Frank Robinson named the mixture Coca-cola, and wrote it out in his discticnt script. To this day, Coca-cola is written in the same way.

If not now, when. If not me, then who!

About nine servings of the soft drink were sold each day. Sales for that first year added up to a total of about $50. The funny thing was that it cost John Pemberton over $70 in expanses, so the first year of sales were a loss.

There are a couple of lessons to draw out from the Coca-Cola story

Start with what you have

This is one of the prominent things in the Coca-Cola story. Sometimes, we are bugged down by trying to figure out all the tiny details before starting anything. We want to have everything ready to go before we take any step. Most times, we focus on what we don’t have rather than what we have. Pemberton started the Coca-Cola company with what he had – a formula. At that time, he didn’t have any business or marketing experience. He could have held back because of the many things he didn’t have but he didn’t.

There’s a story that explains this in a deeper way in God’s word. In II Kings 4: 1-7,there is an account of a woman that shows the power of starting with what you have. The woman, a widow, had a peculiar problem. He late husband left her and her sons huge debts to pay! And as far as she was concerned, she didn’t have the wherewithal to pay these debts. She did what was very logical to do – she ran to the man of God for help (since he husband was also a prophet when he was alive). I am sure she was expecting a display of a miracle. However, the man of God asked a very instructional question

“Elisha said, "I wonder how I can be of help. Tell me, what do you have in your house?" "Nothing," she said. "Well, I do have a little oil."

As far as she was concerned, she had nothing, except a little oil. Guess what? That little oil was enough to get what she wanted. This woman was focusing on what she didn’t have. The man of God drew her attention to what she had! What do you have? May I challenge you to start with that, and then see how you attract and get what you need.

Don’t be afraid to fail

In case you are not aware, Coca-Cola did not make any profit in the 1st year! First year sales closed at a loss. Infact, Pemberton, who invented the mixture, died 2.5 years after his discovery. However, the seed of greatness for this brand has been sown and just needed time to germinate.

One of the best lessons I ever learned was that it was OK to fail. It is OK to make mistakes. Failure has a wonderful way of teaching you lessons, sometimes very painful lessons, that you can use the next time you tackle a problem. You may not learn the lesson the first time, or the second, or fifth time, but eventually each failure will teach you something you can use later.

Don’t be afraid to fail. Every successful person has failed at some time. Everybody that plays it safe, they’re never going to fail, but they’re never going to be a big success,”

How did I learn this? By recognizing one crucial thing – no one starts off being the best at something. All the greats of anything did it through hard work, something you can read about in Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers and his 10,000 hours idea (that to truly master something you need to spend 10,000 hours on it). And you know what? The first thousand hours were probably filled with failures.“Don’t be afraid to fail. Every successful person has failed at some time. Everybody that plays it safe, they’re never going to fail, but they’re never going to be a big success,” said Peter Kim, Hudson Jeans CEO, requoted from a Los Angeles Times article.

(To be continued)

Want Success? Raise the Bar!

Earlier in the week, while attending a team meeting at work, something interesting happened. I was in a meeting where one of my leaders was reviewing one of the key results in my department. It was an area where we were really doing poorly a couple of months ago. We did a full analysis of the problem and put actions plans in place to solve. In the last 4 months, we had exceeded our targets on a consistent basis. I was happy to share the moment with the team. However, I sensed something in the room then that I had to caution. I sensed complacency. I sensed the “we have arrived” syndrome. I didn’t need anyone to tell me that that result will stay stagnant for a while unless I did something. I did

I congratulated the team on the milestone achieved. I told them of the need to feel good about the great result they had delivered. I was however quick to raise the bar for them! I changed the target! My mind immediately played over a story I have read some years back. There was a conversation between a man, and his son, who was practicing to become the best high jumper in the world. Let’s hear from the man.

One evening as I returned home from work, I found Lee practicing his jumping. I asked, “How high is the bar?”
He said, “Five feet, eight inches.”
“Why that height?”
He answered, “You must clear that height to qualify for the state track meet.”
“How are you doing?” I asked.
“I can clear it every time. I haven’t missed.”
My reply: “Let’s raise the bar and see how well you do then.”
He replied, “Then I might miss.”
I queried, “If you don’t raise the bar, how will you ever know your potential?”
So we started moving the bar up to five feet, ten inches; then to six feet; and so on, as he sought to improve. Lee became a better high jumper because he was not content with just clearing the minimum standard. He learned that even if it meant missing, he wanted to keep raising the bar to become the best high jumper he was capable of becoming”

Can I please ask you a question? Where is your bar set? Low enough so you can have a life filled with accomplishments? So high that you continually stretch yourself to climb higher? Somewhere in between: safe yet a little challenging? I believe strongly that each of us can do more. We can accomplish a great deal more than we are doing at the moment. We only need to create the desire, get organized, have balance in our lives, and go for it. We only need to set a new standard of achievement and raise the bar on ourselves and our goals.

Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The term “raise the bar” came into common usage in the English language through the track and field sports of high jumping and pole vaulting, where athletes run and jump to propel themselves over obstacles. In each subsequent round of competition, the bar which establishes the vertical height of the obstacle is raised, making the event slightly more challenging. The athlete who displays the greatest stamina and skill successfully crosses the highest bar (or series of them), and wins the event.

As applied to life outside of the sporting world, raising the bar most often pertains to setting ever higher expectations of quality or quantity. These expectations may originate externally, imposed by others who are judging performance, or internally, as a method of self improvement. Ideally, the two work in tandem to bring about a new level of achievement unseen in the context of previous measures of excellence.

So what kind of focus and plan does it take to "run up" the score in your business? It takes a lot more than a dream, big goals, and hard work. Here's how I suggest you raise the bar:

1. Compete with yourself more than others. Ask yourself this question, "Am I better than I used to be?" Set goals that stretch you, all the time. Where I work, we call it stretch targets

2. Admire your strong competitors. They prevent you from getting complacent and motivate you and your team. Learn from them and then beat the pants off of them.

3. Create a mindset focused on making the best out of opportunities and resources. This will make you less susceptible to downturns.

4. Don't let yourself get complacent. It will infect your team. When a leader lets up a little, the people they manage let up a lot. I suggest you bite off more than you can chew when making goals for yourself. Stretching won't allow you to get complacent.

5. Stay focused and keep attacking. We sometimes are inclined to coast when we are out in front. Don't play not to lose, play to win outright!

As you raise the bar on yourself and on your team, I can guarantee you something – you will reach new heights of success and achievements

So, what are you waiting for? Raise the Bar…..Today!