The Economic Empowerment Mindset

Here is the full text of my speech at the Rotary Club Today.

ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT IS NOT WHAT YOU THINK: IT IS HOW YOU THINK!

There is a story told about 40 young engineering students attending their first campus lecture that goes like this….

The Professor walked into the room and asked the class “ If you were to build a road from here to the highway across that field, how would you go about it?” one student immediately answered “ I would draw a detailed plan and hire a contractor to build the road” another said “ I would obtain capital from the World Bank and get the latest technology from China to put in place a state-of-the-art tunnel meeting global environmental standards at half the cost of a tarmac road. A third student raised his hand and said “ I would go home get a Slasher and cut the grass between here and there…. The class went silent for a moment then burst into laughter… After the laughter had died down the Professor asked the young man who had made the last remark to see him after class.

The young man timidly went to see the lecturer after class and was surprised when the good professor asked him to join his research team. When the student asked why he had been chosen the professor said. “Son, in four years’ time the University will graduate 40 engineers, but only one of them will be able to build a road”.  

Many people think that economic empowerment is about having a good job, having a talent, or having access to capital. We believe that having any one or all of these things will lead to economic empowerment... By that we mean having enough money to live above the poverty line.

• Perhaps you have also heard of the story where donors provided resources for a well to be dug in a local market. The women in the community would no longer have to walk six miles in the opposite direction before returning to the market to buy food in the evening. Then you heard the second part of the story where the pump broke down a year later and could not be repaired because of lack of donor funds. Apparently the donors left without leaving the community economically empowered.
• Or maybe you’ve heard of the story of the poor happily married couple that lived in a one roomed slum house and won a three bed-roomed town house in a newspaper lottery. Six months later they were contemplating divorce and sold the house because they could not agree on how to manage it.
• Maybe you remember the neighbor who had a great job, drove fast cars, wore designer clothes and lived in a posh house for so many years until he lost his job. Then he suddenly had no money. You were terribly disappointed because you could not explain how someone who had handled so much money for so many years could have so little economic sense.

On the surface these stories may appear to be very different, but none of them resulted in economic empowerment: what happened? What went wrong? If economic empowerment is not about giving donations, acquiring material possessions, having a job or enjoying life above the poverty line then what is it? Well I suggest that economic empowerment is about three things;

First; Purpose is more important than passion

A poor woman from any village in any part of the world who sets a purpose to bring up her children will get up every morning and look for bread not knowing where she will find it. As day follows night she will go to the farm, till the ground, go to the market, fetch water and find a way to feed her children. The poor woman has a very clear purpose. A purpose that keeps her alive.  A purpose that will utilize all the resources she has, all the resources she gets and all the resources she creates.  But you don’t have to be poor to have a purpose.

Many of our young people have great passions about many things, but are not willing to commit themselves to anything. The village woman is willing to do what it takes to fulfill a purpose in life. A purpose not only attracts attention it activates resources. Passion, on the other hand, generates a lot of excitement and debate. It also consumes resources.

The second is the ability to recognize and utilize available opportunities to create value and turn a profit in spite of education, talent or capital.

Perhaps we should start by appreciating that not enough people understand the word “profit”. There are two kinds of people in the world; those who consume profit and those who create it. Those who understand profit create value. Those who do not understand it consume it.

However, value not profit is the key to economic sustainability.  Entrepreneurs are economically empowered because they are able to recognize and utilize available opportunities to turn a profit. Entrepreneurs see opportunities where consumers see products.  To be economically empowered requires you to adopt a particular state of mind. An enterprising state of mind that creates value.

The ability to recognize and profitably utilize employment opportunity is perhaps the biggest challenge to the economic wellbeing of our society today. While all employees earn an income, not all employees return a profit on the money they earn.

If more employees recognized that wages are capital and not just money earned, they might think a little more like entrepreneurs instead of consumers. If employees would consider their earning as a means to empower themselves economically, they might create a little more wealth. The millions of employees living above the poverty line without turning a mentionable profit year in year out gives you an indication of the magnitude of the real problem of “economic DIS-empowerment”.

The Third is Patience

You may be familiar with the fact that 8 out of 10 businesses fail in their first year and another 80% of those that survive the first year will fail within the second year. Why does this happen despite the fact that these businesses may have been very well capitalized in the first place. The key to success in a business is to develop the ability to sustain an enterprise through successive business cycles. This takes patience, courage, learning and mastery of the process.

While there are multiple reasons why businesses fail, the character of the entrepreneur plays a huge role in the survival and eventual success of a business. One of the primary competencies of any successful entrepreneur is patience. Many people want instant success and do not have the patience to till the ground, plant the seed, tend the field, harvest the crop and then get ready for the next season to repeat the cycle. For most of us the sacrifice and effort required over that waiting period is just too much work.

Successful entrepreneurs will tell you that economic empowerment is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. Turning a profit is made by accumulating resources slowly, surely and carefully. As you accumulate profit slowly, surely and carefully you also learn to value it, multiply it and keep it securely.

No corporate executive is entrusted with company resources without proof of years of education, experience and training. Family businesses that survive generations apprentice their children starting from the lowest jobs and slowly moving them to higher positions of responsibility as they are schooled in the patience and skills of economic empowerment. On the other hand a family business collapses within one generation when impatient children sell off their parent’s lifetime investment to the fastest bidder.

So if I was to give you a definition of economic empowerment I would say it is the ability to commit to a purpose, use available resources to you to turn a profit and create value for the next generation.

It is my considered opinion that such a person will be successful at whatever they do in life.  Like the young engineer they will not look at what they don’t have, but use what they have to make a difference in the world.

It is my hope that as you go out to empower our people and particularly the youth that you will not only give loans and gifts like donors or offer them jobs and educational opportunities, but that you will also challenge young people to find a purpose in life, share with them the truth about the economic realities of your life’s journey and challenge them to take responsibility to ensure the survival and success of the next generation. When talking to young people we need to be careful to let them know that economic empowerment is not the goal of life but a means to a goal. I suggest we urge our young people to do the following to attain economic empowerment:

• Teach them to commit to a purpose and develop the ability to handle responsibility.
• Teach them that it is more important to do what needs to be done than what you want to do.
• Teach them never to despise opportunity and mine every opportunity for everything it is worth.
• Teach them that the lack of financial resources have never stopped anyone from achieving a dream, then let them know that
• Hardships, challenges and opportunity are the schools of life to which they must apply purpose, talent, and basic abilities to survive and thrive.
• Tell them to find a way to make humanity richer before they leave earth.  
• Teach them to be good stewards of the time, talent and treasure and never give an excuse for non-achievement because of what they don’t have.

So why are our young people not able to achieve economic empowerment? – It’s because we are teaching them all the untruths about life. We are telling them you can have anything you want – then we give it to them.  We give them everything then wonder why they depend on us.

We blame them for being irresponsible, but are not willing to hold them accountable for what they do. We are willing to pay for good grades and hide the fact that failure is part of life on the journey to success. We encourage them to be active, but never require them to be productive. We tell them that they are special then wonder where they get their sense of entitlement. We tell them that they mean the world to us then wonder why they are so self-centered.

The Economic Empowerment Mindset is much more than giving people education, money, material resources or jobs. It is about equipping people with a mindset to turn a profit, solve problems by creating valuable solutions. It is about developing the character to commit to a purpose and see it through to the very end. 

God Bless Kenya

Allan Bukusi, November 2018

Other reading

Employment and enterprise are the same thing

The five laws of successful employment

Employment is a business

The entrepreneurial employee

How to start a business without capital

The age of the employee has come to an end

The 33 Laws of Self Employment