Everybody has Three Economic Assets

 

Everybody has Three Economic Assets.

 

Everyone on the planet has three economic assets; some money, a job and their self. While this might appear obvious, it is in fact for this very reason that these three powerful economic assets are so frequently overlooked. I would have added time as the fourth, but no man has been able to control time. The best you can do is use it wisely. While everyone occasionally comes into the possession of varying amounts of money, not everyone appreciates the power of this wealth creating tool. Those who create wealth and substance from the money they earn are usually good accelerators of money. They save money diligently and carefully with an aim of accumulating capital to fund a venture they have in mind. For these people money has purpose and principle. It is not to be taken lightly or spent on things you do not need. Those who do not create wealth do not consider the little money they get or earn to be of any economic value. They spend it as soon as they get it on things that they want. The immediate gratification of their desires is their primary motivation of using money. The truth is creating wealth lies in the discipline of managing money and using it for long term constructive purposes.

Well not everyone has a job, you will say, so not everyone has access to this economic asset. Indeed, formal employment has jobs on offer, but informal employment has jobs too. In fact, there are many jobs around you that you could do for yourself. You could make your bed, wash the dishes, do your homework or take out the trash. All of these jobs help you live a better life or prepare you for a better life. However, you cannot access the economic benefits these jobs offer you unless you are willing to work. Your mother may ask you once or twice to help with washing the dishes. If you don’t, she will not ask you a third time. While this may seem like a small victory of freedom on your part, what you do not realize is that you have just been fired! What this teaches us is that you can only hold a job if you are willing to work, make some personal sacrifices and create social value that can be paid for. Many people would like a formal job where they are paid a large sum of money without having to put in any effort. It is probably why betting and gambling is so popular. If you want to access the economic value of a job you must learn the discipline and the habit of working in such a manner as to be honestly rewarded for your initiative. You really can’t expect to eat a meal off a clean plate unless it has been washed, you can’t expect to pass your exams if you don’t study, you can’t harvest what you have not planted and you really cannot expect to be paid for work you have not done; especially if you have not created the requisite social value. Learning the skill and capacity to work empowers you to unlock the economic value of any job.

My friend, JB, reminded me the other day that it takes time to create wealth. For a moment I contested his meaning, because I thought wealth is having allot of money. If you look at rich people they have great substance in assets, enterprise, investments and financial savings. It is the kind of substance that takes diligence and patience to accumulate. Then I understood JB’s point. It is the person that makes the riches, not the riches that make the person. To accumulate wealth, you must invest develop and train yourself to make wise economic decisions. You may need to learn accounting, invest in developing a skill, knowledge and understanding of medicine, cooking or brick laying. You will need to equip yourself to extract all the various gifts, abilities, interests and talents you have to make yourself valuable and a person of high net worth. You will have to develop your character, competence, courage and confidence if you want to realize your full economic value as a person. Many people just don’t bother to learn, get themselves an education and develop the capacity to do more with their lives, then wonder why life does not give them much economic value in return.  The human being is the only species endowed with the ability to learn above any other creature and thus has the capacity to lead, change and make themselves worth more in terms of economic value. If you really want to realize your full value of your economic assets, you must make your money work for you, work on your job, but most of all you must work on yourself.

 

What would we do without Poverty?

 

Photo by form PxHere

Poverty

Poverty is the systematic or systemic marginalization, exclusion or isolation of a community, group or section of society from access to public goods.

Brain Drain & Voice of the African Child

 

BRAIN DRAIN & VOICE OF THE AFRICAN CHILD

Why is brain drain a real problem? Why is it that the African child seeks refuge in the west? It is where they find their voice! When educators in Africa gave voice to the dreams of the African child, they help society speak into being a new reality.

Managing Wealth

 

Managing Wealth

The rich man gathers an inheritance for his children. The children spend their entitlement and become poor. The distraught children of the poor and disenfranchised in society are driven by dreams and aspirations to work hard and become wealthy.

Their Children will go to school

Their Children will go to school

 

Successful people may be school dropouts. But of this one thing I am sure. Their children will go to school.

The resolution of an issue is in its definition.

 

The resolution of an issue is in its definition.

How to introduce and establish change in a Hostile Environment

 

How to introduce and establish change in a Hostile Environment

There are many approaches to introducing change. However, establishing change in a hostile environment demands that the change goes an extra mile to create a new reality. The following steps will be helpful

First, study the values that underpin the current practices. What you see is often just the tip of the iceberg supported by a substructure of belief systems. Understanding the scaffolding, without being judgmental of the practice, arms you with sufficient insight to address the roots that create the outcomes.

Second, pragmatically determine those values that are ethical that should continue and those that need to be challenged and changed. Take care not to “throw the baby out with the bath water” and be keenly aware that your personal biases in the situation do not always qualify as right or even righteous. There are multiple lenses in which reality exists and can be projected. The ideal calls for prudence rather than change for the sake of change.  

Third identify the mechanisms, publics and environmental institutions that can be used to lobby and build support to dismantle undesirable practices.  

Fourth, construct an institutional culture, structure, policy, procedures and systems that introduce, surround, protect and support sustainable change within the environment.

Slaying the dragon of Corruption

 

Slaying the dragon of Corruption

Corruption is a behavioral construct supported by a values system. In theory, to dismantle corruption one would need to deconstruct its support system and replace it with values and mechanisms that promote, sustain and reward ethical behavior in which ethics conform to the beneficence of the greater social good.  

The enemy of success

 The enemy of your future success is your last achievement. It does not matter that you won or failed.  What matters is what you do next.. The last achievement becomes the bedrock of your success or your resting place. The choice is yours.

Leaders make things happen

 

Leaders make things happen

Leaders make things happen. Managers get things done. There is a secret to accomplishment. It takes three things. Knowing what needs to be done (education), understanding how to do it (skill) and doing it with blood, sweat and tears (will). Making things happen takes vision and courage. Getting things done takes planning and insight. Many people know what to do but don’t know how do it, others know how, but never muster the will to get on and do it. The reason why leaders and managers are considered extra-ordinary is that they give no excuses, submit to their goals and appear to lead and manage with ease.

Job opening at the Center

 

 AFRICA LEADERSHIP & SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT CENTRE

Office Assistant (Temporary)

Acacia Estate, Ongata Rongai

We are looking for an Office  Assistant to take up a temporary position beginning 2nd August 2021 The position entails basic office management routines, administrative tasks and secretarial duties including cleaning, book keeping filing, record keeping, making calls copying materials, supporting  consultants in the marketing, delivery and management of assignments.

The ideal candidate will have mature interpersonal skills, 25-35 years, be an independent worker, have functional computer skills in word processing, power point and spreadsheets. Those with a business related diploma will have an added advantage. Interns are encouraged to apply.

Send a one page resume to the Director, email  mdi@mdi.co.ke outlining your Bio data, qualifications, competence any employment experience you may have and your expectations of the position with regards to your most recent earnings. Also state your availability to take up the challenge. Only suited candidates will be contacted. Applications close 24th July 2021.

CAN YOU TAKE A MILLION Hits!!?

 

Celebrating 1,000,000 Hits!!!

What does it take to write one million hits? I don’t quite know what flamed my desire to turn the glorious rendition of thoughts into scripture, even though my Dad did publish a book on African stories. It must have happened about the time I was ten or eleven when my fifth grade English teacher, Ms. Kinuthia scored my essay titled, “How I was made” with an A-Grade. That was an inspiring moment for a student who had never before earned anything more than a C-Grade in an English test. The story was about how a car (me) was transformed from iron ore mined from shafts deep in the earth, transported to dumping sites, smelted in a fiery furnace, cast into cold hardened blocks, assembled with many foreign parts and finally dunked in a pool of wet paint before being put on sale in a show room window. Ironically, that story more or less describes my journey as an author.

last century, in my younger days, I wrote secret poems, short stories, science fiction, songs for youth groups, drama and scripts that were just words strung together. Later, I would record and produce audio-visual materials as well, but these never really held the magnetism of the written word for me. The first manuscript I dared to present to a publishing house was never accepted. The only publisher who replied, after three years, informed me that the script needed substantive revision before it could be considered. Publishing in those days was a huge specialized undertaking of press works at an unimaginable cost. However, the day I received that fateful letter, I knew I would have to find a way to be read. So I wrote for Magazines, Newsletters, Newspapers and anyone who allowed me space for a few words on paper. Four years after I received that rejection letter I printed my first book.

Around the turn of the century came Computers, WordPerfect and the Internet. In an instant the publishers spell was broken. Now anyone with something to say could take their message to the world by pressing the enter tab on a keyboard. Suddenly the exclusive world of publishing was prized open to a million writers and a billion readers who no longer had to wait for lengthy production, distribution and delivery cycles for printed pages to be stocked on the limited shelves of a bookstore. I do admit that I feel a deep sense of loss at the passing of the hardcopy of scripture, but I am also happy that a billion more people now have access to the word. As time passed I wrote blogs with messages of leadership and life to reach as many as can access a web page. Over five decades, I have written some two dozen books, thousands of articles, children’s stories and a lot of stuff I just might publish someday.

As I reflect on the journey of a million blog hits achieved this week, I realize that every time someone opened a page of one of my books, read a post or recalled what I had written, I made a hit that changed a mind, guided a thought or helped celebrate life. I realize what an awesome responsibility it is to write, share hope and enrich another person on the other side of your own perspective. I have friends who have encouraged me to keep writing over the years. Perhaps this is the message behind their urging- that it is a blessing to give to whom you know not will receive!  The other day I started another journey writing academic papers. The journey has started with just 1,000 Hits.  It has many critics and much philosophy, but it uses the same alphabet with some modifications to the length and arrangements of words. I hope to influence some readers to become leaders and help make the world a better place. Almost half a century has passed since I wrote my first hit in that fifth grade class and I am not quite at the journeys end. By God’s grace I will write some more. Maybe the best is yet to come. In any case I thought it wise to pause and leave a note on the table to encourage as many as would else come through this open door and wonder if this is indeed the way.

The only way you can take a million Hits is to stay standing.

Allan.

What is your ONE thing?

 

That one thing.

When all is said, what is the one thing that you did that only you could have done?... Perhaps, the one thing I did is write my story.

Did you not know that leadership is not for the strong!

 

Did you not know that leadership is not for the strong, the clever, the wise  nor the elite!

Rather, leadership and enterprise favor the brazen and those who persist.

The government is not anyone you can talk to

 

The Government is not anyone you can talk to.

The Next Generation Corporate Leaders are among us!

 

CHRM EXECUTIVE DIPLOMA IN CORPORATE LEADERSHIP

The next generation corporate leader is an independent worker with a corporate responsibility, able to convert any place into a workspace to deliver consistent, self-driven, high performance outcomes using available digital tools to influence people, facilitate productivity and ensure service delivery. This 21^st century leader is a global thinker equipped with the generative skills of a consultant and entrepreneur, yet maintains contact with networked teams to deliver client promises. The leader knows that what they do today affects tomorrows reality and thus plans for growth, deliberately programs activity and solves problems on the path to desired goals. The CHRM Executive Diploma in Corporate Leadership prepares you for promotion  as a leader and is an investment in your career success.

This powerful program is suited for independent business executives, supervisors and middle managers seeking to advance a corporate career in a challenging post-COVID world! Graduates are equipped to be effective leaders as well as more productive as entrepreneurs, people and business managers. The program is ideal to develop your On-line or in-house corporate team. Click here to sign up for the next Online Cohort or talk to us at CHRM College for a program to equip your leadership team for the realities of a New Normal global business environment.

A Great Man just stepped off the Planet! Help me say goodbye to Bishop Michael Sande

 

Goodbye Mike, Goodbye Bishop – Till we meet again!

The other day a light went out on Earth and a flame erupted in Heaven- signaling the return of an angel. I never knew a man who could say so much in so few words. Soft, refined and well defined phrase. My last engagement with Mike was at a coffee shop. Mike was on the way to a board meeting when I bumped into him. I enjoyed a secret privilege to pay his bill as I left him seated eating a fruit salad – an insignificant amount compared to what he had done for me over many years. In case you think I am talking about a hobo, make no mistake, Mike was a Bishop, but unless someone explained to you his credentials you would never know. Such was the gentleman, patterned after his master Jesus the Christ. To all of us teenagers he was just Mike. Sometimes Mike on the mike. The title did not make Mike, Mike made the title. I was privileged to have him as one of my seven fathers when I and a hundred other young people in IMANI needed a father, mentor, patron and brother. Together with Mrs. Sande, whom we respectfully called Mama Jessica or Mama Olando; they gave us an open home, a taste of heaven and paid for our musical dreams. With an astute mind he taught us, guided and chastised us. And even had some of us married. Never did he mention a forgiven wrong. He never raised his voice, never demanded, but he did ask – ever so politely. In life he lived a testimony, in death he has brought us face to face with our own mortality. Would he want us mourn, perhaps… a little maybe, but for him it would be more important that we each make our own peace with God. You may think I am talking about an angel, but believe me I have not described half the man. Of the Bishop I will let others speak. Mike has gone ahead to the promise he held us to keep – Up from the grave he arose with a mighty triumph ... Yes, a light has gone out on Earth, but a flame is burning in Heaven. No words can describe the pain, but the gain is that we shall see him again, if we hold to His Spirit. We love you Mike; we will miss you, rest well - till we meet again.

How Transformative Thinking works

 

 

This paper explores how business leaders can use transformative thinking to successfully facilitate corporate transformation in the 21st Century. The author explores the principles of transformative leadership put forward by published authors alongside the challenges of ensuring a business remains sustainable in a dynamic environment. The paper lays the groundwork for empirical research on transformative thinking and corporate transformation as a base for the development of sustainable business policy and organization development strategy. The author argues that business leaders have the responsibility to ensure their organizations stay attuned to the operating environment without losing focus in serving the needs of an evolving customer base. The article challenges business leaders to engage transformative thinking as a way of generating superior, non-traditional outcomes and creating a paradigm shift in organization performance. Click here to download full article.