The-Accountant-Jul-Aug-2016

MANAGEMENT
people by his side. He brought people
like Stanton into the cabinet in 1862 as
secretary of war. For example; Stanton
was much tougher and secretive than him.
Their opposite temperament balanced
each other out. Even Barrack Obama did
the same thing by choosing his chief rival
Hillary Clinton to be Secretary of State
and Joe Biden as the Vice President. He
also included powerful Republicans in
the cabinet like Robert Gates and Ray
Lahood. The major reason in my view for
these two leaders doing this was that they
wanted people who were free to question
their authorities and who were unafraid
to argue with them. They wanted to work
with people who were original in thought
and who don’t imitate others. Herman
Melville wrote, “It is better to fail in
originality than to succeed in imitation.”
As long as you are trying to conform to
someone else, the best number you will
ever become is number two. You cannot
reach your destiny when you take another
man’s road. Several counties in Kenya face
a challenge of managing waste because
they always want to conform to known
methods of managing waste without
being innovative. Take a country like
Sweden for example, it has an innovative
waste management program where
it uses 96% of its garbage to generate
electricity. In fact, in 2012, it faced a
crisis because it ran short of garbage.
It had to start a process of importing it
from neighbouring countries. What I
learn from this case is that; there is the
conforming thinking- focusing on setting
up disposal boards with a scramble for
appointments to figure out how to deal
with garbage problems; and there is the
innovative thinking that sees garbage as a
blessing and cannot get enough of it.
John Henry Fabre placed caterpillars
in a circle. For twenty four hours the
caterpillars dutifully followed one another
around and around. Then Fabre placed
them around saucer full of pine needles
(favorite food). For six days the mindless
creatures moved around and around the
saucer, dying from starvation even though
abundance of choice of food was located
two inches away. All they were simply
doing was conforming and none of them
was innovative enough to discover a great
opportunity around there. This means if
you simply conform you will never make
the situation you are in any better and
hence no growth. I think now it is time
to answer the question I asked earlier
arising from the movie story entitled,
‘Boy in a ‘Bubble.’ The question I asked
you is whether you thought the boy chose
to live in the bubble and live a longer life
or he chose to leave the bubble and live
his life to the fullest no matter how brief.
For the record, Travolta’s character chose
to leave the security of his bubble. He
knew that in order to truly live, he had to
leave his protective bubble and embrace
life, no matter how short it was.
What about you? Where would
you choose to live? More to the point,
where are you living? Therefore, let us
all be transformed and not conformed.
Remember if everyone in your
organization agrees with you, there is no
need for them to be there.
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