Knee Jerk Management

If you have been around management circles for a bit then you should have heard just about enough buzz words. But I'm sure one more wont hurt.

The Knee Jerk Management style is unfortunately one that we all fall back on more often than we should. My worry is however not about those of us who fall back on it intermittently as it is about people who never shift out of this management mode.

Here are a few pointers you are stuck in the Knee Jerk Management mode;

1. You can not clearly state your Mission in one sentence.
2. The last time you looked at your plan for the year was when you wrote it down (if you wrote it that is)
3. The reason your company is on the internet is that everyone else is (a symptom of the reason you do most other things).

Knee Jerk mangement condemns you to reacting to the urgent when you ought to be pursuing the important. Quit being a knee-jerk manager.

Being CEO

Recent events in Nigeria, particularly the long AWOL of the president and the interplay of forces it has thrown up has got me thinking again about what it is like being CEO.

I am not as particularly concerned with the many shades of opinions on what the president should have or should not have done as I am concerned about the actions/inactions and utterance/silence of Mr President himself.

The entire fiasco has led me to draw and reinforce the following conclusions:

1. It's not about you; the organization, company wasn't created 'ços you are CEO, you are CEO 'cos the organization exists. If the organization isn't better off with you as CEO - quit!


2. Character shows; eventually, character does show up. Character for me is being able to live beyond the human instinct. Under pressure, Mr President and the FEC have prooved to be just another group of sit-tights.



3. Conflict is Valuable; difficult situations throw up scenarios we never thought about. If we seize the opportunities, we can build better frameworks for our lives/organizations.

BREAKING NEWS! I just acquired the Oxygen Franchise.

That sounds like the most fantastic news, doesn't it? To imagine that any one person can acquire the exclusive rights to market oxygen to humanity, that gives me what... a monopoly of 6 billion clients?

As extreme as it might sound, I actually do have the exclusive rights to market oxygen to mankind ... well something to that effect. The whole concept that each one of us has a unique purpose to fulfil on earth literaly translates that we each have something that nobody else has to offer to the rest of the world. It can be further deduced that if the rest of the world didn't need what we exclusively have to offer, we wouldn't be here.

Purpose is like spiritual DNA - no two people have the same purpose. Realising that you have a unique purpose is discovering that you just inherited a secret recipe to solve a global problem. Building a business out of that recipe is entirely up to you. It will be a shame to just let that recipe go to waste and leave the world deprived of the solution that it needs.

Build a business around your purpose and get ready for six billion customers.

Who is your boss?

Have you ever signed a form committing you to exclusively serve your employer during the period of your employment? I have at every place where I have worked. Employers generally want to be reassured that you are working exclusively for them. They don't want you distracted by other jobs or faced with conflict of interest issues. Well that rule seems to have always been around.

Jesus taught that "no man can serve two masters"; it's categorical, man just wasn't designed to serve two masters. So the question again is, who is your boss? Bear in mind that ultimately, there are only two bosses; God and the Greenback. Which one of them are you working for? Who sits in the corner office?

As a business owner, the fundamental question you must answer is ''why am I in business''?...

...There is only one right answer!

What's faith got to do with it?

For the majority of business people, we'd sooner rely on hard facts and critical analysis in taking business decisions but experience has shown over and again that faith is perhaps an even more important factor in achieveing business success.

In dealing with what we like to call "cold hard facts" we forget to reckon as George Soros argues in his recent book The New Paradigm for Financial Markets that the interpreters of the data cannot disspassionately evaluate the data as they are themselves a part of the data. Consequently, whatever decisions we take strictly from the data we have is tainted by our own prejudices.

Writing in Management of the Absurd, Richard Farson argues that you can't research the future; in essence, it's only in laboratories that yesterday's data is sufficient basis for predicting the future; an educated guess is still really just a guess. In real life as in business, one singular event can and often does throw years of data into the trash can. Imagine the impact for instance that 9/11 had on businessess in the united states.

The prospects for business success instantly leaves the realm of probability and enters into infinitely positive certainty when our decision leaves the realm of information based prognosis and enters into revelation steeped prophecy.

God controls facts and in consequence, he controls outcomes. That is why his prophecy in 2kings 7 that the economy of Israel will experience unprecendented deflation in 24 hours came to pass. He knew what events to trigger to create the facts that will result in the outcome that he had spoken about.

Picture Isaac Gen 26 sowing in a dry parched land that hadn't seen rain in a while because he got revelation to stay back while everyone else was shipping off to Egypt. That's like getting revelation to buy a stock everyone is dumping, or invest in a dilapidating neighbourhood- you get the drift; it may not make sense when you consider the data but sure puts some girth on your bottomline.

What's faith got to do with it? Everything!