Is your leadership Scalable?

I am convinced that everyone is a leader - unfortunately, most of us wait for the crowd to prove it.

If you woke up tomorrow and you were announced as the leader of the world's most influencial country, do you think that would be an opportunity or a disaster? To put it another way, is your leadership scalable?

The quality of a leader is not necessarily seen in the size of his following but in the values that shape his motives and actions. Jesus taught that if a man proves himself unfaithful in a small task, he declares himself unworthy of bigger ones.

Maybe you run a small enterprise, you can't even afford a cash register but if you handle your money with the correct values, you won't get into a big mess when you become as big as Cadbury.

The Biblical record of Joseph's life reads like a classic on scaling leadership: he was as fantastic a leader in Potiphar's house as he was in the prison and as Prime Minister of Egypt. More importantly, he didn't need 'time' to settle into the new position - the same principles, driven by the same values is what leadership requires at every level.

Similarly, Mordecai who transmuted from being merely someone that sat at the kings gate to the king's (for a territory that covered significant portions of present day Asia and Africa) second in command in a matter of days demonstrates his readiness to assume leadership at any level because a short while earlier, the only person he was leading was his relative - a young Jewish girl called Esther.

The size of your following is irrelevant, lead like you are leading the world. No matter the size of your enterprise, run it like you own the oxygen franchise.

Let us call a spade a brand

Brand is the new new name for spades; never mind the old maxim.

like all other fads (I know. Some will have my scalp for calling branding a fad) that dominate our enterprise lexicon for a time, Branding will someday go the way of the rest; it will no longer be a unique selling proposition, but merely a common feature of enterprises.

More effort seems to go into creating better brands these days than creating better products or services yet when Omo became the generic name for detergents, it wasn't as much about creating a brand as it was creating a product. Here is a test; if I say 'detergent', you'd probably think Omo. How about if I say 'happiness', I doubt that Coca Cola sprang into your mind just as quickly. Why then is Coca Cola branding as open happiness?

The first thing that used to come to mind when you say branding was hot iron, pungent air, mooing cattle - and a mark that distinguishes mine from yours. Branding used to be putting a mark on cattle so that we can tell which belongs to who. Now if you put your sign on a sick looking cow - all bones on wobbly legs, that wasn't going to make me buy it, just because I recognize your sign.

Much of today's branding effort is not about identifying/differentiating the product but creating an impression. It works for a while but people are not iredeemably stupid, they catch on after a while. This was what Jesus referred to as Whited Sepulchres (Manicured grave plots, grass clipped and flowers bright, but six feet down, it is all rotten bones and worm eaten flesh.)

Worse than being a fraud, it is possible to brand yourself out of existence; when your branding effort leans towards creating an image that consumers can not relate to your product easily, you are branding yourself out of reckoning. As much as you may want to believe that people are buying image, the reality is that majority of people are buying products and services. If I am thirsty, what I want is water not open happiness ( what is that by the way).