Sundaymail Editor
Hunt for Greatness
Milton Kamwendo
Transforming anything starts with transformed people, with transformed thinking. Wake up, smell the coffee of reality and get ready to think differently in order to play differently. A lot of what you knew, you now have to unlearn, relearn and then repeat again.
Change is here and it is happening fast. It does not tolerate complacency or denial. Remaining married to the past, chained to the way things used to work, will leave you an artefact of history and consign you to the statistics of the past.
Past success is never a guarantee of future success. Mastery of old rules, is never mastery without continuous learning and never-ending improvement. Get ready to play differently, learn differently and be the difference.
In days gone by, the exhortation was that, to innovate you have to think outside the box. This is ancient wisdom, whose time is now past.
Being outside the box but still in the room leaves you vulnerable to the forces of change.
It is no longer about thinking outside the box, which is so yesterday. Boxed thinking works if you are in a casket. You have to think in totally new boxes. Instead of getting out of the box, be more aggressive and determined; move and get outside the building.
You cannot get fresh perspectives surrounded by stale opinions and retired minds that loath learning. The game has changed and you need not just new glasses, but a fresh pair of eyes and ears. Be willing to restart the learning cycle and have the wonder of a child. Do not make too much noise about your dated experience.
There is a new game, and you have to play it differently and approach it with a new mindset.
The 1990s were great years for Microsoft and its CEO and Chairman, Mr Steve Ballmer.
He had taken the company through many strategy runnings and Microsoft was winning, understood the market and would keep winning. So he reasoned at least. Microsoft was on a disciplined and determined path, it understood the innovation game.
It launched new operating systems for desktop and mobile devices. The mobile phone market had incumbents that claimed market positions. A number of mobile devices ran forward thinking Microsoft software.
What could change this market structure that had great names playing, with great innovative teams? What new market logic was needed in this race except the dominant logic?
In 1997 Microsoft was awash with cash and commanded a market share above 70 percent, and even threw a saving line to troubled Apple that was finding its soul following the return of Mr Steve Jobs.
Things could not have been better for the confident Microsoft and they were really working, albeit by rules prevailing then. The ground was shifting, the game was changing and rules were being rewritten. A storm was long in coming.
No one is entitled to greatness because it is a daily journey that never happens in a day. It is when you think you are winning the current game that you are most vulnerable. It is when you think that there is nothing to change that you must start changing.
While Mr Ballmer and his Microsoft team were playing the game as it was and had been, Apple saw the future and took a different and new path.
You cannot compete in the new and ever evolving game playing by old rules. Stubbornly playing an old game when things have changed is a major handicap. In 2007 when Apple unveiled the iPhone, Mr Ballmer chuckled and laughed at the idea of the iPhone.
He considered it to be a highly prized failure in the offing that was selling at double the price of the most expensive mobile phone then.
He was the phone and never understood the whole game and context. Ballmer joined the wrong school of prophets.
He could not think of this weird phone being any danger given that windows and other big-brand phones were everywhere. Phones that could play music were there; phones with good cameras were there; and Apple had no market share or experience in the category at all. What new things would it bring to a mature category. That was the story then.
Mr Ballmer said the iPhone would not appeal to consumers because it lacked a physical keyboard. That was a golden rule of the old alchemy game. As all experts do in their confidence but blinding folly, he even predicted that there was zero chance that the iPhone would ever get any significant market share. That was car-bon-dated market analyses by the insight-poor but highly experienced Ballmer.
He did not see that the iPhone was a game changing ecosystem that was playing a different game. The game had just changed right in his face and old game players, with their accolades of the past were due for relegation.
By 2009, he had to swallow all his words and a little more. When 2010 opened it was clear what was happening. Apple was playing a new game, using new rules and had become the most valuable company in the world. It had overtaken Microsoft in market capitalisation.
It did not take long, nor did it need much massaging, for the Microsoft Board to come to the realisation that although Mr. Ballmer was an experienced technology leader who had successfully led Microsoft in the glory days, the game had since changed. Past success was now just that, past success. The old rules were no longer going to work. A leader playing by old rules needed to retire. A new leader, who would play by different rules was needed. It happened.
There are many traps that hold us back from greatness.
Thinking that you are already an expert keeps you chained to the past and while you glide clutching dated papers and outmoded experiences. If you ever think you knew anything, it is time to change all your textbooks and learn differently from new teachers or in new ways.
The future belongs to the ever-learning and ever-curious one. Sometimes the best and sharpest teachers are the little ones, who are not tied to the blinkers of the past.
The old re-main with the legacy accolades of success whilst they are totally ignorant of the new game, the new rules and new scorecards.
Get ready to play differently and to gain new insights and new expertise.
The quest for greatness calls for deep humility and the willingness to doubt and look beyond all the things that you took so long to learn and master.
Check and re-evaluate closely the rules by which the experts that are advising you are playing or planning.
They might be using an old play-book or a tired stencil.
Remove the insulation tape in order to play differently and win. Sometimes the people around us insulate us from people, learnings, networks, ideas and new concepts because they are comfortable with past.
Get beyond the insulating and isolating bubbles, and remove the insulation tape.
The past may have given you many rights and privileges, bar one – the monopoly over wisdom and learning.
Put your learning and running shoes again because the pace of change is not slowing down. It is time to play a different game and learn different rules.
The game is changing, the problems are changing, the boundaries are shifting and the logic of the game is changing. It is time to get out of the building to learn. Playing rugby with a soccer mindset will expose your folly. Playing FIFA on X-box requires different skills from playing for the local football team.
The game may look the same, but the media, the approach is different, the logic are different and the thinking required is different. The analogue mindset differs significantly from the digital mindset. Challenge the mental models you hold as you reach for greatness.
You know that new opportunities have come when there are new and bigger problems. You cannot solve new problems using old answers and dated logic. New problems require new solutions and in many cases new arrangements and answers.
Old players, loyal to old arrangements are a big risk when the game has changed, the rules have changed and the context has changed. Rise to meet the sun and great the morning.
Dawn is not dusk. New problems bring new risks, new stories and new models.
Stop using old stories to frame new problems. Do not be imprisoned by old metaphors.
Things will not get better by themselves, someone has to take action. Think outside the building to free yourself from the limitations of the past. Think outside your village and its popular lore. Think outside the kraal for you to see clearly your operations. Think outside the narratives of the past and the boundaries that were set yesterday. Unless you change the rules you have been playing by you will find current reality cruel. Get ready to play differently.
Committed to your greatness.
Milton Kamwendo is a leading international transformational and motivational speaker, author, and workshop facilitator. He is a cutting-edge strategy, team-building and organisation development facilitator and consultant. His life purpose is to in-spire and promote greatness. He can be reached at: [email protected] and His website is: www.miltonkamwendo.com
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