adminZachary Aldwin Milkshake in the Boardroom
Johannesburg the provincial capital of Gauteng, the wealthiest province in South Africa, has over 7 000 kilometres of road, including major highways linking the main areas that make up the city. To the average Zimbabwean who rarely sees more than two lanes of traffic moving in the same direction (except when the kombis get crazy around rush hour) it can be a nightmare to navigate.
Miss the wrong exit and you could spend hours navigating your way to your destination. Fortunately technology has provided a solution in the form of what is commonly called a GPS.
A small device that connects to the global positioning system satellites, pinpoints your location in a scary ‘Big Brother’ manner, and provides you with directions and a mini map to your chosen end point. I want to throw mine out the window.
I should be honest here, most of the time it functions particularly well but the moments it fails me are those glorious incidents where it tells you to turn a fraction too late, usually when there are two turns close to one another.
You end up in the wrong lane of traffic and before you can blink you are swept away in a sea of cars into the depths of traffic.
Your shock is broken only by the buzz of the GPS telling you that it is ‘recalculating’. At that point the only thing preventing you from hurling the gadget into the abyss is the thought that you may lose the deposit on your rental. Such is the problem when you live your life relying on other people’s ideas.
Some people are leeches when it comes to ideas and efforts. They have no internal inertia and getting them to do anything productive at all is a mission in itself.
We had a high jump mat at high school that was heavy but could deform easily when pressure was applied.
Moving that mat was the bane of sports days. It could not be pushed and rolling it over was equivalent to spending an hour at gym.
There are people like that in the world, difficult to motivate. Most of us probably are not in the high jump mat category of life, however, there is a tendency for us to often wait for instruction or someone else’s creativity before moving.
If you live your life based on someone else then you will probably miss your exit on the highway.
The instructions will come too late and the time it will take for you to correct are years not just a couple of kilometres. Passive following is not going to get you to a place of success.
Be proactive. Take initiative. If you are an employee then that initiative may be within the scope of a wider company vision, but instead of complaining about your problems over the tea dispenser be the person who goes out and solves it.
Not for the recognition or promotion but because showing initiative is a hallmark of successful people and you will have made a positive contribution to society.
I mentioned last week that I used to do ballroom dancing. There was a phase in dance when the thinking was that the man led and the woman meekly followed his non-verbal cues.
This has changed somewhat. The man is still expected to lead, he is still in control of the dance, especially if something unplanned happens like another couple cut in front of you. The difference is that the woman is not just a passive partner being dragged around the floor.
She knows her steps, she knows the routine, and if you take the man away suddenly she probably will not fall over.
As a couple they have a connection that allows them both the independence to move freely, but maintains that interdependence that looks amazing. If the woman was purely passive then they would never get anywhere.
Persuasion is a short term solution. It takes much effort and is a sad way to live life. Connection, real genuine connection, is an exciting and dynamic relationship that is self-sustaining.
There is a buy in from both parties that transcends the mundane and creates art. On the dance floor my partner and I would have moments when everything would just click and there would be the incredible flow of movement like you were dancing on air.
We would spend hours of practice to recreate those glimpses of spectacular and make them more permanent. A true connection relationship makes living a life based on persuasion dull and grey.
Stop needing to be persuaded all the time, initiate more. Stop having to persuade all the time and connect more.
Making the shift is about as scary as leaving an airport for the first time and driving straight into crazy freeway traffic, but once you have gotten past the fear it becomes the only way to live.
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