Extraordinary People Solve Problems!

     Leadership Series #6: EXTRAORDINARY PEOPLE SOLVE PROBLEMS.

The greatest key to your leadership potential is the problems you help find solutions to in life. If you want to secure a legacy solve problems. If you think about it, this world is actually about solving problems!  The restaurant solves the problem of hunger; the carmaker solves the problem of transport! One of the greatest challenge of African ‘leaders’ is that they don’t want to solve the problems that confronts the continent!

After the Second World War in 1946, Europe was totally devastated, everything was upside down, and nations were at their lowest ebb in human history! Then steps in an extraordinary person! George C. Marshal, Secretary of State of the United States of America, at a speech in Harvard University in June 1947 ‘spoke of the urgent need to help the European recovery’. By June 5, 1947, the framework of the Marshall plan (officially the European Recovery Program, ERP) designed by William L. Clayton and George F. Kennan of the State Department was in place. “The plan was in operation for four years beginning from April 1948. The goals were to rebuild a war devastated region, remove trade barriers, modernize industry, and make Europe prosperous again”. The plan cost the US taxpayers US$13b in economic and technical assistance to instil in Europeans a sense of hope and self-reliance, today Europe is a flourishing continent! That is problem solving at its best.

Great Leaders solve great insurmountable problems and move human history forward. Lee Kuan Yew, the founding father of modern Singapore, as Prime Minister in 1959 inherited a poor, ‘relatively underdeveloped colonial outpost with no natural resources and transformed his city/state into a “First World” Asian Tiger. He is one of the most influential political figures in Southeast Asia’! His title “Minister Mentor” is very instructive. He is one of the longest serving Ministers in human history! A problem solve per excellence!

What problem do you see in and around you that needs solution-take a deep look, there are countless problems calling for ordinary men and women to step in and become extraordinary! Will you take the challenge, today and do something?

Bankole Olubamise, Aug 17, 2012.