The Solutions

'Free Your mind and the rest will follow'

Many little or not so little things have registered over the past few weeks but the point of this blog is to find the most powerful lens to view them from and give something meaningful to the readers. It is a time when a 3 year old 'British kid ' is kidnapped by 'rebels ' from the Niger Delta. A period when even though Senator Obama generated more donations about$32million dollars more than Senator Hillary Clinton's $27 million with over quarter of a million small donors he remains a distant second on National polls. More painful he could not get African Americans to see with a more holistic lens and cheer him on as they continue to be prisoners of their victim mentality. Watch ing the crowd of educated and enlightened Black people fall for Senator Clintons line on HIV/AIDS discrimination against black women. It made me cringe as they hollered for cheap shot and gesture politics as opposed to Obama's remarks designed to share responsibility and hopefully challenge them to recognize their own not so insignificant financial, emotional, intellectual and spiritual resources. It was a period when the New Nigerian Government of Mr Yar adua has allowed the debate about legitimacy and distractions and in fighting of the elite stop it from setting any agenda that captures the imagination of the Nigerian on the street. Here in Milton Keynes the local press put out a wanted ad on a mugger and their only description is ' Black man with big nose believed to be Nigerian'. My shopping basket was filled with many disparate ingredients and I now have a challenge on how can it be turned into a powerful meal? especially when some comments on this very small world we are creating here seeks solutions.

In the past four weeks I have also been involved in one of the most challenging aspect of my day job, teaching those who have authority in organizations in how to lead change that is sustainable. Usually there are three elements to this kind of workshop. How do you get people to participate, adapt and create a space for change emergence. In this case the client a local Council with one of the most diverse populations in the UK, has a cash squeeze, a demanding community and a pressing accommodation move. For most part of this three day training, delivered in groups of maximum 12, to about 47 participants over the 4 weeks we generally had a powerful transformative experience. It was quite draining however my most powerful revelation came with the last group. This was the group with the most senior participants and were beneficiaries of positive feedback from other Preceding participants. Never mind it is Sods Law, they were the most passive of the lot and took very little risk for their own learning. They wanted to be directed by me and also wanted me to extract conclusions for them. When this failed of course they saw it as my failure not something that they shared in creating. We as a group in that circumstance were underperforming and even though there was individual growth and learning the collective normed at the level of the cynics. It reminded me a lot about what I see happening with Nigerian as well as the African American political elites and thought leaders. They are committed to succeeding by default , no pain , no sacrifice, blame others and wait for the messiah who has no faults. Disdain the wisdom of the masses and project own failures on them so that they cannot succeed without your prescribed approach. Paralyze them with a sense of the impossible and constant of complaint even rewarding those with dysfunctional behavior by being an apologist for how they have no choice. All you have to do is look at the Niger Delta and the excuses people make for the abuse of other human beings .

So what can i suggest . First is we are all co creators of what we see as going wrong. We act as observers, commentators, participants and even critics . By just changing our own role into something that moves in the direction of what we desire we start to shift the architecture of the problems we help keep in place. So here goes:

1 ) Change your role if you do same thing for too long you lose your audience.

2) Get out of your bedroom of habitual meaning making or make new meaning of issues. For example my new meaning is around organization in Nigeria not Corruption . it is a powerful paradigm that has led to creating a Institute that has now been licensed by the Nigerian government called the Vocational Management and Organizational Development Centre (VMODC) more later. It has also led to seeing with deeper and more empowering lens.

3) Use many lenses to see the situation especially one that chooses your dreams rather than seeks your nightmare. Simply the eyes of what you love rather than what you fear. Some call it a the power of Attraction since what you focus deeply and meaningfully upon becomes your reality. it is the basis of the book 'the Secret ' but this is the basis of Yoruba Epistomology. The name Orisha is an example it can mean Ori ni afin sha nkan, we choose things with our 'head'. Built in is that we attract what we believe but of course we reject this powerful things. Then there is the power of suggestion that if you do not feel your thoughts with what you want then others will replace it with their own which might be designed to sell you a sense of failure and lead to out performing you. The Mohammed Ali name the round strategy or Rope a Dope . Whose dreams is it that Nigeria should be a failed state? Whose aspiration is it that Africa is the basket of destitution, disease and destruction? What role do we play in attracting these things and keeping them in constant rotation?

4) See the pattern that empowers and increases your possibilities. Have you heard of Ron Eglash and his study of African Fractals. One quote that emerges from this very powerful lens which see that Africans had developed the sophisticated Fractal geometry that is at the top of western aspirations today many years ago is this,

" When Europeans first came to Africa, they considered the architecture very disorganized thus primitive. It never occurred to them that the Africans might have been using forms of mathematics that they hadn't discovered yet"
Ron Eglash 2000

The shame is that it never occurs to many Africans that their continent has the leading competence for this adaptive Century strangely because of the very reasons that it is vilified or pitied that it has nor become so industrialized or engineered that it still uses the authentic capacity to self organize and space for emergence. For many who cannot imagine the genius of the African they will still await the West to declare the revolution.

5) Synthesis into action beyond what is accepted or defined into the world of new possibilities. We are going to use the VMODC to start a revolution. It is a Management revolution where we will use local genius as a catalyst in developing 100,000 new managers, facilitators or organization developers who will help to create 10 jobs through the improvements they create in productivity, creativity and interaction . This is effectively 1 million jobs over 10 years.

The only thing to fear is fear itself. The time is now and our people need pioneers . We need to move beyond the regular deconstruction to improvising if necessary our construction. We need to move beyond nations known for consumption to those who reward production.

The time is now.