If it’s going to be, it’s up to me – Robert Schuller

Most people view motivation of employees as one of the key responsibilities of leaders. But is it really possible? Can one person give a motive to another to the effect that he/she then will transform to a truely happy, energetic and satisfied worker? Furthermore, how much of leaders’ stress is not a direct result of the belief that nothing will happen if they don’t succeed in some or other way – even if it’s negative - to motivate employees, and employees’ belief and expectation that motivation for work is indeed the job and responsibility of leaders? I believe it is more correct to say that good leaders create an environment that is favourable for people to find and be driven by their own motivation. That is an environment where the free choice of an individual is respected and consciousness of it is encouraged. It obviously includes the reality that our choices have consequences for which we have to take responsibility and it includes the responsibility of leaders to ensure fair and firm discipline.


The problem is that we don’t believe that successful organisations can also have a high degree of freedom. We put great organisational effort into constructing a world of control, consistency, and predictability. We engage in planning that attempts to predict the future, we believe that structure and rewards drive behavior, and we trust that for every problem there is a solution. We hold this set of beliefs together by focusing on measurement with deep and abiding resolve. We act on the belief that if we cannot measure something, it does not exist. This set of beliefs is the engineering mind in action. It leaves little room for valuing the element of surprise, discovery, and creativity. If something does not show a result - for example, expressing feelings - then we think it is the wrong, or unwise, thing to do. This is why so many of us come to believe that we cannot be ourselves and be successful. To be successful means to either conform to the will of the boss untill you one day get his/her position, or to start something where others have to conform to your will. In both cases confrontation/conflict is avoided or discouraged at the cost of freedom, honesty and creativity – and ultimately productivity.


To transform organisations for more freedom for all is usually viewed as a frightening prospect. From the perspective of the boss employees cannot be trusted to use their freedom in the interest of the goals of the organisation. From the perspective of employees acting with freedom puts everything – meaning their job security - at risk. At a deeper level, whether we are bosses or employees, we tend to rather escape our freedom than embrace it because with freedom comes accountability (not only to superiors but to ourselves, our loved ones, God, society etc.), with accountability comes guilt, and with guilt comes anxiety. Since our freedom leads to anxiety it is easier to repress it than to live with it - easier to believe that we are not free. Science, in the sense of rational cause-effect thinking, has given us a magnificent excuse to exonerate us of being accountable. Environmental forces and unconscious motivations justifies that we need not feel responsible for the problems facing us and our world.


In the interest of developing leadership and our organisations, we need to find ways to enhance acceptance of the fact that as individuals we always have choices. We need to enhance personal accountability and responsiblity. As Peter Block (Freedom and Accountability at Work) states, by saying ‘I had no choice’, we have chosen to betray our human nature. He illustrates that choice is not an option with the following:


If I fall asleep at the wheel of my car and get into a serious accident, I have to accept the tragedy as the consequence of my free will, that is, my choice. As I got sleepy driving, I was confronted continuously by the alternatives of either stopping or moving on. And as the clock ticked away, I continuously and freely chose between the alternatives. However, the fact that I had to choose between these alternatives was not in turn subject to choice. Choice exists, it is not an option. In choosing to keep driving, I freely chose to take my chances. In other words, the careful analysis of the act of driving an act which may lead to death-shows that it contained all three elements of free will: spontaneity, self-determination, and choice. My possible death was thus a consequence of my free choice. To be equipped with the clear knowledge of the structure of one's free will gives one the maturity to avoid tragic mistakes. Our free will and our understanding of it are perhaps our greatest resources.


To make our choices count, we need to know what our visions and dreams are and then work and live with the knowledge If it’s going to be, it’s up to me.


African Renaissance



My contribution to African Renaissance thinking is to give the ‘podium’ to one of the dream’s biggest advocates, our president Thabo Mbeki. In the Nelson Mandela Memorial Lecture this year he said, very much in alignment with the ideas of accountability, the following:



I believe I know this as a matter of fact, that the great masses of our country everyday pray that the new South Africa that is being born will be a good, a moral, a humane and a caring South Africa, which, as it matures, will progressively guarantee the happiness of all its citizens.


I say this as I begin this Lecture to warn you about my intentions, which are about trying to convince you that because of the infancy of our brand new society, we have the possibility to act in ways that would, for the foreseeable future, infuse the values of Ubuntu into our very being as a people. But what is it that constitutes Ubuntu – beyond the standard and yet correct rendition – Motho ke motho ka motho yo mongoe: Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu!


The Book of Proverbs in the Holy Bible contains some injunctions that capture a number of elements of what I believe constitute important features of the Spirit of Ubuntu, which we should strive to implant in the very bosom of the new South Africa that is being born – the food of the soul that would inspire all our people to say that they are proud to be South African!


The Proverbs say:


“Withhold not good from them to whom it is due, when it is in the power of thine hand to do it. Say not unto thy neighbour, Go, and come again, and to morrow I will give; when thou hast it by thee.


“Devise not evil against thy neighbour, seeing he dwelleth securely by thee. Strive not with a man without cause, if he have done thee no harm. Envy thou not the oppressor, and choose none of his ways.”


The Book of Proverbs assumes that as human beings, we have the human capacity to do as it says - not to withhold the good from them to whom it is due, when it is in the power of (our) hand to do it, and not to say NO to our neighbour, come again, and we will give you something tomorrow, even when we can give the necessary help today.


And then he deals with our value system:


Because the white minority was the dominant social force in our country, it entrenched in our society as a whole, including among the oppressed, the deep-seated understanding that personal wealth constituted the only true measure of individual and social success.


As we achieved our freedom in 1994, this had become the dominant social value, affecting the entirety of our population. Inevitably, as an established social norm, this manifested itself even in the democratic state machinery that had, seemingly “seamlessly”, replaced the apartheid state machinery.


I am arguing that the new order, born of the victory in 1994, inherited a well-entrenched value system that placed individual acquisition of wealth at the very centre of the value system of our society as a whole. In practice this meant that, provided this did not threaten overt social disorder, society assumed a tolerant or permissive attitude towards such crimes as theft and corruption, especially if these related to public property.


The phenomenon we are describing, which we considered as particularly South African, was in fact symptomatic of the capitalist system in all countries. It had been analysed by all serious commentators on the capitalist political-economy, including such early analysts as Adam Smith. Specifically, in this regard, we are speaking of the observations made by the political-economists that, since the onset of capitalism in England, the values of the capitalist market, of individual profit maximisation, had tended to displace the values of human solidarity.


Important and thought provoking views. Surely business leaders have a crucial role to play with regard to the values we want for our society.


I trust spring in the sense of warmer weather will arrive soon and that you would be able to enjoy it to the full.