Strategy is a Step Forward

The key to starting is starting. Start with your strategy. Plot your action path and commit to action.

Right now, right there where you are you are standing at the centre of your pool of possibilities. You have a choice, use it well. Eyes that look are all too common, but eyes that see opportunity are valuable and trained for greatness. It is not what happens to you or around you that matters the most but the way you think and what you choose to do about it.

Giving up is not an option; then what? Thinking that everything will just change at the tap of a finger is not realistic either. Rouse the lion in you and get back to your hustle. Start by looking at your strategy and making some solid decisions. Where will you play? How will you win? What steps will you take? What will make you different? What is your strategic and economic logic? What capabilities do you need to develop? What will you do on Monday morning?

Take action...start by looking at your strategy. Will it get you there?

Committed to your greatness.

Milton Kamwendo.
(c) 2018 

The Life Leverage Number: 10 - 90 Rule.

 Life is 10% what happens and 90% what you choose to do about it. It is true that bad things that happen. It is true that difficult times come. It is true that some winters are bitter. It is also true that adversity strikes. All that is just 10%. It is what you do with whatever happens that makes the real difference. Whatever happens to you, you have a choice. Use that choice wisely otherwise you imprison yourself and kill your potential and initiative. Regardless of what happens never lose hope and do not let the fight in you die.  

Whatever you focus on grows in your eyes to become significant. Wherever your focus goes, there your life will go. Focus on the negative and you will enlarge your darkness. Focus on possibilities and you will start seeing them everywhere. There are too many opportunities and few takers. Your focus feeds either your faith or fears. Most situations that we face in life are neutral. It is our focus that gives them meaning and significance. Never give your problems and challenges special trophy status. You are not a victim, just a warrior posited to win. 

Whatever happens to you regardless of how bad or ugly it is, it is only the 10%. You are the one that supplies the rest of the story - the vital 90%. If you choose you can talk, think, preach, act and fellowship like a victim. Misery always has friends and disgruntled partners. If you are looking for someone to pity you, you will always have ears that surround you. Greatness does not come from pity, but a fight that starts as an attitude within you. There is something so strong inside you. It is up to you to unleash it or lie on it. Have ferocious focus and refuse to be deterred or distracted.  

Invest in Brand You!

Invest in your personal brand. Brands are everywhere - Coke, Nike, Mike, Royco, Buddie, Roil, You, Me and many others. You are also a brand and you have a category or space you influence. 

No brand ever grows without any investment. People will never stop talking about anything they choose including you. What they say when you are present is not as important as what they say when you are absent. What they say when you are not within ear-shot is your the real character of your personal brand. 

Invest in your personal development and build your capacity and competence. Whatever you invest in building your brand will always come back to your with multiplied benefits. 

Any thing you invest in learning and growth will always come back to you compounded. You can never be made smaller by learning anything from anyone. Learn daily and from every source. Learn in any style that works for you. 

You want your personal brand to be a premium brand that delivers something valuable. Me too is never good enough. Personal branding requires your commitment and attention. You can never shine without some polishing. Greatness without some work on your part is mere gambling. Polish yourself daily, consistently. Pick yourself up if you fail and keep learning. 

Learning allows you to reinvent your life daily. Improve with age. If you do not get better, you will just grow bitter. Buy a book, take a class, watch a documentary, write a paper or blog, attend a seminar, do a research, meet a mentor, participate in a group. Whatever you do, refuse to let a day pass while you remain the same. Grow daily and you will shine gradually. 

Application ideas:

1. As a brand what do you represent? What words are associated with your name? 

2. What are you learning daily this week? This month? This year? 

3. What is your brand vision? What are you becoming? Don't be arrested by your present situation. 

Committed to your greatness.

Milton Kamwendo

©2015

Negative is a luxury you do not afford

You do not afford the luxury of a negative thought and orientation. Facing the wrong direction is a costly venture. Brooding on negative thoughts creates in your a disadvantage complex that holds you back. Cut the code of negativity. Refuse to eat negativity, talk negative or be negative. 

You life will never change until

Your thinking does. Change your thinking to transform your life. When you think negative you block your mind from creating and imagining. Negative mindsets never breed winning strategy. Worry is distorted imagination. 

Think possibilities. See possibilities. There is always a dark, dysfunctional side to anything, but choose to face the light and dreams of possibilities. Above the cloud of despair there is always a light shining and a future that beckons. Choose light, not darkness; faith not fiction. 

Create space for thinking and reflection. Starve your mind of the opportunities for worry, regret and fear. Replay your vision of the future and stop terrorizing yourself with your personal horror movie. Read, think and reflect. Invest time into thinking and reading. 

Unless your broaden your canvass your thought, you shrink your universe of options. Your issues cannot be solved by the thinking that created that birthed your problems. To do differently you have to know and understand better. Negativity assumes that the past and present is a continuum into the future. Do not let anyone rob you of opportunities of today and the possibilities of tomorrow. The problems and opportunities of today will not be there forever. Go grab them!

Committed to your greatness. 

Milton Kamwendo. 

Build new capacity!

Wherever capacity exists, blessing abounds and excellence is expressed. Wherever capacity is lacking simple things take longer to get done, if done at all. 

Building your capacity means that you are able to do more than you could before. You can go further and maximize your potential and opportunities. You are able to handle bigger challenges, think in a more structured manner and resolve bigger challenges. 

You are not building your capacity if you let your competence level stagnate. You cannot do, be and have more if your capacity is not growing. 

Lifting the same weights will not help you build strength. Merely doing things out of habit does not in any way mean you are building your capacity. Stretch a little more. 

Never be satisfied with old capacity, limited thinking and mere repetition. Do not die while living. You are no longer learning when you are now stuck in routine. Keep building and growing. 

Ideas for action

1. In what areas have you stagnated? 

2. What new thing did you do or learn in the last 6 months?

3. What could you do to start stimulating growth and development in your life? 

Committed to your greatness. 

Milton Kamwendo

Be Negative and Win Complaining Friends.

Negativity is the shanty dormitory town that many run to for refuge; where their excuses are validated and approved. Negativity has friends, relatives, comrades, cousins and neighbours. However all the kinsmen and friends of negativity are loud, always complaining, cynical, glum and depressed. 

If you are negative you have conversation advantage. In a queue you will always have someone to complain to and commiserate with. If there is no one you will always have the weather to curse. Negativity makes you a sharp analyst. Suddenly you give eloquent analyses of what is wrong, who caused it and why it is broken. You always seem intelligent and clued up. Negativity bequeathes you with prophetic powers. Suddenly you can foretell the gloom ahead, the doom we are in and the mess that will never go away. Many nod, shake their head and walk away. You feel vindicated and satisfied. At least you have followers who also see what you see and hopefully are experiencing what you are. Negativity makes you feel needed, appreciated and listened to. In a conversation you are never odd, because everyone is complaining also. You fit in perfectly. That helps your feelings, but takes you nowhere like a rocking chair. 

The only problem with negativity is that it is like sun glasses. When I was young my father has some dark green sun glasses. I used to sometimes try them and they were fascinating to look through. Putting on the glasses, everything around me had a greenish tint. The color was so real. I could swear that the whole world was greenish. That was true until I removed the glasses. Negativity is like my father’s green glasses. Once you are looking at everything through the green negativity glasses everything is negative. Even in the midst of opportunity you will see negativity first. 

Never forget that while you are putting on your green negativity glasses, not everyone is putting on the glasses. Never let opportunity pass you by while you linger in negativity. Do not allow other people’s negativity become yours. As you assemble your choir of negativity singers, do not forget to look closely at who is in your audience. It just may be that you those who see what you do not see are too busy with life to be entertained by your negativity. Never let those who are not going anywhere, discourage you from exploring the world. Never create your world on the negative and dull templates of the prophecies of the lazy. 

You do not afford the luxury of a negative thought and disposition to life. 

Committed to your greatness. 

Milton Kamwendo. 

Never Skip An Opportunity to Grow

Every precious moment that I have is a special present to be lived fully. Every day is an opportunity for growth, enjoyment, improvement and development. If you are not growing you are steadily decaying. If you are not getting better you are likely growing bitter with each passing moment. Whatever you do, do not stand still but grow daily. 

Grow mentally: read, think, meditate, share and stretch your mind and boundaries. Refuse to set so low a ceiling that you have so little headroom and you see your door step as the universe. You are only limited by your choices, but never your circumstances. Circumstances are the excuses that you use when you are operating in “victim mode.” Grow daily in order to see more expansively. A mind that is not stretching is becoming dull by the hour and is increasingly becoming a liability to the other minds that it interacts and works with. When your mind is stuck in the past you live in denial and boredom. Thinking in analogue terms in a digital world is self-defeating. If you are stuck in time you use too many resources to do the unnecessary. 

Read something every day. A day in which you have not opened a book is a wasted one. A mind needs daily stimulation to be in shape. Surf a few websites, send a tweet or two, read an interesting book, visit an exciting place, strike a conversation with a stranger, attend a conference, see the world differently. There is so much to learn, so much to do and so little time to spend in purposeless grinds. Mental stagnation is a poor choice to make. You truly have shallow goals, small ambition and poor vision if you easily run out of things to do. If you dream small, you will see a tiny overcrowded world without space or opportunity. This is an abundant world, filled with more possibilities that you have thought and more opportunities than can be digested. It all depends on where you are looking and what your eyes are glazing for. When you are through with growing, you are ready for burial and you make worthy museum material. Refuse to be buried alive in your despair and despondency.

Grow daily and you will prosper gradually. 

Milton 

Take Responsibility to Positively Affect the Grassroots.

In my work at Innov8 Consultoria I do a lot of work with agricultural-related business and Non-Governmental Organization. I facilitate strategy development workshops, work on capacity building and organisational development interventions. The role of the NGOs in development and raising the standard of living in our rural areas in highly commendable and should continue. A number of other community actors have also taken the responsibility to make a difference at the grassroots and at household level. I have also met many individuals that have done many commendable things in their rural spaces. Efforts are there but they are not enough. Unless we start seeing the potential of our rural spaces and investing in them proactively, development will be a distant song playing on foreign radios. Should we choose, you and me can do something where we are, with what we have to change the rural development narrative. 

What is regrettable and disheartening is that there is a significant portion of capable and resourced people that have abandoned their rural areas and left them at the mercy of anyone-to-whom-it-may concern and whatever-may-happen there. To use a rural home is just a burial is to abuse a family and national treasure. We can never rise to greatness as developing nations so long as we ignore the rural areas and allow them to be abused for cheap political egos without tangible development. Many people have over the years been playing their part in rural development and it is clear that the new frontier of interest and opportunity is developing rural areas, empowering our people and positively impacting the grassroots. Tooting high sounding verbiage and development rhetoric to small pools of urbanites that are not willing to take personal responsibility while ignoring the great rural majority at the grassroots will hold future generations of our nation hostage to debilitating poverty. 

Take responsibility: If not you, who?

In most areas in Africa, even for city denizens your primary identity is the rural home of origin. In the colonial era, the first interview question used to be: "Where do you come from?" You could not be taken seriously is you referred to some urban area as your base. Much has changed since. 

In Zimbabwe your rural district is still identified in your national identity number. For a few senior citizen, even your kraal is identified in your national identity. To drum interest in the rural areas as a ticket into circles of power is to abuse our heritage. We must start taking active responsibility for our rural destinies. It is gross irresponsibility to treat rural homes as places to bury and confine the poor, aged, sick and dying. This change starts with a change in attitude and mindset. To be cloistered within the urban comforts and forget that the rural areas are not another country, but part of who we are is to be self-deceived. Without taking personal responsibility and interest in developing our rural spaces we will forever be a lost people with confused and stinking priorities. We will be known for singing great ideals and emotive choruses but doing nothing worthwhile to transform and uplift our own heritage.