The Giving Challenge 2015

In 1963 the film Cleopatra starring Elizabeth Taylor was released. At the time, despite being the highest grossing film of the year, it made a huge loss against a 44 million dollar budget. Ten years later due to rentals and a number of television deals it finally broke even. Ten years of ticking over returns and deals to finally get to a point where it made money. Books that make bestseller lists for extended periods are not there because they have had one week of great sales, rather they are there because they consistently sell over time-even if it relatively few a day. It is the daily drip of sales over time that fills the coffers eventually. In the grip of a world fascinated by instant news and the momentary glory of a thousand retweets (before being drowned out by someone else’s noise) we have forgotten the power of daily showing up.

We are currently just under a month away from Christmas and I want to issue a daily challenge to all you Zachians who are interested in making a difference. It is a chance for you to show up every day and do something special. The Giving Challenge is to give away something every day between now and Christmas Day. It may be food to a streetkid, an extra something for your clients, or a gift to a staff member. Size of the giving is not important. Share a piece of business wisdom a day on your blog. Give a lift, not because you need to charge someone a dollar for fuel in your car but because you are helping someone get somewhere. Start giving. You can make it the same act every day or you can vary it as you go. You can start small and get bigger as we approach Christmas or you can stay at the same level daily. I don’t mind-this is your giving story that you are working on. In a season where things may be difficult financially and cash flows are harsh this is an opportunity to get away from thinking about ourselves and to think about others.

The secularisation of Christmas with its focus on material gifts has watered down the power of an act of generosity; thirty minutes helping an elderly person repair their home, creating and uploading a free piece of music online. The old tradition of helping someone cross a busy road had been lost to many of us.

Feel free to write and tell me your experiences as you go, especially of you do something really creative, but this is not some publicity stunt. If no one ever finds out about what you do then that is okay too. Nor is this levering some form of mystical karma. I have heard many messages that talk about the reciprocity of giving-that if you give then you get back more. I am not denying that this may happen but give simply because being generous is a better way to live.

Some of us need to start with giving in our families. By giving our kids an hour of our time a day, or giving an underappreciated spouse more compliments and face time.

The multiplier effect can be staggering. It is one thing for me to do an act of giving every day, but when you all join me, when you get your entire office involved, when your family starts looking for opportunities to give then we begin to make a real impact. Everyone wants a better Zimbabwe: what are you doing about it?

Be intentional about giving. Look for the opportunity. Set it in your mind every morning before you leave the house. Perhaps you are not sure where you can best make a difference, set the intention and the opportunity will jump out at you.

Push through daily for a month. Pay attention to how you feel, to your attitudes and internal emotions. Introspection may highlight a few areas that you need to work on. As you meet the needs of others perhaps a few solutions may present themselves that you could look at and scale into a business. Generate a habit of generosity in your life between now and Christmas. At the end of it we may just all be a little bit richer.

This Is Africa-The Need for Daily Input

The 2006 movie Blood Diamond is known for two things in its portrayal of the Sierra Leone civil war: one is Leonard Di Caprio’s horrendous accent, the other is a line he quotes to describe the reason for the situation he finds himself in “T.I.A This is Africa.” The phrase for many becomes the resigned excuse for any negative experience in dealing with the continent. Bribe requests and corruption, unnecessary delays in obtaining paperwork, powercuts in the sub-region can all be brushed away with ‘This is Africa’. I would love to see a situation where the phrase is turned about to be a positive one. ‘Here is your permit ahead of schedule Sir, of course it is early-This is Africa’. ‘This is Africa-we don’t take bribes here.’ Even if changing people’s perception of Africa seems a little far away; how about we just start with how people view Zimbabwe. If that seems too much, then just let us just start with ourselves; our businesses, our departments, our families, our lives.

Cinderella’s fairy tale gives us some insight here. Cinderella wants to go to the ball, her fairy godmother conjures up a carriage from a pumpkin for her to go in, she steals the heart of the price but has to flee at midnight when the magic runs out and she has to dive out her carriage as it turns back into a vegetable. Every day the ‘magic’-the input, the effort that you have put into creating something amazing in your business- is going to run out at midnight. There is a need for new input in the morning. In the same way that a marriage needs daily commitment and daily winning of your spouse’s heart to flourish so does your business.

You can dream of the day that you can leave your business to run itself and you just reap a profit at the end. Keep dreaming. At some level you and your staff will need to fight the natural tendency of entropy that has systems breakdown and causes relationships to degenerate. It takes effort to keep inventory in stock, to chase debtors that are letting you down, to hold a creative and positive environment at work. Realise that at that moment when you reach a point where you could step back and hand over your business that you face the opportunity to get bigger, to provide more, to work even harder, and produce even better work.

Your life and your work will not get better because of one magical day that changes it all. It will get better as you embrace the daily discipline of working, of building, of making each day magical.

Today pick one thing that you can do to improve your work or someone else’s life. Perhaps it is buying a round of coffee for your staff who are working later than normal. Maybe it is reviewing your customer contact policy or drafting your top client a letter of gratitude. Pointing out where your client relations are not up to standard and encouraging your staff to maintain or go beyond the set standard. There is always something you can do. Then tomorrow do something else.

We can dream of a better future. We can dream of a better nation. Our dreams need to motivate us to action every day. Every day that we put effort into our lives and businesses, every day that we fight the pull of second-rate and corruption, every day that we spend not settling for the excuse of ‘This is Africa’ is one day closer to seeing that dream come true.

Speak Out and Speak Up!

A fire start the other week. It was in a compost heap at an organisation’s backyard. At first I thought it had been set deliberately-after all seeing people burn rubbish these days is hardly an uncommon occurrence. I ignored it for a while. After all, other people, including company employees, had walked by it and done nothing about it. Then it got too big to really ignore and I did not see anyone managing it so I passed a comment to my host. There was momentary panic, there was chaos, there was water and then calm was restored as the blaze was put out. It did, however, take a little while for the fiery words from my host to his staff to simmer down. It had been a spontaneous combustion that can occur with compost heaps, they had all seen it happen but no one had spoken up.

How many times have you held back from asking something or making a suggestion because you are worried that you will not get heard or that nothing will change? You stay silent because you are afraid that there will be a negative consequence to your idea-be it outright rejection, ridicule or worse. In many cases these fears are unfounded and you are more persuasive than you think. Research by Vanessa Bohns indicates that people overestimate the number of times it will take to get a positive response to a simple request by up to double. This held true for simple actions like filling out a questionnaire to something more morally unsound as defacing a library book.

So what keeps our mouths shut? Self-efficacy is your internal appraisal of your ability to do something. Would you be able to climb Kilimanjaro? See, right there you just make an appraisal of yourself. We do it all the time-not just the big things like climbing mountains but whether we can get a proposal out on time or if we can approach a high-profile person with an idea.

Tied strongly to self-efficacy is self-worth. This is the appraisal of whether or not you deserve a positive outcome in your life in response to your actions. If you feel unworthy any positive response feels like a trick or luck of the draw. It does not stop there-people who feel unworthy can project their feelings onto others. These are the people who when they see someone succeed say ‘well he got it because he must have done something dodgy to get it’ without realising the hard work and effort that went in, or that perhaps the other person just had the courage to show up and speak up.

Sometimes showing up is merely half the battle. I entered a competition last month. I won. Part of the reason I won was that I simply showed up and a number of other people who had said they would be there failed to show up. Yes I still had to put in the effort to win but I could equally have stayed in bed because I did not think I was good enough. In line with this is the classic excuse that it is not your job.

Fear of rejection and criticism hold us back from speaking out. We are so attached to our ideas when we put them forward that when they get shot down-even if it is politely- that we take it personally. Then because of the personal hurt we never step out again. ‘He never listens to anything I say anyway’ becomes the mantra of the fearful. Rejection of your suggestion is not a personal attack-well at least it should not be.

If your business culture is the kind where people are fearful of making suggestions to you as the owner then you are probably doing something wrong. One of these is thinking you know it all-and even if you know that you don’t, then you are giving staff the impression that you do. Publically degrading staff suggestions, being rude, shutting down people before they have finished talking, and just not listening at all make people less likely to approach you. Sometimes people just do not know that they can approach you as the owner-you need to create the opportunities for them to do so.

I am not asking for you to create a culture where all people do is complain at staff meetings about their lack of perceived entitlements. Rather work at creating environments where constructive communication can take place. As more people speak up you may be surprised at the positive ideas that begin to flow.