OPINION: Leadership should focus on next generations
Leadership should focus on next generations Prof Matluli Abbey Mdhluli writes: Ordinary leaders think, talk and act with their attention focused on securing their positions, powers or titles.
Average leaders focus on winning, outclassing rivals and securing the next elections. Good leaders focus on the existence, growth and success of their organisations. Great leaders focus on laying foundations for the next generations.
Let us learn some valuable lessons from the small creatures ants. Ants are partially blind. They see only light and darkness, with no discernment between colours. On average, ants live for one season. Thus, when you see these creatures working today, they are not working for themselves, they are working for the next generations.
The ants of today know that they are alive because the ants of yesterday collected food and stored it for them. It is, therefore, the generational responsibility of the ants of today to collect and store food for survival of the ants of the next generation. If the ants of today fail to do this, it is the end of the ant species. Take it, therefore, that true leadership focuses on laying foundations for the existence, survival and success of the next generations.
No shortcuts. No cutting corners. No quick fixes. Anything done by leaders driven by immediate, temporary, short term goals is selfish, self-centered and self-serving. As much as all people think and act individually, we are all connected in a network of generational identity.
The next generations will either praise us for laying good, solid foundations for them, or they will curse our graves for passing on to them a broken world. In short, we have a generational mandate to make sure that we leave this world much better than the way in which we found it. It would be very unfortunate if we leave this world in a worse condition than the way we found it. Until next time. Shalom.
