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achievement, ayoibaru, delegation, dues, greatness, growth, leadership
This is a wonderful, mentally stimulating & life enriching write-up by my friend, Ayo Ibaru. It will speak to you!
I have paid my dues!
There is a problem with this statement.
As a background, it takes much to achieve greatness. This is common knowledge.
Days and nights of seemingly unrewarded toil, the misunderstanding introduced to relationships (because of required sacrifices), failed attempts at making systems work not forgetting the attendant frustrations of trial and error.
The list is almost endless-balanced only by the significant rewards much thereafter.
After accomplishing greatness, why then does it slip as we have seen in so many instances?
Is it the attendant comforts that it brings? Or does it pull down the character traits it took to attain such a status in the first instance? Many will agree that while it is a task to achieve greatness, it is a much difficult situation to maintain it.
It is never wrong to carefully enjoy the attendant rewards of greatness. One must only remember to stay close to the roots of achievement.
An example of this deviation is delegation.
Delegation, while popular, must be done correctly as getting familiar with its comforts will only dull the senses, and reduce alertness to opportunities for change. With unbridled delegation comes unnecessary dependencies. The ancient civilizations of Rome and Greece achieved greatness through knowledge, enterprise and discipline which translated into success in war, and profit in trade. They also depended heavily on slave labour.
Then seemingly came the time to rest, after all, after so much hard work, rest was only a long time coming. The forms of rest from being a reward for consistent effort gradually became a frequent past time. At first work was punctuated by rest. Then things changed; rest became punctuated by work. Slaves were pushed harder, and the elite drew farther away from the core practices of leadership.
As the civilizations of Rome and Greece learnt, sadly through terrible losses, and eventually with their own demise-consistently delegating the building blocks of society and daily existence can lead to weakness, and then death. The slaves got frustrated, and decided to leave in different ways-it just wasn’t worth it anymore. The competition had gotten leaner, and more calculating. It was only a matter of time.
When we stop stretching beyond our limits, delegating key tasks because we now consider same as inferior to our status, we risk losing touch with the source of our alertness to the next opportunity.
When the exclamation ‘’I have paid my dues’’ becomes a bold declaration, without any rational idea suggesting movement, change, or improvement in any direction, then there is a problem. This means that the entitlement mentality has fully set in, a symptom of one fact: the existence (however little) of the inability to go any further without sufficient cajoling, prodding, etc.
In this lies another problem.
New areas cannot be discovered unless there is the internal readiness to go the extra mile and confidently pitch tent there. If indicative of any insight into the future (a.k.a vision), this must be done without any expectation of reward in the immediate.
This is the beginning of every cycle for introducing anything new- an insight into the future that downplays the importance immediate of reward.
This is why the founding fathers of nations, organisations and business have a permanent place in history.
Those who fought for America’s independence did so with the hope of reward. They weren’t tired of paying dues to Great Britain. They simply wanted their dues to count. When this reward would be received was unclear. Still, a point had to be made. Existence in the chase of a dream is its own reward.
For as long as there are new areas to be discovered, dues will always need paying. And if we are not ready to pay, then rest assured, there would be no new areas to reach.
Ayo Ibaru is a Christian thinker and a change enthusiast. He serves currently as a banker and he can be followed on twitter @ayoibaru.