DR.

TAYO ADULOJU: FROM THE MIND OF THE STRATEGIST

From the Mind of the Strategist

(Journal of the Teachings of Dr. Tayo Aduloju) S/NO.1

PRIVATE LEADERSHIP PRECEDES PUBLIC LEADERSHIP

The primary challenge of Africa is to overcome the barriers to unleashing their full
potential and optimizing their God endowed resources. The barriers are three fold:

The first barrier is a dearth of personal leadership. There has never been a generation were some
many people have totally abandoned responsibility for life, for their decisions, for their lifestyle, for
their families, for their environment, for their national resources. You and I grow up schooled in
what I call the blame game. We are taught blame government, blame your parents, blame your
founding national fathers, blame the weather, and let someone else be responsible. This lack of
personal leadership is the foundational root cause of human failure. Once this personal quality is
lacking in your personal life, you will live life without a vision, you will fail in the stewardship of your
gifts, talents, time and resources. And you will find yourself blaming everyone else for it! You need
to break away from this culture of irresponsibility. You need to accept the call to develop your
character, improve your mental intelligence, develop emotional maturity, physical fitness and
health, and walk in financial excellence. You need to stop making excuses for what they did not
give. You need to decide to make your life one of the shining examples of the change that we can
represent when we become distinguished and responsible citizens of the planet. That means you
become part of the solution and not the problem. That means you become the change you seek in
society. That means you become the change you seek in government. That means you take those
actions to transform yourself into a model for a younger and struggling generation to follow.

The second barrier is the dearth of organizational leadership. Nine out of every ten organizations
on the planet fail to achieve their vision. In almost every case, it’s a failure of leaders within these
organizations to execute with excellence, to face up to emerging issues, to confront reality. Just like
people do not take responsibility to confront reality at the personal level, the number one cause of
corporate failure is the unwillingness of leaders to confront reality. The amazing capacity of people
in positions of influence to irresponsibility to overlook changing trends and critical issues, never for
once considering the implications of their actions is a value system that has destroyed institutions

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and continues to do so till this very day. The lack of corporate citizenship and accountability to the
stakeholders within their business operation environment is evidence that the fundamentals of
effective organizational leadership are lacking. How an organization that rapes does, destroys and
ravage the very communities in which operate expect to sustainably do business in those
environments.

You see leadership is an enabling art. Medicine plus great leadership creates good medicine.
Accounting plus good leadership creates good accounting. Science plus good leadership creates
good science. Good leadership is the kind that inspires others to find and express their unique
personal significance. It rallies the best in human nature. It creates possibilities. It creates a vision of
a bright future and deploys the character, momentum and discipline required to translate vision
into reality. It sacrifices for others. Leads from the front and sets the standard of what should be
acceptable.

The third barrier is a dearth of national leadership. Africa is suffering from a lack of strategic-level,
principle centred, and visionary leadership. You and I must begin to understand that the philosophy
of corporate whole of Africa is creating the worst manifestation of leadership the world has ever
since. We must stop the madness. We must deepen our resolve to become the leadership we need.
We must train our sons and daughters to aspire to a higher standard. We must hold ourselves and
our state and national leaders responsible. We who are in leadership must hold ourselves to a
higher standard. This responsibility is personal but never private. It is the personal decisions of many
individual leaders across the African Continent that has created so much suffering, heartache and
pain. It will also be by personal resolution of leaders at state and national levels that Africa will be
ushered into an Economic Renaissance of Prosperity and Power.

I believe the following three strategies are the solutions to these barriers:

1. Unleashing Personal Leadership and Greatness; providing the estimated 1 billion

people with the tools and resources to discover, understand, release and maximize their
human potential and achieve their unique personal significance.

2. Unleashing Organizational Leadership and Greatness; providing the public and

private sector institutions and leaders in Africa with the tools, techniques, strategies and
solutions to achieve organizational success, achievement and growth.

3. Unleashing National Leadership and Greatness; providing governments and

national leaders in Africa with the strategic frameworks and competencies for creating,

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developing, articulating, implementing and executing national strategy; translating vision

into massive, measurable realities.

This chapter addresses the first barrier – unleashing the personal leadership and
greatness and the rest of the book addresses the unleashing organization and national
greatness.

The Unlimited Power of Human Potential: The Reserves of Trapped Possibilities

We live in the most advanced civilization of human history, face some of the most devastating
challenges the world has ever seen and have greatness potential to achieve good, than ever in the
existence of the human race. Human Excellence is not an option. Quality is not an elective, it is a
prerequisite. It is a right of entry into the Knowledge Worker, Information age in which you and i
live in. Like already stated in the last chapter, developing the excellence is a personal
leadership imperative.

A brief overview of the latter part of the 20th century gives evidence of the tremendous leadership
vacuum prevailing throughout the world today and sadly still exists right up till this very day. One
of the most balanced perspectives on the challenges facing our world today is the concept of
World Problematique’. The profile of the ‘World Problematique’( which is a concept
created by the Club of Rome, to describe the set of crucial problems – political, social, economic,
technological, environmental, psychological and cultural - facing humanity), have one common
denominator; a growing strategic leadership gap.

The term ‘World Problematique’, is a global phenomenon. It describes the forces that shape the
existence of more than 90% of the human race. More specifically, it articulates the experience of an
estimated 4 Billion people out of the over 6 Billion on the planet today, in Third World
Developing Nations (TWDN). The term ‘TWDN’ was coined out by economists to describe
nations that did not benefit from the first and second industrial revolution. These populations
struggle for survival. Success is not simply a luxury that they can afford to think about – the
thought of such dreams have become too painful to bear.

“A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the
instalment plan.”

~ Martin Luther King Jr.

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Most of these countries after hundreds of years of oppression, colonialism, dictatorships, suppression
and slavery, have nothing left to dream. The proliferation of national independence by these
nations promised them freedom, prosperity and liberty, their leaders delivered them to the chains
of a visionless, hopeless, painful, sick and poverty laden existence. Long after their historic colonial
masters have gone, TWDN are still struggling with the reality of economic, technological, political
and social colonialism.

Consider the African Continent for a moment, endowed with enough natural resources to feed,
shelter and power the planet. Africa has the poorest of all the peoples of the earth plagued by HIV
AIDS, Genocide, Civil Wars, Dictatorships, Disease, Religious Crisis, Xenophobia and Mismanagement
by governments, unbridled looting of national and state treasuries. The abuse, mismanagement,
rape, and hoarding of this wealth has rendered millions of people helpless, depressed, destitute,
devastated and disillusioned. The primary challenge of TWDN peoples is to overcome the
barriers to unleashing their full potential and optimizing their God endowed
resources.

The Basis of Balanced Human Development

We have established that human excellence is the right of entry into today’s highly competitive
global marketplace and personal greatness, unique personal significance; is a prerequisite for
surviving this Century and rising above the tide of global challenges, to take your place as a leader
that contributes your unique brand of value to the universal effort, thereby creating a better, safer
and more prosperous world. Development of our human potential has a process.

First, we must understand our human potential

Second, we must know how to use our human potential

Third, we must release our potential through actual practice

Fourth, we must maximize and optimize our potential

Understanding Human Potential - Whole Person Paradigm

“....and may your SPIRIT and SOUL and BODY be preserved sound {and} complete [and found]
blameless” 1 Thessalonians 5:23 Amplified Version (emphasis mine).

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The human being is a Spirit, has a Soul and lives in a Physical body. While the terminologies
and categorization of the vital components that make up the human constitution varies, most
people would agree that man is more than flesh, bone and blood; more than emotions, thoughts
and intellect; and more than conscience, sub-conscious and invariably connected to a dimension of
existence that transcends the here and now. So, for the purposes of discussing human development
perspectives, we would use the SPIRIT-SOUL-BODY whole person paradigm model. Okay, here
are a few assertions based on this model:

YOU ARE A SPIRIT

Your human spirit constitutes of your capacity to capture and discover the essence of your being.
The voice of your human spirit is known as your ‘conscience.’ You will walk in integrity and
character to the degree you keep a good conscience. The direction of your human spirit gives you is
sometimes called intuition. The very calling to Excellence is a call of the human spirit.
When the human spirit speaks, it comes through conscience. If the conscience is developed and
obeyed, its first fruits are Integrity and Honesty. The purpose of the human spirit is guidance
and light. The Ancient King Solomon, author of the Book of Proverbs, calls the spirit of man “the
candle of the Lord.” The human spirit holds the answer to self-awareness and four (4) age long
questions:

1. Why am I here? The Question of Purpose– The answer to this question sheds light on
your individual life’s purpose, assignment and mission – it creates the basis of contribution
and leaving a legacy. Your spirit remains restless until it finds and discovers the answer to
this question and until that discovery illuminates your human mind.
2. Who am I? The Question of Identity – The answer to this question sheds light on roles
you are meant to fulfil in life. It creates the basis of how you describe who you are. It
describes the inner image of who you are and articulates how that image will be
communicated to the world around you.
3. What can I do? The Question of Talent – the answer to this question sheds light on your
genius – it reveals what you do well, it reveals capacity to perform, create and innovate. It
unveils your powerful abilities to you and gives you the motivation to develop your talent
until the exercise of your abilities reach world class standards.
4. Where am I going? The Question of Vision – the answer to this question sheds light on
your end. It paints upon the canvass of the mind, pictures of possibilities; what could be,
what you could know, where you could go, what you could possess, what you could do,
whom you could meet, whom you could impact in a significant way, what contribution you

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could make, how much you could earn. Your vision is your envisaged end and strategic
future position.

The greatest need of the spirit is to find answers to these questions and hence to find Meaning.
Since the meaning resides with God - the Creator of all life. Man will not find these answers outside
a relationship with God. It is in finding answers to these probing questions that spirit
finds fulfilment in leaving a legacy and significant contribution to this world. Yes, you
will not be fulfilled if you lived life without leaving a legacy.

It took a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get to where we are today, but we have just begun. Today we
begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is just a little bit better than
the one we inhabit today.”

~ Barak Obama

When the potential of your spirit is unleashed, it guides you into the perimeter of destiny. It is
within this perimeter that you find your unique personal significance and your sense of
fulfilment.

PURPOSE TALENT

PersonalDestiny

VISION IDENTITY
 DR. TAYO ADULOJU: FROM THE MIND OF THE STRATEGIST

Destiny Perimeter™

YOU HAVE A SOUL

Your Soul consists of two broad components; the Mind and Heart.

“We have rudiments of reverence for the human body, but we consider as nothing the rape of the
human mind”.

~Eric Hoffer

“All sorts of bodily diseases are produced by half-used minds”.

~George Bernard Shaw

YOUR MIND is the seat of your Intellect, which consists of your Will, Reasoning, Memory and
Imagination faculties. Your exercise of the Human Will is the greatest gift and power given to
mankind – your freedom and power to choose. This element in you makes it possible for you to
choice the course and direction of your life.

“To live is to choose. But to choose well, you must know who you are and what you stand for, where you
want to go and why you want to get there.”

~ Kofi Annan

The exercise of your Reasoning is your capacity to assimilate information through your senses,
analyse facts and draw conclusions on the basis of your analysis. The exercise of your Memory is
your power to replay your past in vivid mental pictures and your exercise of your Imagination is
your capacity to pre-play and create pictures and images of your envisioned future. The greatest
need of your mind is to learn.

“Do not be conformed to this world (this age), [fashioned after and adapted to its external,
superficial customs], but be transformed (changed) by the [entire] renewal of your mind [by its
new ideals and its new attitude]”

Romans 12:2 –Amplified Version

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YOUR HEART is the seat of Motivations and Emotions (which is the seat of your feelings). The
exercise of your Motivations is driven by our beliefs, attitudes and value system. The
exercise of your emotions is driven by what your mind is focused on at anytime (emotions include
the full range of feelings you are capable of expressing and your psychological
temperaments). The greatest need of the heart is to love and its highest fruit is
passion.

“A master in the art of living knows no sharp distinction between his work and his play, his
labour and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation.

He hardly knows which is which.

He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing and leaves others to
determine whether he is working or playing. To himself he always seems to be doing both”

George Bernard Shaw

YOU LIVE IN A BODY

YOUR BODY is the physical vehicle that houses your Human Spirit and Soul; it is the physical
structure of the human being consisting of thousands of cells, bio-systems, organs, tissues and
millions of very complex involuntary chemical and physiological processes that are orchestrated by
your brain twenty-four hours a day, every day of our existence. This reality makes the body the
most sophisticated machine, organism and organization in the universe. When your physical body
dies.... the human spirit and soul looses their capacity to operate and interact with the physical,
natural world. So you could say that the Human Body is your license to operate on earth. The
greatest need of your body is to live.

Potential Intelligence – How to Use Our Human Potential

“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been
waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”

United States President Barak Obama

Just a review of the potential that each human possesses is enough to show that we are not limited
except by ourselves. The problem is, after decades of blaming others and pointing fingers at

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everyone from our government leaders, to our spouses, to politicians, to the devil, to God and even
Mother Nature, we develop a complex form of irresponsibility for our circumstances and our
outcomes, which our past choices has created. But like Barrack Obama made the millions of people
all over the world realize, ‘We are the change we seek,’ and we need to get with the programme
and make changes we desire, become reality. Until we accept responsibility for our potential, it is
almost impossible to release it. Potential must be developed on purpose.

“The purpose of life is a life of purpose.”

~Robert Byrne

“We should all be obliged to appear before a board every five years, and justify our existence... on
pain of liquidation”.

~George Bernard Shaw

”A useless life is an early death”.

~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

THE 12 PRINCIPLES OF HUMAN POTENTIAL

1. Hidden in every human being on this planet are latent abilities, untapped power,
unlimited capacity for good, trapped greatness, buried treasures of talent, creative forces
that are asleep.
2. The conception of a human being is the conception of a body of potential. The birth of a
human being is the release of a seed-solution to a problem in this world.
3. Every human being on this planet has the potential to solve at least one of the problems
that faces our world today.
4. Every human being is responsible for the potential that they carry. Each one of us is
responsible for understanding, developing, unleashing and maximizing our potential.
5. No two human beings have the exact combination of Purpose-Potential-Identity-Vision.
6. Every human being has a purpose that gives meaning to the potential they carry.
7. Every human being must have a vision that gives direction to their potential.
8. Every human being must discover, develop and express their unique distinct personal
identity that frees them to be, do and achieve all they are capable of.
9. When any human being possesses potential without purpose, they will experience a lack of
fulfilment. Purpose is the key to fulfilment.

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10. When anyone possesses potential without vision, they will experience confusion. Vision
births, like President Barak Obama put it ‘an audacity of hope.’ An audacity to ask of life
and the universe things that are impossible to men, things that can only be seen with the
eyes of vision, and the faith to expect them to come to pass.
11. When anyone possesses potential without knowing self (identity), they focus their energies
trying to be duplicates, instead of originals.
12. When potential is unleashed on purpose, directed by vision, fuelled by passion, motivated
by love for others, and maximized by one that has come to know that unique self within...
greatness is born.

“To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you
everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop
fighting”.

~E.E. Cummings, 1955

“All my life I had been looking for something and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me
what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-
contradictory. I was naïve. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions
which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my
expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: that I am
nobody but myself”.

~Ralph Ellison, "Battle Royal"

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry,
their passions a quotation.

~Oscar Wilde, De Profundis, 1905

“If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise”.

~Johann von Goethe

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“I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made”.

Psalms 139:14

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