The job of a leader

 

He responded to medication so fast that he got discharged and was out of hospital on November 4. A week later, on November 11, he was back in the office. He immediately busied himself, appraising the business’ High Value Targets (HVTs). On new management dashboard. He couldn’t believe what he saw. Unbelievable. Startling performance. How could it be? He couldn’t fathom it. He couldn’t understand what had happened to and for the business to post such results. Impossible. To satisfy his curiosity, he called for a copy of the audited financial report from auditors whose offices were in the same building as theirs. Floor #12. Amani Towers. Kivukoni street. The two reports talked to each other digit-to-digit, shilling-to-shilling, cent-to-cent, neno-kwa-neno. Eureka. All the business’ HVTs for the immediate past financial year were met and, in some cases, exceeded. 

Unanswered questions

How could an organization that operated for a full year – rather 13 months and 8 days - without a leader be able to achieve its HVTs? How on earth could a contingent of 470 workers scattered in a 1,219,090 square kilometer country demonstrate unified leadership without a leader? Putting icing on the cake, market statistics showed that they posted the best annual results, attained highest growth rate, and was voted the best company in the market. What was special about this team and organization that when everyone else was blaming the Covid 19 pandemic for poor performance, they went to town, registered, and celebrated extraordinary performance? There were more questions than answers. Or did they doctor the figures? Unanswered questions. Yes, unanswered questions. Thanks to one business pundit who debunked it. We now know the truth about what happened - It all pointed to the leadership of the man who was in the intensive care unit at Kawe hospital for 404 days. 

The name of the man in the story is known to all of us. He’s no stranger. You and I know him very well. Ludovik Igunza. The iconic CEO of Blue Lagoon hotel. Involved in a serious road traffic accident, Igunza was admitted at Kawe central hospital for 13 months, nine of which in the intensive care unit, in coma.

Headquartered in Masaki, the Blue Lagoon hotel operated thirty-two outlets and employed 470 workers. It wasn’t the biggest hotel in the country, but stakeholders, including lodgers, referred to them as market leaders. With every socio-economic fundamental working against them, how did Blue Lagoon manage to register the strongest performance in their market during the 13-months’ absence of their CEO, their leader? How did the man in coma in the intensive care unit at Kawe hospital, unable to communicate in any way for 13 months and 8 days, lead a multi-culture 470-member team to stellar results? Leading from a hospital bed. In coma. Dreamlike.

Clearing misconception rubble of leadership

I’ve said it before. I’ll say it again because it’s such a valuable point. The job of a leader is not to chair meetings, not to boss around, not to spew out orders, not to be busy being busy. I repeat. The job of a leader isn’t to refine products, not to manage the brand, not to entertain customers with expensive five-star hotel luncheons or dinners, not to intimidate rivals, not to dare the marketplace, not to impress stockholders. No. That’s not the job of a leader. Every leader has three jobs. Yes, three jobs. Three only. Job #1: to develop other leaders. Job #2: to develop other leaders. Job #3: to develop other leaders. In that order. Yes, do it right, in that order, and your organization, your team and you will be ranked the best among peers in your marketspace. Trust me on this one. 

Demystifying leadership secret of Ludovik Igunza

Ludovik Igunza was a legend. Revered. Venerated. Visionary. He learned at an early age that the job of a leader is to grow other leaders. He also learned and made his team aware that the job of ‘other leaders’ is to cross-pollinate leadership on the business and not in the business. He dedicated all his wake and work time to building a leadership pipeline. He gave his employees unique opportunities to develop their strengths, skills, passions, acumen, interests, and talents. He built and put together a leadership development program that focused on and turned the proud, the inept, the incompetent, the coward, the timid, the poor communicators, the lowly, the semi-erudite, the voiceless, the retarded, the less regarded, the uncommitted and those with poor attitude into sustained situational leaders. Whatever knowledge, advice, expertise, dexterity, or skill that the team learned from Igunza, was tested, and tried in his 404-day absence, when he was not only admitted in hospital but laid in coma. Half-dead. There couldn’t have been a better time for the 470-member team to demonstrate leadership and responsibility of and in their roles than the time when the leader was not around. He developed his team such that each one of them knew exactly what it means to work on helping the business thrive. He didn’t teach them - they learned from him - to assume personal responsibility for individual and team results. 

News about Blue Lagoon’s extraordinary performance and leadership of its legendary leader, Igunza, went viral in the region and beyond. MBA students, political leaders, traditional chiefs, academicians, luminaries, business captains, seers, healers, grandmaster chefs, sheiks, renowned entrepreneurs, fundis, maharajas, sages, business mavericks and influencers trekked and made pilgrimage to Blue Lagoon to meet with Ludovik Igunza. To seek his amaranthine wisdom in people and business leadership.

Igunza’s success story was premised on what he referred to as cross-pollination leadership. He narrated with uncommon wit, “I came to appreciate that if I was going to be successful in life and business, the only thing that I had to do, was to build a culture, team and organization that would be capable of morphing and changing long after I had left.” He continued, “It’s our culture at Blue Lagoon to pollinate leadership across the entire organization.”  True. He lived by this mandate. He coined it as his trademark. 

When news about his great cross-pollination leadership spread and people started flocking to his base, he carved a programme prefaced on one-on-one stints. He had passion to help as many people as possible to mine individual and teams’ potential in order to get desired results. He kept his door, always, open for ‘visiting students.’ At first, people came in scores, then in tens, then in dozens, then in hundreds. Before he knew it, his office was flooded with people, in tens of hundreds, wanting to sit under his tutelage. 

To drink the timeless leadership wisdom. He realized that he was not going to fulfill his mandate – to evangelize cross-pollination leadership insights – by spending all his time in one-on-one coaching stints. He strategized. He requested those he tutored. Trained. Mentored. Instructed. Coached. Taught. Lectured. Pontificated. And won over to evangelize the teaching, share with and cross-pollinate others who desired to listen to and learn them. Who would say no to Igunza, the maharaja? His teaching was simply unrivalled and touted to be ageless. 

The alchemy of cross-pollination leadership insights

The cross-pollination leadership secret of Ludovik Igunza, in a layman’s language, was “take care of the people, the business will take care of itself.” His brain tattoo philosophy was that leaders who sacrificed their own comfort for those in their care are rewarded deeply by their loyal subordinates who go an extra mile to achieve (and even exceed) the unachievable HVTs. 

Lester Chinyang’anya ǀ General Manager - Operations ǀ Minet Malawi