There is an old story about a certain rich man who gathered his three servants to announce that he was travelling to a faraway country. Before he left, he gave the servants a certain amount of money in the form of talents. In those days, one talent was equivalent to several years’ wages for casual laborers like them. To one servant, he gave five talents. To another, he gave two, and to the third servant, he gave one talent. He instructed the servants to look after the talents in his absence. He then set off.
While the master was away, the servant with five talents took them to a marketplace and traded with them until he multiplied the five talents to ten. The second servant with two talents did the same, doubling his talents to four. The third servant, being a cautious man, took the one talent that he was given by the master and buried it under cement concrete ground for safekeeping.
After some time, the master returned. He gathered his three servants together to inquire about what they had done with the talents that he had given them. The first servant stood up and explained that he took the talents to the marketplace and wisely traded with them, multiplying the original five talents to ten. The master said to the servant, “... well done.” The second servant narrated his story that he had also traded wisely and presented to the master the original two talents plus two more. The master said to the second servant, “... well done.” Finally, the third servant stepped forward and told the master his story, “... fearing that I might lose your money, sir, I carefully dug the ground and buried the one talent which you gave me.” He then proudly presented the one talent he was asked to look after to his master. The master looked at the unused one talent and said, “... I am taking the one talent from you and give it to the one who has ten.”
This story is familiar to most of us unless you are from a different astral galaxy outside planet Earth. It is referred to as the parable of the talents. Yes, many people don’t like the way the story ends. They argue that it is unfair to take the few resources that the third servant had and give them to the first servant, who had many talents. My dear reader, of all cosmoses and creations, it’s only life that has a fair accounting system. Life does not give rewards or offer returns in proportion to the level of need. No. Life gives rewards in proportion to our level of desire and action.
Moral of the story is that whatever life hands us – whether it is one or fifty or eight hundred, whatever the number - be it money, relationships, occupational positions, assets, intellectual capacity, it is our responsibility to work with it. This is the formula that the virtuosos and true titans of industry use to turn challenges into opportunities, weakness into strength, disability into ability, and stumbling blocks into stepping-stones. Roadblocks into highways. Thorns into red carpets. Darkness into light. Harsh winter into pleasant summer. Animosity into goodwill. Silos into teams. Teams into movements. Lemon into lemonade.
Two people born of the same parents as siblings with the same level of education, living in the same household, and engaging in the same economic undertakings may end up with different levels of success. You may have come across people who are well-greased with knowledge, have a good attitude, and are ethical, but live on the margin of life. Certainly, you know some folks who hardly stepped foot in a classroom and lack virtues, but come out on top. What separates these categories of people from each other in terms of well-being has nothing to do with spirituality or superstition, but their desire to make something of themselves. There is no point in being an educated fellow when you cannot turn your knowledge into productivity. We need to turn our knowledge into action.
When the king of Egypt, Pharaoh Khufu, hatched the idea to build the Great Pyramid of Giza, he did not have all the materials on site. He did not have the 25,000 workers he hired for the project, nor the thirteen million tons of limestone and granite, all available at once in Giza. No. As a matter of fact, he embarked on the grand project with a few pebbles of limestone scattered around and at his disposal. He worked with what nature gave him at that particular time. Today, you and I marvel at his works - the Great Pyramid of Giza - as one of the seven World Wonders. If he had waited to stockpile all the materials and assemble all the workers before initiating the project, he could have waited forever and not realized his dream.
She was travelling in a Montgomery, Alabama city bus. When asked to relocate to the back of the bus, Rosa Parks did not call Martin Luther King Jr or confer with any human rights activists for their opinion or sanction. No need for a committee decision. She acted instantaneously, refusing to let go of her seat on her own instincts.
The Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur, had a meagre $1,000 as capital, earned from sales of their bicycle business when they embarked on a project to assemble an airplane. They did not wait until their bank account had ballooned to start the project. They worked with what they had. Today, you and I book flights, take to the blue skies, thirty-five thousand feet above sea-level, rubbing shoulders with birds to faraway destinations without pausing to appreciate the ‘beauty of the start.’ If the two brothers had waited until they ‘broke a bank,’ they could have waited forever. Let us learn to work with what we have at our disposal, and the rest will be added unto us.
I doubt if, today, you and I could have been able to enjoy the use of the two iconic gadgets - iPhone and iPad - if Steve Jobs and his long-time friend, Steve Wozniak, were narcissistic, wanting to establish their start-up Apple in an upmarket tower somewhere in the Silicon Valley or Wall Street. They could have waited forever and perhaps not realized their dream. Instead, they worked with the resources they had at their disposal – Job’s parents’ garage provided a workspace, wooden relics were used for casing, and a pooled $2,000 as working capital. Jobs sold his Volkswagen car for $1,500, and Wozniak sold his HP calculator for $500 to realize the $2,000 operating capital. The rest, as we know, is history.
Whether you walk, drive, or cycle to work, school, farm, or any place, do you see the entire road to your destination? No. You only see a few meters of the road in front of you. Putting one foot in front of another or pressing the accelerator lever makes you reach your destination.
What is it that you currently have that you can use to build your fortune? Your dream? Every time you underrate the adequacy of resources at your disposal, pause for a second and remind yourself that Apple – now a multitrillion-dollar company – started its journey with only $2,000. The Wright brothers embarked on a seemingly impossible project to assemble an airplane with rudimentary resources. Richard Branson launched his magazine business with $1,200 at age 16. You don’t need billions of shillings to achieve your dreams. But brains.
There is no denying that life’s too short to learn from one’s own mistakes. We can learn from other people’s mistakes and successes. Yet at other times, the lifestyle and habits of some creatures offer us the opportunity to crack the wisdom that we need in our lives. The wisest person to have ever walked the earth was King Solomon. Solomon is renowned for countless leadership wisdom. One piece of wisdom that has defied the test of time reveals how you and I can learn from the tiniest of creatures: “... go to the ant, thou sluggard. Consider her ways and be wise, which having no guide, overseer or ruler, provides her meat in the summer and gathers her food in the harvest.”
Two quick lessons from the wise words of Solomon. The first lesson is that ants have no guide, ruler, or overseer to direct them on what to do, how to do it, and when to do it. The ability to take initiative and personal responsibility to improve things in your orbit, whether for your own good or for the good of others, is a key attribute of leadership. Most of us are good at hatching plans or strategies, but fail miserably to execute them. And follow through. Why? Because we slack - we only do work unless we are compelled to do so either by the presence of our boss, by their instructions, or by the organization’s policy. A wise person does not need the presence of the boss to perform. A wise person keeps the laws without the need for enforcement.
The second lesson that we can decipher from the ants’ story is to preempt times and plan for them according to their demands, challenges, and opportunities. Ants, as tiny as they seem, are wise enough to stockpile their meat in the harvest for dry spells. Michael Jackson was considered the best music dancer of his generation [watch his signature moves in Thriller – the iconic backward slide, high kicks, smooth 360-degree turn, and the toe stand]. Notwithstanding all this, Jackson - the dancing machine - took time to rest. There is time for everything. Time to sow and time to reap. Time to study and time to write examinations. Time to work and time to rest. Time to laugh and time to cry. Time to be alone and time to network. Every action that we take today builds tomorrow’s fortune. Don’t live life as it comes. Plan each section of your life. You cannot just wake up each morning, go through the day’s events, and go back to sleep without making plans for each day and evaluating them. Just as the ants gather their food in the harvest with the knowledge that the harsh winter is coming, you and I must learn to plan each season of our lives. Mastery of time is the nucleus of greatness.
Views from the top are that if we are to be high performers in life, then we are compelled to come up with an actionable plan, work with the resources available at our disposal, implement all that we know by expressing through action in the outer world what we have inside and turn knowledge into productivity. Here is the thing. If we continue to misappropriate the resources that we have at our disposal and defer action, verily, our abilities will remain frozen, buried, and unappreciated like the one talent of the third servant in the story above. Unlike the throughput of ants, our skills and competences will remain unrewarded forever and ever.
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