There are no shortcuts to the top of the palm tree: looking ahead to 2024 and reflecting on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

As we step into the new year, reflecting on the past is a valuable exercise to understanding the path we want to take in the future, and an African proverb wisely reminds us, “If you don’t know where you are going, remember where you came from.” ?With reflection, we can celebrate important wins, better understand our areas of improvement, paths we never want to take again, and opportunities we must seize going forward. It is equally important to look ahead and plan towards the future. From an organizational standpoint, at a high level, this can be in the form on developing and executing strategic and operational action plans, and at an individual level, this can be in the form of your own personal leadership development plan.

Since we’ve just rung in the new year and are also two weeks away from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I would like to share some thoughts on how we may each want to consider moving forward this year, while drawing some inspiration from Dr. King. Six months before his tragic assassination, in 1967, while addressing students in Philadelphia, Dr. King emphasized the importance of dignity in work, service and the pursuit of excellence. This dignity in work and service is similar with that Robert K. Greenleaf shared in his 1977 essay about servant leadership and that “it begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead.” (Greenleaf, 1977 )

Dr. King emphasized the significance of having a life blueprint, drawing a parallel between the necessity of blueprints for constructing buildings and the importance for individuals to establish their personal life plans or blueprints. Consider adopting the 70:20:10 model as a framework for your learning, development, and pursuit of goals. This model, formulated in 1980 by three researchers—Morgan McCall, Michael M. Lombardo, and Robert A. Elchinger—from the Centre for Creative Learning, delved into leadership developmental practices that propelled successful leaders. The researcher trio surveyed nearly two hundred executives who self-reported on how they believed they learned, with their feedback leading to the model's creation. Their findings revealed that 90 percent of knowledge acquisition occurs through informal learning, while formal learning comprises the remaining 10 percent. The researchers further broke down the learning categories into three categories namely: experiential learning, social learning, and formal learning.

Dr. King believed in personal leadership, which we all can embrace and integrate into our professional lives. In the 1967, he outlined two key elements in one's life's blueprint. Firstly, he mentioned that one should have a profound belief in one's own dignity and self-worth. He encouraged the students to always to recognize their value, to feel that they count, and that they should understand the ultimate significance of their lives. Secondly, Dr. King emphasized the necessity of determination in achieving excellence in one's professional discipline. He reminded the students that despite the plethora of societal inequities, opportunities were also emerging that were not available to their parents. The challenge, as he expressed it, is whether they would be ready to enter doors as they opened. On the quest for excellence and service, Dr. Kind shared the following:

“If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera.

Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well. If you can’t be a pine at the top of the hill, be a shrub in the valley. But be the best little shrub on the side of the hill.

Be a bush if you can’t be a tree. If you can’t be a highway, just be a trail. If you can’t be the sun, be a star. For it isn’t by size that you win or fail. Be the best of whatever you are.” (King, 1968 )

These are important words that we can also imbibe in our personal or organizational quest for excellence. The challenge for us is will each of us – individually or within our respective organizations– be ready when these doors open? It is not enough to know, one must also act, so don’t let your personal 70:20:10 plan or your organization strategic plan and tactical plans gather dust by sitting on the shelf. Another African proverb that says there are no shortcuts to the top of the palm tree, so if we want to reach the top of our respective goals, we will need to put in the work, while being in service of others.

As I contemplate the approaching Martin Luther King Jr. Day on January 15th, 2024, and attempt to offer insights beyond Dr. King's iconic "I Have a Dream" speech in 1963, which was the culmination of collaborative efforts between civil rights leaders like Dr. King and organizations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and resulted in a historic march that drew a quarter of a million people, advocating for the civil and economic rights of Black Americans at the nation's capital, another speech comes to mind? that continues to challenge and inspire our nation and its people to aspire to a more perfect union.

Four years after his “I Have a Dream” speech, Dr. King gave another speech entitled “The Other America” at Stanford University in 1967. Dr. King said:

“And I’d like to use as a subject from which to speak this afternoon, the other America. And I use this subject because there are literally two Americas. One America is beautiful for our situation. And in a sense, this America is overflowing with the miracle of prosperity and the honey of opportunity. This America is the habitat of millions of people who have food and material necessities for their bodies and culture and education for their minds, and freedom and human dignity for their spirit. In this America, millions of people experience every day the opportunity of having life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in all of their dimensions. And in this America, millions of young people grow up in the sunlight of opportunity.

But tragically and unfortunately, there is another America. This other America has a daily ugliness about it that constantly transforms the buoyancy of hope into the fatigue of despair. In this America, millions of work-starved men walk the streets daily in search for jobs that do not exist. In this America, millions of people find themselves living in rat-infested, vermin-filled slums. In this America, people are poor by the millions. And they find themselves perishing on a lonely island of poverty, in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.” (King, 1968 )

Dr. Kings words are still relevant today, and encompasses social determinants of health, outlined by the United States Department of Health and Human Services such healthcare access and quality, education access and quality, social and community context, economic stability, and neighborhood and built environment. If we take close look at housing for example, the rate of Black homeownership has plummeted to levels not seen since segregation in housing was legal in our country (Chen, 2021 ), and Olmsted County and Rochester, Minnesota have one of the largest racial home ownership gaps in the country evidenced by 77% White household home ownership compared to 22% for Black/African American households (Olmsted County, 2020 ).

In examining another example, persistent educational disparities are evident across the nation, and in my home state of Minnesota, due to structural racism, an alarming statistic showed that 60.4% of Blacks/African Americans and 60.9% of American Indians faced barriers won’t achieve a college degree (Rosalsky, 2020 ; State of Minnesota Outcomes by Race ). This reality was one of the reasons why Mayo Clinic, a values-based and socially responsible organization, powered by her RICH TIES values collaborated with the Rochester Minnesota Branch of the NAACP to launch the RISE for Youth Program , aimed at creating new pathways for success for Black and underrepresented students by providing critical educational and leadership skills, training, and long-term mentoring for careers in health, science, and beyond.

So, as we all look forward to 2024, what will we collectively do to improve our respective organizations, communities, and world? What will we do to better serve patients, employees, customers? How will we work hard to ensure equitable outcomes are achieved? Dr. King stated “Make a career of humanity. Commit yourself to the noble struggle for equal rights. You will make a greater person of yourself, a greater nation of your country, and a finer world to live in.” For me, I will take these words of Dr. King to heart and action, and hope you join me in embracing these ideals.

- Walé Elegbede