We need brave people making brave decisions

We just came back from an overland trip to Zambia from South Africa. There was an incident when we were in the Kafue National Park when there was a vehicle stuck in the sand.?? It happened to be their ranger patrol vehicle there to protect the animals and maybe us and it needed to be mobile.? They were in uniform and they had kit to wear.? You could see that they are appointed for the job, but now they are stuck and they cannot get out.

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At that time and at that point when we, me and my wife Olga, arrived there they were stuck and they would never get out of there. So they started cutting branches from the nearby trees and tried to fill it up with a high lift jack underneath the vehicle but nothing was working.? As I was assisting them and was going to try to pull their car out with my land cruiser,? I was spending time with them and we talked and joked. I took my gauge for tire pressure, and I checked on their tire pressure because that's kind of lesson number one on those roads in that wilderness. In the thick sand, if you don't bring your tire pressure down for reasons you are going to find it hard to drive and you can get stuck so much easier. Anyway, they had 3.5 bars on one tire, three bars on the other tire and two bars on the other tire, one bar on the fourth tire. So how is it possible? I mean, just ask yourself how is it possible to have a range from one to 3.5 bar and four tires and then expect not to get stuck? So we talked about it and I soon discovered that they didn't know how important this was. And they didn't realize that if they did not bring the pressure of all four tires down to one bar, they would be in trouble. In other words, they have not been properly trained or educated, yet they are expected to be highly professional in the execution of their daily tasks.

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?That got me to think, what is it that we mess up in life and society and we do it all the time and you see it everywhere?? People are not good at what they are doing because they haven't been properly educated trained or coached and they get stuck. What a great example of how certain basic, fundamental underlying lessons or principles are not properly integrated into people's lives and they can't solve that problem because they don't know how, they are stuck.

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So if I think of what we have tried to do in school for 12 years when we try to educate the kids in my country, South Africa. ?You educate them for what? You educate them for life. You educate them for business.? You educate them to become responsible citizens, with high levels of ethics and moral values. You educate them on creativity, for problem-solving. And the vehicles that you use to get there are maths and science and ecology and biology and all of that, that I understand. But if you don't integrate that and make it relevant to life, then you waste 12 years of your life, and going to college or university or the Training Institute for ranger training is the same dilemma, same problem. We just miss it and we pay a price for it every day. You go into the streets of the city that you live in or in the town that you live in and you will be disappointed with the levels of service, the levels of engagement, and levels of clarity on what it is that you have to do to get proper service and get the job done.

Why?

• Well, we teach the wrong subjects number one. ?
• Number two, the subjects never get integrated.
• Number three, it never becomes practical.
• We don't make people good at what they do.

I mean, changing or fixing a tire or getting a vehicle out of sand that is stuck in Africa is an excellent half-a-day or a full-day activity out in the veldt or in the wilderness where people get an opportunity to take several learnings and integrate that into one experience. What learnings?? ?There are maths in there, there is biology there, science and economy, business principles, and even teamwork.? ?That's the stuff that people need to be good at every day in life.? Those opportunities are all over the place for us to teach them and to make them good at it. But that's not what we're doing. Everything we do is fragmented. Everything we do is chasing a scoreboard of something that you have to pass to get credits to eventually get your qualification, but still, you can't do the proper first parade on a vehicle when you drive into town or drive in the African Wilderness. Why would it be different on the highway? It's the same stuff. The fundamentals are not taught. And the fundamentals are not integrated.

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So let me be a little bit sarcastic. If ?I was the Minister of Education in my country, which is South Africa, I would close down what we call school, that whole system. I would kind of like to destroy it and start all over again and say:

• Come on, what do we need our kids to be good at when, after 12 years, they leave that space that we call school?
• What should they be able to do?
• What should they know about business?
• What should they know about our society?
• What should they know about family life?

How easy is it to make them good at some of the underlying principles or lessons or experiences so that they can go out and be good every day of their lives in getting the job done?

I think we missed it. I want to believe that in business and coaching people who are already educated or qualified, you can give them tools or a system to work with. Then all you have to do is to make them good. I think that is what is missing today.? That coaching is not happening. We are under pressure, we don't have time for this kind of stuff. My take is you can have maybe an 80% improvement in the performance of a business unit or service that you try to deliver if you just keep on coaching people on the underlying principles of the performance you want them to execute.?? If you don't do that, you will run this country or your business on 20% efficiency.? How stupid is that?

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You know, the stuff that I'm talking about now is not that difficult, it's not rocket science, but the key is in the integration. The key is in how you make it hands-on practical and get young people after 12 years to be able to do the first inspection of the vehicles before they drive and when they get stuck then at least I know they've already ticked boxes one, two and three and now they can do five, six and seven to get out of there which was not that difficult to do.

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?So is there a lesson here for us or is it just me moaning and groaning a little bit about this kind of experience? ??No, I want to believe there is a lesson.

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I've got a concern that when it comes to managing our businesses, the country, society, and aspects of it, we are failing all the time and we are not going forward. As a matter of fact, in my experience, we are sliding backward.?? Fixing it is not that difficult. But it will ask for some brave people to make brave decisions on how to go forward differently because what we're doing right now is not working, it's just not good enough.

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What we are looking for is way more integrated approaches to the outcomes that we want. No fragmentation. People are being allowed to become way more proactive. not reactive. People skilled in open conversation for understanding and meaning. I mean, this is the real world and this is what we have to take to society way more than what we are doing now.

Experiences with purpose - Callie Roos

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