What entrepreneurs can learn from Nelson Mandela’s life

Uzo Nduka, business coach and chief executive, Domino Information Company Limited, in this interview with OLUYINKA ALAWODE speaks on the vital lessons entrepreneurs can learn from Mandela’s life to run businesses successfully.

As a manager, if you do not have a strategy, you will live life and run your organisation based on luck. The problem with luck is that you may not be able to repeat particular outcomes at will. But if you manage based on strategy, then you can actually repeat any outcome.

Mandela lived his life pursuing an objective: that every South African, irrespective of skin colour or race, should live free and equal. He lived his life in pursuit of this objective and ended up making a lot of sacrifices; to the extent of losing his freedom for 27 years. He accepted it as the price he had to pay.

It is often the case that every vision (or objective) that must be accomplished comes at a price. Paying the price is your proof of commitment to the accomplishment of that vision.

Some of the virtues and lessons managers can learn from Mandela’s life include, but are not limited to the following five:

Forgiveness

Mandela chose to forgive rather than take revenge, so he did not divide his people along racial or social lines. In most organisations, the human resources department could often find itself enjoying a rather tense relationship with the operations department, usually over welfare issues. It may be quality control department versus production or finance versus research and development.

The point is that an organisation is driven by people with various interests and professional orientations. People that see things differently. The entrepreneur or business manager must learn to accept people for who they are and get them to focus on the common objective of the organisation. No matter his own background, he must never allow dominance by any group of people within the organisation because they are from the same background as he is. He must also get rid of any bitterness he may harbour about any group of people and not allow it to determine how he relates with people from such backgrounds. He must be a forgiving person, not bringing up the past wrong deeds of employees to deal with them in the present.

Depart from the norm

Mandela apparently saw that taking up arms against the racial oppressors would only worsen the situation even though that was the norm. He did at some point but decided to try something different. The lesson herein is to adopt new and different approaches, especially something unexpected in times of business crisis as long as it is legitimate.

Knowing when to leave, hand over control

The fact that you are the owner and founder of the business does not mean you must stay there or control it forever. As president of his country, though his people still very much wanted him there and he had the right to go for a second term, Mandela knew it was time to hand over power and he did. During the early growth stages of a business, the owner is needed but as the business grows and new skills set are needed to stir the business to another level, if the owner does not have those skills set and he is not willing to acquire those skills, then he must hand over those areas of the business to someone else who has the ability.

Commitment, doggedness, resilience

Mandela refused to be broken. Before his 27th year in prison, he could have given up the fight. If he had renounced his earlier commitment to fight for his people’s freedom, the government of the day could have released him sooner. So, as entrepreneurs in good times or bad times, whether or not we make profit, we must not give up and declare bankruptcy, we must not compromise our values just to make profit. Mandela’s decision not to go for second term was because he wanted to stay true to his original vision. As entrepreneurs, we may adopt different strategies, but we must learn to stay true to our original vision.

Ability to relate or connect with all people

Mandela was able to relate with virtually everyone. As entrepreneurs, we must be able to run our organisation in such a way that it can connect with people at all levels – big or small, high net-worth or low net-worth, lawyers, police, and so on.