Alusine Barrie: Enterprise is the way - How People Who Want To Make An Impact End Up Becoming Entrepreneurs

If you pay attention as you grow up, you'll start noticing those things that are consistent about you; the things you care about, your likes and dislikes, the kind of people you enjoy to work with, environments that bring out the best in you and the types of problems you enjoy tackling and how you enjoy approaching them.

One of the greatest challenges I have observed people who want to have an impact face (especially those who start non-profit organizations) is the constant frustration to keep an organization running (with sufficient financial resources primarily) while staying true to their mission and vision. In the quest to gain funding from donors who have their own agendas and templates, who have their own preferences or may not see the urgency and dynamics of the problem you are trying to solve and how you want to solve it, it's a constant battle to explain and convince, and living by the whims of people who may not understand your approach.

People like these are leaders and are not afraid to work and give everything to the things they care about. But it's so hard sometimes to convince donors about why and how things should be done. They may feel slowed down, have to bang their heads a thousand times to close down a piece of funding and constantly have to live in the worry of whether or not they can fulfill their organization's basic responsibilities. These frustrations I have seen are what have driven my interest into utilizing the power of entrepreneurship to reach the impact I want to have. And this is becoming more and more evident as I continue to meet people striving to have and impact.

People like Bill and Melinda Gates are a striking example in this regard. With their wealth, they set up the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation through which they tackle big causes like poverty and health care especially in the world's poorest countries. As Arnold Schwarzenegger said, "any idea is great, but if you don't have the money, you can't implement anything". Steve Jobs (co-founder of Apple) also had this to say "I think money is a good thing. It allows you to invest in things that don't have a short term payback."

Many who embody the traits of an entrepreneur (a.k.a proactive leader), actually don't think they do. This is exactly how I have seen myself for a very long time. However, entrepreneurs are just people driven to change things, whose character helps them see opportunities and solve problems around them. This is the definition of leadership at its core too. In my view, entrepreneurship is a more proactive form of leadership and change making; one that takes into account of this reality. What entrepreneurship does is that it gives you the space and resources to see the change you want to see the way you want to see it. NOT how the donor wants you to reach it.
Many people who end up becoming entrepreneurs are people who care deeply about a problem or cause and use their enterprises as a way to have the impact they envisioned. For many entrepreneurship is just a necessary step to reaching their purpose in life. The image of the business prodigy who started selling at the age of 10 doesn't fit many of us and definitely doesn't fit many number of  those who have created the greatest enterprises in history.

What most people don't realize is that the traits like vision, purpose, passion, drive, decisiveness, persuasiveness, risk tolerance, flexibility, trustworthiness etc that make a great leader are also all the key traits that define an entrepreneur. For many, like the one I just met, entrepreneurship is just a necessary 'evil' to something else - to see the change they want to see while staying true to who they are and want to approach things.

There's one caveat though; Entrepreneurship is not an easy ride so don't get into entrepreneurship just for the sake of money. Choose a problem you deeply care about and enjoy working on. All those who have succeeded in building business have emphasized the necessity of passion in succeeding as an entrepreneur. See my earlier post on why doing work you're passionate about is the only legitimate shortcut to success and fulfillment: http://theyouthstand.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-only-legitimate-shortcut-to-true.html.
Thanks,
Alusine Barrie.

Whatever the circumstance, Just do the next best thing, there's always one!

Every once in a while we all come to the cross roads. Facing a failure, challenge, doubt, anxiety or any other difficult situation? That's perfectly fine, now just do the next right thing. No matter the circumstances you face, favourable or not so favourable, doing doing the next right thing is a choice that's always available to each and everyone of us.
However, this doesn't just have to do with facing challenging situations. In fact, good times, when everything seems amazing is usually a time of great peril for many people. When all is well and good we can easily forget what brought here and this far, we forget to nurture important relationships, we slack on our efforts, it's easy to take on character eroding tendencies that undo our sense of self.

Or sometimes we just get tired of the daily grind, we get burned out in our jobs, work, and in our relationships.
We also make mistakes, big and small. To all these, I say to you just do the next best thing.

No matter the cross road you find yourself in, there's always a next right thing to do. You may not have been been able to see it yet, but there's always a best thing to do. Take time to look deep within, most time your guts and your instincts know us more. We all know deep down when something feels right and it doesn't. Our circumstance and challenges grow larger and cost us more when we fail to listen to our inner voice pointing us to the best course of action.
However, it is good to always remember that the next best isn't necessarily the next most comfortable thing, the next easiest thing, or the thing that will make everyone around you cheer you on. The best thing in every situation is just the best.
Just do the next best thing!!

How do Sierra Leone’s Leaders Make Decisions – why credible data is necessary for a better nation

How do Sierra Leone’s Leaders Make Decisions – why credible data is necessary

Conversations that can transform Sierra Leone; Discussing the power of credible national data in aiding Sierra Leone’s businesses, organizations and most importantly its policy makers make more informed decisions.

The task of Sierra Leone’s leaders and policy makers is not an easy one. National development; the social and economic transformation requires foresight and the ability to plan into the future. It requires decision makers to have access to and base their decisions on reliable and timely information about Sierra Leoneans and Sierra Leone’s present and past as basis for planning and implementing policies that achieve the best outcomes for the country. The logic of my thought today is simple; we elect national leaders and give them the huge responsibility of making our lives better, but if (when asked) we do not give them the (right) data they need to make informed decisions, the whole nation suffers, as it has been for a very long time in my own opinion.

This past Friday I was in a conversation with a group of fellow young Sierra Leoneans and we were having a conversation about the importance of data in decision making. As the discussion went by, it slowly became clear that without rigorous, timely, and reliable data that reflects the real Sierra Leone to guide our policy makers, the decisions they make will inevitably be constrained and be overshadowed by faithful guesses their own humanly biases at best.

Actually, if there’s something worse than not having data at all, it’s misleading data. Here is where the daily Sierra Leonean has a lot do to help him/herself and the rest of their community. When there are censuses and surveys conducted by government, we often look at the enumerators/data collectors and the exercise light-heartedly. However, if one knows the number of both daily and long term decisions that will be made based on that data, one would treat with its due seriousness. When we refuse to give information to data collectors, or give them false information, we are causing ourselves our very own harm. The scariest part is when the government or its related agencies hire us to collect data and we think we are being smart by sitting in our own house and fill up the ledgers with made up information. Ultimately, this data collected will be processed and will form the basis of national decision that affect our daily lives as Sierra Leoneans.  

This tension culminated in small group activity in which we divided trainees into 4 groups and each group was tasked to make the same decision but each group received a varying amount of data to support them in their decision making challenge. The first group had no data to aid them, the second had 25% data, the third 75% and the fourth had access to all the data needed for them to make a good decision. This was a vivid illustration of the power of data as each group had to prepare a presentation to showcase their decision and justify the basis of their decision.  

Actually, the activity showed us also that without good data to rely on, decision makers can still sometimes guess their way to a good decision. However, this is what precisely we don’t want. We don’t just want Sierra Leone’s leaders to have access to data, we want them to believe deep down and absurdly, ensure themselves that the relevant mechanisms are put in place to put correct data into their hands.

At the end of the day, if our leaders don’t make our daily and long term decisions based on credible data, what are they making them based on? Our leaders are not magicians, their decisions come from somewhere, let us all play our own part by giving them correct information with which they can make the decisions to mover our country forward. A food for thought for all Sierra Leoneans.