The Strategist

I remember the first time I needed help with a difficult business situation.

I had to manage a riot of about a 150 African workers ready to stone me on a construction site in Nairobi, Kenya. If the police hadn’t shown up with machine guns, this could have quickly turned sour.

A few months earlier, I had boarded a plane for my African adventure. Just after finishing high school I wanted to intern and get some business exposure. My uncle received me as a young volunteer in his African construction business. When he saw my enthusiasm and work ethic, he put me in charge of operations and management. For a few months I took care of buying building materials, negotiations of labour contracts, doing payroll with piles of cash on Fridays, and other stuff that an 18 year old kid normally does. Just kidding. I was in way over my head.

All went well, until it didn’t. All of a sudden I had a riot on my hand. And I had no clue what do.

I called my uncle in South Africa and he got on a plane. When he landed, we got into a board room and for the next couple of hours I saw him work magic. He developed a strategy to deal with the problem. It was not just the solution that impressed me, but the whole process of thinking through various options as well as some out-of-the-box entrepreneurial moves.

And we solved the problem.

That’s when I decided to invest into my thinking and became a strategist for myself and the problems I get handed.