No, setting more grandiose goals won’t bring us development

You read that right: ‘No, setting more grandiose goals won’t bring us development.’ The focus should be on achieving the desired effect, or outcome(s).

Ok, fine, that’s a tricky statement to make. It is not true, but it is also not untrue.

The point is, it takes more than setting goals, especially grandiose ones, to achieve desired outcomes.

We need to shift the focus from goals to the processes, or systems, that will allow us to have the desired outcomes.

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Sidebar 1.0 – doing it anyway

You know that feeling you get right before you share an idea?

The angel on one shoulder says you’ve come up with something really interesting, an idea that can reshape how we think and that will change the lives of your readers forever. Meanwhile, Kwaku Bonsam (the devil), on the other shoulder, scoffs at your idea and mocks your confidence calling your ideas lame, half-baked and far from interesting.

Well, it was the year 2021, and the day was today.

For months, I started countless posts – and deleted them. The devil was winning.

Today, it doesn’t seem like it…

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There is nothing more exhausting than pulling off a major event, especially one that includes a long list of high-profile personalities.

It’s a lot.

Anyway, I pulled one off, another one. *dusting my shoulders here*

So, I made it to the end of said crowning event. As I was busily attending to departure protocol, I got a tap on the shoulder. Someone needed to speak with me…

“Oh,” I thought out loud, “I hope there’s no issue.”

What ensued next is one for the books….

Them: “My sister, we just want to speak briefly about the gift.”

Me: “Which gift?”, I ask, slightly confused. I sure did not buy anyone gifts.

Them: “The gift for X “.

Me: (Slightly confused and alarmed because the gift was in the car.) I ask, “What happened to the gift?”.

Them: “Nothing, it’s just very delicate and needs to be wrapped.

Me: How thoughtful! “Sure, do you need me to get it for you to wrap it? That would be nice.”

Them: “No, we have the gift; it’s right here.”

Me: “ok…”

Them: “We need money to go buy the gift wrapping.”

Without giving away too much, let’s just say I almost lost my already swirling marbles.

They needed me to give them money to buy wrapping paper for a gift their head of party gave to my head of party?!

Somebody make it make sense.

It was at that moment that I realised that the journey for this country was going to be a long one. The hope and aspirations I had built, despite several reasons otherwise, shattered into so many pieces.

Thankfully, the fate of the world does not rest on my pithy judgements; phew!

That was my random rant, on to business.

Fatigued…with the the failures in (or of) development

Our achievements have improved conditions for some, but it is not enough.

The state we find ourselves in and the endless poor choices that leave most of the continent’s people with shallow electoral rights and pisspoor economic conditions is uninspiring.

Failures in development are more common than successes, or at least it seems that way.

Yes, people are not much better off than they were under previously oppressive foreign domination.

But, to many, the advent of “democracy”, which the independence movements advocated for so strongly, has not delivered gains equitably. And in many places, income inequality is as gaping as the jaw of a crocodile ready to grab its prey.

We need to put the focus back where it belongs: how do we actually make individuals better off? What does that require? In other words, what is the process to get to that outcome?

A shift in how we think about achieving more?

I think so.

This shift can be better understood like this. In many places in Africa, targets for universal primary and secondary school enrolment have largely been achieved.

Yet employers complain of graduates with inadequate and improper skills to meet their demands. Why might that be? The effort was always geared towards getting bottoms into seats, not into jobs or to create jobs. We missed something, misplaced a focus…

Producing a qualified, competitive and high-quality workforce requires more than putting people through school.

It requires producing people with high-quality knowledge and training for the kinds of jobs employers actually require. It requires raiding a crop of people who can think widely and wildly to solve problems.

These outcomes are not automatic, not in the educational curriculum of the average African school unfortunately. I went through it, I know.

The current approach that focuses on the numbers – big goals – is oblivious to the calibre and quality of what is needed to change lives.

Leaning on James Clear – breaking it down

In any sport, the goal is to finish with the highest score. However, wishing for the highest score or simply talking about it is not the way to get the highest scores. Instead, you win by playing better.

In the book Atomic Habits, author James Clear helps understand the problems with this way of thinking:  

• Even the loser set out to win as well. Clear identifies goal setting as suffering from “a serious case of survivorship bias.” He adds, “We concentrate on the people who end up winning—the survivors—and mistakenly assume that ambitious goals led to their success while overlooking all of the people who had the same objective but didn’t succeed.”

• Achieving a goal only changes your life for the moment. The idea is often to ‘change the results’, but, in actuality, the results are not entirely the problem. While seemingly counterintuitive, this way of thinking about things is helpful. It can be helpful to explain, for instance, why many African countries have failed on one too many occasions to deliver better economic outcomes. Extrapolating James Clear’s ideas from self to nation, “What we really need to change are the systems [processes?] that cause those results… In order to improve for good, you need to solve problems at the system level.” James believes that if you “Fix the inputs, the outputs will fix themselves.” I believe more than that, fix what makes the inputs work together to produce the desired outcome, not just an output.

Essentially, goals are directional, but processes (or systems) always win. The better system wins, always, and success is a function of our commitment to the process. Again, James Clear, ladies and gentlemen.

What history teaches, what we think we know

History has taught us that there is no big answer or silver bullet to creating a better life for people. It is a series of things, done well and repeated over and better again.

The commonalities among countries that have been able to turn their economies around from stagnant to growing and their people from low-skilled primary workers to more skilled and high-order productive people are those that made the right policy choices, actioned them, and showed commitment to making better choices for the wellbeing of their populations.

We often get obsessed with becoming like Singapore but fail to understand and appreciate the process that Singapore went through.

In fact, the Singaporeans tell of how many African envoys came to them in the 20th century and yet bucked when they realised it wasn’t some “magic potion” they took but but hard work.

We have got want to do the hard work too.

A country like Zimbabwe cannot just announce that will become a hi-tech economy and thus demands a company like Acer to relocate to start producing in-country in an attempt to jumpstart its waning economy and create jobs.

It requires more than just a declaration, or aspiration. What is the narrative that investors would buy into? A country that lacks the basics such as stable electricity supply, a supply chain of electronic products, a cohort of locally-based engineers, financing structures and institutions, sufficient collateral, government subsidies, the rule of law, policy predictability and ease of market access… It is a tough sell. Pragmatism.

Pragmatism

Similarly, we can all wake up and decide to want a summer body.

However, losing that muffin top is not about staring at Adrienne Banfield-Norris on the vision board with #bodygoals next to her image(s). Nor is it just declaring you will lose 20kg in 12 months.

Instead, it is about the choices we make to change our lifestyles and our commitment to push ourselves to stick with the routine and transform our lifestyles, over time. That’s likely to lead to a better outcome.

And if after achieving that summer body, we go back to consuming garbage, GIGO.

In half the time we lost weight, we would puff right back up, competing in the beer body Olympics. So there’s that – systems, processes, not just goals. They lead to the desired outcome.

Where the chips fall

The point is that perhaps part of the reason we have failed to achieve longstanding developmental outcomes in many places is our obsession with the goal. The goal of attaining middle-income status, higher GDP, becoming part of the G7…

Goals are aspirational; they give us hope. They play on the fine line between joy-inducing visualisation and narcissism. They also bode well in elections. Remember a promise you heard on the campaign trail? How’s that going? Outcome achieved yet? I bet it’s a “No!” And I wonder why that is.

It’s re-orienting towards outcomes

We need to reorient our thinking to understand and demand the implementation of the processes that may lead to a said goal(s).

What will make us achieve the outcome of getting more people employed as opposed to paying more to train more people?

Outcome. Outcome. Outcome

One may ask, “This seems pretty straightforward, why might this be hard for leaders?”

Lots of reasons. Perhaps because some processes are arduous and long-term and this may not always be seen as politically expedient? Elections and electoral cycles matter and the focus on personal ambitions and victory over public needs may alter the incentive to do the right thing. Especially if you don’t know if successors will continue with reforms. Why not do the little things that bring glory today?

You catch my drift? It may be tough actually.

But I also suppose that’s the job of a leader – to make the tough calls people need for the greater good.

We need better quality people, better quality systems, improved standards of living.

Imagine if the people that poured onto the streets during ceremonial events have testaments of better incomes, better health outcomes, improved literacy, new businesses to boast about, innovations to address the problems in their environment instead of merely celebrating another borehole opened. (Knowing full well that the three others broke and no one could fix it and that this too will break soon.)

I don’t know, I want more. I desire more – better.

Looking ahead: outcome-based thinking

Coming out of COVID-19 and charging ahead in an increasingly competitive global landscape, will demand of African leaders to accelerate economic policy reforms and pro-investment choices in and into productive areas of society that will accentuate the desire for improved incomes and livelihoods. Again, the outcomes.

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Sidebar 2.0: Growing pains – note to self

Becoming good at it (whatever) is about as much luck as someone getting rich from stumbling across a leprechaun in the forest with a pot of gold.

The people who make it think strategically, map out a plan, and then work their butt off to make it happen.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but in each and every case you learn something. Even if you do end up scrapping your blog and starting over, you come out of it with a fresh perspective.

And if you think about it, that’s good news.

It means it doesn’t matter if your blog is a flop or not;

It means you don’t have to succeed the first time out of the gate.

It means your confusion is perfectly normal, your questions are necessary, and you’ll get through it.

So, keep your chin up. Do some thinking, work your butt off, and most of all, believe in yourself.

You will get ‘there’, eventually.

And when you do, it’ll all be worth it.

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What stumped me this week

Maya Angelou 

“Sister, there are people who went to sleep all over the world last night, poor and rich and white and black, but they will never wake again. Sister, those who expected to rise did not, their beds became their cooling boards, and their blankets became their winding sheets. And those dead folks would give anything, anything at all for just five minutes of this… So you watch yourself about complaining, Sister. What you’re supposed to do when you don’t like a thing is change it. If you can’t change it, change the way you think about it. Don’t complain.”

Source: Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now

I like Maya. Here’s to my work changing things, in spite of the minor agitations. Like sir, go buy the wrapping paper yourself, please. Do better.

PS: Did you catch my last post? Many have enjoyed it; you might too. See it here.