Why Mindset Change is critical for personal development
Synopsis: Celebrated author, life coach and consultant, Akosua Bame visited the offices of the Graphic Communications Group Limited last Friday and engaged our editor, Mr Asamoah Boahene in variety of pressing issues affecting the country. Your authoritative paper The Graphic Business transcribed the conversation to our cherished readers.
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Below are excerpts of the conversation by Graphic Business's Kwame Larweh
Editor Graphic Business (GB):Welcome to the Graphic Communications Group we are proud to have you with us. First of all who is Akosua Bame (AB) for our readers and listeners who don’t know you?
Akosua Bame (AB): So I will describe myself as a driven servant of humanity and let me explain what I mean by that. I believe that we are all cretaed here on earth to serve each other. I believe in the principle of Mbontu which means I am because we are and therefore, I look for opportunities to use my knowledge experience skills to serve, and it will come in different guises and that's why you find my work multiple areas. I am somebody who values and treasures loyalty and therefore, I don't necessarily make too many friendships, but whatever friendships I have they are quality friendship.
I also grew up in a privileged background, on the University of Ghana Campus, my father was a professor and it was a very cosmopolitan, quite meritocratic environment and one thing I took from my father was the principle of the accident of birth.
He used to say nobody chose to be born into poverty or privilege. So being privileged is not something to Lord over others, privilege is to be used to serve and so that guides me, I relate to everybody and I seek to assist where I can, so that is really in a nutshell this who Akosua Bame is.
GB: How did your entrepreneurial journey began?
AB: I think my entrepreneurial journey typically started with buying and selling. As early as in sixth form in Achimota School I started selling sweets. And then we came to the University of Ghana, and I was doing my national service at the language center. And I started selling coke and fanta etc.. what we call minerals here in the Legon Hall senior common room and that is how my journey started.
I obviously studied business administration currently at the Univeristy of Ghana Business School, which was then called the school of Administration.
After graduation I relocated to the United Kingdom where I've been up till now so I'm a bit of a Papa Shamo. I studied insurance So when I relocated to the United Kingdom my first job was in insurance. I worked with a company called Commercial Union Insurance they have now merged with a number of companies currenlty called AVIVA.
I was a management trainee there but I realized that I was bored and that I wasn't going to really thrive in one company and rising through the ranks, and I needed a bit more variety. So I took time out to study for my MBA at Imperial College, after which I then joined a consulting firm.
But then again, I was still I was a young mother at the time and again i wanted to be in charge of my own destiny. I then started working as an independent contractor.
So basically, I would work with different organizations, maybe for a duration of two years. And in 2008, I decided to form my management consultancy firm which I launched in 2008 called Strategic Change Management Consultancy.
I then added mindset coaching in 2010 because I identified a gap in the market, because my work is really doing transformation work with organizations who want to change themselves with the new products etch, like Graphic is doing now.
What I found out is that there was a gap in terms of the attention paid to culture and mindset change. So I added that niche to my my offer, and it's been a good journey so far in terms of continuity of business, etc. I don't advertise, most of my businesses, I get are repeat businesses through word of mouth referrals.
I mean, one of the things that pleases me is in the last year for instance is that I have had two companies come back to me that I have worked with over ten years ago which tells me that they still value the work I did for them.
So that's really been my journey in terms of entrepreneurship. I also launched my own online cosmetics company with a brand called Obaapa and the leading perfume is purple by Obaapa, that's been quite an interesting journey. I just like to put my fingers in quite a few pies. So I have a few entrepreneurial things up my sleeve that I will unfoldThem in due course.
GB: So what was your motivation for writing the Book, The Mindset Revolution?
AB: I have written three books, the one called Mindset Revolution is one of three books. and the idea is to help build the Africa we want.
The initiative to write the book came from two folds or series; first because of my work in strategic change management and transformation, one thing I can recognised in my course of work is that 70 to 90 per cent of transformation programmes fail to deliver the benefits they anticipate that they will deliver.
And If you ask why, they cite reasons such as lack of clarity in objectives, lack of capacity to carry out beyond the programmes, among others, as some of the issues which underlines the failure to shift culture and mindset; that is, human behavior and human behavior is driven by the mind.
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Most organisations will write flowery statements and values however, research will show that most of these doesn’t work because people are not empowered.So there is a misalignment between the messaging and the experience of people and the live experience of people drives them to continue to behave in a certain way.
If I do something right, and am not rewarded for it I will not repeat that behavior and vice-versa. So that was one thing, I realise that to be able to transform, you can’t change without changing the mindset that is leading to the result that you don’t want.
That is one dimension, so I always see organisations as a microcosm of nations, they are smaller nations basically, so whatever you can try and test within an organizational environment, you can try and test within a national environment. I went to the UK and said I was going to do a two year stay and I’m still there.
But am a Ghanaian at heart I want to come back home. And I love Africa as well and I observed when I went to the UK, I had people telling me that when you come here you have to forget about your degree and just settle for whatever job you can get and I won’t had any of that otherwise I will be back home and that was a little miggle, why do we thinK that way, why do we think that when I’m in Ghana I should be able to occupy the top echelons but when I come to the United Kingdom I should actually set my goals low, why?
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So that was a trigger for me and then I observed , even to this day I go to boardroom meetings and I am the only Black person there and the only Black woman there , why?
I don’t want to people to think I am special or unique, there are many of people like ‘me’ out there out there so how come they are not projecting themselves into this space? That was another trigger for me . Again looking around, Black and African experiences, if you look in the UK, the places that are predominantly ran down you will found that it is being populated by Black people, in America, the same thing, can be said. So one begin to think that there has to be something, that is driving us in this direction.
Look ay Africa and everytime we are talking about Africa in terms of potential, that is something that is in the future but it is never happening, why?
That is where I started thinking, actually it is the same thing that is happening in organisations, if we fail to shift the cultural, the behavior and the mindset of citizens we will continue to have the results that will lead to lasting transformation we need as a people.
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This was my motivation for writing the minds and the revolution series.So there first book is a personal journey, the 365 daily thing that you will basically start of your day or end your day or have a reflective moment because we seem to operate on auto-pilot. I get up in the morning, I have a shower, I sit in my car, and I come and do the work, I go back and then have a meal.
We don’t invest in the one primary thing that will change our lives, which is how we think.
That was my motivation, my motivation was really, from the experiences, from my transformation journey and also looking at the plight of blacks and Africans in general and identifying as far as I could tell that really the underline issue that we have that of mindset.
GB: What has been the response so far?
AB: People are receptive, I mean obviously we can be quite brutal in my message sometimes,but I’m not apologetic about it because I believe that we need that wake up.We need to start questioning, we need to be able to say ,no enough of this charade , I cant for the forseeable future carry on living in this way but it is not going to happen magically, so I have to now look inward instead of continuing to look externally,
I need to look inward, I have a mantra, I say if it is going to be it is up to me. It is not up to anybody but me, It is not up to anybody to create my opportunity for me, my opportunity is up to me to maximize it , it’s up to me to deliver on this opportunities.
So the response is , so far as the momentum is actually building and it may be an uncomfortable truth sometimes, but it resonates with people.
GB: What are the key mindset issues that we have to change, if you can put your hand to one or two on mindset issues.
AB: The mindset issues come out in different ways but I will couch it all together as the Slavery Mindset. And in a slave relationship, you have a master and a slave. The master has a particular type of mindset because if you don’t have the master dimension you don’t have a slave relationship. And the master dimension is very exploitative, he feels entitled, he doesn’t care about the rest of the masses and that I would say that is the mindset that most of our political leaders currently hold.
The funny thing is the slave dimension is a dependent mindset. It's a mindset of I move only when I am instructed to. It’s a mindset of learned helplessness.
That's why we have people within our countries living in spaces that are sanitarily poor but they can't do anything about it. I mean, yes, okay. The government has a role to play.
But why would you live within a space where there is rubbish and say, well, the government is not doing anything about it, and therefore I will continue to live in those unhealthy circumstances that because of a learned helplessness, we become so dependent on an external source, instead of an internal source.
So that for me couches the slavery mindset. Now on the international level, our leaders go there and they don't display the master dimension of their slavery mindset. They display the slave dimension so they get there they are subservient to our former colonial masters.
They defer to the west. When West says jump we ask how high, that is really, the overall so the nub of it is that we have a slavery mindset, but it manifests in different ways. Citizens, for instance, also feel entitled, you know, they sometimes they want something from nothing. And I will have to be fair to say though at a basic level the average Ghanaian is not asking for much. They're asking for what they are basically entitled to. It is food, clean water, clothing and shelter.
But because we have shifted our focus as a nation, from morality to materiality, and material gains, no matter what, the average Ghanaian dream has now become one I'm just waiting for my political party to get into power so I can get something which is confliction.
So that perpetuates the cycle over and over again, sometimes I don’t blame some of these leaders that are being exploitative because ones they become a minister people are queueing up at their doors expecting handouts, what salary is he using for you to be expecting those handouts.
So it's a multi dimensional thing. We could talk about corrupt practices but we're the ones that actually feel that corrupt behavior.
So I would say the nub of it is a slavery mindset. It manifests in different ways we're not health conscious. Because if we are health conscious we wouldn’t be openly defecating, we wouldn’t be openly throwing rubbish around, we subscribe to medication after the fact.
You know, how many of us really have a fitness regime, how many of us really look to eat a nutritionally balanced meal, as opposed to something that looks and tastes good and stuffs like that. And I don't think I can blame us per se, it's a lack of education. And I don't mean formal education is just a lack of information.
These things have not been prioritized by government. Governments should be me leading the fight and the charge to try and build a healthy nation through information and education to the common masses. We're not doing what you know. So that is what I will say.
GB: What can be done to reverse this Slavery Mentality?
AB: We need to let people take ownership and responsibility. You can only achieve that through changing the lived experiences of people. Chiefs have a role to play, you living in a community, town or village and the chiefs must involve the citizens there to build those areas. We can’t continue to sit down and look at government externally, and I’m not absolving government at all, I’m saying we can’t continue to sit there waiting for government to come and fix this, do that, do this etc. when we can actually help ourselves.
What's wrong with the village coming together and digging a borehole instead of saying we cant get clean drinking water so we will carry on drinking muddy water until Mr Government from someshere comes to do that. What’s the problem with them coming together to do that and building a public laterine.
GB: It’s a shared responsibility?
AB: Exactly;
GB: And all of us need to play a role?
AB: Come to face it what is the percentage of people in government, I always say things like this we talk about the law is not enforced, there is no law and order and open defecation is a symptom of that, now what I will say is even if half of the population of government were in the police force they wouldn’t be able to please the other half, citizens have to please each other, and I don’t mean vigilantes, I’m taking about in the conscience of citizens , I shouldn’t be comfortable openly defecating in front of you. Peeing by the road side when you coming, it should be in-built that we please each other. Because the Police Force cannot do it all
GB: So the question is when we have the opportunity to travel outside the country, we conform to the laws. What is it with us, is it a sense of entitlement. Is it because we simply don’t care or our values are so low?
AB: It’s is a complex combination of that but ultimately that is why I call this a mindset issue. Because we have the mindset when we go outside to be compliant. Mindset is reinforced through both soft and hardship, so through both reward and sanctions,because of sanctions, potential sanctions out there we conform,
What we have here is that the fact that we cannot enforce our laws. Because the starting point is to enforce the law so that people actually conform; until it becomes embibed.
GB: So then it comes down to probably the governance structures we have?
AB: Absolutely
GB: So democracy may not be the way to go?
AB: Well I mean I have this statement that I've made which sometimes irritates people, but I'm going to say it and I would say that we have lawlessness. For the most part, we have lawlessness which we actually describe as democracy.
And I can do what I want when I want where I want how I want it, regardless of impact in society that is lawlessness masquerading as democracy.
The democracy model that we currently have is not serving us. It's not working and we need to ask ourselves, when did we actually inherit this?. It happened just post independence.
So we can't keep hanging on to dear life to this model that is not working because it's democratic. Really in truth though even when you scratch beneath the surface, is there real democracy do people feel comfortable, openly publicly critiquing governance, with no fear of repercussions. Let's be true.
Let's be fair, let's be honest, depending on who is in power and who you are align to, you may or may not have a full extent of freedom of speech, which is one of the tenets of democracy. But the other thing I would say is democracy is not a point in time.
Democracy is a spectrum. And we need to evolve and grow our model overtime. Most of the questions people that are now shoving democracy down Africa’s throat evolves from people from authoritarianism.
Why because sometimes you need a directive to be able to shape something, you know what we have, for instance, at the moment, this four year, eight year cycle of change, means we don't have a long term transformation agenda.
We don't, essentially this government comes in and starts building hospitals here. The other camps ignores that and builds them here, essentially, so we have was not sufficient hospitals, wasting resources. Even if we're going to keep this model, we definitely have to have a long term roadmap that each successive government will have to subscribe to at the bear minimum which is when you come in and this party has finished after this point.
You carry on the journey, if we're going to even maintain this form of party politics, but I will say this model doesn't work. Why because we don't have iseological differences.
In the West, they have ideologies that they subscribed to, the parties we currently have are really tribal divide.
Now if you are constantly going to have tribal alliances that means at any point in time any government imposition is only perceived to be serving a particular group of people. How does that build cohesion and unity for the country?
GB: So a lot of people are asking if our leaders have had the benefit of travelling outside the country, and visited places, Ghanaians in general are noted for being hardworking. When they come back home what happens and how come they don’t do the right things to get us out of this mess?
AB:A lot of the times , I mean this is the issue I have and this is why I put it down to mindset, We come back and mindset is reinforced through structures, don’t get me wrong.
So we have poor structures and the poor structures are continuing to feed the poor mindset. We also don’t need to understand that as much as we like to pretend that we are fully functioning educated people that is not the reality in Ghana. And mindset evolves through information and education and also through identity.
The problem I think fundamentally we have in Ghana and I said this in the past is that we don’t have a Ghanaian identity and therefore we don’t love the country called Ghana. If you dare to burn an American flag you will feel the full wrath of any American citizen walking by. It wouldn’t have to be the law intervening.
GB: But post independence, Ghanaians we were patriotic what happened?
AB: Well we started a journey towards a Ghanaian identity, because at the end of the day let’s not forget that before independence we were really a collection of nations, I don’t like using the word tribe, because tribe is really quite steep in the word of racism.
But we were a collection of nations, we have the Ewe nation, the Ga nation, the Hausa nation, the Akan nation. We were a collection of nations and then we were demarcated, half of us in Togo, half of us in Nigeria etc, why?
And then we were left with this geographical space we called Ghana. But what is it actually mean to become a Ghanaian.
Because a national identity must give me a sense of belonging to a cohesive whole, we don’t have that. I can tell you what it means to be an Ashanti, I can tell you what it means to be an ewe, Ga but can I tell you what it actually means to be Ghanaian.
And when you talk to me emotionally, do I connect to being Ghanaian or do I connect to being my national tribe, So that is what we have, we have a collection of people living in a geographical space we call Ghana.
At this point in time probably the only thing that unifies us is the Ghana card.
Before that unless you have travelled that is when you have a Ghanaian passport, if you haven’t travelled you really don’t have anything to hang on as an identity. We have recognize this problems in the past that is why we have nationalistic songs in our folklore to inspire patriotism.
Such as “Yen Aara Asase ni” and “Ma Oman nu ho Hiawo”, it was a call to identity but we hadn’t had the opportunity to do that, you know Nkrumah’s vision was prematurely cut off with his death and subsequently living in exile and dying and since then we have just had successive governments that have come in either by military coup or democratic rule who have not necessarily addressed the question , what does it mean to be Ghanaian?
We need that otherwise we are never going tp overcome our local national differences. What unites us as a people is what we should be harmonizing on.
The other thing I would say is because of that we don’t see ourselves as as citizens, we don't see our stake in the state of Ghana. And I will give you an analogy.
If I live in my father’s house, I actually know that I have a stake in that house, I have a stake in that home, I have a stake in his assets , so no Abusuapayin can just get up and start selling my father’s assets and I will just sit back and look on.
I will fight for what is mine, the average Ghanaian does not see their stake in the assets of Ghana, they don’t see themselves as a shareholder of the nation called Ghana.
And therefore we have our ‘Abusaupayin’ that we have put over us who have the right to do anything they want to do with our assets.
So if the asset belongs to you and the debt you are incurring too belongs to you then in truth I should hold you to account.
We have soo many programmes that are announced but there should be a time when we get citizens set up a forum where ministers come and ordinary citizens question the ministers. As to you were given these resources, you were supposed to improve agriculture, improve health, improve whatever, what have you done.
There is no accountability because citizens are not aware of their needs and demands. Until we wake up and realise that these politicians whom we employ we don’t allow them to set up their own salaries we are doomed.
We do it we accept it year in year out. And all we do is to sit back and pray that my government is in power so that I can thrive, this is the issue so citizens need to wake up.
GB: So coming back to the question of Africa and how we can take our place in world economy,here is Africa that produces everything and yet dependent on everything. How can we reverse this trend?
AB: Well, I mean, yes, so many models out there to learn from but I think that the basic thing is really the shift from the fundamental problem that we have in Africa, is mindset.
That's why we behave differently when we go out and behave differently while we are on the continent because of the fundamental, and that fundamental, even though it manifests in different forms, is slavery mindset.
The reason why I say mindset is because your results in life, are driven by the actions you took. The actions you take, are driven by the decisions you make, the decisions you make, are driven by your way of thinking and your way of thinking is framed by your values and beliefs, which I call mindset.
Your cultural mindset. That's how you frame it, the lenses through which you see life. So we cannot shift and transform Africa without a shift in mindset.
But you can't shift mindset through force, I can't beat you to change your mindset. You can shift mindset through actions.
Through lived experiences so that's why I'm saying if you have a nation and you have whatever the chief in the area is responsible for the people. He can empower his people to clean the environment.
You can have cooperative farms that you all farm and you all harvest from. Let’s forget the central government for now.
What can we do ourselves as citizens within our sphere of controls we need for example education change in our educational system, both formal and informal. It's about the media being used as a weapon of information, change the information that we are giving to people because the average Ghanaian and the average African is ready to soak up.
We do we have quite happ,y particularly in Ghana we're very hungry for knowledge to give us hope, something that will give us a transformation all we have been fed with so far, has not been helpful. If it had been helpful we will be seeing different results.
It is time to change what we have been feeding ourselves with, media has a key role to play here.
Instead of busy reporting on everyday issues, all of those things are important but I think media should really take the space of the revolutioning of mindset through information, through education through entertainment so I'm talking about media in its broader sense because as Malcom X said media is very powerful, it has the ability to make a guilty man look innocent, innocent man look guilty.
That's how much power you wield, let's use the power constructive, to shift the perspective of people to let people be able to say okay, this is right. Why is it that people from external, foreigners come in and then they come and solve a problem that we have and we queue up to buy that solution. Why?
We have been made to see problems as problems, as far as I am concerned problems are disguised opportunities. In every problem is a solution waiting to be discovered.
That is a shift in perspective, so long as you start thinking that oh , there is a problem her but I can solve it , that is it, actually we have a gold mine, for every problem we have , there is an opportunity waiting to be discovered. We can solve our problems and make money out of it.
GB: So for you the beginning of everything we have to do to transform ourselves it will have to start from the mindset.
AB: It will have to because everything we do will not be lasting if we don’t change our mindset, we can actually flog people into doing things out of fear but they will only do it for a duration.
GB: So that accounts for the bit and pieces we are seeing and calling it as development
AB: Exactly
GB: That’s why we are not moving forward, we need a total transformation of our minds for which we can apply ourselves to other principles to move on
AB: Exactly. And you know that is the fundamental thing this is why Albert Einstein said that the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect the same results.
Is that simple if the results we were having were great there will be no need to shift our mindset we will just carry on.
But so long as there is evidence, this is why I don’t talk about one mindset, there are mindsets, into different aspects of lives, even successful people, part of their lives are not necessarily achieving what they want , that is the area you need as an individual to say I don’t like this results what is driving these results is my actions why I’m I making these decisions, because of the way I think, what’s driving me to think this way, then you can actually make a change there before the results.
Editor: And mindset is not just an event is a process , a way of life.
AB: It is a lifetime thing.
Editor: From where you sit, how do you perceive Africa and Ghana for that matter, if we are to progress and how do you see our leaders, do you see them taking us to the next level?
AB: No, and I will say a resounding no because this is whole thing, the mindset issue is not just the citizens mindset issue or leadership mindset.
I would say the average African leader at this point in time faces what I call the triple mindset constraint.
That's their own mindset is constraining them because they are from the citizens, the citizens mindset is constraining them and then the mindset of the West, the West continues to see itself as our colonial masters and they enforce it with the international structures that we often subscribe to.
But we can't do anything about the West. We can't do anything about the West, you can't go and force them to change their mindsets about you. It is for us to deal with our leadership mindset many for us to deal with the citizens mindset.
Now, the current crop of leaders have an entrenched interest in maintaining the status quo, because you can do anything and the citizens won't hold you to account because they don't even know their rights in the first place.
And that's why I believe it has to be a multi-pronged attack.
We need to make sure that citizens eyes are opened and that was one of my motivation, eyes opened through constant education, information, entertainment, you know instead of the various local films focusing on mothers-in-law who don’t like daughters in-law and those Nollywood films, witches who are doing this and all these kinds of of nonsense, why not use it as a weapon of education through the stories you tell?
So because people actually absolve things through their senses, what I se,e what I hear, what people tell me etc.. so entertainment is a huge channel, a huge channel, before I left the UK I knew what life in the UK was why because of what I had seen, obviously the reality is not necessarily the same but they painted a picture that made it glow, Hollywood paints its picture through the stories they tell.
We then decide to tell our stories and we are reinforcing things like ritual murders. You know we are glamourizing these things, this is why a young teenage boy will go and kill a 10 year old boy using them for ritual murder because we've normalized it through entertainment.
And the media is amplifying it. As far as I am concerned, the media has huge responsibilities. You can’t take your power lightly you have huge power and with power comes responsibility and accountability.
The media can actually really help very quickly to shift mindsets just by changing the stories we tell. Just by doing that.
GB: There have been some School of thought that what happened some few years ago with regards to the Arab Spring may hit us.
Lately we are seeing coups in West Africa and Africa and West Africa for that matter have a youthful population, the median age is about 21, who are unemployed, a chunk of the youth don’t find spaces and there is a saying that woes to the mind who has nothing to lose, is it possible that we might see something like that?
AB: It is possible, It is probable a potential, an actuality, if we carry on this path, because all the talk about oh Africa has a young population, inherent in the young population are either assets or liabilities.
At this point in time we are disenfranchising our youth, they are frustrated, they are looking on at a leadership that is really doesn’t care, so you are absolutely right, the youth can get to the point where at the end of the day if you are to choose between what I currently have and what I currently could positively have b a revolution of some sort then I could actually go for what I could positively have because I don’t like what I currently have.
That is a potential reality, and that is the whole point. We are h human beings we respond to whatever we are told, so this is how the stock market works.
The stock market will tell you oh this company is got potential it is going to do this blah blah, so we all rush and buy some shares in the company, the share price rises, the company’s valuation rises, it is a self-fulfilling prophesy.
This scenario if we carry on preaching it is a disenfranchised youth and they will one day rise, we are gonna get it. So instead of elevating this problem we should be asking ourselves how we should solve this problem before it arises in the first place.
GB: But there is some potential, you mentioned music, for instance , Nigeria music has permeated everywhere in Africa and the whole world.
AB: Absolutely it is going global, the youth are very entrepreneurial. The frustration is the fact that governance models are not necessarily creating a space to actually elevate them.
