By WALE AKINYEMI

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Wars have shaped geographical boundaries and defined civilisations over the ages, determining the growth of nations.

By conquest, kings have ruled and others have been removed. Great names like Alexander the Great and Napoleon Bonaparte have been studied over the centuries because of their great understanding of war.

The bottom line is wars are fought by soldiers but won by thinkers.

With the rise of capitalism, an interesting dynamic emerged. Competition became the order of the day and, just like at war, only the best survive. Capitalism means that the fact that something is owned by someone else does not mean that you cannot have it. War found its way into business.

External wars of dealing with the competition and outsmarting them is now the order of the day. Businesses are constantly competing for customers and fighting for the hearts and minds of the people.

There are also internal wars: Plotting how to remove one person and replace them with another, planning how to mobilise people to support your idea against the next person’s, handling betrayal, backstabbing and smear campaigns by colleagues.

STRATEGY

One of my mentors, who was a general in the army, once told me that for business to succeed the businessperson must think like a soldier. “In the business world if your strategy does not work, you will go back to the drawing board. In war if it does not work you go into a body bag as a corpse,” he said.

The ability of a businessperson to think like a warrior is non-negotiable if they want to win. You don’t have to go looking for war to get involved in it. As long as you are a visionary who can make things happen, war will be waged against you. It will come psychologically, emotionally and sometimes even physically. There are people for whom your loss is their profit.

As a former scout I live by the motto “be prepared.”

In the book The Trouble With Nigeria, the late Chinua Achebe wrote about how the administration of Yakubu Gowon was overthrown in 1975. Once people got to know that the new head of state was going to be Murtala Mohammed, everything changed.

Civil servants got to their offices as early as 7:30 am. This was due to the reputation of Murtala Mohammed as a no nonsense leader. Six months later when Mohammed was assassinated, things went back to normal. The indiscipline resumed.

When President Muhammadu Buhari was elected in 2015, there were reports of people who stole money from the government returning the money even before he was sworn in as president. There were stories of people who served in the former administration of President Goodluck Jonathan relocating abroad before the inauguration of the new president.

Why? Because President Buhari at the time had a reputation for being a strict, no-nonsense leader who did not condone corruption.

LEADERSHIP

Leadership is the ability to influence the thinking and behaviour of others. Regardless of your title, you are not more than an office holder if you are not able to influence behaviour.

Don’t confuse intellect with influence. They do not always go together. The fact that a person is intelligent does not mean that they can influence the team. It may work against them because their intelligence could intimidate the team. People with lower intelligence may get together to fight the one with a higher level of intellect.

When high intellect is tempered with emotional intelligence then the chances of sharing the direction of the team is heightened. If the most influential person is the one with the lowest level of intelligence, this is dangerous for the team. A herd of sheep led by a lion is more to be respected than a pride of lions led by a sheep.

Why do we draw this conclusion? It is unnatural for lions to subject themselves to the leadership of potential prey. Conversely when a lone sheep dominates a pride of lions either by manipulation or other means, that sheep is to be respected.

A leader without followers is simply taking a walk and if people follow because there are consequences for not following, the day you are no longer in office is when you will realise you were not truly a leader. It’s one thing for people to respect your office but a totally different ball game for them to respect your person.

Wale Akinyemi is the chief transformation officer at Power Talks