Change we want to believe in

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CHANGE WE WANT TO BELIEVE IN Christophe Fauconnier, October 28th, 2010

A hero I was taught to fear My hero is a man I was taught to fear as a young boy. My hero is a man who believed in an idea he was willing to die for.

But more importantly, my hero was a man brave enough to live for an idea that made a difference to a lot of people.

This man inspired me to believe that change is more possible if we can believe in it. That change is more possible when we can add our own meaningful verse to it, and finally that change is more possible if we can identify with this change. This man is Nelson Mandela, the living icon of Africa and perhaps the last pure hero on the planet. I hope not.

Having been part of this change in South Africa, both as an actor and spectator, makes me believe in meaningful change. With Mandela as my teacher I’ve learned that for meaningful change to happen, we must awaken to it. The story of Nelson Mandela is not unique, although we like to think so. As a mentor to many of these change processes for companies or for brands, I’ve tried to extract some key learning that can be useful for those who are busy with the art and CHANGE WE WANT TO BELIEVE IN

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science of change. Nelson Mandela is my first inspiration. Politics, like marketing, is ultimately about change and persuasion. Nelson Mandela is not so much a great communicator, as a great persuader. In this article, I want to shed light on some of the principles and learning we can take from this great leader: Nelson Mandela, also referred to as Madiba LEARNING 1 Great leaders tap into something we all innately care for.

People by nature desire fairness, although they tend to seek fairness more for people like themselves.

People by nature want respect, although they often fail to give and receive it. People by nature want to change the world whenever the current ways of perceiving it becomes unbearable for too many and for too long. Nelson Mandela’s struggle was as much about respect, fairness and creating a more bearable country for him and others, as it was about a world wide anti apartheid movement that he embodied.

Nobody would disagree with these longings for fairness and respect, although we would greatly debate the model of fairness or respect we would apply. Mandela, like most of us, believes no one is born prejudiced or racist. No man, he suggests, is evil at heart. Evil is something instilled in or taught to people by circumstances, their environment, or their upbringing. It is cultivated. It is not innate. Apartheid made men evil; evil did not create apartheid.

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So when Mandela struggled for human respect, fairness and dignity, he was fighting for something that did not just serve his interests, he was fighting for something we all strived for and he mobilized people to care for something they already cared for.

His ability to persuade and win people over came from an appreciation for the intricate spider’s web of human motives. He understood people’s fears, frustration and aspirations. He got people to care for him, he liked to be liked, but more importantly, he got them to care for an idea of equal rights for all, regardless of race, class, or gender. He knew a transformational leader does not talk about polls or votes or tactics, but about ideas that people could care for.

LEARNING 2 Great leaders engage people with visions that they want to participate in.

If effective leadership is the ability to understand the value and opinions; the fears and frustration of your following– rather than assuming absolute authority, and the ability to shape common quest and identity into a blueprint for action, then Mandela should be classified as one of the world’s greatest leaders. By “leadership” we meant the ability to shape what followers actually want to do, not the act of enforcing compliance using rewards and punishment so often used by nation leaders and marketers alike.

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The greatness of Nelson Mandela is that he could relate to both the fears of the white minority and the frustration of the black majority in South Africa.

There were times, claimed some of his critics, that Mandela seemed to spend more time easing white fears than relieving black hardship. But he was well aware that he needed both white and black support and he is a man who would always meet you more than halve way. As a great marketer and leader, Mandela was so intent on winning over the Afrikaners that that in itself engendered a kind of loyalty to him that most brands could only dream of. He knew he had to go straight to heart of people, not only their brains.

“If you want to mobilize people, sell a vision not just a proposition.”

Mandela did this with his own supporters as well as the Afrikaner. But in the case of the Afrikaner, or in marketing terms – non-lovers – he had much to overcome. Mandela knew that prejudice was not rational and that he could not address it only in a rational way. He needed whites to accept democracy and the idea of a diverse nation not only intellectually but emotionally. Only then could he realize his agenda. What he looked for were the common grounds for identity between black and white. He understood that there were profound similarities between the African and Afrikaner. Both suffered CHANGE WE WANT TO BELIEVE IN

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from a sense of insecurity. Both had been oppressed by the British. Afrikaners has been demeaned by the British imperialists, treated as boorish second class citizens only a step up from Africans. They too felt like scorned outsiders. As a people, they had a collective chip on their shoulder, not so different from the black South Africans under apartheid. He knew he had to create for all South Africans a new meaningful frame of references to define them selves and he did this by cultivating the identity vision of “rainbow nation”.

The problem with many leaders in business today is that they are excellent in setting goals. Lets double the size of our business in the next 5 years (rings a bell), or we will become market leader in solar heating, but these goals lack to power of identification. Identity visions are embedded with a “change ideas” that becomes the existential glue of a new or existed group. The way we cultivate our identity is by believing in something or someone.

Nelson Mandela, like no other, understood this. By providing a vision for a future South Africa that people wanted to participate in, he could position himself for leadership.

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LEARNING 3 Great leaders position themselves to embody an idea and shape how they want people to perceive them.

In a similar fashion as Muhammad Ali, Nelson Mandela’s greatness comes not by the man he was or is (and to me he was a great man), not by the warrior he was or is, but by the idea. Nelson Mandela pondered for twenty-seven years on how to be a leader, how to be the brand that could serve the agenda and the idea of a new South Africa. He understood, learning from Mahatma Gandhi, that some part of leadership is symbolic and that he is a splendid symbol. Job number one for him, when he became president of South Africa, was to be the father of the nation, the patriarch who united white and black around a common vision.

All his life Mandela cultivated images of himself and he is well aware that images have tremendous power to shape how we are perceived. No detail was too superficial to merit his attention. He let people position him as the happy warrior, not vengeful one.

He understood, like no other, the power of symbols and they often mattered more than substance. After all, he became the leader of his nation because he united symbol and substance. He was a genius at what sociologist call “impression management”. His most powerful asset to re- position himself from ‘outlaw warrior’ to ‘father and liberator of the nation’ was his smile. Mandela’s smile is among the most CHANGE WE WANT TO BELIEVE IN

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radiant in history. It conveys warmth and wisdom, power generosity, understanding and forgiveness. A perfect asset for positioning. In the election campaign in 1994, his smile was the campaign. That smiling iconic poster was everywhere- on billboards, on highways, on streetlamps, at tea shops and fruit stalls. It told black voters that he would be their champion and white voters that he would be their protector. It was political Prozac for the nervous electorate. He wanted to position himself to be the father of his country, to unite a heterogeneous battlescared land into one nation. All his actions and his smile had to embody one idea: that he had buried the past; that he was the father of the rainbow nation; that he was looking forward, not backward. He understood that expressing his anger would diminish her power, while hiding it increased it.

LEARNING 4 Great leaders turn identity visions into reality and enable people to experience this identity.

Having a great idea is important, and coming up with a plan to implement it is the start to creating change.

When the threats to harmony were greatest, 1994 and 1995, Mandela used a courageous tactic: he turned to sports as one way of healing the nation. He studied carefully what symbols could unite the South African nation and rugby, like football this today, became a key means by which he turned his vision into reality. I suggest watching the movie ‘Invictus’ CHANGE WE WANT TO BELIEVE IN

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directed by Clint Eastwood to better understand how he did this.

Rightly, he thought rugby could be the great uniter, and not a divider. In marketing terms, he identified a platform upon which he could express his vision of a united country.

In his most famous gesture of reconciliation, Mandela wore the Springbok jersey and cap to the rugby finals at Johannesburg’s Ellis Park Stadium in 1995. A day all South Africans will remember. When he strode out before the game to greet the team captain, the mostly white crowd began to chant, “Nel-son, Nelson!”. It was one of the most electrifying moments in the history of sports and politics. Tokyo Sexwale, who had been imprisoned with Mandela on Robben Island, told Carlin, “that was the moment when I understood more clearly than ever before the liberation struggle was not so much about liberating blacks from bondage, it was about liberating white people from fear.

LEARNING 5 Great leaders know that all truly important battles are first waged within.

Like most other meaning seeking journeys, his journey was about growth that is meaningful to him in the first place, but in a way in which all of us could relate with his striving and struggle. His CHANGE WE WANT TO BELIEVE IN

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circumstances were his to face, but his struggle rang true to all of us.

It is said that all of the truly important battles are waged within the self and in the case of Nelson Mandela this was no different. His journey started with outward goal, as is often the case in business, but his journey became successful as he awakened to himself transcending his own doubts getting beyond the prison bars of his own mind. He had the willingness and the courage to journey into uncertain terrains and to change himself. Like all purposeful pursuits, his journey was fueled with the energy of unrest with the way things were. His journey was characterized by a desire for change and fueled by a longing to create a more fair society. But his journey was also one of growing in awareness of himself and how he could use his ‘identity’ to serve a broader purpose.

“There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.”

We must deal with the prison bars inside our heads as much as dealing with circumstances and predicaments around us. Before Nelson Mandela could change South Africa into a Rainbow nation, he first had to change himself. When he came out of twenty-seven years of imprisonment he stated that there is nothing like returning to a place that remains CHANGE WE WANT TO BELIEVE IN

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unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered. Prison matured him, but we need not all go to prison to do so. It was his journey of personal growth that allowed all South Africans to change a nation.

In the long run, we get no more than we are willing to risk giving and he gave everything.

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