Lessons for Leadership: What Tanzania Can Learn From the Manchester United’s disappointing season

In the interest of fairness, I have to disclose from the outset that I am a gunner. So perhaps I am unqualified to make an objective assessment of the Manchester United’s recent dismal form.

Moreover, I am acutely aware that it may be tempting for the United’s fans to compare Arsenal’s absolute thrashing on Saturday at Anfield to the United’s successive poor results. The comparison is particularly appealing to the United’s fans given that United had, earlier on in the season, put a commendable performance against Arsenal. However, since then, United have struggled and failed to get any momentum going while Arsenal have spent more time on top of the table than under it. More worryingly, United’s Champions League hopes for next season are all but over after last weekend’s poor performance as they laboured to draw with Fulham, bottom of the league side. Troublingly, the draw was despite fielding Wayne Rooney, Robin van Persie and Juan Mata all on the same pitch. As a consequence, the most successful and powerful club in the Premier League is now languishing in the mid-table position and the prospect of finishing below Arsenal, Chelsea, Everton, Liverpool, Manchester City and Tottenham, while almost heretical a year ago and unthinkable as recently as Christmas, looms large.

However, before I beside myself or worse crucified by United’s fans, I must admit I am not a football pundit. So do not take my ‘commentary’ to heart. Nevertheless, strange as it may seem, there is one aspect that perhaps we can all agree on regardless of our club allegiances: Leadership matters. It matters who is at the helm, be it a football club or a nation.

I believe there are three essentials to successful leadership.

Firstly, a clear vision is necessary in order to successfully lead. That is, the foresight to see where you are taking the people, what is up the road ahead, and being able to skillfully navigate the various challenges along the way. Even more vital, vision is about articulating effectively the desired destination at the beginning, such that the people who you hope to lead (or are leading) can vividly see the future at the beginning.

In the business world, this projection of the future state of an organization is commonly expressed in what is known as ‘the vision statement’. Whereas in party politics, is generally known as manifesto. A manifesto contains party’s policies that spell out the intentions, plans and conventional views of a political party as regards various essential issues. As such, in established organizations and political parties, the vision hardly ever changes significantly or regularly regardless who is at the top.

The second and rather the obvious essential to successful leadership, is the availability of sufficient resources to implement the vision. It goes without saying that, however impressive the vision, inadequate resources will hinder its effective execution.

The third and most likely the key to successful leadership are values. Values underpin vision by acting as an anchor and a reference point for every decision that one makes towards the fulfilment of a vision. Crucially, values are ‘personal’ and deep rooted and often the product of tradition, attitudes and actions of leaders, imitated and passed on until they are second nature to the masses. Values protect both the vision and the resources and act as a hindrance to making decisions that will self-sabotage the vision and abuse the resources. Therefore, values are more important than both the vision and the resources.

Unfortunately for us however, this is an aspect of leadership that presents us with most difficulties. As a nation, there is almost a generic consensus regardless of our ethnic, religious or political affiliation that, given our vast wealth of resources, we are not where we need to be. So the vision for the country is not the major challenge. Likewise, I am certainly not the one to believe that Tanzania is short of resources nor that it is ‘poor’, relatively speaking. It is just poorly led. On the other hand, it is awfully obvious that we are suffering from ‘values deficit’. This scarcity of values is, to a large extent, a direct result and reflection of the attitudes and actions of leadership both at the elite and grassroots levels of the society

Now as a people, we have the propensity to gravitate towards ‘charismatic’ leaders. Leaders with excellent oratorical skills and magnificent plans for the future. While this tendency in and of itself is not necessarily detrimental, what we really should be doing is scrutinizing their values and hold them up against our own values and see if they measure up. This is especially important as we are heading for the 2015 general election. We ought to be voting in coherence with our value system.

I believe the main reason that we still look up to late Mwalimu Nyeyere as one of Tanzania’s greatest son is because of his values. Granted that he had exceptional oratorical skills and ambitious vision for Tanzania, but it was his values that distinguished him.

Many, both internal and external disagreed with his vision for the country. If truth be told, one of the reasons that he voluntarily left power was to make room for the country to head in a fundamentally different direction to the one he had envisaged and believed. Nonetheless, both foes and friends alike would unanimously agree that, Mwalimu Nyerere was a selfless man with high degree of integrity and dignity who consistently held himself to a higher standard both privately and publicly. And for those who are jockeying for Nyerere’s legacy, they too, should hold themselves to similar standards.

Further, I am quite aware there are a lot of good football men and women out there who feel that they have no business with leadership and how the nation is run. You probably do not even intend to vote in the 2015 general election or in any election for that matter. Maybe you see politics as business of evil men, hence the saying goes ‘politics is a dirty game’. I hear you, I understand your frustration, I feel the same too, more often than not. However, the truth is, we are already voting nonetheless, everyday whether deliberately or otherwise. When we stay silent in the face of a tax official coercing a customer for ‘kitu kidogo’ before providing a service, we are voting for corruption. When we are awarding tenders without proper pre-qualification and competence of prospective bidders, we are voting for nepotism and incompetence. When we show up for work late and leave before time, we are voting for sloppiness. When we turn a blind eye to a foreigner being mistreated, we are voting for bigotry. When it is relatively easy to raise millions for a wedding but a struggle to raise funds for one’s education, we are voting for short-termism at the expense of long-term success.When we become immune to inequality, poverty and injustice, we are voting for apathy.

Therefore, nothing good happens in the vacuum of values and all of these social ills are indicative of not only the abuse of power and positions of authority but they are also emblematic of a nation that has lost its core values. As a result, ‘dog-eat-dog’ mentality permeates the society and the vulnerable and those without god-fathers and people in the high places are left to fend for themselves.

Hence, active engagement is not an option. We owe it to ourselves and to the next generation to ‘vote’ differently than we currently are. We know too well that even if we deliberately decide to do nothing to change the status quo, we will still complain and expect those in the positions of power to construct roads, provide electricity, build hospitals and equip schools. And that will be a real failure. Ultimately, the real failure is trying something and learning it does not work and continue to do it nevertheless.

In closing, and to continue with the footballing analogue, Manchester United’s vision has not changed. Their resources have not diminished either. If anything, with the addition of Juan Mata, their resources have increased. However, a different man with distinct personal values and ways of achieving the same vision is now in charge. The values are going to take some getting used to. Let us be gracious and patient with the new man.

If leadership matters, values matter even more.

I remain an irrational optimist,

Albert Mkony