I was watching the famous lecture “How to speak” by the late MIT Professor, Patrick Winston, in whose introduction he said,” Your success in life will be determined largely by your ability to speak, your ability to write, and the quality of your ideas, in that order”. I found this statement to be extremely profound. I believe it accurately represents the work we do at Impact Africa Network, which is to Unleash Human Potential and develop successful innovation leaders.
I work as a designer. My job is to ensure that both products and the digital assets we release are visually appealing and extremely attractive. And even in that role, I, too, am challenged to lean into my learning journey and tap into my potential. Sometimes it’s hard to explain exactly how this works to my friends; how a designer can become an innovation leader. Or exactly how Impact Africa Network is facilitating this transformation.
Let’s use each of Winston’s keys to success to explain IAN’s game changing strategy;
The ability to speak
As Patrick Winston puts it, the quality of communication, your speaking is largely determined by this formula:
Q = (K, P, T) where
K is the Knowledge: how much you Know,
P: how much you Practice and
T: your inherent Talent.
K stands out more than the rest of the variables, because what matters first and foremost is how much you know.
Impact Africa Network presents a dynamic work environment that constantly equips us with knowledge concerning both macro and microtrends in the startup world. We are directly involved in the ideation and startup creation process. We gain first hand experience on everything from how to effectively test and validate a business idea to actually launching a startup.
Though we would wish it were, there is no such thing as an overnight success. All this knowledge we keep acquiring and executing on while building these amazing startups is heavily scrutinized at the end of each quarter, during our All Hands meetings. Here, everyone gets to present to the entire organization exactly what they’ve been able to accomplish, where they failed, lessons they’ve learned and what their plans are for the coming quarter. This is where variable P for Practice comes in. You have the knowledge, you’ve executed on what you know, now you get to practice by telling your peers about it.
The ability to write
The organization has a professionally curated Learning and Development Program that encourages us to both write and share our ideas. This stems from the belief that the more you write about a concept, the more thoroughly you understand it. To keep us on our toes, our performance in the L&D program is meticulously tracked and rewarded. This has helped me stay consistent in my learning journey.
The quality of your ideas
We work on great ideas that are becoming great African companies and part of our 10 10 10 vision. We believe that to tackle more demanding domains we have to become the type of people and organization capable of doing so successfully.
Through our Learning and Development program, our mindset shifts with each milestone achieved, book read, podcast listened to, and fireside chat attended. Each piece of useful knowledge moves us forward at a compounding rate.
Besides developing Innovation Leaders, we also Build Community and Launch Startups, and this is how we grow in the direction of our 10 10 10 vision which will produce One Thousand Lee Kuan Yews.
