"The thing about winning and losing is that
they are both self-reinforcing."
The
Gunners as a metaphor
As an Arsenal football club fan, how do
I convince anybody that the team is good or that coach Arsene Wenger is doing a
good job, given the long spate of trophy draught and inexplicable losses
in the current season both in the English Premier league and the Champions
league?
The
mentality of winning and losing – the Tyson effect
Winning reinforces your self-confidence and
instils an inherent mythical fear in your opponents. The whole team is
energised and ready for the next win. Losing on the other hand, engenders a
loss of confidence and a significant level of demystification, inviting all
manner of opponents to fancy their chances at you, as happened when the erstwhile
undefeated heavyweight boxing champion, Mike Tyson lost to a lowly challenger, Buster
Douglas in 1990 in Tokyo, Japan. This was followed by a string of losses
leading to a less glorious retirement, highlighted by his biting off the ear of
an opponent, Evander Holyfield, during a boxing match. Thus, was dimmed a
golden opportunity of going down in history as one of the greatest heavyweights
of all time.
Reversing
the pattern – Leicester City FC finds her magic
Taking the steps required to reverse
your losing spree and shifting into a winning mentality restores your lost
glory, seemingly obliterating the past string of losses e.g. Leicester City
Football Club; after parting ways with coach Claudio Ranieri (ironically the
same coach that propelled them to the dizzying heights of winning the English
Premier League title last year) have suddenly become unstoppable again; beating
the better rated Spanish side, Sevilla FC for a place in the Quarter Finals of
the UEFA Champions League. Even as first timers, they are the only English team
still flying the British flag where great teams such as Manchester City and
Arsenal have crashed out.
Winning
is ‘In spite of’; Losing is ‘because of’ - the Usain Bolt
determination
A loser’s mentality is strongly
underpinned by a culture of excuses; finding ‘very good’ reasons why you didn’t
make it or why you lost; as if this will magically convert the loss into a win.
An earful of balderdash at best.
A winner’s mentality on the other hand, is centred
on ‘making
it’ in spite of all odds. A very good example being Usain Bolt, who not
only holds the world record for the fastest human dead or alive, but also winning
three gold medals in the 100m, 200m and 4X100m races in three consecutive Olympics;
Beijing (2008), London (2012) and Rio (2016) – Now, that is a winner with a
strong winning mentality.
Believe me, it was no walk in the park. He
knew what he had to do when overconfidence brought an embarrassing loss to his
training partner and competitor Johan Blake. Blake beat Bolt to second place in
both the 100m and 200m at the 2012 Olympic trials in Jamaica, and this was just
about a month to the London Olympics. Just imagine the pressure that Bolt would
have felt. In the beginning he resorted to excuses; he blamed the 100m loss on
a poor start, and the 200m on a poor bend. Realising that a golden dream was
evaporating before his eyes, he quickly faced reality in his following
statement, capturing his renewed attitude “it’s
all about work and just needing to get my things together and get it right.
I’ve got to get in the work and figure out what I did wrong”. And with that
he got himself in shape in time to win both events at the London Olympics. He
did work very hard and deserved the results and his place in history (watch the
documentary on him titled ‘I am Bolt’).
The
Nigerian Super Eagles – Our ‘Invincible’ of old
I remember with nostalgia when all the
immigration officers in the countries that I visited in the 1990’s became very
friendly upon sighting my Nigerian Passport, reeling the names of our Super
Eagle players and asking me if I knew them; Jay-Jay,
Kanu, Amuneke, Keshi, Okechukwu, Taribo, Oliseh, Rufia, Amokachie, Yekini,
Siasia, Ikpeba and the host of others .
These were the glory days of Nigerian
soccer, where other teams’ reverence of our players conferred on us very deep
respect as a country. Not so these days; we have managed to get ourselves stuck
in a losers’ mentality to the extent that ‘the giant of Africa’ did not even qualify
for the last edition of the African Nations Cup in Gabon this year. We managed
to win the bronze medal at the Rio Olympics, but who remembers, after the
unbelievable story of our players being stranded in America and arriving hours
before their opening match; what manner of organisation? The headlines in the
global media were enough to make every Nigerian bow their heads in shame. The
Mirror succinctly captured it thus “Nigerian Olympic football team stranded in
Atlanta hours before first game after unpaid flight bill”. You did not
need to read the body of the copy to see how shoddy our organisation could be.
How can we aspire to Gold with this attitude?
We
need the right attitude to aspire to greatness – the China and Dubai examples
Countries like the UAE did not attain
their heights by sudden flight, but rather toiled over the midnight candle
while other less ambitious ones floundered, more so the ones with more human
and natural resources and much more potential. They have keyed into a certain winners’
mentality that sees them breaking record after record.
For instance, The Burj Khalifa in Dubai
is the tallest building in the whole world. A trip to Dubai will convince you
beyond doubt about how seriously they take themselves, and how seriously everybody
takes them. China is another story. For over three decades, China has had the
world’s fastest growing major economy. The country is in the midst of urbanisation
on an unparalleled scale.
With more than 1.3billion citizens,
China is the world’s most populous country. Until the late 20th
century, most of her citizens lived in rural areas. Within a 50-year span, the
percentage of city-dwellers rose from 13 to 50%. On a recent visit with my
wife, we could only marvel at the scenic beauty of the west Lake area of
Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province. Our Chinese tour guide, Mr. Forrest
informed us that the plan of the Government was to lift a third of the
population into the millionaires club within the next 10 years.
Without
power we have not even started – the Muritala Mohammed Airport blues
Africa is called the ‘Dark Continent’ for
a reason; it is literally pitch dark when you fly overhead at night, due to the
dearth of electric power. The sound track of Lagos, and indeed many Nigerian
cities is the din of generators coughing up smoke into the already polluted
environment, making the ban on public smoking of tobacco quite superfluous.
From reliable reports, our International Gateway, Muritala Muhammed Airport (MMA)
has had to rely on candle lights more than once, due to power outage (and
unbelievably, failure of the generator secondary source).
To tell it the way it is, MMA being the
first and last impression of a visitor to Nigeria is either a
misrepresentation, or a sad commentary on us as Nigerians. The non-functioning escalators
over many years, projects us as a set of very unserious people. How complex is
the technology and what will it take to fix it?
The drive from the airport to the Third Mainland
Bridge that takes you into the commercial business districts of Victoria and
Lagos Islands could qualify as one of
the most uninspiring airport rides in the world – again, can this not be fixed;
Really? A famous Irish proverb that says ‘nodding the head does not row the boat’
seems to sum this up.
Are
we passionate about our country – should we be?
Is it true that passion is something you
value more than your life? Something you are willing to die for? If so, are we
passionate about Nigeria? Should we be? Are other nationals passionate about
their countries? Growing up in Ghana, my motherland, I really felt very
passionate about her, as I believe were the sentiments shared by my other
classmates. The Chinese, Japanese, Europeans, Americans and all the places we
love to flock to are very passionate about their countries and will gladly use
their talents to help her win; be it at the Olympics or the World Cup. Many a
times our Athletes and Players have made money a precondition; and who can
blame them? The experience seems to suggest that the officials bail with the
money immediately after the games. The objective all round, seems to be the
money rather than the glory for country.
Epilogue
– where we should be headed
As a country, we have the complete
ingredients for success; human, mineral and material resources in abundance.
What we need are people that can dream and turn the dream into an executable
plan. Then execute and live the dream. Dubai has proved this theory, we just
need to follow the path to success. We have to strongly shun the temptation to
try to ‘win by shortcuts’. Imagine that Nigerians lost a whooping N18b
to the MMM Ponzi scheme, despite many warnings by the Central Bank. This is not
the first time and unlikely to be the last time we embark on a get-rich-quick
misadventure. We flock to all manner of religious centres and shrines looking
for money doubling miracles instead of putting in brainpower and manpower
towards our endeavours.
As
Mary Robinson said, nobody can go back to create a new beginning but anybody
can start today to create a new ending. This is what we must do as a country. Everybody
needs to put in the disciplined hard work and dig into our inner recesses to
find our own winning ways! We need to start in earnest to develop and sustain the
serious mentality of winning. We need to genuinely create an enabling
environment underpinned by peace and security that nurtures prosperity
for all, rather than all for a cabal.
This
is our chance – the tide in the affairs of Nations
“There
is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to
fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in
miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat, And we must take the current
when it serves, Or lose our ventures”. This is the
admonition of Brutus to Cassius in William Shakespeare’s epic, Julius
Caesar. Nigeria today is presented with such an opportunity. The
current economic challenges after decades of squander and squalor have
presented us with the golden opportunity of a reality check devoid of the
distractions of easy oil money. This difficult period is too painful to waste.
We must seize the opportunity for a reawakening, and realign towards doing the
right thing and cultivating a winning mentality. If not now, then when? If not
you, then who?
*Austin Okere is the Founder of CWG Plc & Entrepreneur in Residence
at CBS, New York. Austin also serves on the World Economic Forum Global Agenda
Council on Innovation and Intrapreneurship and on the Advisory Board of the
Global Business School Network (GBSN).
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