VISIONARIES

As one who held leadership positions, I am keenly aware of the challenges and risks.

Getting your people to accept new ideas and change old behaviours and attitudes, may well be the greatest challenge of all. Being misunderstood might be the greatest risk.

Your people may think that you are weird. Your concepts and ideas are often misunderstood.

Didn’t people initially think that Thomas Alva Edison had a few loose screws? The lights were on (pun intended) but nobody’s home. What about Bill Gates? Was not the situation the same? Ask Steve Job, another brilliant man himself.

At times visionaries may even appear arrogant.

Winston Churchill loathed Mahatma Ghandi (“It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious middle temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the east, striding half-naked up the steps of the viceregal palace, while he is still organizing and conducting a defiant campaign of civil disobedience, to parley on equal terms with the representative of the king-emperor.” 1930). He thought the Mahatma arrogant among other things.

The Light Side
If visionaries are misunderstood and thought to be arrogant, history may reveal that our Mr. Patrick Manning is a visionary extraordinaire.

A CHEWED up Shilling
Recently my last daughter, bless her heart, was trying to console me about out of step about something.

“Come on,” she said, “you don’t have to feel like a chewed shilling in a one cent party.”

Trying to under the expression, a rather philosophical discussion ensued. I tried to explain to her why I could not agree with it.

Our minds just could not meet on this matter and having failed to convince her on my point of view, she gave up on me in exasperation. “Do you go to primary school?” she finally said. “Then you will never understand the saying,” she quipped in response to my negative reply.

Anyway, being out of step has never been a problem for me. The fact is that even up to today I still revel in it.

The Bright Side
As to the expression, I still feel that a chewed up shilling (25 cent piece) is worth more (proverbially and otherwise) than a mint quality one cent any day. Just take it back to the Central Bank for exchange.