The old saying: “Fools go where angels fear to tread,” needs a revamp – because the real danger isn’t stepping forward -it’s standing still.
The fools are the ones who wait for perfect information, perfect timing, perfect certainty…a divine equivalent of a ‘bat signal’ to know all will be well before taking a risk.
Those who seize ‘The Chaos Advantage” know that the stars seldom align and choose to think and act differently to their competitors – it’s what I teach leaders in my keynotes and training sessions.
Let me demonstrate.
What do the CEO of one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential companies on earth, the creator of a world-leading cooler box and a Mozambiquan retailer have in common?
On the surface not much.
After all, building a cooler from 58 components that keeps ice frozen for more than two days may seem like overkill, building the second of what you anticipate will be a multi-country digital bank six time zones away from your home base, and choosing to open your first supermarket in the least accessible part of one of the poorest countries on earth appear to have little in common.
For Lebanon born Hussein Chalha – opening a Spar supermarket in Mozambique’s far northern Tete province made complete sense – most ‘normal’ people would not have dared. However he realised that if he could succeed there, he could succeed anywhere. A few years after his first store, he is poised to open his 17th in that country. For Lee Hartman, creating his high-end Fieldbar cooler out of 58 individual components not only served his goal of ensuring his drinks didn’t warm up enroute to his destination – but also made the design too difficult for most in the mimicry industry to replicate. As for Tyme Group, building a bank from scratch in The Philippines, 5000 miles from its first market made the group structure difficult to replicate and gave them a growth opportunity few others have.
The world rewards audacity. That is ‘the chaos advantage’. Consider Cheslyn Kolbe chasing down a potential tournament changing conversion attempt by former Toulouse teammate Thomas Ramos in the 2024 Rugby World Cup. Look at the sheer audacity of Steve Jobs reinventing personal computing, Elon Musk disrupting established industries, Jeff Bezos doubling down on online during the global financial crisis while laying the groundwork for global cloud computing, and even Phil Knight the creator of Nike and many other household names.
None was guaranteed success when they started. In fact, each endured various levels of failure at different times – they all have one thing in common – the chaos advantage – they see world as it is and had the temerity to think how they might change it for the better.
If you think The Chaos Advantage is a concept worth spreading, nominate me as a ‘Global Guru’. Visit https://globalgurus.org/vote/leadership/ enter your name and email, and then select ‘Other Guru’ and fill in my name and your rating of me.
