Archibald Marwizi Quotes

There is need to focus on selling an emotional experience instead of a mere product or service - the impression you make on others must be lasting and permanent. These experiences have to be positive and worth remembering. This will increase the chances of repeat business and referrals, guaranteeing customer loyalty. And that is what sustains businesses, brands and careers for generations! The principle remains the same for comedians, actors, footballers, musicians, sales executives or any other area of specialty.

Shift from mediocrity to excellence. Mediocrity and Excellence are like jealous suitors fighting for a partner and competing to please him/her, to the extent they do all they can to reproduce in sets of twins. Mediocrity gives birth to Irrelevance and Obscurity, whilst Excellence breeds Relevance and Significance. These sets of twins cannot inhabit the same life, only one compatible pair can co-exist.

Your life as an effective person must always have productivity surrounding all your efforts, there must be a sustained forward and upward trajectory in every area of your life. This is where the Shona Shereketa meets the Japanese Kaizen - you are moving and shaking past mediocrity on the basis of small but continuous improvements that will ultimately result in positive quality changes to your life.

If you want to excel in any endeavour you must pay attention to detail, know exactly what you want, have the detail on how you want it done and how you will get it done. You must realize the importance of definitions and love defining things in your life and about your life – Define your mission, define your problem, define your future, define your path and the finer details of your vision. Use your sense of imagination and creativity.

Beginning to work your plan means movement and action. The success of your movements and actions can only be guaranteed if they are well calculated.

Research has shown the challenge caused by Climate change is mainly man-made due to abdication of leadership and personal responsibility in taking care of the environment. Will you be part of the army replenishing the earth and promoting proper stewardship of its resources?

Don’t do things or act out your posture and gestures to impress people, just be yourself and portray the confident ‘you’ with that high self-esteem. So relax because you are ‘you’. Be sincere, be authentic. That will be impressive enough.

Even if you are counted amongst the best, you will slip into mediocrity by remaining comfortable being the worst of the best. You might be relevant, but because your level of effectiveness is in the bottom tier and your impact minimal – you will soon become obscure as your relevance begins to wear off.

If in this generation, you still consider yourself the only one who knows or who has the capacity to make a difference, it’s a shame because you are delaying this leadership excellence train from reaching its destination. Make a decision to change your leadership philosophy and agenda today!

If you are not sure or you don’t know something, politely ask. Asking is not a sign of being daft, but of confidence.

There must be a clear distinction between wishing and believing. A wish is a hazy thread of desires that leaves room for the winds of doubt to toss it about, meaning it might happen by chance or not. A belief has no equivocation; it is clear, stubborn and deliberate in taking hold of what remains yet unseen by the physical eye. If there is no visible way, a belief will draft the way, create the way, walk the path and reach the desired destination.

Work is simply, “force x distance” or the product of a force applied to an object and the displacement of the object in the direction of the applied force…holding an object in the air does not involve any work, no matter how painful your hand will be after a few minutes… reflect on your daily activities and the results from them. Are you really working or just increasing your potential without progress or desired results? Your work must produce some movement, progress and change, by effectively using all your energies whether intellectual or physical.

Terrorist groups will not, in most instances, openly recruit from universities or the well developed areas that politicians and business leaders are always focusing on. They will not flight newspaper or TV adverts, but will use belief systems riding on the back of disadvantages, poverty and problems that have remained unaddressed in particular communities, tribal and religious ideologies. They will recruit the most vulnerable to harm and attack the most vulnerable, in order to spite leaders and authorities.

What are the obvious temptations and inclinations that consistently call me or entice me to go against my personal beliefs, values and standards? You don’t need a prophet for this!

Empower your children - Allow self-discovery and self-awareness (their own key to success), Facilitate an environment for learning through experience (practice of knowledge acquired). Remember, this exploration will take place whether you approve or not – it’s inevitable, that’s why YOU MUST be in charge of providing awareness and exposure to improve the quality of decisions made during exploration and experimentation.

Your leadership principles give that unique character to your leadership brand. When all your responses, decisions, choices and leadership practices are filtered through your well defined principles, you have automatically connected yourself to making the success of your leadership excellence brand more deliberate.

Realise your Stewardship role as a parent – you raise children to offer a quality gift to society. Even your spouse should not be treated as an object or possession you own; support them to be the best of what they were created to be. Do your part and trust God for the rest. If you have empowered them, trust them to be responsible.

The role of political leadership in any society will remain critical to the socio-economic progression of the world. It is however worrying to see the growing number of people, including the youth, getting into politics for economic gain and not for a cause. This, inter alia, is the contaminated seed and eventual root of chronic corruption because such leadership will always be selfishly seeking gain and enrichment from their roles and offices.

Some people are known, they have the platform and presence, but still remain irrelevant. They know you and what you do, but they don’t need you or your offering. I see too many people with a platform but without substance, again this is not sustainable. Lack of substance can only relegate your talent or skill towards the league of the mediocre, if at all you become much by superficial branding then you will become the best of the worst. You don't have what it takes but you depend on your ability to sell substandard offerings to the market. It will not last for long, but quickly become irrelevant.

You must not end your life because you failed an examination. Failing an examination or making a mistake does not make you a failure at life. The context of life is broader than that.

Just like watering the field will cause both the desired seed and the undesirable weed to germinate, the opportunities for your mission in life will be equally presented with real-life threats.

Who are you’ is a question of both substance and position. In other words, what is the authority of your voice, service, product or performance in relation to the needs of those you intend to serve? Secondly, have you defined and demystified yourself enough to be accepted as the solution of choice?

Just imagine the strides Africa would have made if all the resources being channeled towards conflict resolution were going into construction of power generation plants and irrigation capacity. Can’t we promote our own peace? What are we doing to seriously focus on other eco-friendly energy sources like wind and solar?

Some people choose to lead, others to follow. Success is not primarily a matter of circumstances or native talent or even intelligence — it is a choice. Your beliefs, passion, values, enthusiasm, relationships, interpersonal skills and how they are blended, will move you further ahead towards success.

Understand that every ‘voice’ has the spirit to influence. Watch your tone, accent, volume and speed. Be careful that you don’t sound angry or argumentative whenever driving an important point. Equally important, is not sounding serious or sounding playful when the message being conveyed needs to be taken seriously.

Most of the things to guarantee your death have already been done so you can spend the rest of your time focusing on the things that can guarantee your success and happiness.

Having a succession and legacy plan in place will make you ready for forced changes due to circumstances beyond your control, like death, any form of incapacity, sudden changes in laws and regulations and even corporate scandals and moral failure.

Your success must never be left to others. You must be able to visualize it and see it through your own eyes, whilst others assist you to see it better and make it clearer.

You choose the leaders and place them strategically around the table of your vision and mission. They are already around you because of some degree of loyalty, so if you continue putting 80% effort in enhancing loyalty that already exists, you will end up going into overkill and igniting a toxic level of internal office politics that was not originally existent in your organisation.

Internalising success means that even if a misfortune takes away all the evidence or traces of success, yet what made you successful, remains. Soon enough, the evidence will return.

Just because you cannot see it now, does not mean it is not there or not possible. See yourself succeeding and own that vision through all your planning and hard work.

You need to change the questions you ask yourself and of your situations, in order to change the trajectory of your life. These are questions that will help you define and refine your purpose.

Attitude is the mind-set, the kind of thoughts you process and meditate on, to generate the kind of feelings you have towards life, people and issues. This is what makes you do what you do in the way you do it.

It must start by knowing Time = Life. Spending your life on impulse will lead to a broke life, just like impulse buying leads to an empty wallet! How much value you place on your time reflects in the activities that consume your time.

If you check your personal blind spots, you can be able to guard against focusing on what you cannot do, but reduce the areas of weakness by taking their space with more of your strengths.

Be deliberate about what you choose to read, watch or listen to – these are source codes to your internal programming.

You make the plans - otherwise you will die thinking it is not possible to plan to have time for work, for exercise, for sleep, for relaxation, for recreation, for eating, for entertainment, for love, for family, for spirituality, for friends, for personal reflection, for personal development, for business, for charity all in one life!

Don’t be intimidated and at the same time don’t intimidate.

Release children as part of your delegated leadership influence - this will enable you to leave a legacy worth noting. Realise the risk in delegation and bestowing this trust - if you sacrifice a rib, you expose your heart to possible pain, hurt or pride, fulfilment and joy. When these come – it’s not the end of the world, be brave enough to face the challenge with a positive attitude.

Positioning yourself and effective branding should not be left to sports and movie stars. Your need a personal coach, manager or mentor otherwise your expertise, skills or talent will not go far. You might have what it takes but sometimes you lack strategy and some finer elements.

Two key leadership excellence values worth focusing on separately are being principle-centred and being consistent. The complimentary construction of these leadership fibres can easily be misconstrued for unreasonable stubbornness, yet they form the backbone of strong, effective transformational leadership. In building the legacy advocated for, in leadership excellence brands, you must sharpen the practice of these leadership values in every area of your life.

Consider your will to be the vision of your influence on earth after you cease to be a part of it. Crafting a lasting legacy means you start planning and making it possible now.

Your personal brand must exude who you are, what you stand for, specifies your target market, what value you intend to add to them and the unique offering through which you will do that.

To achieve your desired success you have to be effectively selling something and to be significant in impact, you must be teaching somehow. How effectively are you selling and how well are you teaching?

Call your personal board now and discuss the important questions. You cannot invent, re-invent or show creative brilliance without asking pertinent questions. You must demand answers from your life, from your present circumstances or from any challenge you may face. Why can’t you change? What does it take to get different results? What else can you do or try?

You cannot offer quality experiences as an isolated island. Learn to work well with others on the success train. Respect those you work with and appreciate their contribution in making you the best at what you do.

Even if you bury me underground and put a concrete slab over the hole – one day you will wake up to find a crack in the concrete with a tiny green sprout shooting through. When you see that shoot – that will be me!

It’s about teamwork, realizing we are on the same side and complementing each other. The family is at its best when exposed to and engaged in high-quality environments, interactions, and relationships. This is not technological or economic quality – it is leadership and effectiveness quality. Children mature best when the adults in their life work in partnership with one another. There must exist important aligning of mission, beliefs, values and behaviours within the family unit.

No one can change your attitude or another person’s attitude – only you can decide to change your own attitude by influencing the whole value chain from programs running in your subconscious mind to beliefs and values you strongly hold.

The accumulation of beliefs, knowledge and experiences contribute to our level of success and progress in life, however they also introduce the reality that we are all prejudiced. If not well managed, our personal prejudices can become the mental prison we lock ourselves inside or we use to shut others out. You need to deal with this likely impediment to a success-driven lifestyle.

You must first become – before you are appointed, conferred or pronounced. Unfortunate challenges and failures are likely to be manifested whenever conferment precedes becoming what you aim to be. Be ready to maturely handle success.

Build relationships and friendships by finding common experiences or interests instead of getting discouraged by noticeable differences.

What makes you succeed must be possessed where it cannot be taken away. The internal capacity to succeed is more important than the external and temporal manifestation of success.

Exercise must become a regular part of your day or personal effectiveness system. Do not wait to start exercising because you want to lose weight or because the doctor has given you some scary update on your health. Exercise to keep fit and stay healthy. It’s not too late to start now.

There are silent killers like poverty, hunger, easily preventable diseases and illnesses, and other related conditions. These remain a daily and ongoing catastrophe, but they rarely manage to achieve and sustain, prime-time headline coverage on the news. Why not report on these until someone acts on them?

At times the challenges will displace us or some of the things that are important to us. If we strengthen our belief system from within – those challenges must inevitably begin to float away and not take root or force us to sink.

Have a clear plan or strategy to translate your success philosophy into desired results. Adopt an effective work ethic, with a laser-focus and requisite execution strategies to produce results.

There are batons that you will obviously choose to pass on, upon your death, but there are others that would be advisable you pass on whilst you are still alive. Implement as practicable as possible, all succession elements that can be done whilst you are still alive so that you can ensure they are done according to your will/desire.

The obvious signs of a brand gone wrong are the levels of negative headlines it consistently attracts. People talking about you for all the negative and wrong reasons. You begin to shoot yourself in the foot and you have become your own enemy. The gospel about you should be good enough to create relevance and significance - or rather to confirm that.

No matter how much I care for you, you have to do your own growing – it’s your personal responsibility. Muscles do not grow by reading but by lifting weights. Exam grades do not improve by wishing but by studying.