The Art of Leadership
By Dag Heward-Mills
The universe is ruled by a creative God. This world is ruled by creative people. To be able to think of something new and greater and to achieve it, is creativity. An ordinary person wants to do what everyone else is doing. A leader is someone who is prepared to be creative and to chart new territories.
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
Genesis 1:1
There are two groups of people in this world. One group has created new things. The other group has created nothing. Creative people dominate non-creative people. You don’t have to look far to see this truth.
Seven Steps to Becoming a Creative Leader
- Ask the Holy Spirit to teach you what to do. Realize that you may be in a non-creative environment. You may have to fight a spirit of non-creativity all your life.
- Admire nature. Be interested in animals, nature and the human body. As you become interested in things God has created, the spirit of creativity will be stirred up in you. Non-creative people are usually uninterested in nature.
- Overcome the natural resistance to change. Most people do not like change. Be honest, and deal with every streak of non-creativity and the “anti-change” spirit in your life.
- Be interested in the amazing creations of ordinary men. Be interested in medicine, surgery, cars, planes, computers, etc. Non-creative people are usually not interested in such things.
- Be open to new and unusual ways of doing things. Do not have a blackout attitude towards every new suggestion. I have often been laughed at when I have made new suggestions. In the end, it is these same suggestions that have been a blessing to many people. Creative people are often laughed at because of their ideas.
- Be ready to embark on adventure that takes you forward and not fruitless exercises that take you backward.
Adventure is the sister of creativity. Adventure leads you to go on exploits that can propel you forward. A good leader must be careful not to embark on adventures that take him and his people backward. Mongolia reduced its nation to poverty and backwardness (primitivization) by wiping out creative increasing return activities.
Primitivization is the return to backwardness, poverty and the dark ages by wiping out creative industries and creative manufacturing activities. Under a policy of primitivization, the majority of the people are forced back into non-creative diminishing returns activities. Manufacturing industries die out and poverty-causing non-creative activities take over and dominate the nation.
Half a century of creative industry-building in Mongolia was virtually annihilated over a period of only four years, from 1991 to 1995. By March 2000, the country’s previously considerable industrial sector had been virtually eradicated. Statistics showed that, one by one, all of the country’s various industries had disappeared, beginning with the most advanced. Statistics showed that the production of bread was down by 71 per cent and the production of books and newspapers by 79 per cent, Mongolians, in other words, probably ate and read less than before.
The only sectors that, according to the national industrial statistics, were expanding were the production of alcohol which showed minimal growth and the collection and preparation of ‘combed down’ from birds (to the extent this can be defined as an industry). Closing down the country’s steel mills and newspapers and sending its population out to collect bird down cannot be considered anything but a primitivisation of the economy.
The combination of deindustrialization and deconstruction of the state had created large scale unemployment in Mongolia. Many people had been forced to return to their ancestral way of living: nomadic pastoralism and herding.
In 1990, before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Mongolians shared their lands with 21 million herding animals – sheep, cows, goats and camels. As a consequence, the number of grazing animals had risen from 21 million to 33 million in ten years.
The Mongolian economy was driven back from the age of industry to that of pastoralism. The nomadic economy, however, was unable to sustain the population and the industrial system, and the result was an economic catastrophe.
- Try introducing variations to already existing models.
Variation is the brother of creativity.
A creative leader is someone who is able to come up with new ideas. New ideas often contain the solutions we need. Are you someone with new ideas?
The ministry I oversee is made up of mainly lay people. I myself, started out in ministry as a layperson. When I did, many felt I was not concentrating on my studies. They had not seen the lay ministry in operation. Today, this creative lay ministry has led to much growth.
Dear leader, remember that the creative rule the non-creative! Be creative in your business! Be creative in your work! The fact that something has not been done before does not mean that it’s wrong. Creativity will make you dominate in your sphere of life! Decide to be a creative leader!
theaol@ymail.com