I would want to talk about seven (7) elements that will propel you to achieve explosive results in business.

1. Strategic thinking & management
   Companies that tend to achieve explosive results always have strategic thinking and management backing them. These companies normally have foresight and allow their vision to drive current decisions. This is very important if a company wants to achieve great results.
2. Importance of growing other leaders
   Founders or CEOs discover the importance of growing other leaders around them. In other words, their main purpose is to grow other leaders. When this is done, the company is empowered and can even grow ten times faster. This process is a bit tricky because you have to identify people with potential to be able to groom them. When you have people you think will let you down, you have to lay them off but at the end of the day, you need to relentlessly look for the subordinates with leadership potential and help them to lead.
3. Create momentum
   The third characteristic of companies that generate sustained and good results are the companies that create momentum. Momentum in the sense that, the company cultivates a certain culture whereby each worker is self-propelling so that even the laborer feels he has a role to play in the success of the company. You have to ensure this by taking time off to visit your workers as an employer; it is one of the secrets of achieving extraordinary results. If you want the best from your employees, make them feel important; let them feel they are a part of the value addition chain.
   In GIMPA, I was nicknamed, “The Walking Director-General” because I walked around the school at least twice a day. I never called anybody to my office. I always went to them. Initially, they thought I was walking to check on them so they looked nervous so when they saw that it had become a norm and that I was going to come in everyday, they became relaxed. The only person who came to my office everyday was my accountant because he has to tell me how much we have on daily basis. He came in to give me a breakdown of how much we have spent and how much we have banked so that I would be able to take decisions. It is very important to generate momentum.
4. Learn to manage change
   The fourth characteristic of companies that deliver explosive results is that they learn to manage change. As soon as you create other leaders and generate momentum, in a sense, you will lose some control because many people would be taking initiatives on their own and this is one of the biggest challenges at the workplace because if you are not careful, you will not progress. Good leaders may appear not to be nice but they are always doing what one of the authors call “dancing from the balcony”. In managing change, you must be ready to take the hard decisions and solve the critical problems.
5. Create the culture
   The fifth characteristic is that at the end of the day, you need to create the culture. That is the most difficult aspect of leadership. Cultural change is tough because in our part of the world especially, if you are the one who pays salaries, your employees will fake that they are doing what you want. It normally takes a long time; like a minimum of 3 years for you to start genuine cultural change. I am talking about the programming of the mind. This would result in the change of work habits and work ethics of employees. If you are able to achieve this, you are going to have improved performance in your organization.
6. Employees must know the customer is king
   If you want to have explosive results, every employee must know that the one who pays them is the customer. It is a different mindset especially if you are in the service organization. You do not need to distinguish one customer from the other because you do not want people saying that you are bad with customer care. Most employees in our part of the world do not realize that every employee can attend to and satisfy the customer. Often times, the CEO is the last person to be seen by the customer. You will see the security personnel, the secretary not being so involved but if you want to achieve explosive results, every member of your team should feel that the company is theirs. When they are the first person to be in charge of the customer, they would do a good job at handling and attending to the customer. When I was in GIMPA that is what I was doing and I knew I was going to succeed. There was one time that I got to the entrance of GIMPA at around 5 A.M and I saw the gardener watering the flowers. I was so excited and I thought to myself, “Why would someone wake up this early just to water the flowers?”. The answer was simple, the one watering the flowers knew that he also owned GIMPA.
7. Develop character
   The last key for explosive results in any organization is the leader. To be a leader of an explosive organization, first and foremost, you must have character; you must be trusted. If your employees ever suspect that you cannot be trusted and that you are just thinking about yourself, it is finished. To be a leader, you must be competent. This is not the type of competence that makes you able to do every technical thing. This type of competence is that which makes you as the leader to be able to ask every employee the right and relevant questions. Any serious CEO who wants to learn to be competent in this regard can know it in one month regardless of the field in which they find themselves. Using myself as an example, I am the Chairman on many boards including medicine, engineering to real estates. It is the venture capital ones which are more difficult to manage. You need this kind of leadership knowledge to be able to lead. There is something called, “Accountancy for non-accountants”; once you know how to balance the figures, you will be good to fit in. As a leader, you do not have to make people see that you are daft. As a leader, you must let your employees know that you care for them as human beings. Sometimes it is so difficult to make people below us feel that we care. In my case, what I used to do was that I normally gave money to my staff and they would prepare food. When the food was ready, we all ate together.

Every leadership position has three roles. As soon as you abuse your legitimate privileges, you lose your leadership. Every leadership position has a price to pay. In Ghana, when one becomes a chief, we say that he has ‘come to chop something’, which is the direct transliteration. A true leader pays a greater price than any other worker.

There are many temptations that come with leadership. Sometimes you may not even be handsome but as soon as you are made a leader, everyone would say that you are handsome. Immediately you yield to the temptations of leadership, you will lose your leadership. Almost all leaders in Ghana come as heroes and they leave as villains. This is because they abused the price and privileges of leadership.

When I came to GIMPA I met a little messy situation. Basically I came and found the school run down and the government was even considering selling or privatizing it. In the nine years I was there, we ended up increasing the turnover to 3000%; from $500,000 to $15,000,000. We became the best school of business in Ghana ahead of Legon. Legon had 34 teachers and we had 80 teachers after 3 years. We were the only university in Ghana to be part of the African Institution of Business Schools. We were paying every professor 50% more than the University of Ghana until the single spine which broke our spine. Every lecture hall was air-conditioned. You should always know that the sky is the limit.

Professor Stephen Adei,
former Rector of GIMPA