Leaders and resourcefulness

Leaders deploy resources to get results. However, without being resourceful, there is a ceiling to what a leader can hope to achieve with the resources at his beck and call. Without resourcefulness, leadership could be frustrating because resources are often inadequate to achieve determined goals, but it takes a resourceful leader to stretch available resources to get desired results. Therefore, perhaps the most important resource a leader needs is resourcefulness.

Resourcefulness goes beyond doing more with less; it is the ability to optimize available resources to achieve set objectives. Resourcefulness is coming to the realization that the leader and his team are capable of doing more than they initially thought possible. It is looking inwards and outwards to get a problem solved. Being resourceful has less to do with insufficient personnel, tools or funding but more to do with deploying available resources into finding a way out of a labyrinth. Hence, every complaint about inadequate resource is an admission of deficiency in resourcefulness. Resourceful leaders can always get any resource they need by making use of the available ones.

The father, the son and the challenge

A boy was saddled with the task of moving a heavy bag from one point to another. He tried all he could to accomplish the task but he found it difficult to move the bag. The father, who was with him, kept encouraging the boy to give the assignment his best shot by deploying all the resources at his disposal. On hearing that, the boy mobilized all his strength and tried to move the bag but the more he tried, the more frustrated he got because his efforts amounted to nothing as he could not move the bag at all. After several attempts, he decided to give up and told his father that moving the heavy bag was beyond his capacity. But the father said he could move the bag if only he would make use of all his resources. The boy said that he had used up all his resources without the desired result, so there was no point wasting more time. Then the father asked him why he failed to ask for assistance, saying, “Don’t you know I am one of your resources? If you had asked me for my assistance, I would have obliged you and we would have been able to move the bag with much ease.”

Many people are like the boy. They complain of inadequate resources because they fail to fully utilize the available ones. Though the father was right beside him, it never occurred to the boy that his father was a resource that could be deployed to get his goal achieved. So, resourcefulness is basically the ability to identify and optimize available resources, stretching them to get better results than earlier imagined.

How leaders can be more resourceful

To be more resourceful, leaders need to do the following:

Be open-minded about new possibilities

Many of those who fail to be resourceful are those who operate from a wrong premise; they have already closed their minds to certain possibilities and are unwilling to make a shift. They bounce off every new option or suggestion because of the warped belief they hold that what they already have is final. But as opined by Brooks Atkinson, a theatre critic, “The most fatal illusion is the settled point of view. Since life is growth and motion, a fixed point of view kills anybody who has one.”

Leaders must always be open-minded about situations and people. There is no standstill in nature. Situations change just as people do. When a person or a situation is turned around, a new perspective is unveiled. It is the leader’s responsibility to turn his people and situations around to get new results from them.

That a viewpoint was right yesterday does not mean it is right today. Ditto for an opinion that was wrong yesterday. Leaders, by their calling, must be open to new possibilities. It is when they see new possibilities that they can challenge their intellect to make use of what is already available to arrive at the expected end. A leader with a closed mind shuts himself and his people away from great possibilities.

Ability to simplify problems

Part of being resourceful is having the ability to simplify a matter. When a challenge is left as a whole, it can be intimidating and may appear invincible. But part of the responsibility of a leader is to deconstruct problems. Problem simplification comes with the terrain for great leaders. By breaking down a seemingly complex matter and stripping it of all the coverings, the real issue is revealed and the leader is able to deploy the available resources to get the task accomplished. So, to be really resourceful, a leader must be given to problem simplification.

The process of simplifying a problem is by asking some pertinent questions about the matter. By asking the right questions, the leader gets the right picture about the situation and is able to come up with the right solutions.

Tap knowledge from others

Every member of a team has a value. Each member of the team has strengths, views and skills that could be helpful to the organization. But in many cases, most people will not volunteer these unless they are asked. The leader must devise a means of getting these out of the team members by laying issues bare on the table and asking for inputs. If a leader goes around with the air of arrogance, he may be treated to a cold shoulder when team members are requested to share their views on issues. But the case will be reversed if the leader has a reputation for respecting other people’s opinions. A leader must find a way of knowing what those who work with him are capable of doing and take them to task on that. That is one of the reasons he leads them.

Must be able to inspire and sustain commitment

One of the strengths a leader cannot do without is the ability to inspire commitment of his team members. Commitment cannot be legislated; it is a response to the leader’s attitude to others. A leader that values his people and cares about them will inspire commitment from them with ease. It is the law of reciprocity. Most people who have been treated well feel obligated to repay the benefactor in his own coin. This is what brings commitment on the part of the team members. In most cases, team members will be willing to go out on a limb for a leader that cares about them.

On the other hand, when a leader does not show much concern about his team mates, it will be difficult to inspire commitment. The best the leader can hope to get from them is compliance. The difference is that while the committed are willing to go the extra mile, the compliant are not willing to go beyond the call of duty. While the committed own the task, the compliant do not. They do not see the task as their own but the leader’s. So, they are not bothered whether it succeeds or fails.

To bring resourcefulness to play requires having committed people available. Leaders can’t do much on their own; they work through people and the quality of the result they produce is a function of the commitment of the people. But beyond the initial commitment, the leader must be able to sustain the level of commitment especially when the task runs into a hitch. Without sustained commitment, the set objective may not be realized.

Resilience

Resourcefulness requires resilience to produce desirable result. There are times when resourceful leaders get stuck in their bid to get results. When that happens, they have to be resilient, provided they are convinced that the path they are treading is the right one. Many dreams have been turned into hallucinations because the dream carriers lack resilience. Getting a result that will have long-lasting effect sometimes takes a long time. So, the leader must be resilient to guard against producing still born results.

Henry Ford’s Model T

When Henry Ford announced that he was going to build a motorcar for the great multitude with a view of taking the motorcar from a status symbol to a commodity which everyone could access, not many people believed him. Even some of his engineers laughed him to scorn behind his back. But he was determined to get his dream realized and worked unrelentingly at it. He had already made his design which he presented to the engineers. As the work progressed, the engineers and technicians raised some concerns, none of which deterred Ford. It was during the time that he made his now popular statement that, “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you are right.” Ford thought he could and he was right because two years after, the car was ready. Relying on resourcefulness and resilience, Ford was able to give the world Ford Model T, the first mass-produced car, in 1908. Not only did he achieve his dream, he also became one of the richest and most influential men of his time.

Last line

With resourcefulness, there is no limit to how far a leader can go.