Acts of random thinking

The Four Pillars is an 80,000 word manuscript about entrepreneurial behaviour and innovation. In it I try to explain that the two things are in fact synonymous. Entrepreneurs are innovative and innovation is the basis of all entrepreneurial behaviour, therefore we are all innately entrepreneurial. So what is it that conspires to defeat us time and again? The text is based on my 25+ years of experience as a dot com CTO, ERP consultant, entrepreneur and converted cynic, during which time I worked for numerous global institutions that I do not care to name (and shame).

Among other things, if you ever want to know how to get innovation to work in a large, complex organization and are prepared to stop lying about the success of forced initiatives like your ‘innovation portal’, then this is a book for you.

You can download the introductory chapter here.

Chapter I – The Boy Who Raised the Devil

Religious Education filled the graveyard slot on a Friday afternoon. Pupils and teachers stifled yawns, mopped sweat from their brows and prayed hard for the bell to ring. Minds were elsewhere; splashing playfully in streams, sitting in cool shade, gambling for childish treasures, fishing, eating, playing games. Nothing could have been less interesting than the subject of the day: The Role of Omens and Portents in Religious History. Normally, Evelyn ‘The Holy’ Roly would have told the class to read their textbooks quietly while she perfected the art of dozing open-eyed. Today however a strange feeling beyond her control compelled her to deliver the lesson.

Evelyn removed the nylon beehive wig that was helping to slowly cook her brain and placed it on the table in front of her. She cleared her throat to attract the children’s attention and proceeded to recite her notes to a class of bored, listless, eleven year olds. Given that she had not explained the meaning of the words ‘omen’ or ‘portent’ to children for whom English was a second language, the attention she commanded from the clearing of her throat was fleeting.

Like the rest of his classmates, Emeka Ejoh heard little as he stared wistfully out of the window. He was lost in a daydream, blissfully unaware that this particular lesson had been engineered for him from the moment of his birth. In his final year of school he would write an essay in answer to the question ‘Discuss the role of omens and portents in governing the timing and nature of ancient conflict’. He would get an A-plus for it as a piece of work, proving that he understood divine signals in the theoretical sense, but he failed miserably to see the signs in his own life.

Why did he not realise that the cross on the chain around his neck had mysteriously turned upside down? When he rubbed his head and found the two little bumps growing under his hair, why did he not run and consult Mama Isoro, the local herbalist, immediately? How could it be that when he cut the yolk of his egg and saw blood come pouring out of it, his only action was to screw his nose up in distaste, scrape the plate into the bin and eat a slice of toast instead? Surely God moves in mysterious ways.

It was strange that he should have missed all the signs, for Emeka Ejoh was otherwise quite clever. He might have become an academic had he been educated in his native tongue. As it was, his lips moved when he read, right up until the age of thirteen and by then nurture had defeated nature and it was too late. Though he trounced his classmates in every subject, he was no more than first among unequals. At his final year prize-giving in secondary school, his Headmaster, handing him his third award of the day, turned to the audience and told them that here was a boy who would leave an indelible mark upon the world as a man. Never was a more prophetic statement uttered.

Early indications were that Emeka would become a man of means. His entrepreneurial spirit was far in advance of his age and an early foray into business reaped spectacular results. Like many of the boys in his neighbourhood he spent his afternoons catching catfish in the swamplands near his home. Not for Emeka a mother’s approbation as he laid the day’s catch on the kitchen table, Emeka sold his fish door-to-door on the way home. And instead of spending his profits on sweets, like any other, normal boy would do, he invested in more rods and lines and hooks, with which he caught more catfish. Soon he had more rods and lines than he could set or collect on his own and he began to employ friends, whose labour and naivety he ruthlessly exploited. With their input he rapidly outgrew his door-to-door customer base and in no time at all expanded his market to include the stallholders who sold food, cooked by the roadside, and all the small bars and restaurants in the neighbourhood.

This expansion marked a turning point in his life. Suddenly his success became measurable by the trappings of wealth. He bought a bicycle, a much coveted chopper, with gears in the middle of the crossbar; a radio, and a Polaroid camera. Such possessions in an impoverished neighbourhood were real status symbols. They earned him recognition, which he mistook for popularity, and respect which he misinterpreted as admiration.

And then, one summer, for no good commercial reason, the catfish business ended. Emeka’s hormones kicked in and like many a young boy standing at the crossroads of life he dumped his past like so much old rubbish. He got so torn between the stress of acne and the wonder of masturbation that he quite simply forgot to catch catfish. He forgot where he had laid his lines, forgot who owed him money, forgot everything that now belonged to the life of the child that he no longer was. Emeka Ejoh, child star, metamorphosed into the most pathetic creature of all; the lonely, angst-ridden teenager. He had been respected for his academic prowess and admired for his financial acumen, but he had never been liked. Even his mother didn’t like him. There wasn’t much to like. He had not been pleasant or handsome to start with and manhood did not improve him one bit. He remained short and bow-legged, with lips that were too large for his small, round face. Bright, piggy eyes bulged out of his head so that when he smiled he took on an uncanny resemblance to the catfish he’d so passionately hunted. His physical appearance might not have mattered had there been anything that could be described as endearing in his personality. He did not even possess the redeeming feature of being good at sport or games. His one and only girlfriend, who had accepted this dubious status on account of his previous wealth, dealt the final, fatal blow to any chance he had of popularity when she cruelly announced that she’d dumped him because he always smelt of fish.

While his classmates smooched behind the bushes Emeka consoled himself with music. From the time he bought his first record and stuck it on his mother’s gramophone player, his trading instincts told him he would one day own a record shop. His future opened up before his eyes in a manner so clear that a suspicious mind might have described it as a vision. He would listen to music all day and make a vast profit from the inexhaustible supply of music lovers who would patronise his establishment. If he closed his eyes he could almost see the crowds and smell the money.

Emeka did indeed buy a record shop when he grew up. Intellect and determination made the first step in the fulfilment of his dreams easy. All might have gone well but for his nascent dalliance with business and economics, which left him with a proclivity to reinvest his profits in a winning formula that bordered on the obsessive. It might have worked for catfish but with records it was to prove a disaster. In complete defiance of normal economic principles, it was when he started to trade profitably that he found himself in trouble.

From the proceeds of selling records, Emeka bought more records, until he had so many records that one could hardly move in his shop for fear of knocking a towering pile of vinyl to the floor. In such cramped and precarious conditions he began to lose his customers, who preferred to browse through a selection of records like cows grazing in a large, open field, not jammed up tight against the merchandise unable to see beyond the top layer.

Faced with the calamity of a mountain of stock that nobody bought, in a space that was far too small to hold it, Emeka had three stark choices. He could move to a bigger shop, he could change his business model, or he could become a gifted crank who lived above a dusty old record shop that was packed full of beautifully preserved but ancient records which would never sell. With his usual determination and certainty, Emeka chose the last option, and in taking such a dramatic step crossed the border into eccentricity that sealed his alienation from his friends and neighbours.

“He’s mad,” they all said, the chorus of condemnation growing over the years, “hoarding those stupid records that nobody wants. Hasn’t he heard of CDs and DVDs, and files that you can download over the Internet? I tried to go in there the other day and you can’t even get the door open properly because there’s a dirty great pile of records in the way.”

Day after day, the numbers of people who came to the shop dwindled. At first Emeka tried to entice his customers back with ‘two for the price of one’ offers and free posters, which brought in a handful of bargain hunters. Soon even they stopped coming. After a while it became pointless dusting the records or sweeping between the irregular gaps on the floor, or even switching the lights on. Emeka stood on the brink of ruin.

A less conceited man, staring disaster in the face, might have sought advice. But Emeka remained as certain of his own logic as ever before. In the dark depths of his predicament he was convinced that he saw a shaft of light glimmering at the end of the tunnel. His problem wasn’t that he had too many records it was that he didn’t have enough. He was in the wrong market. Retail was not the answer; he needed to become a wholesaler!

So he took out a loan and began a new business, importing crate-loads of cheap records made by obscure artists. He classified them by genre, ascribed a rating to each and sold them by the crate to local DJs who had discovered that if you play bad records loudly enough to people who are drunk, nobody notices.

Emeka’s new business left him with an even greater mountain of useless records because the vast majority of his new stock was outdated junk that he couldn’t give away if he tried. His gleaming shaft of light turned out to be nothing more than the dull glow of a foolish idea, and everyone thought him more cuckoo than ever before.

Emeka ceased to be ‘normal’. His superstitious neighbours feared eccentricity, no matter how harmless, and ascribed all kinds of extreme outcomes to the gentlest forms of insanity. Which is why, if anyone had told them that Emeka Ejoh would raise the Devil they would have nodded sagely and said “you know, it doesn’t surprise me one bit. I mean look at his record shop!”

To obtain further chapters or the full manuscript please email Dele Sikuade at Dele@Gogojaja.com

Chapter 1 – The things worth dying for

It was the time of year when the days are unbearably hot and the nights are cooled by the dry, harmattan wind that flows down from the Sahara, sucking out all the moisture that it can from the lips and skin of the people in its path. The last rays of the sun lingered still behind the hills but the wind was cool enough to give goose bumps to bare flesh. A small group of men stood in a circle as dust devils whipped about their feet. A blast of air stoked the fire in their midst and as one they drew their cloths tighter about their shoulders and edged closer to the flames.

Shola crawled through the undergrowth to the edge of the clearing, to better see from the light of the flame the faces of the men who had gathered there. She was too far away to hear what was being said so she crawled forward on her belly until she lay beneath a row of low shrubs close to the back of the group. She prayed that there were no snakes or scorpions nearby to be attracted to the warmth of her body.

A guttural cry and the squawk of a startled cockerel heralded the start of proceedings. The low hubbub of voices ceased as the ceremony began. Men took on the appearance of statues: grim faces alternately illuminated and cast in shadow by the flickering flames. The wind whipped away the last strangled cry of the cockerel as its throat was cut. The Babalawo, Shonubi, spoke in the strange high-pitched language of the spirits that only he understood. Holding the dead bird by its feet, he placed a fist beneath its headless body so that blood poured over his hand and spilled onto the ground. That done, he tossed the carcass carelessly behind him and cast whatever had been in that blood-soaked fist into the fire.

Blue-green flame shot up and all bar Shonubi stepped back in surprise. In the brief breaking of the circle, Shola got a good look at the man in all his ceremonial glory. He wore a leather loincloth and anklets of cowrie beads. A necklace made from the bleached skulls of small birds and animals hung around his neck and his body glistened from the red paint and palm oil smeared about his face and torso. Suddenly his head spun in her direction and the mop of thick, black, matted hair that hung down to his shoulders swung apart to reveal hard, narrowed eyes and deeply gouged tribal marks on his cheeks. Shola’s heart was in her mouth when he stared in her direction, as if he sensed an unwanted presence. She felt that she was being drawn towards him and dug her fingers into the soil in resistance, but to her great relief he looked away again and she was released from his spell.

The fire burned a brilliant white and Shonubi, dancing drunkenly around its base, seemed to be able to wrap his arms around it and exhort the flames to rise ever higher. Shola was just getting used to the new level of illumination when darkness fell on the gathering. It looked as if the fire had burned itself out but it was only a trick of the light; the fire had died down, burning normally once more, so that its light was reduced to a dull, orange glow. Shonubi trembled violently and screamed, possessed by the spirits that his black magic had summoned. Pointing one shaking, bony finger at the stars above, he declared in his shrill, unnatural voice, that the Gods, speaking through him, had decided the matter before them. Their judgement was death! The men nodded sagely at this news. In the conversations that had preceded the ceremony none had expressed any doubt that this would be the outcome.

Shola felt sick and placed a hand over her mouth for fear that she might betray herself. Despite the presence of her husband, her life could be forfeit for daring to be in a place where no woman was permitted to be. She wanted to slip away right then but she felt faint. She continued to watch in a state of curious detachment, unwilling to believe what she had just seen and heard. Shonubi picked up the dead bird and began to walk around the circle, daubing its blood on every man present. As he marked each man he assured him of the Gods’ protection if he did their bidding.

Faint or not, Shola knew she had to go. Stealing silently away from her hiding place she crawled backwards until she was back in the bush bordering the shrine. Then she got to her feet and ran, thrashing carelessly through the leaves and branches until at last she reached the open fields.

The moon was out and the trees were silvery ghosts swaying seductively in the breeze. Visibility was good and she could no longer afford to run in case she was seen. A woman out for a stroll could simply nod goodnight to her neighbours and pass unmolested but a running figure would attract attention and questions could be asked to which she had no answers. Shola wrapped her arms around her shoulders, bent her head to the ground and tried to focus only on the uneven road beneath her feet.

A sudden cheer rang out and when she turned in the direction of the shrine she saw the unmistakable yellow glow of torches being lit and raised. She had to go faster! Adopting a half jogging, half walking gait, she pressed on. The men she had left behind were drowning their inhibitions in a sea of palm wine and religious fervour that would soon give them the reckless courage they needed to carry out their dark intentions.

Rounke was putting her children to bed when Shola burst into the room.
“Shola, what’s up? Are you okay? You nearly scared me to death.”
“Rounke quickly, take the children and go!”
“What? Go? Go where? What is it, what’s up with you?”
“Rounke please just do what I say. Take the children and run! Go to the old guava tree. You remember our guava tree in the bushes? Go there and I will come and find you as soon as I can. Oya! Everybody get dressed. Quickly! Iyabo, Olu, help Kunle, we have no time.”
Since she seemed not to be paying any attention to her, Rounke seized her sister by the arm and spun her round to face her.
“Shola, what are you doing? What is the matter with you? Stop this!”

Shola stopped. Her head was swimming. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and tried to compose herself. She pulled her sister into the corner of the room and whispered fiercely in her ear.
“Rounke, Shonubi said that the children are witches and they must be killed.”
“What?” It was Rounke’s turn to feel faint. She clutched her sister’s arm tightly as she held on for support. “No. No! How can he do such a thing? Who would believe him?”
“They all will! They all will because of the dreams that people are having about them…” Shola’s voice fell to an almost inaudible level “…even my husband believes him. I heard him talking with his friends, saying that the elders were going to see Shonubi to find out what these dreams meant. I followed him. Oh Rounke, I followed him!” Shola began to cry and even though she still did not comprehend the meaning of her sister’s words, Rounke began to cry with her.

A faint, alien cry reached their ears from far away. Rounke raised her eyebrows quizzically but Shola recognised its pitch. She wiped the tears from her eyes with a fierce determination to put all anguish behind her so that she could act.

“Come!” Shola twisted her arm free, grabbed her sister by the shoulders and steered her outside.
“Look!” She said, pointing to a procession of torches winding its way down the hillside above the village and snaking in their direction. “You see that? They are coming here to kill the children. Stop wasting time. Take them and go!”

Rounke froze and no amount of pleading could get her to move. It was as if she had been struck deaf and dumb and rooted to the spot by the enormity of what she was seeing. Even the children, when they emerged from the house, confused and scared, were unable to galvanise their mother into action.

Shola, seeing that they would soon be in clear sight of the mob, abandoned her sister, picked up the infant Kunle and made Olu and Iyabo follow her.
“Come on!” she urged the children, though she turned her face away so they would not see her tears, “Your mum will follow us. Come on!” And such was the force of her command that the children, believing that their mother would indeed follow, ran behind her.

At the edge of the village, Shola cast one last despairing look over her shoulder. Her sister was a small figure illuminated by the pool of light from the house. She would not be coming. Shola’s sadness, deep though it was, was now matched by a deeper emotion, a growing fear that made her weak at the knees. Once she had left the children in the relative safety of the bush, she knew that she would have to go back to face her own fate.

Shonubi rounded the bend at the top of the street, his body now covered in markings of white chalk that would ward off evil spirits. In one hand he held a flaming torch, in the other a knife. The sight of him finally spurred Rounke into action. She stepped back into the house with grim purpose. She quickly stuffed some clothes under the sheets so that it would look as if the children were lying in their beds. Then she extinguished the flame of the oil lamp, plunging the house into darkness, and took up a position behind the front door. She was standing there, trying to remain still and quiet when her foot came into contact with hard, cold, metal. It was the machete that she used on the farm. Bending her knees, she felt for its handle in the dark and picked it up.

A minute later, the shadows of men with sticks and machetes were crowding through the open doorway. She pressed her back hard against the wall and hoped that no light would give her away. Shonubi crept forward cautiously and peered into the gloom, his torch held in front of his face. He walked stealthily forward and put his head around the bedroom wall. Seeing shapes in the bed he tiptoed back to his followers and announced in a loud whisper: “The children are here. Look for their witch of a mother; she seems to have abandoned them. Or maybe they have killed her.”

The mob gave a collective gasp at the pronouncement that the children might have killed their mother and one or two faint hearts took a backward step.

Rounke held her breath. Shonubi had passed within inches of her and now was only a foot away. She could smell his rancid sweat. Her heart beat so hard that all she could hear was the blood rushing in her ears and she had to clench her buttocks to stop her bowels from opening in fear. She closed her eyes and prayed for divine intervention but opened them seconds later knowing that none would come. Her salvation, if such a thing were possible now, lay in her hands.

Rounke had not known what she would do, right up until the moment that she saw Shonubi raise his arms and throw back his head to receive the adulation of his followers. That gesture, the raising of his arms, that one, small thing, triggered something in her so deep that she could no longer feel fear. She no longer felt anger. She became cold, devoid of all emotion. All of her body was possessed by one overwhelming feeling – hatred; her mind consumed by one thought – revenge!

Shonubi never heard the parting words that were spoken to him. Rounke was not even sure she had uttered them. All her thoughts, her words, her life, became entwined in a maelstrom of blind fury that reached its crescendo in the sickening thud of her machete cutting deep into the back of the Babalawo’s head. The men outside, who were preparing to enter the house after their leader, backed away as he staggered out of the doorway towards them. Still holding his knife and torch, the look of surprise on his face caused them too to be surprised. Then he fell forward, dead.

For Rounke, the storm of emotion now gave way to a deathly calm. She stepped out from the doorway behind him, covered in his blood.
“You came to kill my children eh? You dogs. Just try it and you shall live to regret that your mothers were not barren.” The thin cloth that she wore for sleep dropped to the floor. Naked, she drew the bloody blade of the machete across her torso, in a line running from above her left breast to her right hip and her blood began to flow freely from the wound.

“If you want my children then you must first pass me.” She smeared blood from the cut across her face. “But I want you to see what I am prepared to do to myself so that you will know what I am prepared to do you. Let the first one of you whose genitals are bigger than those of the red-headed lizard’s, whose genitals are so small you cannot see them, step forward so that I can send you to join this animal.”

So saying, she spat on Shonubi’s dead body, placed a bare foot between the shoulder blades of his corpse and waited. Rounke had no illusions as to her fate. Not now that she had killed the Babalawo. The mob would not be denied, but while these murderous men delayed in confrontation with her, the children were escaping. Nobody had expected this sudden turn of events and she had bought them precious time.

She caught sight of her brother-in-law, hiding shamefully at the back and at last the thought process that had led her to this point slipped easily into focus. She could not have asked Shola to stop them. The crowd would have pushed her aside in seconds and what would have happened to the children then? Kunle was too small to outrun grown men and she could never have hoped to outrun them carrying him. Somehow she had known that this was the only way. The thought of her sacrifice did not trouble her. She had no regrets, the children were her life. ‘The joys of living are worth dying for,’ were the last words her dear husband had said to her before the fever had taken him and now, as the crowd began to rumble with anger and inch closer, she knew exactly what he’d meant.

To obtain further chapters or the full manuscript please email Dele Sikuade at Dele@Gogojaja.com