had to ask when he lamented in his later
years that he experienced the same fate as
the fool. He then questioned why he had
wisdom to start with.
A person who was very intelligent and
skilled at fixing typewriters in the seventies
and the eighties may still be intelligent
but because their intelligence is not
relevant; it is useless. On the other hand
a person who may not be that intelligent
but whose service is relevant will outshine
an intelligent person who is not relevant.
Innovative
How relevant are you to your world today?
People do not get paid because they are
intelligent. They get paid because they
are relevant. Relevance is not a function
of how intelligent you are neither is it a
function of size or present day success. It
is not a function of how deep your pockets
are today.
It is a function of how innovative you
are and how well you are able to read
the future and use your innovation to
capture that future. Value never follows
the irrelevant. You need to be concerned
about the shelf life of your current model
or way of thinking.
The Future
The more relevant you are, the more value
you add. The key to sustained relevance is
re-creation. If you do not understand the
time in which we live, you will miss out on
a lifetime opportunity. If you try to carry
forward the past into the present, you will
miss out on the present and absolutely
lose the future.
Making the adjustments to be relevant
is by no means an easy task. It has to be
intentional for it to be exceptional. A lot
of leaders who are not able to read the
times will find themselves frozen in the
past.
People have defined insanity as doing
the same thing over and over again and
expecting different results but I want to
put a twist to that definition.
Insanity is bringing the intelligence of the
past into the present and expecting it to
work without making any adjustments.
Intelligence is not to be confused with
wisdom, which is the correct or the relevant
application of knowledge. The continued
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success of an entity is determined by how
connected or useful it is in the context of
its environment.
Success is the reward for relevance. This
is true across board. When something
is relevant, it resonates. When you are
relevant, you will resonate with people.
The more people you resonate with,
the more relevant you are and the more
relevant you are the more successful you
will be.
Churches
Europe had some of the grandest
cathedrals in the world. They spent
millions in building these architectural
wonders over years. However, many
of these cathedrals were converted to
shopping centers, apartments or even
mosques.
Why did this happen? Once the message
from the pulpit stopped resonating,
relevance was lost and once relevance was
lost patronage declined. On the other
hand we have huge churches in Africa
that will overflow every Sunday. People
will go in their thousands and they will
give in the millions.
Many intelligent people have never
understood the logic behind a poor person
going into church and giving what he has
to a church that is obviously wealthy. The
answer is in relevance.
Poverty
The message that God will make your life
better does not resonate with a society
where the government has made their
lives better. It however resonates with a
society that is poverty stricken. The way
to deal with the threat of irrelevance is
not to attack the relevant but to re-create
yourself for relevance. Again, remember
it has to be intentional for it to be
exceptional. How then do you re-create
yourself for relevance?
The 1932 painting by Pablo Picasso
featuring his mistress Marie-Thérèse
Walter was sold in 2010 for $106 million
(Sh10bn). Another Picasso painting
Garcon a la Pipe was sold for $104
million. I once projected each of these
paintings on a wall to a group of people I
was training and I asked them how much
they would pay for the paintings. Someone
offered to pay five dollars, another offered
to pay 10 dollars and the highest bid of
the day was 20 dollars. Now, why would
they offer to pay so little for something
that was so valuable? Because they did
not know the value.
Value
In essence, it is not enough to be valuable.
Your value must be appreciated for it to
be relevant. There are different genres of
music and each one has a following. The