Learning from the greats - Muhammad Yunus
Dying of starvation is a particularly horrible way to die. In 1974 Bangladesh was suffering from a famine that would eventually claim the lives of some 1.5 million people. A young economics teacher at the University of Chittagong called Muhammad Yunus wandered out one evening to a local village, where he struck up a conversation with a women called Sufia. Together with other families in the village, she was attempting to earn a frugal living by making and selling bamboo stools. Her business was failing because she could not borrow the money to buy raw materials. Yunus asked her how much money she needed. Sufia explained that she and the other 41 families in the village making bamboo furniture needed a collective total of $27 to save their businesses – and the lives of their families. Yunus did two things that marked him out at a great leader. What were they?
The first thing he did was to give Sufia and her 41 colleagues the $27. 'When will we pay this back?' they asked. 'When you can afford to' was the reply.
The second and most significant action taken by the young Muhammad Yunus was to think about tackling the bigger problem. Sufia wasn't unusual. Millions of Bangladeshis were in the same predicament – wanting to work their way out of poverty, but unable to secure the initial finance necessary. Yunus established what is now called the Grameen Bank – an institution which lends very small amounts of money to people who need it.
Grameen wasn't set up in time to save the victims of the 1974 famine: but since then it has helped 8.5 million Bangladeshi women out of poverty. 98% of loans are fully repaid and the microcredit model has been copied all over the world.
What makes Yunus a great leader is his ability to address the short term crisis and the bigger problem. Many business leaders are great at dealing with crisis – they're often not so good at addressing underlying issues that have created the crisis in the first place.
How about you? Are you able to resolve the immediate situation and address the underlying issues? In fact, how much of your time do you spend dealing with crises and immediate problems, and how much dealing with long term, underlying issues? The more your focus is on the long term, the more of a leader you are likely to be.