"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by. And that has made all the difference.” (Robert Frost in the poem, "The Road Not Taken”)

About 30 years ago, US economist Rosabeth Moss Kanter published an article, which changed the way many people - including this writer - think about career development, success and leadership.

Ever since the start of the Industrial Age, most people have looked at work in a rather ‘bureaucratic’ or ‘hierarchical’ way. You start at the bottom rung of the ladder within an organization and gradually you work your way upwards, attaining ever-increasing positions of power, responsibility and salary.

Ideally, everyone has the potential to rise from the mailroom to the board room, with a lot of hard work and a bit of luck.

This traditional career path is still valid for many people here in Rwanda and around the world. If it is handled properly, it can provide much needed structure, clarity, predictability and security for those who seek it.

In her article, Dr. Kanter also mentioned two other career paths. The one that resonated with this writer was the Professional one. Professionals are mostly not interested in the relative reliability, personal branding, regular promotion and formal leadership that are typically part of the ‘bureaucratic’ or ‘hierarchical’ way.

Instead, Professionals usually have a particular area of focus and they just want to go deeper and deeper and get better and better at what they do. They can be active either within an organisation or more likely as an independent operator outside a traditional organisational structure. 

This professional has been trying to hone his writing and consulting craft for the last 30+ years, working closely with external colleagues and counterparts but with no internal employees other than a series of long-suffering domestic pets. In more recent times, Professionals have attracted other epithets, such as ‘creatives’, ‘conceptuals’ and ‘knowledge workers’.

Dr. Kanter also focused on a third career path – that of the Entrepreneur - which has been around for millennia across the globe but has only been normalized and celebrated in many cultures in recent decades.

In theory, entrepreneurs have a great, original idea for a product or a service of their own and then they start to build an organization - and sometimes an empire - to develop it and any related offshoots. The reality may be somewhat different though.

Most people think of high-profile, global business entrepreneurs - such as Oprah Winfrey in the USA, Richard Branson in the UK, Jack Ma in China and Aliko Dangote in Nigeria - but there are also many social entrepreneurs or innovators now, who focus on societal, cultural or environmental issues rather than becoming a billionaire before they are 40 years old.

One prominent example is Bangladesh’s Muhammad Yunus, who founded the Grameen Bank to pioneer micro-finance for small, women-owned businesses in the Global South.

What these and many other successful entrepreneurs seem to have in common are the following: vision, self-belief, passion, internal drive, creativity, self-confidence, tolerance for risk and a great deal of personal stamina, strength, patience and perseverance.

These are not all typical leadership traits, particularly during the Corona pandemic, which has encouraged leaders to focus on other more ‘human’ qualities, such as resilience, flexibility, listening, compassion and trust.

But then entrepreneurs tend not to be typical leaders. None of them are ‘leaders by mandate’, such as the Catholic Pope or the UN Secretary-General. They are rarely ‘leaders by example’, such as Mother Teresa or Nelson Mandela (before and during his presidency of South Africa). They are more often ‘leaders by impact’, inspiring new and potential entrepreneurs to find their own unique ways to sustainable success through the wonders of what they have created and by how they have hopefully enriched the lives of others in some way.

"I've run a very successful business, and I think I can also run a very successful team … I always make sure I hire people smarter than me … I'm not in it for the money. No, no. I like to run a business that's successful,” said Aliko Dangote, the Nigerian entrepreneur who was mentioned earlier.

The next "Leading Rwanda” column will look at being an "entrepreneurial leader” in the Rwandan context, which is very different from elsewhere in the world in terms of motivation, goals, process and success.

The views expressed in this column are entirely those of the writer.