Can we cope with success? Can we get to the top without a track of ill behind us? Can we get to the top and be glad someone can reveal everything we did on our journey to the top? Have we known what to desire? Have we considered our leadership? How do we define leadership? Can we lead now more than ever? Now more than ever, the lines of leadership have been blurred in jargon.
For the businesspeople, the end could justify the means. That it doesn’t matter what route one takes to the top if one gets to the top. Should our ethics be based on pure consequentialism? Shouldn’t we be able to judge the goodness of action before it is taken? What are our thoughts? What reality are we choosing to participate in?
On what is our ethics based on? Is it an ethics that maximizes utility? That what makes leaders happy, is good. Or is it a Kantian ethics? An ethics based on rules. Is something good simply because there is a law behind it? Are rules good because they happen to be good or because they protect something good?
Leadership is often cited as a challenge of Uganda, yet none has defined what it means to lead. Do we need more of transactional leaders? More of charismatic leaders? More of transformational leaders? What is leadership?
We all agree that there should be a desire for excellence in leadership. But what is excellence? At Ortega Group, we believe in a new paradigm of leadership, a leadership based on virtues. We believe that all leadership should strive for excellence. And that to be excellent, one must be;
- Effective: Able to answer the question ‘what must I do?’
- Efficient: Able to answer the question ‘how do I do it?’
- Enthusiastic: Able to answer the question ‘what do I like?’
- Ethical: Able to answer the question ‘why do I do it?’
We believe in a leadership that’s backed by the right intention and the right implementation. We believe in a leadership that reaches for the harmony of reason, will and feelings. We believe in a leadership that’s based on virtue as habits of excellence. We believe that virtues are qualities of the mind, the will and the heart that instil strength of character and stability of personality.
And we believe that all leadership is based on four cardinal values:
- Self-control: a mastery of heart and mind, an understanding that what’s pleasurable is not necessarily good.
- Prudence: practical wisdom, the wisdom of the heart, and the ability to make the right decision. It is this ability to see reality as it really is.
- Fortitude: a leadership that stays the course, the virtue of the will, boldness.
- Justice: the ability to give everyone their due, a leadership based on communion and communication
We believe that these four values are complemented by two pillar values:
- Humility: a passion to serve, the habit of living in truth, the ability for leaders to recognize both their gifts and their limitations.
- Magnanimity: we believe in the greatness of the spirit, that leadership is that which strives to become happy and make others happy. That although ambition and magnanimity aim at doing great things, only magnanimity aims at doing things great. We believe in the beauty of the mission, in the beauty of the great things.
We believe that leadership is a repetitive practice of these virtues. And by a repetitive practice of virtues, one can achieve a full life. Leadership must practice its virtues. By repetitive practice of virtue, we change the way we are affected by the world, so that we react differently and eventually behave differently.
Ortega Group believes that the leaders of now, of the future, must learn to make the right decisions in real life under pressure. That these leaders must embrace the purpose of business as that which adds value at a profit. Now more than ever, we believe in an ethics that’s not a mere choice between what’s good and what’s wrong, but a choice between what’s good and what’s better. We believe that freedom is not mere choices, but the ability to choose and do what’s better for us, we believe in a freedom that comes out of knowledge. A freedom that is not a mere doing of what one loves, but a freedom that comes from loving what one must do. We believe in fidelity as the highest expression of freedom.
We do not ascribe to an ethics of compromise, but on an ethics of commitment. We do not believe in ambition, but magnanimity. Leadership leaves a legacy. And for this leadership to be sustainable, it must be ethical. An ethics that’s not about something good or bad, but one about good or better.
We have all been called to lead. Who will answer the call?