long, it is too late. So you have to keep opposites in mind. One of the scenarios I'm sure all of you are playing is that when you come out ofschool you are going to get a job. But actually, you should be playing the opposite scenario-maybe when I come out ofschool nobody is going to give meajob and then you have to think,"What am I going to do?"ifthe scenario ofnobody offering me ajob turns out to be correct because that is happening to lots of youngsters around the world. They are coming out of school at the moment and they are playing one scenario:the world owes me a living and they are abso lutely shattered when nobody offers them a job and in thatsense you should keep opposites in mind.You should actually be saying to yourself, what's going to happen under these circumstances and under the opposite set of circumstances. The second golden rule is that you mustlook for periph eral events, events on the horizon which could become absolutely essential to your future in a very short space oftime. Let me give you a story. In 1876,a young man walked into the offices of Westem Union,which at the time was the largestcompany in America.It transmitted messages all around the country with Morse code.It was the largest telecommunications company in America at the time. And this young man walked into the offices of Western Union and said: "I have a device here which is going to make Morse code obsolete and I'm prepared to sell you that device for $100000. Western Union said,"Thanks, but no thanks - we're developing a more sophisticated Morse code system." Two years later they went to the young man and said,"We'll offer you $25 million dollars for your device. He said,"Thanks but no thanks - I've started myown company and it's doing rather well."The young man was Alexander Graham Bell whose device was the telephone and Westem Union was history! Now you can imagine exactly what Westem Union said when thatguy walked into their officesfor the firsttime. They said, "Who's this young whippersnapper? He's totally irrelevant to the future. Get him out ofthe office as quickly as possible." And ofcourse he brought them down.Now,in life there are always peripheral opportu nities and threats and you have to look for those periph eral opportunities and threats-the ones that are on the horizon. Don't look at the things right in front of youlook at the things right on the horizon. Now there are two things in South Africa which are on the horizon and which we should be planning for now. The first is, that the world economy is at its mostcom petitive at any stage of the twentieth century because everyone in the world is now beginning to understand the formula for economic success. So it's not just countries like Japan, Germany, Singa pore and Hong Kong-names which are always thrown up about economic success. It's countries like Indone sia, Malaysia, Argentina, Mexico. Everybody is team ing the key to economic success. So we're entering the world economy just at the moment that everybody is running that much faster in the race.And ofcourse,what happens when we enter the world economy? We all have strikes and labour unrest and everything else. Nobody says, "Hell, we can't afford this because all the other mnners are actually mnning ahead of us." It's kind of accepted as normal but it's not normal because we have a real peripheral threat right now which is the competi tiveness ofthe world economy. The second threat to this country is AIDS.The figures on AIDS are quite dramatic but the media don't even publicize them.They are puton page five in kind oftiny little articles. Right now 4,25% of the adult population of this country is HIV positive and the doubling time is 13 months.In Natal, where we are right here,9,26% of the population is sero positive and this is from tens of thousands of HIV blood tests, or blood tests for HIV which have been conducted in ante-natal clinics in this country.In other words,it's not the kind offigure from a small sample-it's a very, very big figure. Now,what does that mean for Natal? That means that out ofevery ten people you see,one person is going to die within the next fourteen to twenty years. In other words,they are going to die prematurely offull blown AIDS.That fig ure is going to double in the next thirteen months. And yet,I don'tknow, maybe the Natal Witness has actually made it a front line story but I bet you it hasn't given as much prominence to AIDS as it has to the election or to all the kinds ofcurrent things going on in the province. I bet you the Natal Mercury hasn't made AIDS a sort of banner headline and yet it is a silent killer that is stalk ing Natal. It's a peripheral threat which will become absolutely central to this province over the next five years. And nobody is doing anything about it. So that's why you've got to look for those peripheral things that are going to become essential. The third thing is that you must work out precisely what you can change and what you can't change because you want to adapt to the things you can't change and you want to exact maximum leverage out of the things you can change.Let me give you an example. In 480 BC,King Leonidas of Sparta faced an invading army of Persians led by King Xerxes. He transported his army ofthree million Persians over floating bridges on the Dardanelles. And he decided to make his stand on a cliff path with a very steep cliff on one side and a steep drop into the ocean on the other side. With three thousand Spartans he held offthis army ofthree million Persians for the space ofa week before he was betrayed' by one ofhis ownfollowers.Butthat completely turned the course of the campaign. Xerxes had to go back to Persia defeated in the end.The point ofthe story is that that was his place ofleverage. It was called the pass of Thermopylae and everybody has his points ofleverage. I mean I've been just looking at some ofthose marvel lous products that are produced out there. That's lever age.It's where nobody else is producing something and you come in and you decide that that is going to be your little market niche.That's where you're going to getlev erage in the market. That's what I mean by looking for those points ofleverage,working out precisely what you can change to exact maximum leverage. But ofcourse, you've also got to adapt to the things you can't change. Maybe the tastes in Natal are going to change in the next five years in terms of consumer products. I don't know,but you have gotto adaptto that,you can'tchange that. Well you can change it if you actually put your products into the local newspaper and advertise, maybe you can actually change tastes. But at the same time you've got to adapt to tastes.So it is really worth work ing out what you can and you cannotchange.I mean the marvellous story in Clanwilliam, which is an agriculKearsney Chronicle 1994 17
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