006: Bill Taylor – Do You Pass The Leadership Test?

“The true mark of a leader is the willingness to stick with a bold course of action — an unconventional business strategy, a unique product-development roadmap, a controversial marketing campaign — even as the rest of the world wonders why you’re not marching in step with the status quo. In other words, real leaders are happy to zig while others zag. They understand that in an era of hyper-competition and non-stop disruption, the only way to stand out from the crowd is to stand for something special.” – William C. “Bill” Taylor

This is drawn by the duo at Ramen-Empire. You can check out their comic strip too.

This comic is an original story that I think might be complicated because of the number of layers in the story versus the amount of panels used. I had to keep it short and use less panels due to the nature of the quote, but still tell the story. I took a chance on this story anyway. I hope you like it.

The quote in the comic is from Bill Taylor, co-founder of Fast Company Magazine. This quote of his, comes from the opening paragraph of his article at Harvard Business Review entitled, “Do You Pass The Leadership Test?“. His quote is related to his book, Mavericks at Work. The award-winning book is about how leaders with creative and innovative thinking will ultimately be successful in the 21st century and how you can be such a person. I think he is right, but I also think creative and innovative thinking has helped many people in the past ‘win’ as well. If such a classic technique is useful to people past and future, I’m sure it will be useful to you in the present. So take his advice to heart.

For those more business savvy among you, you would probably spot the, “nobody wears shoes in Africa story” reference. I though it would be a cute plot twist. By the way, that story is just a business urban legend and not true. However, it does bring up an important business insight.

There are few things to clarify, in case of misrepresentation. Firstly Africans do know about and/or wear shoes and flip-flops. However since Africa is such a large continent, it’s a bad idea to generalise. Only some parts of Africa are largely without shoes, and it is mainly because it’s so hot that wearing shoes is impractical. Secondly, the Africans you see in the comic are the Maasai people from Kenya. The false bit in the comic is that they don’t live that near to the coast, but some distance inland. Third, the pirate captain is not white. He is based on the pirate red beard, who is Turkish. In fact, if you look at the comic hard enough, you realise that the pirate’s ship sails out of Turkey and not mainland Europe.

I hope you have learnt something from look at this quote. If you didn’t quote catch the entire story, please let me know in the comments below.