Today is the first day of 2025.

What a wonderful day to wake up in the new year.

Like any other day, it could be great and not so great depending on your perceived reality and expectations for the year.

We still have wars, rumors of wars, conflicts, preventable diseases and hunger, corruption, moral decay, environmental degradation, homelessness and drugs in many streets, and a host of other social ills.

But individuals at their level of their influence can make changes, foster and promote changes in their own lives and at their communities, without costing them a lot of their efforts, time, and energy.

We don't need more martyrs, we need pragmatic actors who are simply rooted in reality but optimistic and highly adaptive. 

In 2025, there are three areas that purpose-centric organizations will continuously contend even more: 

First, the rapid integration of generative AI to make the work of analysis, documentation, monitoring, and sense-making has become easier than ever before. But using AI technology alone at this incipient stage wont get your organization funded or put in the hall of fame for AI bandwagon. What you need to up your game is not reliance on technology to do your jobs but to augment technology with human insight using thick description to have a real feel of what's going on the ground and get the distinction right between perceptions and reality. What new skills do you need to augment AI in these areas?  

Second, during the pandemic, the weakest of the non-profits died a natural death, merged with a stronger entity, or carried their mandate in a new totally different form. These adaptations are crucial in an increasing tighter regulatory environments, private calls for more transparency public donations and net social impact  Where ESG and corporate philanthropy fail is where the non-profits succeed, with lots of social capital and credibility from the onset. But to exist automatically because you're serving the world is no longer a good business proposition and untenable. Your mission doesn't justify your existence, your sustainability and net social gain do. This time, the strongest will continue to be strong and the weak must be able to catch-up or else, there is no charity waiting in the horizon. You are expected to demonstrable impact at every turn. 

Third, when technology and increasingly mandatory impact as a business objective become front and centre, what investments will you be making to get this right?  Workforce upskilling is one, work flexibility, is another, and increasing organizational innovation, finding the right way to structure the organization according to fast growing societal trends and economic pressures.  What are you doing to strengthen the capacities you have from within? What opportunities  exist that you can leverage? What you should say No to so you can say Yes to growth? 

Changemakers, which I call "Provocateurs" will not be complacent about their success. You either do it or not, don't try.

And if your organization is not in the best position to tackle these challenges, get help and don't do this charade forever that everything is okay when it's not. You can do better than most executives at impacting many lives when you care about results than looking good in the annual reports and social media.

I was in an agri-show a few weeks ago and there, I met Ray.

Ray was the herd dog that was herding five ducks in a show to demonstrate how dogs can be good shepherd with proper training.

The ducks went into different obstacle challenges with Ray not barking once, but pre-empting the ducks' movements, nudging them to take a certain direction, and lastly, blocking their way so that they have no choice but to take the challenge.

It was a great experience to learn and see how Ray was a patient, methodical, and strategic herd.

I likened this to leaders who are trying their best to show their followers the way.

Through nudges, incentives and rewards, pre-emptions, and strategic blocks, leader fine-tune their styles to suit the temperaments of their team, the objectives at hand, and the process they had to be girded on. 

Herding is a process that requires high relational quotient. if your team doesn't trust you, your herding is scorned and ridiculed. 

Your attempts to pre-empt and redirect will be taken in contempt and mistaken to be self-serving.

Your nudges and subtle reminders will be ignored.

Like Ray, you don't need to bark to show them the way.

​Your subtle gestures are loud enough to warrant paying attention. 

I was talking to a coordinator of a research institute a few weeks ago and we talked about how community supporters can help in bridging the academe with community issues through their involvement and advice in their institute. 

Good idea, right?

Well, this idea is not new and had been proposed for several years but the supervisor refused to budge on the topic for various reasons: Money, adding up to work, etc.

When bureaucracy says no, almost all the time, it's just protecting the status quo and eliminating any threats to its  state of being. Community involvement means work but it will open up the institute to far greater input, new ideas, new partners, which will then lead to greater impact.

Results are not what bureaucracies are for, in general. When questioned, they tend to have a zero vision about outcomes, impacts, or resonance with real-world issues.

If our academic institutions are solely run on past successes and are afraid of building allies, then we should all be worried about our future generation!