The Onion Way: Accountable and Strategic Leadership is like Peeling and Slicing
Peeling off the outer skin and slicing your onion into shiny rings mirrors leadership accountability and strategy.
Life is an organic whole; we make wealth from waste and heal from food. Never mind that urbanization has made distancing ourselves from the earth appear noble. We can equally gain wisdom and food from tilling the soil.
When I set out to cook even a small pot of jollof rice, a popular West African dish, the process takes me about two hours. Adding extra salt is avoidable, but peeling and slicing onions are inevitable. In leadership, you have core and supplementary activities, too.
And while I would rather not induce myself to tears when preparing a delicious meal to nourish my budding creative juices (I recently started a YouTube channel), I would fall short of my target without adding a sizeable amount of onions at each milestone: fried fish or meat, fried stew, and the winner — an orange-hot-looking and ready-to-eat portion of jollof rice on the table. As Sylvester Stallone would say, “That’s how winning is done!”
So, what do onions have in common with leadership? A couple of things, but the best parts are “peeling” and “slicing” yourself like this nutrient-rich vegetable. "Peeling refers to removing biases and affiliations that may hinder your leadership effectiveness while slicing represents the strategic allocation of your resources to delegate tasks effectively.
Peeling as Accountability
For many years, the Farmers’ Almanac has asked people to “waste not” and “want not” as diverse plants and food offer life-saving nutrients to help us lead our best lives.
Natalie LaVolpe sums up the invaluable nature of onion layers: “The outer skins of onion and garlic provide an excellent source of vitamins A, C, E, and numerous antioxidants. The skins of onions are also a rich source of flavonoids, particularly quercetin, a potent antioxidant and anti-inflammatory.”
But how does the back of this small paper-packaged ball of juice get such capacity? Vegetables like this protect themselves by reinforcing their outer layers with attacking and healing nutrients. So, while you may peel them, you’re advised to keep them for other uses. Leaders should peel off their biases in official matters. Outside official matters, your preferences are likely healthy, considering you’ve garnered trust from others.
Peeling refers to distancing yourself from affiliations that could undermine your integrity. It is how you protect yourself from the arms of the law and lurking spiteful criticisms awaiting fulfillment. You would have a hard time doing this if your office is attractive to vested interests, but if you shed off some benefits that could accrue to you personally, you’ll sharpen your focus.
The former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele, plunged the country’s finances through numerous payouts to the previous political administration. Now, he battles prolonged court trials he could have spared himself.
Imagine you're the chair of the organizing committee for a national children's Bible quiz with participants from various congregations and denominations, including yours. How would you ensure fair competition?
You shed off any bias that could make you favor your own church's children. In such a case, you should not be involved in creating practice materials for your church’s children, as you may inadvertently offer tips and suggestions they can leverage.
Peeling is also how you make yourself accountable. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO 26000:2010) describes accountability as:
accepting and responding to appropriate scrutiny and responsibility to prevent and remediate wrongdoing.
answerability to controlling interests, legal authorities, and those affected by its actions or inaction.
If you’re subject to your interests, you will lose accountability. However, you’d be free to focus when you shed your affiliations or anything that may cause you to yield to personal interests in official matters.
Slicing as Strategy
Some leaders hold multiple positions within a group and in other groups. Such leaders will perform even better by delegating their responsibilities to others available to support them and whom they could mentor.
The trust in being appointed to multiple positions is that your presence or vision could yield better results. Do not get carried away by thinking you’re endowed to do everything yourself. There is no joy in wearing yourself thin.
I have seen some people throw a whole onion after peeling off the back into a cooking pot. I doubt that is as effective as slicing your onions into your soup or spreading it atop your rice, chili, hot dog, and whatnot.
Don’t throw yourself into every task required of your office. Instead, slice your presence, energy, time, or any worthy resource of value you have to lend. This strategic approach will not only nudge your delegate towards effective task fulfillment but also inspire and motivate them to take ownership and excel in their roles.
In the example above, a small church may appoint you to head its children’s ministry. Still, as plans for a national competition take shape, the conference of children's ministers may also appoint you to head the national organizing committee.
In that case, while you may be excited about the possibility that your church winning the competition will further prove your capacity, you would not be free to focus on your national role unless you shed off that bias. Shedding would mean appointing someone else to lead your local children’s ministry.
Slicing alone won’t cut it.
When good people end up as bad examples of leadership for pandering to the requests of their admirers
Leaders who end up as bad examples often have many admirers and gain traction for leadership. When they falter, the public is shocked at the lost potential while MBA students pore over the details. Yet it is usually the case that such leaders either didn’t peel and slice, or they just sliced and it hurt.
Rajat Gupta allied with Rajaratnam in the Buffet-Goldman deal, and they both went to jail for it. Gupta was a rag-to-riches leader who ended up on the board of Goldman Sachs. Upon learning from a board meeting hours before the public that Warren Buffet was billed to invest in the bank, he sliced off some minutes to call Rajaratnam, who quickly bought nearly two hundred thousand shares.
Morgan Housel aptly sums up the life of Rajat Gupta and his ally in his book, The Psychology of Money, “… they went to prison for insider trading, their careers and reputations irrevocably ruined.”