It takes faith to watch over the world and believe that one can somehow steer it in a different direction. However, it takes more than having faith to make a difference in the world. Faith in itself gives a person hope, comfort and strength to face the situation, but without the acquisition of the much-needed knowledge, wisdom and insights, such faith cannot save anybody. Boldness, panache, and charisma, etc. doesn’t solve problems in themselves, they do not move the mountains in themselves. Faith is simply an all-things-are-possible state of mind, an unwavering conviction that you can get the job done. 

But Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” 

Matthew 19:26 (ESV)

You are always going to need to have faith in God to empower you for certain things, especially when you are trying to have a socio-economic impact on the world around you. The Watchman watches over their world as an expression of a sense of divine duty. The idea that they are serving something, part of a cause that is greater than them. Nevertheless, just because you have faith that something is possible, does not mean it would be easy. There is a great difference between claiming something is possible and claiming that something is easy. Your faith must eventually seek out knowledge and practical wisdom to accomplish the goal. 

It is dangerous to have zeal without knowledge, and the one who acts hastily makes poor choices.

Proverbs 19:2 (NET)

Being enthusiastic but not thinking carefully about what we are about to do is not good; doing things hastily can cause us a lot of trouble [IDM].

Proverbs 19:2 (T4T)

In practice, one would do well to remember that it is the application of knowledge and wisdom that solves problems. Let your faith drive you towards knowledge. 

You need more than HOPE, COMFORT and STRENGTH in this matter. 

Haven’t you been paying attention?

Do you not understand that HOPE is not a strategy?

What does it mean for something to be considered impossible? How certain are you that you can properly differentiate and distinguish between extremely difficult and impossible? It could be extremely difficult for you to single-handedly build a rocket and take a trip to the moon. Extremely difficult, but certainly not impossible. It would be easier, but certain still “extremely difficult” for you to start a company with a goal to assemble an expert team that can build a rocket that can ferry people to the moon. This is not impossible, just extremely difficult. We should stop claiming something is impossible if it has been done before. 

So, it is not a bright idea to claim something is impossible if there is a proof that it has been done before. 

You therefore want to really perform a thorough search before concluding something might be impossible because it has not been done before. You want to be sure that it is not merely a difficult undertaking, but it is really impossible. I reckon that during every season in life, certain things will always seem out of reach and hence, “impossible”. On the other hand, certain things that used to be impossible are now everyday experiences for you. 

So, is it impossible, or it just seems impossible for you to do because you are yet to grow spiritually, intellectually or emotionally into the stature of the person that can get it done?  

Furthermore: when you were in primary school: 

1 – 8 = IMPOSSIBLE 

√3 = IMPOSSIBLE 

…when you further your education, you learn that: 

1 – 8 = -7

√3 = 1.73 

In fact, you actually learn that √-1 = i (complex numbers) when you really get into advanced studies. Introducing the character i empowers one to deal with situations that would have been considered impossible. Here is the big idea: EVERYTHING THAT LOOKS IMPOSSIBLE TO YOU TODAY LOOKS THAT WAY BECAUSE YOU DO NOT HAVE ADEQUATE KNOWLEDGE. You see more opportunities and possibilities when you get an education! 

So, do you want to go beyond IMPOSSIBLE? Get an education, don’t stop until you get a PhD. 

You will be surprised at the range of ideas and possibilities you would begin to see when you get a proper education by apprenticeship, mentorship, schooling, taking some courses or personal study. Those who received education have more range, and with God on their side, nothing can be considered impossible for them. 

It is up to us to reduce the scope of what seems impossible for us to tackle.

A wise man once said:

“All of physics is either impossible or trivial. It is impossible until you understand it, and then, it becomes trivial”

Ernest Rutherford

I am wary of people who are quick to throw around the “impossible” word, or those quick to reject some new idea as not practical. It is neither a sign of intelligence nor maturity. It is usually a sign of ignorance and illiteracy to reject a new thought or idea without clearly articulated reasons. Our daily living does not require us to think and challenge every idea out there, and as such, we fail to recognise that everything we consider normal today was not always so.

I think that by definition; nothing is possible and nothing can be done until someone, someday proves it can be done. An agent of change must understand that no progress is to be had by rehashing current ideas (Albert Einstein calls it madness). Progress would demand that we rethink what is possible, aim for a better understanding about why EXACTLY something is considered impossible.

Did you give up on your quest because “they” claimed it was impossible or did you actually hit a brick wall you couldn’t demolish?

“Never tell a young person that anything cannot be done. God may have been waiting centuries for someone ignorant enough of the impossible to do that very thing.”

G. M. Trevelyan

The best time to plant a tree is always twenty years ago, and the second-best time to plant the tree will always be now. This is nearly a universal truth. The analogy here is that the only way you can live your best life possible is when you get a chance to build upon the works of others that have gone ahead of you. If that infrastructure does not exist, life is harder and progress is very, very slow. It is your job to identify such gaps in your world and then set out to see how things could change over time.

It takes vision, patience and some measure of selflessness to plant a tree. You have to ignore the hunger pangs of today in favour of the abundance the tree would make possible when it matures in the future. This is where it gets tricky; how do we ignore the needs of today to focus solely on long-term projects? Yet, there is no other way to usher in a better world. It might be easier to pluck from other trees, or plant shrubs instead, but they all lack the long-lasting impact of a good tree.

A true Watchman sooner or later realises that energy is actually best invested into projects that will don’t yield a return instantly. You might go broke for years while you await the maturity of your “tree project”. And that is OK, because once the tree reaches maturity, not only will it change your life forever, it will also provide an enabling environment for others.

Dear watcher, what is your 10-year project?

There is a mountain out there with your name all over it. Now, you have just got to find it. You could choose to do anything you like with your life, it is your life and your time after all, but then, you know deep down that you would never get a sense of fulfilment if you spent your entire life chasing down stones and molehills. A watcher is identified by a sense of commitment to something greater than themselves. It is like they empty themselves of anything that gives them a personal identity in favour of embodying an idea whose time has come.

It is time to take a look around you and begin to critically think about how you can make a difference in the society. There are so many things that are out-of-place, and you could take a look at how you could set it right and fair. One has to engage carefully, as it is well known that re-painting the toilet will never solve the plumbing problem. There is always a need to think carefully about any problem out there that one intends to solve. Question everything and test all assumptions about the problem.

The sooner you accept that your future requires you to move a mountain, the better. You will then be able to devote the time required to identify the right mountain to move. It is not about moving just any mountain, you have to move the mountain. Once you identify the mountain, you can then proceed to build up your knowledge base and get ready to move the mountain.

Proceed thoughtfully.

It is fashionable to consider oneself a Watchman or shall we say a Superhero. However, we have to understand that choosing to watch over your world means you are ready to go beyond the mundane affairs of life and embrace a life of fighting battles, putting out fires and moving mountains. This is not in reference to your own personal battles only, but to take on things that ordinarily would be none of your personal business. A real person on watch is dedicated to the common good and ready to do what is required.

“A strong man stands up for himself, a stronger man stands up for others”

Ben the cow, Barnyard (2006)

That is the core of what it means to watch your world. It is a commitment to take on the responsibility to consciously steer the world towards a better future. The world does not advance on its own, it requires brave people who are committed to set things right and fair. This is an extremely difficult undertaking, and that is why we have very few watchers in today’s world. Life is hard enough when one is only focussed on personal growth and advancement, why would I take on even more work? It is hard to be a superhero, yet something tugs your heart and nudges you towards that direction.

There is no sidestepping this. The future of our dreams requires us to fight. You will have to fight for it, there are fires to put out and mountains that must be moved out of the way for the greater good. The good life you enjoy today was enabled by the labour of the watchers of time past, now, it is our turn to lay the foundations of a better future.

Building a prosperous society is not as simple as flooding the community with cash. If it was a money problem, a government could easily mint as much money as it considers necessary and distribute to the poor communities, but it is not a money problem. This fundamentally reveals that poverty is not merely “absence” of money, and we must think about poverty differently. Poverty and scarcity is not a root problem in itself, it is more of a symptom that something more sinister is going on. The solution to poverty is not doling out money on the streets or giving hand-outs.

We need to realise that fostering a wealthy and prosperous society is not actually a function of how much money is in the system. It is not a money problem, it is a productivity problem. That is why governments do not print money arbitrary, because printing money does not increase the productivity of the people. When you print more money without an increase in productivity to match it, it leads to inflation and a worse hardship than the initial conditions. Wealth is created when productivity is increased, there is no other way. We must therefore understand that our real goal is to increase the productivity of the people.

The poverty and disenfranchisement in the society is due to unproductivity, which is enabled by illiteracy and injustice. None of this can be solved with money. An illiterate requires education, not money. Handing out money in a corrupt and unjust society does not induce better productivity because there is no enabling environment that encourages such. I do not think the bible teaches us to continuously hand out money, food or stuff to the poor and needy. Rather, the bible emphasises over and over again the need to fight oppression, enable justice and advises the foolish to seek knowledge and wisdom.

When we do that, people will be empowered to do their best work possible, productivity increases and poverty is eradicated. A prosperous society is a productive society, and a productive society is enabled by a just system and a critical mass of literate people.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This post is an extract from Power Of The Mastermind: The Driving Force For Faster Success In Life And Business by Ademola Morebise.

I think the most powerful force on earth is the mastermind of five (5) distinct individuals. They have the power to reshape the world, they could wipe out mankind if they wished.

If we could have five (5) people – a quintet that choose to lay aside their personal ambitions and fully, completely concentrate their energies upon a single vision they feel is worth pursuing, THERE IS NOTHING IN THE UNIVERSE THAT CAN STOP THEM.

In this section, our discourse is about a group of five (5) individuals that are working on the same project, business, or some vision, as opposed to five (5) individuals coming together to mastermind over their five (5) separate individual ambitions.

Masterminds of two (2) are effective, but their impact rarely extends beyond achievement of personal ambitions and maybe some contribution to the society. A mastermind alliance of five (5) individuals can set the world on fire. If you want to change the world, find a way to induce five (5) people to unite in one heart and mind.

This sort of mastermind works because while five (5) people is definitively a crowd, the group is still small enough for stronger bonds between individuals. It is easier for participants to really know each other and completely trust the motives and intents of everyone involved.

When we try to induce a large team of people to work together, we spend more time on team maintenance than on the actual work we had in mind to do. It is a well-known fact that larger teams are notorious for been ineffective. Indeed, large teams seems to work only because there is some mastermind quorum buried somewhere inside it.

The challenge is that a lot of energy is required for coordinating and ensuring a larger assemble of individuals is motivated, and this effectively DRAINS OUT THE BENEFITS of the collaborative effort.

Two (2) things happen when we deal with a larger group. It becomes more difficult to coordinate and communicate. It is not about the number of people involved per se, it is that the larger the group, the larger the number of links between them which makes coordination and communication difficult.

For a mastermind of two (2) individuals, that is a single link.

For a mastermind of five (5) individuals, that works out to ten (10) links between everyone.

There is actually a formula for calculating the number of links between members of a group: n(n-1)/2.

As the group size increases, the number of links begins to get out of proportion: fifteen (15) people works out to a hundred and five (105) links, and fifty (50) people share one thousand, two hundred and twenty-five (1, 225) links in between them.

A mastermind of five (5) individuals have just ten (10) links in between them, it is a number we can easily manage without getting bogged down in team maintenance. The small number also means that we have enough diverse interactions and intercourse of ideas to generate forward momentum as compared to a smaller team of two or three individuals. Five (5) individuals just feels right.

The Numbers Trap

When I claim that a small mastermind group of five (5) individuals cooperating in the spirit of harmony can impact the world, and build out a global organisation, I am sure such a radical idea will meet its own share of resistance.

Many visionary leaders always fall into the trap of thinking that they need more people. That having more people will always help them move towards their goal faster, the facts show the opposite.

What adding up numbers actually does is that, it boosts your confidence significantly. But it is a mental trap. It traps you into thinking that you can get more things done, an optimism that is largely misplaced.

The reader might be familiar with some models such as Pareto’s 80/20 Principle or Price’s Square Root Law.

Derek J. de Solla Price, who was a British Physicist discovered something about his peers in academia. He noticed that there were always a handful of people who were dominating all scientific publications within an area of science.

He ended up proposing that “the square root of the number of people in a domain of work do 50% of the work”. That is the statement of the law known as Price’s Square Root Law.

This implies that if we have a team of twenty-five (25) people, we would have five (5) key individuals responsible for half of all the results, while the others would produce the other half. For a team of ten (10), you would observe three (3) outstanding players on the team.

If you have ever been a part of a large team, I hope you can certainly relate to these observations of mine.

Numbers never guarantee anything, if you say it is impossible to build out a global organisation with just five (5) individuals working in a spirit of harmony, I can as easily inform you that there is no proof either that you can achieve that with any number at all. Whether a hundred or a thousand, there is no proof that you need any certain number of people to win every war you head into.

This begs the question: how exactly do we win in wars or business? I think the answers are: insights and strategy. It is the superiority of the deployed strategy that wins wars and not necessarily the amount of bodies you throw at a war.

The business team operating with the better strategy will win, not those operating with the largest teams or deepest pockets or even the better product. The business team with the best strategy wins.

How then do we develop the best strategies? This is the right question to ponder upon. And even if we cannot agree on an answer, I hope we can agree that it has NOTHING TO DO WITH THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE ON THE TEAM.

I would rather have a small team and go to work boosting their psyche, than have a large team that traps us into thinking we cannot lose, because of the numbers.

Five (5) Heads Are Better Than Two (2)

You need at least two (2) individuals cooperating in the spirit of harmony to form a mastermind. On paper, it would seem that adding more people to the group would increase the power available and a stronger presence of The Mastermind.

However, in real life, as with most things, it is not such black-and-white. The magic in a mastermind group really begins to shine when you have at least five (5) individuals present.

All things been equal, they can coordinate more effort, access more knowledge, resources and talents than any group of smaller individuals can, and at the same time retain pretty much most of the intimacy and unity you would find in smaller groups of two (2) or three (3).

Five people trying to coordinate their knowledge and effort, in a spirit of harmony, for the attainment of a definite purpose will generate a stronger presence of The Mastermind and reach resolutions faster. Five heads are better than two.

Two people induced to work in a spirit of harmony become two halves of the same mind. Five people induced in likewise manner creates a hive-mind. This does not necessarily mean that there will be no conflict and that they agree on every matter, but over time, there will be this collective clarity and precision in harnessing their individual knowledge and talents for the progress of their collective objective.

It is interesting that we cannot conclude that ten heads are better than five, because at that point, coordinating, communicating and maintaining a spirit of harmony at all times becomes more challenging. If by some chance, the ten individuals achieve that atmosphere of harmony, it still would not carry the kind of potency I am suggesting a smaller group of five can have.

A suitable analogy to use is a large party vs a small party. At a large party, everyone has a good time but there is no time for depth and engaging any single person for a long period of time – so many people to meet. At a smaller party, everyone still has a good time, but there is time to go in-depth with a handful of people.

To the man or woman that wants to change the world, while acknowledging that you cannot do it alone, you need to also be persuaded that you do not need a thousand heads on the committee. Five individuals working together in the spirit of harmony will generate the atmosphere that will make progress faster.

Indeed, any visionary out there that can understand the principle of the mastermind and then set out to diligently and discriminately assemble a mastermind group, is already half-way successful.

Is Five (5) Really The Magic Number?

Five (5) is the optimised number for the kind of effect promised, I stand by that. It is common knowledge within mastermind circles that having five members is the ideal size for an intimate mastermind group. Seasoned coaches and counsellors that engage in group coaching or group counselling usually favour having four clients at a time, which gives five individuals in total.

Identifying a mastermind group of five working on a single vision can be a bit tricky. Unlike a duo in which both individuals could more easily share the spotlight, a mastermind group of five rarely shines the spotlight on everybody, you usually have a single individual or two people taking the credit.

We have already proven early on in this book, how hard it could be for a single person to achieve massive success on their own. You will always need to induce cooperation from other individuals who might remain in the shadows. They might not be as well-known as the main character, but they have significant roles to play towards accomplishment of the set goal.

In the music industry, you have five member groups that are well-known, but within other domains, it could be hard to pin point the members of a tag team that is making some massive breakthrough possible and so, a single person takes the credit.

When it comes to personal achievement, few can match the stature of a man like Albert Einstein. Albert Einstein is considered by many quarters to be the archetype genius. The man that changed the perception and understanding of our universe forever.

There is a side to the Einstein story that is not as well-known as the main discourse around his revolutionary physical theories. Albert Einstein had a mastermind group that met regularly for several years in his home; the Olympia Academy. It has been wildly reported that this group had an effect on Einstein’s intellectual development.

The Olympia Academy was founded in 1902 by a twenty-three year old Einstein and a few friends. Initially, the intention was to make some extra money by offering private physics classes in his home, but after Einstein placed an advert in the papers and Maurice Solovine, a philosophy student responded to the advert, neither payments nor classes materialised. They rather started discussions around physics and philosophy.

Over time, the group expanded into three core members with about two to three others stopping by from time-to-time.

The mastermind meetings only lasted a few years but it had a long lasting effect on all members of the group, particularly on Albert Einstein. It provided a very good sounding board for his weird ideas.

A more recent example of such a quintet that could be easily verified would be the group that founded the social network; Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg is rightly portrayed as the face of the company and we all see him as the genius that started this company from his dorm room and took it global. The reality is that Facebook officially recognises up to five men with the title: cofounder.

At inception, Facebook was started by a group of five individuals working together. The lion share of the company was held by Mark Zuckerberg, but he founded it along with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes.

Five individuals working together towards a common goal, they were able to create Facebook, one of the most powerful companies on earth right now.

Around the year 1300 BCE, Moses, the man said to be mighty in words and deeds seemed to have single-handedly freed the Jews from Egyptian slavery and led them to the Holy Land that God had promised them.

One does not need to probe too deeply before you realise that Moses worked with people. I identified other individuals such as Aaron, Miriam, Hur and the much younger Joshua Nun as core members of Team Moses. Moses seemed to have this core group of five core individuals – a quintet with whom he worked.

Moses deservingly gets all the credit, but he was able to induce these other individuals to cooperate with him in the spirit of harmony in order to lead approximately three million people out of slavery and through the wilderness towards their “Promise Land”.

Let us take another trip to the year 46AD. Five men in Antioch, a populous city of ancient Syria (now South-Central Turkey) started meeting regularly to fellowship (aka mastermind) together. Their names were given as: Barnabas, Simeon “the black man”, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen (who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch) and Paul. These men where united with a common vision; they needed to take the message they had global.

In the place of fellowship, Barnabas and Paul got selected to go on what we now consider as the first missionary journey of Apostle Paul. While very little is known of the other three members of the mastermind group, Paul and Barnabas were the ones projected into the limelight while the others must have continued to support from behind the scenes.

A small group of five individuals cooperating with a spirit of harmony were able to take their message around the world. There is nothing that cannot be accomplished with a team of five people working together.

Five is the sweet number to aim for if you want to change the world that is how you make a global impact. I would concede that you might be able to achieve the same effect from four individuals and upwards to around eight individuals in the room, but no more.

The smallest organised unit of soldiers in the Roman Army was called a Contubernium, and they were never allowed to grow larger than eight members. On the other hand, the U.S. Navy Seals have decided on four men as the optimal size for a combat team.

Bottom-line: you want to probably stick to a single digit and consider splitting up teams into subgroups as you approach the ten (10) members mark.

I hope that balances out the views expressed in this section of the book a bit. Five heads are better than two.

Your Mastermind Quintet

My purpose and real intention with this section of our discourse is to inspire people to come together in teams of five and tackle huge problems. I think it is time to leverage this idea—a mastermind of five for massive results.

In a lot of ways, wealth creation is tied to problem solving. Making money is merely a reward for solving problems, this grants us a great window of opportunity here.

Imagine you had a group of five individuals who met consistently every week, maybe Saturdays to mastermind over some of the biggest problems in the society. Can you imagine all the good they could do and all the solutions and wealth they could create?

One does not need to go too far before one begins to see problems that are worthy of such an approach. Problems that should ideally force us to lay down our personal ambitions and embrace something bigger.

There are millions of children out there that cannot read, write or do basic math. Of these, roughly half are In Africa. The vast majority are girls. This number is now increasing further because of conflict and disease outbreak in various parts of the world. This is a terrible situation, which must be addressed.

The question seems to be “how do we build enough schools, hire enough teachers, provide enough books, and other materials, to educate so many children?” Where will we get the money? And how long will it take before we have done all that; it might be decades, and meanwhile a whole generation’s future will have been lost!

If you are reading this right now, it might never occur to you that you are privileged, there are millions of people out there that are not considered to be literate. This is a problem we can solve. This is a problem we must solve in our lifetimes.

If five (5) individuals get into a room, mastermind together, think hard enough, solutions and strategies will appear. They are unstoppable. THE MASTERMIND ALLIANCE DOES NOT ERR, you get the best possible path to forge ahead.

There is no problem that can withstand a bombardment of thoughts. If we could concentrate, meeting consistently to think and discuss about it, we can truly make a difference in the long run.

With a forecast that the world’s population will hit 9.8 billion around year 2050. I think it is time to start masterminding around food production and agriculture. With long term business thinking, you do not need to be a genius to figure out that food production and the complete elimination of food wastage have the potentials for massive returns.

Africa currently imports around $35bn worth of food each year and that figure is projected to rise to $110billion by 2025. The interesting thing is that Africa is importing food not really because they don’t produce enough food, but because the post-harvest loss is a problem that is yet to be meaningfully solved at scale.

Let us consider a very simple case study; Nigeria is the largest producer of tomatoes in Africa and also the net importer of tomatoes in the world. Confused? Don’t be. The tomatoes produced are not quickly processed and hence get spoiled.

Groups of five individuals need to start meeting consistently, to see how they could tackle the problem. I fail to see how solving these problems could be impossible. The solutions WILL APPEAR to the team of five that dedicates time, energy and attention towards finding sustainable fixes for them.

We do not need to go too far before we see problems that are global in nature and that could really benefit from a mastermind approach. You do not need any special calling or appointment. Go on now, appoint yourself to tackle a problem you can feel connected to and look for like-minded people you could mastermind with. Commit to meeting weekly over the next two to three years. This could be how you lay the foundations for your own billion-dollar company.

There is nothing inherently bad or immoral with living a life that centres on doing business, an obsession with making money or earning a living somewhere. It is not a crime in itself, but be informed that society only works when we can get that balance of givers and takers. Therefore, we would rather claim that a life that centres on making money (especially without morals or ethics) is a sign of immaturity. A society where everyone simply takes without giving thought to contribution, soon collapses as the driving force of greed soon destroys everyone.

We miss the point when we think poverty and scarcity is simply lack of money, it is not. The greatest idea-virus in this era is our slant towards rethinking and rephrasing every problem into a money problem. We define our problems in terms of how much money we think can solve it and give no room to what really solves problems: the insights we get when we apply knowledge and wisdom to truly understand a problem. Money does not solve problems, it only buys ready-made solutions. Money cannot create a solution.

It is easier to get money than to develop the knowledge and wisdom to actually solve your problems.

For wisdom is a defence, and money is a defence: but the excellency of knowledge is, that wisdom giveth life to them that have it.

Eccl 7:12 (KJV)

A true watcher must understand this.

The key to greatness is selflessness. You achieve true greatness when you understand that at the highest levels of achievements and accomplishments, life is no longer about you. Selfishness and an unhealthy obsession with one’s personal advancement is actually an impediment on the road to greatness. It will be very hard to identify anyone operating at the highest realms of life that remains obsessed with themselves. Ideally, one seeks political offices for a chance to serve and not to be served. A study of billionaires would reveal to you that they are driven by certain ideals that goes beyond money, the money is just a nice-to-have side effect.

But Jesus called them to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Matt 20:25-28 (ESV)

Unless you truly understand what it means to be selfless and embrace service as a core value, you will not be able to unlock the doors of greatness. Selflessness and a heart for service will bring you into better alignment with the greater good and common good. This is something that often conflicts with selfish interests and personal pursuits, but once you rid your soul of all that, the purity that is left transforms you into a true agent of God. A vessel through which the greater good can be championed. Your watch truly begins the day you set aside your selfish interests and begin to seek the betterment of the world you are watching over.

That is when your good life begins to morph into a great one.