Ogunmupe: The Winning Power Of Discipline

By Bayo Ogunmupe

PEOPLE often ask me if I know the secret of success and if I could teach others how to make their dreams come true. My answer is: you can succeed if you could work and pray. It is persistence in your work that will gain you success. Your persistence as well as other skills you can develop, will enable you to recognize your mistakes and learn from them. Moreover, you can use persistence to dodge the traps laid before you in order to keep you from succeeding. If you don’t quit, you can’t be beaten.

Also, discipline is crucial. Discipline is the learned ability to do the same thing over and over again. It requires discipline to perform tasks you don’t like. Discipline is that ability to form a pattern of making yourself responsible for yourself and forming framework upon which you can build a career. Concentrate on getting by allying with mentors and your master mind group.

Commitment to ideals is the essence of leadership. Aside of persistence and discipline, commitment is one more factor of success in life. Commitment means doing something over and over again until you get it right. It means sticking to something when it would be far easier to let go. Leadership today is to be accessible to supporters. Good ideas as well as talent come from the bottom up. Do not wall yourself off from those who can help you get to where you are going. Every battle needs foot soldiers. However, until you truly love what you do, you will never get where you want to go.

Maybe your peculiar idea of success may entail the ability to develop new methods of doing business, perhaps starting a new career or business or promoting a novel economic policy. Whatever philosophy you subscribe to, the most important thing is to become an expert in whatever it is you do. Be the best you can be. Sometimes, to be successful, you have to break a few rules. Barrack Hussein Obama broke two rules before becoming the 44th President of the United States in 2009. He broke the colour bar. He is an African American. He broke the religious bar, his grand father was a Moslem.

Keith Rupert Murdoch and his newspapers and television channels called him a terrorist during his presidential campaign. But with sheer miracle of achievement Obama not only became U.S. President, he won the Nobel Peace Prize of 2010. Also, he took out Osama bin Ladin.

Happiness through self realization is one of the real attractions for winners, not wealth. Happiness does not just happen to you. It comes through your actions, perceptions and timing. Happiness comes from the realization of your dreams. But to succeed in spite of odds requires the setting of unrealistic goals. Being overly realistic can be the kiss of death to your dreams. The only place to be realistic is about your time-table. The only way to make it happen is to surround yourself with people who share your goals. Then visualize for results, plan ahead for success.

Despite the wonders of the internet age, reading is still the best way to find out how other people live, other systems work.

In reading, you increase your awareness of language and vocabulary. These increase your chances of winning and influencing people. Reading enables you to develop a winning image. In surveys done using photographs of the same person in various attire, the subjects were typified as being blue-collar, executive or not based merely on the clothing they wore. Know this and use this knowledge to build your wardrobe. To make impact, always dress for the occasion. It is not only important to dress well, it is essential to be noticed in a quiet way. People want you to look pleasant rather than be self-confident and authoritative. The rule is that you should never wear more than three colours at one time. Maximise your appearance by being assertive. Being assertive does not mean stepping on toes. It means taking charge of your life. Avoid having others make important decisions for you.

You should always play to win. Only losers say it isn’t important to win. To get your way in anything, you must know and understand the players. Needs must always come first, wants come later. Approach players with playoffs they may be looking for. One may want only to improve his position. Another may want recognition, yet another may want to feel a sense of belonging. If you are dealing with a board, or group of people. You will need to analyse each member. You will need tact and compromise. This situation is much different from being a supervisor. The best way to succeed as a supervisor is to build a winning team. However, part of a supervisor’s job is to criticize. In this, the rule is to praise in public and criticize in private. But if your team member did anything exceptionally well, make sure that as many people as possible knew about it. Always give credit where credit is due, then good creative ideas will never dry from your teammates.

Our champion for this week is Keith Rupert Murdoch, the Australia born American media mogul, founder and chief executive of the global media holding company, The News Corporation Limited, which governed News Limited (Australia) News International (U.K) and News America Holdings Incorporated of the United States.

Murdoch’s corporate interests centered on newspaper, magazine, book and electronic publishing, television broadcasting and film and video production. Murdoch operates principally in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia.

The only son of Sir Keith Murdoch (1886-1952) a famous Australian war correspondent and publisher. Born in March 1931, Murdoch began with one newspaper in Adelaide, he acquired and started other publications in his native Australia before expanding News Corp into the U.K, the USA and Asia. Although his current media interests are still mainly in print, they are restricted by cross-media ownership rules.

Murdoch’s first foray into television was in the U.S, where he created Fox Broadcasting Company in 1986. In the 2000s, he became a leading investor in satellite television, the film, the internet; he purchased a leading American newspaper, The Wall Street Journal.

Early in life, Rupert had been groomed by his newspaper magnate father who sent him to the elite Geelong Grammar School. He later read politics, economics and philosophy at Worcester College, Oxford University in the U.K. He supported the Labour Party in Britain. When Murdoch was 22, he replaced his father who died suddenly. As managing director of News Limited in 1953, he added to his family business by buying the Sunday Times in Perth, Australia. He established himself as a dynamic business operator by acquiring Sydney’s afternoon tabloid, The Daily Mirror and the New Zealand daily, The Dominion.

While on an Australian Safari in 1964, he read of a takeover bid for a Wellington paper by the British based Canadian newspaper magnate, Lord Thomson of Fleet. He on the spur of the moment launched a counter-bid which the 32-year-old Murdoch won. Thereafter, he launched The Australian. In 1972 he acquired The Daily Telegraph from Sir Frank Packer, who later regretted selling it to him. That year Murdoch threw his power behind the Australian Labour Party under the leadership of Gough Whitlam who later became Prime Minister.

In Britain, Murdoch acquired The Sun; The Times and The Sunday Times. Then his papers supported Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. Later Murdoch switched his support to the Labour leader, Tony Blair who in the subsequent election won with a wide margin. Murdoch’s British based satellite network, Sky Television, owing to debts, accepted a merger with British Satellite Broadcasting in 1990. They have dominated the British TV market ever since.

In the USA, Murdoch acquired San Antonio Express – News, founded Star, a supermarket tabloid in 1973. He became American citizen to enable him own media in 1985. He has also expanded to Hong Kong. The Bahamas and Islands in the Pacific. Murdoch has dined with every American President since Harry Truman. He has been married three times, has six children and is worth more than six billion dollars according to the 2010 list of Forbes richest