Asher's Blog

Every founder operates with a theory of human nature, whether or not they have taken the time to articulate it.

The theory appears in whom the founder trusts, how the company hires, what it rewards, how much responsibility employees receive and what happens when somebody makes a mistake. It determines whether the founder believes people can grow, whether talent can be developed and whether an employee who is currently average can become exceptional.

A founder who believes people are naturally lazy will build one kind of company. That company may rely heavily on surveillance, approval and punishment because its systems begin with the assumption that people will avoid responsibility whenever they can. A founder who believes everyone can be trusted without verification will build another kind of company, and that company may eventually discover that optimism without controls creates opportunities for carelessness or abuse.

Neither theory remains philosophical for very long. Once it enters a company, it becomes policy, process, culture and consequence.

This is why founders should examine what they believe about people. We are not merely building products; we are organising human effort. Every company depends on customers making choices, employees accepting responsibility, leaders exercising judgment, investors extending trust and partners honouring agreements. If our assumptions about human beings are shallow or unexamined, those assumptions will eventually appear in the weaknesses of the organisation.

Our theories come from somewhere

Most of us did not consciously choose our earliest theory of human nature. We inherited it.

It came from our families, our faith, our schools and the communities in which we grew up. It came from the political environment around us, the kind of leadership our societies permitted and the behaviour we gradually learned to regard as normal. It was shaped by whether authority figures kept their word, whether hard work was rewarded and whether the systems around us appeared fair.

In Africa, where many societies are strongly faith-driven, our beliefs about God, purpose, morality and human dignity often influence how we see people. Faith may teach us that every person has value and that leadership carries responsibility. It may also shape our understanding of work, stewardship, forgiveness and accountability.

However, culture can introduce other assumptions at the same time. If people grow up watching public institutions fail repeatedly, they may begin to believe that systems never work. If political leadership rewards connections more consistently than competence, people may learn that excellence matters less than access. If ordinary amenities are unreliable, ambition can become focused on escaping dysfunction rather than imagining what an excellent society could build.

Exposure changes this. When someone experiences a place where transport works, public infrastructure is maintained, institutions are dependable and innovation is encouraged, the person’s sense of possibility can expand. The experience reveals that what once appeared inevitable may simply have been tolerated.

The difference is not that the people in one society possess a completely different human nature. The difference is that systems, expectations and examples have trained human potential in different directions.

This matters for founders because the people entering our companies carry these experiences with them. Some have been taught to wait for instructions. Some have learned that questioning a leader is disrespectful. Some have never worked in an environment where excellence is clearly defined and consistently rewarded. Others have experienced strong institutions and arrive expecting clarity, autonomy and accountability.

The founder’s job is not to complain endlessly about the habits people bring into the organisation. It is to build an environment that develops the behaviour the company needs.

My theory begins with human potential

The first theory of human nature I would promote is the theory of human potential. I believe everybody is potentiated to do something well. Everybody has an area of strength, and with the right combination of effort, opportunity, instruction and character, people can become genuinely valuable in that area.

I do not believe one kind of ability should be glorified while another is treated as inferior. The person who understands numbers quickly is not inherently more valuable than the person who understands people, communicates clearly, builds with their hands, notices risks or creates beauty. Societies and companies need different forms of excellence, and intelligence expresses itself in more ways than the narrow categories we often celebrate.

This does not mean everybody can perform every role equally well, or that desire alone eliminates all differences in aptitude. People have different interests, starting points, temperaments and natural strengths. A person may be capable of learning a particular skill but have no genuine interest in the work required to master it.

I do not have much interest in animals, for example. I could read about them and learn more than I presently know, but it is not an area towards which I naturally direct my attention. It would make little sense for me to construct my life around becoming exceptional in a field I do not care enough about to study deeply.

The important task is therefore not to pretend that every person can or should become excellent at everything. It is to discover where interest, capacity and useful work meet. When people find that intersection and are willing to develop themselves, they can often achieve far more than their environment initially predicted.

Diligence and humility are a powerful combination

One of my strongest beliefs about human potential is that diligence and humility, when combined, can carry a person remarkably far.

Diligence without humility creates a person who works very hard at the wrong thing and resists every attempt at correction. Humility without diligence may create someone who listens politely, agrees with good advice and never applies enough effort to produce a meaningful result. The power appears when a person is willing to exert themselves and equally willing to discover that their present approach is inadequate.

I believe anybody who becomes highly diligent and remains humble enough to learn has the capacity to become a massive success in the area that suits them.

Humility is often misunderstood as softness, timidity or speaking modestly about oneself. I see it more practically. Asking questions is humility because a question admits that there is something you do not yet understand. Receiving correction is humility because it permits another person’s insight to improve your work. Examining your assumptions is humility because it accepts that your first interpretation may not be the best one.

Experimentation is also an expression of humility. When you run an experiment, you allow reality to judge the idea. You may hold a strong opinion, but you remain willing to test whether customers behave as you predicted, whether the process produces the intended result and whether another approach works better.

Relearning is humility too. A method may have helped you succeed at one stage and become unsuitable at the next. The humble person is not so loyal to yesterday’s knowledge that they refuse to learn what tomorrow requires.

This combination of diligence and humility matters more to me than the performance of intelligence. I am interested in people who are determined to become excellent, who can concentrate on a difficult objective, who seek feedback and who continue improving until the quality of their work changes visibly.

Extremely good is not merely a measure of IQ

When I say that a company needs extremely good people, I am not referring only to IQ. Raw intellectual ability matters in some roles, and pretending it never matters would be dishonest. Certain people understand abstract ideas quickly, process complex information faster or recognise patterns that others initially miss.

But being extremely good is also a decision expressed through behaviour. It is the willingness to study the problem longer, practise the skill, examine previous work, ask better questions and continue refining an answer after an average person would have stopped.

Two people may not begin with the same facility for mathematics. One person may understand a concept almost immediately, while another needs several explanations and many hours of practice. If mathematics is essential to the second person’s chosen work, then the relevant question is not whether learning feels equally easy. The question is whether the person is willing to invest the additional time required to become competent.

Time and focused effort can compensate for many differences in starting point, although not necessarily for every difference or in every field. A mature theory of potential should inspire effort without turning struggle into shame. Some people will need more time, different teaching or another route to mastery. Others will discover that their strongest contribution lies elsewhere.

The mistake is to confuse present performance with permanent capacity. A person who is slow today may be building a depth of understanding that becomes valuable later. A person who learns quickly may plateau because early ease prevented them from developing discipline. Potential is not revealed only by the speed of the first attempt; it is also revealed by the quality of a person’s response to difficulty.

Small, excellent teams can outperform large, unfocused ones

Another part of my theory of human nature is that you do not always need ten people to do a job faster. In many situations, one or two highly capable and focused people, working with a clear objective, can produce a better result than a larger group whose ownership is divided.

Adding people does not automatically add output. Every additional person introduces communication, coordination and decision costs. If the objective is unclear, a larger team can create more activity while making responsibility harder to locate. Meetings increase, updates multiply and everyone appears occupied, yet the result remains unfinished.

A small team with clear ownership can often think more deeply and move more quickly. The people involved understand the objective, recognise how their decisions affect one another and cannot easily hide behind the activity of the group.

However, this only works when the people are genuinely good and the objective is clear. A founder should not use the idea of small teams as an excuse to under-resource important work or place impossible burdens on employees. Focus is not the same as exhaustion. Lean execution does not mean expecting one person to perform several specialised jobs indefinitely without support.

The principle is that headcount should not be used as a substitute for clarity or quality. Before hiring five more people, the founder should ask whether the existing problem is really insufficient capacity, or whether it is poor ownership, unclear priorities, weak talent or a process that should be redesigned.

A theory of potential must include accountability

Believing in people does not require a founder to ignore evidence. Human beings possess potential, but we also possess the capacity for avoidance, self-deception, selfishness and dishonesty. People can grow, and people can also choose not to grow. They can respond to trust with responsibility or exploit it when controls are weak.

A useful theory of human nature must hold potential and accountability together.

If someone is struggling, the company should ask whether expectations were clear, whether the person received the necessary resources, whether the role matches their strengths and whether useful feedback has been provided. People should have a reasonable opportunity to learn and improve.

Yet repeated failure to take responsibility cannot be explained forever as undiscovered potential. A company must judge patterns. Does the person learn after correction? Do they become more dependable? Do they tell the truth when the truth is uncomfortable? Do they solve problems, or become skilled at explaining why the problem belongs to someone else?

Compassion without standards eventually becomes unfair to the people who are carrying the work. A diligent employee should not continually absorb the consequences of another person’s refusal to improve. Belief in human potential should lead us to develop people, but respect for the mission requires us to act when the necessary growth does not occur.

Founders build according to what they believe people can become

A founder’s theory of human nature determines the kind of organisation they attempt to build.

If the founder believes talent is fixed, the company will search constantly for finished people and may overlook those capable of extraordinary development. If the founder believes everyone can succeed in every role, the company may keep people in unsuitable positions for too long. If the founder assumes trust is foolish, strong people will feel constrained. If the founder assumes controls are unnecessary, the company will eventually pay for preventable failures.

The better approach is to believe strongly in potential while designing honestly for human behaviour. Give people meaningful responsibility, but make ownership visible. Trust people, but build controls appropriate to the risk. Teach and develop people, but measure whether learning changes performance. Allow questions and disagreement, but require decisions to become action.

This philosophy should affect hiring. We should look not only at what a person already knows, but at the pattern of how they have learned. It should affect management, because leaders should not reduce people to the weakest version they have seen. It should affect performance, because opportunity must eventually produce evidence. It should affect culture, because an organisation that claims to value growth must make it safe to admit ignorance and necessary to improve.

The founder is not simply selecting people for a company. The founder is creating conditions that will enlarge or diminish them.

Build for the best people can become

My theory of human nature is hopeful, but it is not passive. I believe people have remarkable potential, and I believe that potential becomes visible through interest, diligence, humility and the willingness to keep learning.

I believe people can increase their capacity. They can develop skills that did not initially come easily, question beliefs inherited from their environment and replace limiting habits with better ones. They can encounter working systems and begin to imagine possibilities that dysfunction had hidden from them.

I also believe founders must provide clarity, honest feedback and meaningful standards. It is not enough to announce that everyone can be great while leaving people without the instruction, opportunity or accountability through which greatness is developed.

Every founder should ask what theory of human nature is embedded in the company. Do our systems assume that people cannot be trusted? Do our leaders believe talent is fixed? Do we reward curiosity and correction, or do we make people afraid to admit what they do not know? Are we helping people discover their strengths, or forcing everyone into one narrow definition of intelligence?

The answers will shape more than employee experience. They will determine the quality of judgment, effort and character available to the company.

People often become what an environment consistently expects, permits and develops. A founder who understands this will not merely hire workers to complete tasks. The founder will build an organisation in which human potential can become disciplined, useful and excellent.