By Neal Glatt

You probably didn’t wake up today thinking you could learn a valuable business lesson from Madagascar. Not the cartoon movie, but the actual African nation and 4th largest island in the world. But here we go…

I’m sitting in Antananarivo, the capital city of Madagascar, writing this blog. I’m here doing some humanitarian work training community leaders to better help their people. The reason I’m in Madagascar specifically is because it’s in really bad shape. Economically, it ranks 176 out of 181 countries for which Gross Domestic Product data is available. Worse yet, 70.7% of people live below the poverty line which is the third highest percentage in the world.

Most people don’t realize that Madagascar is so big (it is 140% the size of California and would stretch from northern Florida to the Canadian border) and so rich in resources (50+% of all sapphires mined globally come from Madagascar). So why would a country with so much size and resources be so poor with a population of less than 25 million people? Because of one fatal statistic: Madagascar ranks 152 out of 175 countries for corruption according to Transparency International.

Here’s the thing - everything rises and falls on leadership. Gallup recently released the book, It’s The Manager, based on research proving that 70% of the variation between high-performing organizations and low-performing organizations is explained by the quality of the manager or team leader alone.

That’s why I’m here in Madagascar training leaders to put others first and work as a team.  Because we can stop bad management, and corruption is bad management at its worst, then every significant economic indicator - sales, profitability, and efficiency - increase dramatically.  In fact, I believe that great leaders can even rescue a nation and improve the lives of millions because the data proves it.

If you need to increase your bottom line, reduce frustration, or get more from your people, it’s time to step up your leadership. And since I’m feeling extra philanthropic today, I’m going to let you check all of the courses on GrowTheBench, including my leadership courses, for FREE for 30 days. Simply click this link to add an All-Access Pass to your cart and use the code “Madagascar” by July 1, 2019.