Leap Forward

About the Book

This book was written for people who probably feel they never need it. Its main purpose is to motivate and encourage the reader, whoever and wherever they are, that it is possible to rise up, do better, and excel as a person. It is easy to get into the trap of daily painful existence, blaming circumstances, the environment, other people, and things around us for our negative outcomes in life. None of us love to remain poor or insignificant. We all want to achieve and attain status in life. We all love to excel, yet very few of us do. The book argues—with compelling stories and evidence from history, science, society, and academia—that human destiny, in its most crude form, is like a garden. When left alone, a garden only grows with useless weeds, but when good seeds are sown in it, the ground is well cultivated, the crops cared for, and the garden teeming lively with crops that feed us well. The author shares with the reader his personal experiences and those of scores of other people in the world to demonstrate the indomitable power of the human being to get better. Spiced with easy, witty poems and scores of true stories, the book convinces the reader of their power to excel. The book does this using sequential themes built around eight instructively captivating chapters as follows: 1. Leap forward and get better. 2. Use you power; you are more powerful than you think 3. Pursue excellence; it is your calling 4. Avoid mediocrity and all its roots 5. Accept that you are different 6. Dedicate yourself to service And when you do all these and you realize it is tough, 7. Take heart; the world seldom cheers excellence 8. Now do this and leap forward.

About the Author

Born in rural Uganda in 1963, Andrew Obara was a typical village boy growing up in rural poverty in 1970s with a strong sense of what he wanted to become and seemingly endless drawbacks related to poverty. Somehow, he managed to go through school to university – in part thanks to the government aid to schools and free university education at the time. He studied economics (major in rural economy) at Makerere University Kampala and later on studied for several post-graduate qualifications including an MBA. His first employment was in a development bank for eight years; the second employment in a commercial bank for two years and the third/ last employment was with a USAID project promoting financial inclusion financial inclusion for the poor in Uganda. While working for a bank, he started his own management consulting firm which he resigned from his bank job to manage full time in February 2004. The consulting firm has since grown large enough to employ 22 people full time and scores of others as part time associate, receive awards for being among the top 100 mid-sized companies in Uganda for four consecutive years since 2013, get ISO certification and to be recognized as one of the largest Ugandan owned management consulting firms working both locally and internationally. Andrew Obara is married to Alice Njeri Ngige since 1995 and they have two sons and one daughter.