Have you checked YOU?

I have had the rare privilege to support a lot of people in their quest to unlock the next level in their career – whether in finding a job, switching between jobs or career paths, or simply around unlocking their X-factor (as my friend and sister Dupe tagged the last #CareerBrainStormingSession).

On the heels of this, the shocking & limiting perspectives we tackled (with the help of these amazing speakers - Tunde, Seyi, Adebola and Dinma ) on Saturday at the CBS 3.0 and the several people who reach out to me daily, I thought to share this – The most basic and important ingredient you need to unlock ‘YOU’ is WHAT YOU CURRENTLY HAVE ACCESS TO !!! And I have heard a lot of people echo back – ‘Oh, I don’t even have a job?’ , ‘My current job has nothing to offer’, ‘I do not have any skills’, I do not even know where to start from’ among several other lines.

You need to step back and think through these –

1.What about your person, past and current tasks can be of value to other people, a prospective employer or the world around you?

I have been both angry and amazed at a lot of people after spending time with them asking the right questions around what they do and how they have expressed these. For example I interacted with someone who had his role abbreviated into 3 letters on his CV and LinkedIn profile, 3 letters that I could not make sense of. 3 letters behind which he buried away the amazing things and results he brings to his employer daily. Employers look out for value. Abbreviations hardly convey this. What are the key results you are recording? Communicate these with the use of metrics - for example, 'I developed a customer management tool that cut down the waiting time per customer by about 50%'

Once discovered, then ask…

2. Are you properly articulating this – in your daily encounters, your CV, your LinkedIn profile etc? What exactly are you doing with the minimum of 4 hours daily (5pm – 9pm) left after you contribute to your current employer?

Why get off the bed shortly before the time you are required to be at work when you can gain an extra hour to add an extra skill to yourself? You invest not just your working hours to your employer but the other hours it takes to prepare to get to work (including your commuting hours), yet you expect to grow at the pace your current company grows at?

You seek a job yet you spend less than 1 hour a day actively working around this forgetting that your only job at that moment should be preparing and seeking for a job? Consistently researching companies, identifying requisite skills and adding them to yourself and ensuring you follow closely the people who currently do the jobs you aspire to be in.

One of the speakers at the CBS mentioned that s/he was recently seeking for someone with a required set of skills who s/he was going to pay $1000 DAILY to engage. YES, there are jobs out there irrespective of where you are. The question is - Do you have or are you building the requisite skills?

Preparation meets opportunity. There are people out there who you can have assist you in getting there (around articulating your details etc) but the question is,

Are you showing enough grit? 

#CareerDevelopment #HumanResources #JobInterviews #PeopleManagement #PersonalDevelopment

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Privileged to have worked across the high-capital construction, fast-paced e-commerce & the precision-driven outsourcing industries; 'Kayode KOLADE is a Business Strategist and Project Manager with experience in People, Process & Operations Optimization, a Soft Skills Trainer and Mentor with a creed to continuous improvement. A Fellow of both The Institute of Leadership & Management and The Learning & Performance Institute. 

PUZZLING OR SCALING?

CAVEAT – THE PURPOSE OF THIS POST IS NOT TO SOLVE THE PUZZLE.

I found this puzzle earlier today, shortly after I shared with my contacts via WhatsApp status with the tag ‘Where are the smart people on my contacts list?’ . I got over a hundred feedback within 2 hours. A few of the answers I got were 28, 50, 14, 11, 35, 10, 70, 12… etc from this same image. Feel free, take your shot and drop your answer as a comment below.

THIS POST IS ABOUT THE SEVERAL LESSONS THE FEEDBACK STIRRED UP.

A lot of people reacted too quickly. Some people reacted with such speed depicting that they were trying to validate their smartness. Most people were very pressured by the caption, hence lost the attention needed to pick the details. A few people just wanted to give it a shot. I know a few people who were trying to get my puzzle right ‘this time’. There were few people who waited and then coasted on the answers others gave. Several people rapidly changed their answers, they kept seeing some new information after their last reaction. Very few people took their time, reflected on what the puzzle was anchored on and then responded accurately.

I insisted on a show of workings and eventually asked for lessons learnt.

THIS POST IS ABOUT THE LESSONS LEARNT and a few were…

1.      Be aware of subtle pressure points that take your eyes off the goal

2.      Attention to details and how you interpret them matter a lot

3.      You will have better outcomes if you respond rather than react

4.      Own your mistakes and grow on them quickly

5.      Have the basic skills (in this case knowledge of mathematics) you require

6.      A successful attempt is still an attempt. Make an attempt, it is the only way to know if you will succeed.

Are you still trying to solve the puzzle? Feel free to share your answer.

What lessons did you glean from this?

#RandomMusings #PeopleDevelopment #Success #Training

COURSE CORRECTING

If you live and drive in Lagos, you will have had your fair share of other drivers veering into your lane – whether with honest ignorance or with intentional ignorance (I term this arrogance). Depending on your level of togetherness - as a culture or at the time of incident, your response could range from a silent swivel of your puzzled head to the seeming nerve-calming expressions of your vocal cords. I could never explain this phenomenon to (one of the best line managers money cannot buy -) Josselin while he was Nigerian.

Pathetic as it seems, some of us who are fully aware of the dangers of veering off your predefined lane still have our moments when we live in the reality of being the culprit – whether as a protest to the initiating culprit or for some ‘explainable’ reason on losing ourselves momentarily.

How many people will arrive at destinations if everyone veered off - every time? How more chaotic will it be if everyone was driving at a 100km/hr while veering off?

Can we take this notches higher? Considering the speed of an airplane, the plethora of other items pilots deal with (lets tackle turbulence some other time) ; would you imagine how catastrophe in a plane veering off the its coordinates by say 5 degrees?

Thankfully, a car has a steering wheel designed to give hints on what direction the wheels are facing per time. A lot of times road markings and signs, kerbs and sometimes a simple glance out the windshield helps nudge the mind on how straight or curved the road ahead is and thankfully alignments always ensure positive results. An airplane is blessed with the inertia guidance system (INS) and air traffic control that always ensures you and I arrive safely, on time and at the right destinations.

A lot of times a good and careful driver has to make consistent and slight adjustments to the steering wheel in alignment to the course of the road set ahead. This is similar to the concept pilots achieve flying with. I call it COURSE CORRECTING!

We are indeed the drivers or pilots of our lives. Our daily necessities deaden the need to course correct every once in a while. Our loaded, strength and time sapping routines loudly silences the rationality of a course correcting moment or the energy required to have one. Slowly but steadily, we drift away from having consciously solid relationships. Intentional and undistracted time pockets to edify our mind and spirit are rarities. Healthier food choices elude us. Our personal inhibitions and emotions per time robs us of deeper contacts and results. That momentary decision to be unconcerned with our deep yearnings or right action beyond the hurt or personal discomfort felt. That one piece of item littering your space that adds another until it has a name – clutter.

As drivers or pilots, how do we retrace our steps?

A non-exhaustive guide to course correcting

1.      Get a source of inspiration and stay connected. The project manager in me likens this to the Initiating process group. A driver or pilot usually relies on an ‘inspiration database’ of some sort. Be it the driver’s knowledge of the routes, google map or plain old simple road signage and markers. Airplanes usually have air navigation databases and coordinates to begin with. Define your source and stick to it. It could be an overall source that gives overarching direction or you may need to localize this. My only caveat is that one never gets inspired beyond the capacity of one’s source.

2.      List and organize the areas you would want to be more effective at. Get the right metrics to measure yourself by. This reeks of the Planning process group of project management. With the source identified and the specific destinations and navigation pathways aligned, you are in business. It is critical to gather and determine what your critical success measurement factors will be before you set out as this will ensure that they are unwavering due to situations along the way. How else would we measure success if we do not set benchmarks? Set course correcting reminders for yourself on the listed items. Surround yourself with people who help you get critical devoid of those emotions that could cloud your thoughts. Set markers around you – vision boards, images and audios of your destination as constant reminders.

3.      Act, measure and correct. The executing, monitoring and controlling process group all play in this number. The driver and pilot will first need to objectively compare the degree of alignment. This would have to be done with a clear mind, no wonder there are alcohol limits for pilots and people are generally advised not to drive when drunk. Being drunk impairs one’s sense of judgement just as our emotions does. To accurately course correct sobriety is a necessity. The real work here is to find what jolts you into the right frame of mind as without the right frame, a picture is less defined. Adjust on the move. It would not always be painless. True sacrifice bleeds. Triumphing over your inhibitions will birth one thing - the you no one else can be.

The strength of an illusion is inherent on how convincingly it mirrors normalcy. Do not let your goals elude you. Course correct – constantly!

#PeopleDevelopment #Goals #CareerGoals #CareerDevelopment #ProjectManagement #PersonalDevelopment #Strategy #Management

Please feel to share some of the ways or ideas you course correct with.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Privileged to have worked across the high-capital construction, fast-paced e-commerce & the precision-driven outsourcing industries; 'Kayode KOLADE is a Business Strategist and Project Manager with experience in People, Process & Operations Optimization, a Soft Skills Trainer and Mentor with a creed to continuous improvement. A Fellow of both The Institute of Leadership & Management and The Learning & Performance Institute. 

CULTURING DECISIONS, BIRTHING STRATEGY.

With my eyes shut and such heavy strategy names like Sun Tzu, Niccolo Machiavelli, Carl Von Clausewitz, Karl Marx, Alexander Herzen, Mikhail Bakunin; their documented lives and the practical ways they employed strategy running through my mind [thanks to my new Strategy Bible – ‘Strategy: A History’ by (Emeritus professor of war studies) Lawrence Freedman (Financial Times best book on strategy from as far back as 2013)]; I cannot but shake my head and mind to the myth we have crowned strategy with today…

“ ‘What is strategy?’ Is the most googled phrase that contains strategy”. Those were the words of Bradley Brezinski (one of my strategy mentors).

Despite the plethora of materials and resources in our knowledge-age; people, corporates and entities the world over still strive to substantiate the essence of strategy. I am not going to add to the over 2 billion results google fetches you when you type the phrase -‘What is Strategy?’, but I would simply touch on one of the very many crucial aspects of implementing strategy in a corporate environment.

Of what good is all the strategy in the world without its implementation? May I swiftly accentuate organizational CULTURE and possibly make sense of how it may help to implement strategy.

Borrowing a leaf from Wikipedia, Organizational culture encompasses values and behaviors that contribute to the unique social and psychological environment of a business.

Organizational culture is a chief influencer of the way people react within an entity. Since implementing strategy boils down to how people act and the corresponding reactions to those actions, its indications, counter-indications and the allocation of resources through it all; then it is key to initiate a cultured (pun intended) reaction zone in the least.

No one else is better positioned than the manager – whose primary work is making decisions. An effective manager (that thinks through the process before deciding) directly influences the actions and inactions of others, whether with direct reports or verticals. At work yesterday, I made several decisions and whether I want to or not, I will be making more tomorrow. Deciding nothing is in itself a decision until I have the power to freeze time.

These daily decisions form the cradle of culture. Not that fancy prose the HR and/or executive team came up with. Those are at best the stated values and they have to be exhibited, then become behavioral norms that influence decisions. Everyday decisions especially by managers who directly influence the actual ‘doers’ in every organization drive culture.

It is critical to expend resources in initiating the cultured zone within which managers and decision makers (with influence on people and teams) will execute the everyday decisions as this is the core of the last-mile in implementing strategy.

In Peter Drucker’s words – Culture does eat strategy for breakfast!

…opening my eyes to this Ah-mazing (as Yemi Faseun puts it) quote on page 575 cannot be mere coincidence, as it sums up my exact closing thought 

“In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.” – Yogi Berra (also attributed to Albert Einstein).

#Culture #Strategy #Management 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Privileged to have worked across the high-capital construction, fast-paced e-commerce & the precision-driven outsourcing industries; 'Kayode KOLADE is a Business Strategist and Project Manager with experience in People, Process & Operations Optimization, a Soft Skills Trainer and Mentor with a creed to continuous improvement. A Fellow of both The Institute of Leadership & Management and The Learning & Performance Institute. 

Are you on a ‘DIE yeT’?

Whether or not we pronounce the word, its use and essence has become crucial to a lot of people. There are all sorts of diet phrases springing up daily – from the common and almost forgotten ‘balanced diet’ to the other trending uses – hair, exam, detox, vegetarian, belief-based and especially not forgetting the diet coke (that one you take when you want to feel like you are reducing your sugar intake). Truth is when we use the word ‘diet’ with another, we more often than not are saying we are laying a focus on the word – usually to enhance the other word or its existence. There is usually one or more of these words, a selection, regulation, restriction, limiting, reduction, focus etc - when a diet is mentioned.

The origin of the word diet reflects ‘a manner of living’ and ‘an idea to LEAD one’s life’.

A diet is conclusively a sort of regimen of consumption of or exposure to a substance, concept, or an idea or the lack of it. KayodeKOLADE.2016

Whether you decide it or not you are on some sort of diet about different areas of your life. Determining a final destination, an outcome or a desired result would help tailor and fine tune your diet course.

Who you are today (spiritually, physically, mentally, emotionally, socially, career-wise, financially) is as a result of the diet you lived on yesterday. A little conscious sacrifice today will yield great gains tomorrow.

A seed dies to bear a fruit, an egg births a butterfly…ARE YOU READY TO ‘DIe yET’ to birth the you within?

'Leadaging'​ Right? (Leading & Managing Right)

I have always been entrenched in the school of thought that

‘If you have been a good manager, your absence shouldn’t hinder your team’s delivery’.

The last two weeks have been nothing but a confirmation. This is not a piece intended to blow my own horn but to critically analyse the veracity of my postulation. And of course the youngest member of my team is 6 months old as I am a strong believer in Tuckman’s teaming model.

I have been away from my team of about 50 colleagues and I cannot remember losing sleep (well except from my excessive intake of fine brewed Kenyan coffee). I have had a couple of skype calls, had to pick on one or two emails, quell a spark or two; but I have been able to achieve consistent delivery and continuous improvement REMOTELY! I would love to birth a theory off my postulation. Hence, the motive of this post.

Would you agree that being away from your team is a good way to evaluate its efficiency? 

Your scorecard? Would effective delegation and coaching be the strongest indices? 

Would inclining one’s management style towards Magregor’s Theory X & Y be an edge? 

What would you consider the greatest assets in building a strong, result-delivering team – one that functions well even in your absence as a manager? Or should I say ‘Leadager’? 

THOUGHTS?

#Management #HumanResources

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Privileged to have worked across the high-capital construction, fast-paced e-commerce & the precision-driven outsourcing industries; 'Kayode KOLADE is a Business Strategist and Project Manager with experience in People, Process & Operations Optimization, a Soft Skills Trainer and Mentor with a creed to continuous improvement. A Fellow of both The Institute of Leadership & Management and The Learning & Performance Institute. 

A 3-MINUTE PITCH - THE TRAFFIC STOP HAWKER APPROACH

To many people the traffic stop means very many different things. Are you in the driver’s seat? Hold it! Yes, a traffic stop means more than one thing. To one - a stop and to another ‘time for action’. Yet, right now it is about to mean a whole article to you. Can we for a second leave the driver’s seat and take a seat at the back of the car?

Are we there yet? Great!

“It was 6:38am, and need I say that I navigate this route every day of the week to get to work early. Just as I slammed the brakes, the corner of my eyes caught this young man who had about a dozen watches in one fist - arranged in a manner that with a slight turn, your eyes would catch whichever of the watches he wanted to sell you.

The other hand he used, both to gesticulate and get some attention. So as he approached this car in front of me, he turned his fist slowly and intently. Unfortunately, the driver, his buyer did not fancy any of the goodies in that fist. Seeing this, while taking quick glances at the traffic light, he dug his other hand into his pocket and it emerged with one watch. This time his buyer could not take his eyes off. Seeing the buyer’s reaction, our traffic hawker kicked off a negotiation. At this time the buyer had reluctantly wound down his side window. After what I believe was some price tagging, the seller beckoned to pass the watch into the car through the now more open window. Buyer had the watch in his hand, evaluated it more and just then…

The red light gave way…

Buyer had watch in his hands. Was stuck on what he had seen and was now holding. Seller made to stretch his hand into the car and I was expecting that he would take back the watch and not let his buyer delay us from ‘obeying’ the traffic light…instead it was a fist full of Naira notes. The traffic hawker had made a sale”.

Thoughts from the actions of the traffic hawker

• There were at least about fifty cars held back by the traffic light but the hawker choose that one - maybe the nearest to him or just the first on the long queue of cars. Whether it be based on deep analysis or intuition, Take those steps towards the next thing.
• He turned his fist to watch the reaction of the driver to his stack of watches while being friendly with him and was sensitive enough to know when the driver didn’t find his conversation interesting, reached out for ‘the better watch’ and then regained the driver’s attention.
• He was smart enough to keep the price at a ‘win-win’ point and sealed the deal at the best price considering ‘other things’ with his keen gaze on the changing traffic light.

CONCLUSION

• Do your research, test your markets and employ even your sixth-sense to study your customer’s body language.
• Swift body language hypothesis and analysis is key to a successful product management, customer acquisition, investor buy-in etc. Have your A-game right up your sleeves.
• Know when to skillfully slide into your target’s territory. Be emotionally intelligent.
• Be mindful of the timing. Make it concise, bespoke and be focused on the broader picture.
• Find the traffic stops and while at it decipher what the lights mean to you, your competitors, your customers, your investors, your staff etc.

 Would love to read your thoughts and other ideas this story has generated.

 #Strategy #Culture #Startups #Entrepreneurship

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Privileged to have worked across the high-capital construction, fast-paced e-commerce & the precision-driven outsourcing industries; 'Kayode KOLADE is a Business Strategist and Project Manager with experience in People, Process & Operations Optimization, a Soft Skills Trainer and Mentor with a creed to continuous improvement. A Fellow of both The Institute of Leadership & Management and The Learning & Performance Institute.