Thought Picnic: Quiet Pursuits of Excellence

Quiet Pursuits of Excellence

Sometimes, I reflect on the fact that I lead a number of public lives which revolve around simply doing what I love, without seeking acknowledgement or reward. Something in my upbringing, in the observation of my parents and mentors, drives me towards excellence.

Much as I seek perfection, I quite frequently fall short. I upbraid myself, accuse myself, and talk to myself in a voice that calls me by my own name, because there is a conversation to be had before someone else has it with me. I would rather be my own critic, so as to be prepared to receive a better critique, one of recognition, of merit, and of acknowledgement.

Stories That Once Scared Me

There are stories from my past that frighten me, where the infirmity registered in the ravine of failure offered no opportunity or facility for recovery. It was unsalvageable wreckage, beyond repair, and utterly hopeless.

Yet, I have a better story to tell. No narrative I share today wallows in helpless resignation, for I am blessed beyond measure with testimonies of goodness, success, victory, and triumph.

The Pleasure of Work

At work, I enjoy what I do, not for the remuneration, of which I have once earned stupendously, but for the satisfaction that the knowledge and expertise I bring to bear on the mundane and the complex still matters.

I get to learn as much as I help others learn. I do what I do, not to get noticed, but to make things work. In the process, acknowledgement, respect, and rewards may well come. My motivation, however, is the pleasure.

Appearance and Carriage

In appearance, I have my own kind of dressing, something I pay attention to, because appearance and carriage matter. There have been times when I have been stopped so that pictures could be taken of me.

Once, a young man, after complimenting me, said he would love to have the confidence to dress like me. I suppose hardly a day goes by without some sort of recognition from strangers, and yet I am not out to attract attention. My motivation is simply looking good.

The Wealth of Expression

On this blog, I write about anything that takes my fancy, not for want of engagement or readership. To think there was a time when I hated writing, even though I had a great deal to say in conversation.

I am easily shy, quite introverted, and socially awkward and nervous in organised meetings where people are networking. It is in the use of words that I truly flourish. My motivation is the wealth of expression.

The Story of a Man

What all this says to me is to keep doing what I know to do, in the best possible way, with every aim to impact, improve, and perhaps impress. I will never be everyone's cup of tea, but I hope those who drink this tea enjoy it tremendously.

Decades of work, portrayal, and expression all become the story of a man. Thank you for coming by.

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

Tackling doubt to stand out

We are not that complete

On my Twitter timeline a few days ago, I saw a message from someone I was following who works in my line of trade and is a respected supporter of our community of technical geeks and tyros.

What he had to say was he had about 12 years of working with a main product that most of us cut our teeth on before it began to diverge and diversify from an on-premise kind of infrastructure to embrace the cloud. I started working on the main product in 1996.

We have both watched the evolution of this product along with cloud integration, the cloud part is now becoming prominent in a co-management co-existence that is it now not enough to have a broader experience without the practised activity in the cloud. What surprised me was his admission that he felt like he was behind left behind by the new developments and so becoming concerned about his future prospects.

Overcoming my doubts

I cannot say I gained any satisfaction from learning that someone I assumed was a consummate Jack of al trades from his mastery of part of the subject felt he was not proficient enough in a developing area. I had recognised my limited exposure in the same area and was working hard at acquiring the skill, understanding, knowledge and insight into the workings and best practices.

If anything, it made me begin to question my doubts in my ability, for as I have been looking for new jobs I have mentally excluded myself from profiles that suggested some knowledge of certain fields when I probably had enough of the requisite understanding and exposure to meet the stated requirements and with the wealth of experience should be able to grow into the role to demonstrate proficiency and acumen to excel in it.

Taking on new bouts

I find that as I rate my competence, I am lacking in confidence to venture out and apply for some roles, thereby limiting my choices towards the opportunities that come my way. I feel like I need some sort of reassurance and advice, maybe even a pep talk, I am not sure. What is clear to me is I probably just have to put myself forward, deal with the rejection if that is the result or rise to challenge if they want to take it further.

I am digging for that resilience from within me to face what is ahead. Even in my doubts, I must fight some bouts.

Opinion: Asking for the opportunity to prove ourselves

This is good acting

I watch very little television if I watch any at all, the things that fascinate me are murder mysteries, educational documentaries, detective series, trains and travel.

However, from the moment I saw the trailer for How to Get Away with Murder starring Viola Davis, I was hooked, by both the title and the drama. When I eventually got into the series, I was quite enamoured by the strength of the character of Professor Annalise Keating as portrayed by Viola Davis, I recorded the whole series.

In the weekend, Viola Davis, unbeknownst to me became the first African-American lady to win the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Actress in a Drama Series and her acceptance speech so seriously deviated from the norm by paying a glowing tribute those who had opened the way before her in the quest for the recognition and adoration of their peers in entertainment.

A speech well made

This is the full text of her acceptance speech as transcribed by the New York Times, but one cannot help but excerpt a cogent part of the speech. “The only thing that separates women of colour from anyone else is opportunity.”

Whilst, I will not be too forward in suggesting I have suffered the loss of opportunity, I can fully understand the sentiment that informed her speech where for whatever indecipherable reasons I have missed out on opportunities not offered to me when for all intents and purposes I am well qualified for the job I interviewed for.

Then again, I cannot put it down to overt racism, yet when having been interviewed and well considered an executive at the BBC in 1991 decides he’ll rather not give me the job because I was not extending myself enough or in his words, I was short-selling myself, you wonder.

Open for opportunity

More recently, it was an interview with a major bank where apparently I did not pass the muster for Miss Congeniality for the job. These experiences begin to introduce doubt and literally beat you down that you have to find strength from within to rise beyond that situation.

Blog - Thought Picnic: As Runner-Up Miss Congeniality, I Didn't Quite Make It

Yet, I could paraphrase Viola Davis and say that for many, “The only thing that separates minorities in any society from everyone else is opportunity.” Being given the opportunity to prove that they are both able and capable because some assumption, presumption or dare I say, prejudice has led to people at the gate not letting others into their fold for all sorts of reasons.

She goes on to say that, “You cannot win an Emmy for roles that are simply not there.” By extension, you cannot win accolades, praise, recognition or promotion for opportunities not granted to those who generally by default are not amongst the first to be considered for such placements.

Entitlement debasing opportunity

Then again, I see other areas where people who generally get given these opportunities abuse and squander them foisting their sense of entitlement into the situation.

In the light of this, I find myself antithetical to the smart and apparently beautiful Charlotte Proudman and I note the significance of her surname when on being complimented for her looks in connecting with an eminent male lawyer on the LinkedIn professional network took umbrage at age-old chivalry to deem it sexist. [The Student]

There is an element of political correctness in this reading that bothers somewhat old-fashioned people like myself who will have the tendency to compliment, offer a seat to ladies, take off my hat when speaking to a lady or step forward to open a door for a lady – that is the cultured and expected decorum expected of gentlemen and it in no way belittles the professional attributes of the lady.

Try some emotional intelligence too

In a way, I felt quite sorry for Alexander Carter-Silk who being a generation ahead of the lady was slightly conscious of the possibility that a compliment might be taken wrongly and yet chose to make it in good faith. The Internet shaming of the man shows how discretion is no more a matter of valour for another generation. [LegalCheek]

For all the commentary for and against that episode, I will very well understand and quite sadly appreciate that Miss Proudman with all her academic intelligence and feistiness might have blown certain opportunities that would naturally be open to her in the pride that always presages the self-fulfilling prophecy of a fall. The requisite amount of emotional intelligence always helps in communicating umbrage or agreement.

Then again, Miss Proudman because of her extrovert self-esteem and intelligence displayed a sense of entitlement and effrontery that can be both emasculating and aggressively off-putting, she will go far.

Yet, I commend all those who grasp any opportunity they are given to become and excel and for that also I commend Viola Davis.

Healing on a jet plane

Running for president

This is beginning to look like some sort of amusement, a comedy mating with a farce to produce the utterly laughable.

Only last week, the obituary was written of the rather sprightly and seriously healthy presidential candidate of the PDP when he was carted off (flown) to Germany for a checkup related to "breathlessness", which he fully recovered from, he would shortly be back on the campaign trail.

Now, it seems the Vice President was over-doing his daily workout on his treadmill and has in the process acquired a torn tendon - Go figure! Those things have emergency STOP controls. He was then flown out to the UK to his "local" hospital on the presidential jet - was that the magnanimity of Jekyll Obasanjo or Hyde Obasanjo at play? - For surgery. He was literally running for president, one chuckles.

My frustration at the fact that there are no health services capable of handling breathlessness or surgery in Nigeria is really disheartening.

Another opportunity for excellence

The Vice President for instance has established a seemingly reputable university in his home state of Yola which from all appearances would be a centre of excellence. - [Late edition - I stand corrected by Chippla, the home state of the Vice President is Adamawa, whatever happened to the good old North Eastern State? Thanks Chippla]

One wonders why one or two teaching hospitals cannot be selected to be groomed as centres of medical excellence where resources are not spared in bringing the best medical brains, equipment and means to serve as the incubators for raising health and healthcare expertise in Nigeria.

The people who have then built these institutions can from there become ambassadors or evangelists of administrative prowess and development for other hospitals such that we do not have to run off to Europe for anything as mundane as a sneeze.

One can only wish these men well, but if in the 47^th year of our independence we cannot fulfil basic health needs beyond primary health care and international NGO-sponsored immunisation programmes; Nigerians now need to demand of their leaders better stewardship of health along with other infrastructure needs as electricity, transport and communications.

For anyone who aims to lead Nigeria, these should be no-brainers, Obasanjo failed to see the sense of duty to handle these issues, maybe of the crop of the crippled (Abubakar), breathless (Yar'Adua), smart-arse (Utomi) or non-charismatic (Buhari) choices we have to make, a surprise might arise before we suffer the fate of Goodluck as president - and that would a fate equal to Armageddon.

Corporate inversion to produce excellence

Losing that Corporate umbrella

Having worked in a number of organisations, conglomerates and enterprises, one has seen the tyranny of pointless political battles, internal markets, Russian-doll-empires and departmental rivalries that beset all good intentions of the board of directors.

The Organisational Chart

The Organisational Chart, possibly created in that dreaded PowerPoint or this time Microsoft Visio (See earlier blog on PowerPoint), creates the fertile ground for the at times credible generalisations that:

• Working for the same organisation does not mean you gel as an organisation.
• Each departmental function is an unchallenged monopoly in that organisation.
• Collective responsibility of corporate goals is dispersed amongst departmental heads who work a double agenda of both trying to be efficient and the desire to succeed the incumbent corporate officers.
• Responsibility is aggressively acquired from other units for successes and promptly evaded and blamed on other units for failures.
• Employee value and talent is lost in the bean counting of cost-centre accountancy.

One is saying that the comfort of working under the umbrella of ABC Corporation is failing the corporation and stopping the corporation from evolving fast enough to respond to the change necessary for its profitability and survival.

The logic of proper outsourcing

Imagine your organisation being changed into something completely from what it is now. It now just consists of a board of directors with the ideas and capital for a particular venture.

• The facilities department becomes a facilities management firm competing in tenders to provide a block of offices and run all the facilities necessary for a corporate headquarters and the satellite offices.
• The legal department becomes a law firm providing legal advice to the company and any other companies needing that expertise for a fee.
• The personnel management department becomes combined talent resourcing and payroll management firm managing all Human Resourcing needs for a market that includes your organisation and the departments that have become firms.
• The finance department becomes a corporate finance advisory firm and facilitator for managing the board's capital interests in this venture.
• The IT department becomes a service provider of end-to-end IT services to the organisation and all the firms employed by the board for the organisation. The IT firm also competes on the open market.
• The marketing, sales and publicity departments become a PR firm with professional research and marketing facilities, holding a respectable PR budget.

This is the same organisation with a centralised core of the board with a clear set of goals, requirements and principles. Now, each firm competing on the open market to fulfil the requirements is faced with tougher choices to either perform or face extinction from competition.

The Organisational Chart is no more a hierarchy but a star with one reporting line between the office of the board of directors (the customer) and the firms that provide customer service. The complete inversion of corporate government.

The Board Expects

 For the fee the office of the board pays for each service they have acquired they should expect the following:

• Clearly set contract service levels and penalties for default.
• Professional customer service with performance metrics, which include bonuses for exceeding expectations.
• Well planned and organised project deliveries that cut the muster of competitive market scrutiny.
• Firm managements that can negotiate realistic timelines, costs, requirements and deliverables.
• Considerable improvements if the service contracted is provided or the option to renegotiate or fire the service company if they under perform.

The Firm

The firms face the continual test of if their service is worth paying for; they have to cost and value every negotiated settlement balancing the provision of service with staying competitive.

 This would do wonders for the erstwhile department in these ways:

• All resources that have survived for so long under the corporate setting but brought no value to the company would be exposed and offered severance terms.
• Projects properly researched before any negotiations begin and only within the resources available to service that project.
• Poor management within the firm would be under pressure to perform or depart.
• The level of service required or the firm would require skilled personnel on better remuneration to fulfil contracts signed.
• Market forces would compel the firms to adapt to trends more quickly.
• The organisational issues which plagued the larger organisation and were buried the weight of internal rivalries would have a smaller field of play, but its impact would be immediately felt and dealt with.

The individual

How this affects all the individuals involved depends if you are on the board to demand or in the firm to provide a service.

If on the board your question would be - If I had to pay for this kind of service from an external firm, what should I demand and expect?

If in the service firm, your question would be - Would one get away with giving this level of service if someone had to pay for it?

The Utopian Organisation

The mindset of the organisational entity is completely changed and that is outsourcing in Utopia, if only the world were a perfect place.