What's holding you back?

There are very many factors that could determine your life status and progress and achievements along life's journeys, and top of the list are your village people.

You keep getting fired from every job you hold, it has to be your step mother or that poor defenceless old woman whom society has pushed to the little hut just on the edge of your village.

You can't seem to catch a break, every opportunity is filled just before you have a chance to grab it - your grandmother is a witch, she inherited it from her own grandmother who inherited from her own grandmother (ad nauseum).

You fall in and out of relationships like a carelessly tossed rubber ball, there is this old woman in your village who is so powerful that just by projecting evil thoughts, she can cause random person A (that is YOU), whom she perhaps has never met in her entire miserable life, to keep losing love interests over and over again.

Or so your shaman says.

Interestingly, these old women are never powerful enough to attract the elixir of eternal youth, the fountain of wealth and the assurances of a good existence for themselves and their probably as wretched families. Society needs a sin eater and who else do we blame for everything that goes wrong in our lives than the most obvious, most defenceless suspects.

After all, Nigeria has a white witches association and they meet in Benin - typical!

So, when you find yourself falling out of the umpteenth job or missing the quadrillionth opportunity or reeling out the gazillionth hard luck story, please do not sit yourself down to a private meeting of two (you and your conscience), and take a brisk walk back through the common denominator in all the misfortunes and missed opportunities you might have had - blame your village witches. Perhaps your personal attitude and work ethics have got absolutely nothing to do with why you are where you are.

Like time for instance: what relationship do you have with time? Do you give it as much respect as it deserves or do you treat it as a mere suggestion?

"Let's meet at 9 am", do you interpret that as - "try to be here at least five minutes before the appointed time" or "you know, you can start brushing your teeth at 9 am. Then send me an sms 15 minutes after and then in 30 minutes installments thereafter blaming everything but the culprit - you".

Time, and your relationship with it, can make or mar you.

What about your word? What does it mean when you say you are going to do something?

Is your word something you just spit out casually? Have you developed and honed flippancy to a fine art and dispense generously whenever you feel the need to "keep a conversation going", or is your word your bond?

Pretty soon, people are going to honestly avoid you when they notice that your words have no weight and absolutely no meaning whatsoever. They would rather see an honest attempt to stick to your words however inconveniencing, than rigmarolling around what should to all intents and purposes, be a verbal contract to deliver.

And then attitude - divas are supa, but a team player is best!

I remember someone once asking me in a management training, at what point his own goals should begin to supersede company goals...

"Goals like what"?
"Growth".
"Alongside or outside the company's career path plan"?
"Huh"?

In simple English, check in your "personal goals" at the door. This is a tricky one and I would try to elaborate a bit further.

IF your personal goals are at variance with the company goals, check them in at the door. Your goal is to help the company achieve its goals and beyond. Anything that threatens to derail the corporate goals could be termed a "conflict of interest".

Ambition is good, but how ambitious should you be within a corporate entity? How do you strive to achieve that ambition? Your personal gains and growth should come as a consequence of helping the company achieve its corporate gains and growths and not seek to annihilate everything on your way to personal glory.

So that means you work with a team - not against the team.

It also means you work within the company policy - not at variances with it.

For sure it means you can bend the rules and stretch them as far as they can go, provided you have the results that would prove you right in taking those liberties - don't break the rules.

Most importantly, if you feel the need to take over the position of a CEO, if you find it difficult to be subordinated to, if you are unable to work with a team - then it is time to "move your ministry to the permanent site" - resign and run your own show.

2015 is on its way out and in a few days, we would be ushering in a brand new year. Take a few honest minutes to introspect on what has worked for you over the years and why. If you have also been consistently failing (or failing to meet your goals), then you more than anyone else, owe yourself an honest introspection.

What habits do you need to retain going into the new year and why? Which ones would you need to drop and why? Any habits that need tweaking? Any skills that need polishing?

YOU are the common denominator in all your life's experiences and situations. You just need to be honest enough to realise that first.

And perhaps top on your New Year resolution list, should be giving your village "witches" a break.

Believe it or not, if they had all those supernatural abilities you ascribe to them, they would rather concentrate on finding ways to get Otedola or Dangote to write a will and leave them a huge chunk of their estates; than winching a sorry ass, broke ass churchrat who is not even co-ordinated enough to keep one messenger job in one decrepit organisation or the other.

No be yab, but even village "witches" suppose get ambition.

PS: How come most of the village witches whose flights crashland into high tension electric poles in and around a certain region in Nigeria are women? You mean after the housework and hustling to feed the home and having to put out for oga whether they are in the mood or not, they tumble into bed exhausted at night and instead of sleeping, take off on their brooms for some sort of meeting or the other? For real? Where are the men? No dulling biko. This is an industry you also need to come and dominate please.

Entrepreneurship 101: Give...your time!

A lot of people have jumped on the entrepreneurship bandwagon without pausing to consider the first and probably the most important Key Success Factor for entrepreneurship, YOU!

You need to be available, you need to be willing to give of your time, you need to be there. Lots of people think they can combine a well paying, high (or maybe low) profile job with the task of organising, managing and assuming the risk of a business or enterprise, which at the end of the day is what entrepreneurship is all about.

I say, if you have a vision and decide to convert that vision into reality, quitteth thou thy day job and focuseth thou on entrepreneuring.

Since it is your vision, the chances that another individual, especially a paid employee, will key into and run with that vision the way you would if you were personally involved are very, very low!

Real life Scenario: Two hairdressing salons.

The first, in the heart of town, about thirty minutes drive from my house, the business owner is almost always on ground. Soon as we walk in the door, we are given highly comfortable seats and asked to make our choice of tea, coffee, juice or just plain water. Your children, if any, are quickly provided with juice, toys, cartoons and the ever friendly, charming staff commence to fawn all over you and your child(ren).

The shop owner comes out immediately with a smile on her face and proceeds to interact with you, your child(ren), friends, etc. She does all her best to ensure you are comfortable and has so imbued it in her staff that the few times you arrive while she is not there, you can almost swear any of her girls have her blood running in their veins as they would give you the same matchless attitude.

Price List?

Pedicure - 4,500
Washing and Setting - 1,500
Blow drying - 1,000
Twisting - 6,000
Kids plaiting - 2,500

etc

Hm, Salon 2, my daughter and nanny can stroll down there to get their hair done and be in the salon in under 6 minutes flat. However, every time my daughter goes there, she comes back with a headache and swollen eyeballs from having had her hair pulled and tugged and pushed, all in the name of getting her to "park well". The salon owner is never on ground, you only find two completely disillusioned girls with little or no customers, just lounging around idly and transferring their bad attitude and aggression onto hapless customers.

I walked in yesterday to pick up my daughter and nanny who had gone to make their hair since I was terribly occupied and first thing I noticed, my daughter's eyes were swollen from crying. Second thing, as I write, nobody bothered to even say Good Afternoon to me. Matter of fact, from the look on their faces, you could see my daughter (and I), had come in to disrupt their day long sleeping spree!

Price list?

Washing and setting - 300
Twisting - 1,500
Kids plaiting - 500
Pedicure - 1,200

As we walked away from the salon yesterday, I vowed they were seeing the last of myself and/or my daughter and silently resolved to save myself the heartache of being treated like a nuisance to someone who needs my patronage and go instead to the place where I am treated like a king. As if she read my thoughts, small madam piped up: "Mummy, please can we stop coming to this salon and go to the other one? They do not know how to treat people here".

In spite of their dirt cheap services, it was indeed small wonder they were always customerless with the owner of the Salon a silent, sleeping and invisible partner to the entire transaction.

Working in the bank, I remember a lot of colleagues who had started businesses on the side closing them down after a few months as the businesses "were not doing well" due to lack of supervision. When the cat is away, the mouse play and none plays as hard as mice whose cat is a distracted sole proprietor.

Funds account for themselves, develop legs and walk away from the MD's books.

Staff come to work if and when they please (in these days of mobile telephones, I can be on my bed and lie to you that I am in America and you will never tell the difference).

Customers are treated like a bother, like nuisances that come to disrupt the lounging of the staff, since those staff perforce, do not see the larger picture for what it is.

Etcheteram, etcheteram and so forth....

Seriously, if you want to convert your vision to reality, throw the most important ingredient into the mix, yourself! Do not waste your time and resources enriching other people by setting up businesses for them or granting unadvised and unknown loans to your own detriment - well, what else will you call an employee chopping oga's money if not unadvised and unknown loans.

Make sure you are available. You are the Oga at the top and you do not want any other ogas at the bottom who neither understand your vision nor are willing to do the grunt work ruin that vision for you or make you believe that perhaps you did not catch the vision correctly.

Simply put, what is not monitored does not get done.

Maybe some other day, we will talk about attitude, staffing, customer satisfaction, but if you really are sure you want to pursue your dreams - ermahgerd, repetition alert - then free yourself up to live that dream!


... So, yes, ahem... darsall!