ARE YOU DISPOSABLE OR INDISPENSABLE?

Hello dear friend! how are you? Hope you're doing great. let's talk about value creation. let's talk about being disposable or being indispensable. so, I've titled this, 'Are You Disposable Or Indispensable?'. It's not an insult, it is a question.

'Kayode Oyero

“...Only people of sterling distinction are retained in times of job extinction. Official results save one from social insults...” –O.J.O

>>>>Let's get going!

Seriously, I know by now that lots of thought will be swirling in your head in disarray directions: collision of soul-searching thoughts of whether you’re disposable or indispensable, be it at the work place, in friendship, relationship and generally stating in human co-habitation. But, be patient, you need not go through the rigors of brainstorming to know whether you’re replaceable or not. Relax! I'm here to help you.

Let’s start from the debris of unemployment.

Unemployment is a ghost that centuries to come will continue to haunt all nation's of the world. This position is far from being cynical or confessing negativity. The truth of the matter is that it could only be abated: its complete eradication is a mirage for any government no matter how conscientious such an administration could be in having the welfare of the governed at heart. To embark on a mission to completely wipe unemployment out of the land is to moribund the age-old stench of poverty, a global citizen. Evidently, no country’s constitution has been able to rid-off destitution to the last bit. Even first world nations foremost of which is the U.S have a fair share of poverty not to talk of a third world country called Nigeria. Indeed, it’s a global citizen!

The resultant effect of the above is the display of the conflict theory which engraves the principle of survival of the fittest: a situation where by many scramble to occupy few available positions.

Yes, many scramble to occupy few available comfortable seats in the world of white collar jobs!

In today’s business dispensation, many people scramble to occupy few available comfortable positions. News of a thousand and one applicants for less than twenty job slots speaks volume of this scenario. And as a means of fortification in the survival of the fittest struggle, many acquire barrages of certificates in order to out-wit the phalanx army of contenders. This pursuit of credentials they wrongly rank atop the digging up of inward potentials forgetting that when potentials speak credentials dare not muster a word. If you doubt me, here’s a question for you my friend: ‘Tell me one Professor of Music from any tertiary institution in the world that is as famous as the late pop legend, Mike Jackson?’ Jackson wasn’t a school music boy. His was potentials manifested not credentials. Note this: ground-shaking testimonies abound when talent is subjected to training.

GRAB YOUR POP-CORN, IT'S JUST THE BEGINNING!

In today’s corporate world where technological inventions now replace man-power skills, when sophisticated machines substitute both unskilled and some skilled labour without a fuss, it’s pertinent we ask ourselves the following questions:

Can a machine replace me at the work-place?

Can two titans of my profession jostle to have me? Just as frontline premiership club managers in the salt of Alex Ferguson and Morinho fought a battle of supremacy to have Nigeria’s own dexterous footballer, Mikel Obi back then in 2006?

Will  I be among those to be retained if eventually my company embark to down-size its work-force?

These and many more are the self-evaluative questions that you ought to beam your search light on. Until you become a value-adding individual, you will continue to live an uncelebrated life. It is however not surprising that most business enterprises now have a calligrapher print for framing in their office entrance the slogan: ‘if you don’t impact, you’re just about to depart.’ And how do you impact at work? It is by creating values. And how do you do you go about the value-creation? It is by being efficient: by accomplishing task before deadlines. And in case you don’t know, the extent you’ve learnt in school is never a determinant of how much you earn on the field. But, what you learn to do with practice dictate what you’ll earn. Remember, skills are to be nurtured!

Now, let's face it. What is value in the real sense of it?

In the most succinct definition, the word ‘value’ is something positive that people attribute to someone’s presence in the person’s absence. To tone it down, have you ever heard someone lament the absence of another with the utterance: ‘if Mr A had been here, he’d have performed so and so task? Or ‘If Miss B had been here, she’d have provided the solution to so and so riddle?’ If you have, then, you already have an unmistakable grasp of what is meant by the word ‘value’.

Dear friends, I’ll like to share with you the story of a business magnate whose business empire almost sank completely in the abyss of loss during the last global economic melt-down. And in his rescue quest, he resorts to cut the cost of operation. What he did was to deploy the top-down managerial style by singlehandedly reprieving indolent staffers of their duties. His was to sack not to retrench. It was a crafty attempt to boycott the large amount of money it would cost him to pay their entitlements should he resolve to retrench and not sack.

Then, as parts of his game plan to accomplish his aim, he came up with the log-book exercise. The exercise required all employees (inclusive of himself ) to give detailed record of their daily activities at work from the time of resumption to departure. How they spent every minute were to be written in the log-book.

“What a stringent measure!” you might call it. Right? I know it's a yes!

Let’s proceed!

Immediately the pronouncement was made about the take-off of the log-book era, the sensitive ones amidst the staffs knew that something unpalatable lie ominously. And instantly, every one of them began to toil the path of diligence, truants repented and shifted gear to regularity in attendance and steered their wheel to the direction of punctuality. Faces were unsmiling. No time for frivolities. Each man faced his official warrant. In fact, many refused to check the convenience when their bladder mounted to a hood. Thus, making it painfully solidly full with accumulated urine. The clatter of hands on keyboard rented the air. No time to trifle since every movement must be correctly recorded in individual log-books. There was no room for manipulation, not with the closed circuit television and Protocol officers placed in each department to ensure honest compliance. Brains were busy!

Waoh! so it is not a matter of probability that Bosses don’t want a liability! You just have to deliver!

Incredibly, after a week of this development, about thirty percent of the staffers submitted their resignation letters, willingly. The reason was one of guilty conscience and not of saying that the situation was too harsh a working condition. My friend, how can one explain the official life-style of a worker paid to render a daily service of nine hours, but whose regular routine is to dedicate five hours of the expected time to tweeting, face-booking, whatsapping and pinging? Or what is to be said of the ergonomics of female employees who spend all day in the unproductive act of gossiping and jisting while their table is crammed with unattended files? I don't think there is anything wrong with making frequent visits to social media, but during office hour?

Though value-adding is not exclusive of the business expanse, it also has a tentacle in inter-gender relationships. How have you positively impacted the life of your partner? Are you disposable or indispensable to each other? Does he or she feels the positivity of your person in your absence? Are you a goal-mate to each other or just bed-mates? Do you help each other move forward career-wise? Do you help each other get closer to God?....... If your candid response to these questions is not in the affirmative, that is to say, if your answer is not an objective YES, then, it’s ripe a time to sat down and have a rethink of the whole issue. A re-organization about life!

It’s time we started repositioning ourselves for excellence!

It’s time we started doing things positively differently!

It’s time we became Indispensable!

Thanks for the read.

I'm @Imodoye_1 on Twitter.

…Kip da Optimism Alive

MANDELA IS LIVING AND NOT LEAVING!

By Joshua Oyero

“Successful leadership is not about long duration in Office, but the life-changing donation made to the led within the shortest period of leading.” –O.J.O

Petals Of Thought have been in hibernation recently. Bunch of thanks to the consistent followers of this blog who doused my doorstep with effusive inquiries as to know the cause of the pause of this cyber-weekly. The rationale for my staying indoors for a fourth-night now is nature-related. Guess that’s understandable? Anyways, it’s a welcome back with Petals Of Thought!

In honesty, I had wanted to shy away from commenting on the socio-political happenings in the land if not for my porous lips. Aside that, the ambush and abuse recently meted on pedophile can’t just prevent my emotional pen from scribbling in ink, the desecrative acts recorded on the tablet of my mind by the windows of my eyes and ears. From the macabre of genocidal killings of over twenty innocent promising students of Government Secondary School, Mamudo in Yobe State to the wide umbrage of the mysterious child marriage acts, one can savely conclude that this July will not go undocumented in the annals of children etymology in Nigeria. The mystery is just one that deserves to be embalmed in the negative side of the nation’s history.

As if the above is not enough, the crises rocking Rivers State house of Assembly also assumed a taut dimension when the floor of the state’s green house tentatively turned to a boxing ring. It was an immense outpouring of showers of blows! You need to imagine how overtly hardened the veins that lay beneath their clenched fists was at the time of the bout. It was a ‘we-no-go-gree’ kind of situation when the Amaechi-must-go small-but-mighty cabal of seven dealt mercilessly with the pro-Amaechi faction. To sound mocking, the eyesore reminisces one of the exuberant youthful years of the present Monarch of the great Oyo empire, Alaafin of Oyo, HRM, Oba Lamidi Adeshina, who history depicted as the Bash Ali of his youth days.

Without mincing words, the legislative rascality witnessed in post-military Nigeria particularly in the country’s upper and lower chambers whenever there is a bone of contention between legal umpires aptly necessitates that for a lawmaker to be successful in the floor of the green legislative deliberative crib, such a lawmaker must be a Mike Tyson. In fact, a career in boxing should be included as part of the requirements for the eligibility of candidates into the legislature.

Regrettably, the issue of gentility is considered an act of stupidity in the nation’s legislative arm of governance. This explains why an average Nigerian Law-maker is as swift as a cheetah when it comes to the act of molding iron-fist blows that is sturdy and destructive enough to uproot at a punch the entire sets of teeth planted on the pink fleshy gum of an opponent’s lower jaw. Also unarguable is it that, it’s no fallacy of legislative requirement that a Lawmaker needs more brawn that brain to survive the country’s legislative jungle. I wonder what the perception of the international community was like when the footage of legislative free-for-all in Rivers (not a new political phenomenon though) went viral on social sites, chief among which was You Tube. To me, a situation where by the symbolic gavel turned a ‘tentative whip’ and thus used to flog a member of the opposition is absurd a caricature!

Well aside commenting on the legislative pandemonium, Petals Of Thought will not forget to wish the iconic symbol of leadership that Africa ever had a belated Happy Birthday. A quintessential revolutionary who fought tenaciously against the stay of white domination and discrimination against the black in Apartheid South Africa! The integrity-conscious Moses of the South-Africans who refused to trail the part of sit-tight syndrome like his freedom-fighter counterpart in Zimbabwe: Africa’s oldest president at eighty-nine who clocked thirty-three years in office early this year. Petals of Thought congratulates a man who squirmed the severe fiery furnace of mosquito-infested prison for twenty-seven unbroken years of jail term, all to salvage his people from the taut noose of racial Whites. How can history forget the proponent of legacy and not policy whose article of Faith is: ‘Rule briefly and make the greatest maximum impact.’? And in case your mind grope in the dark as to know the recipient of these accolades and embellishments, be still! He’s none but Africa’s own proudest son, Nelson Mandela! Petals of thought wish him speedy recovery. Petals of thought share the optimism that he’s living and not leaving.

Well, let’s say the ‘grace in fellowship’ to the gall commentary on the civil war pervading Rivers State, and the bonfire of ‘child marriage’ fomented by the Bohemians in the legislature. An mild uprising which is still plausibly the most talked-about totem in the pantheon of national social issues. This is to say that Petals Of Thought better mind his business of  leveraging positive influence just as Pius Adesanmi recently said in one of his numerous ‘I-just-hear-with-one-ear’ posts on face-book that the business of minding one’s business is a thriving business anywhere anytime.

Again to the infirm South-African freedom-fighter of all times, Petals of thought says: you’re living and not leaving!

The world loves you!

Africa appreciates you!

South-Africans need you!

…Kip da Optimism Alive

AT THEIR VOICE, INVOICES ARE ISSUED!

‘Kayode Oyero

“As a norm in Wazobia, to collect, citizens firstly connect.” O.J.O

The Sun’s face tilted towards the west. Orange blur veiled the tired Sun after long hours of beating the earth with a flail of fire. Flapping wings and chirping of birds flood the air the way disco beats bathes the atmosphere of a night club. Their tweets echoed as they move in solidarity to their respective nests. It’s evening!

Mama Aduke’s hut is a meeting point for children. It serves as a brewing pot for wards of the noveau rich and the poor. Dark and light-complexioned; well-nourished and malnourished kids habitually cluster round her at moonlight for fascinating tales.

Seated almost immobile like a post on a wooden stool exuding the calmness of a pond, we thronged her the way toddlers encircle a Nanny at a daycare center picking crusts from our nose. Mama Aduke’s fame as a Story-teller is legendary. This is evident from the fact that Parents from all nooks and cranny of Wazobia fling their wards to her compound. This they do at moments when Uncle Sun goes off duty for Brother Moon to take over.

Often-time, we come with a token of gift from our parents in appreciation for her mastery at feeding we children the morsel of life issues. Memory floods my mind like waterfall as I focus on the past wanting certain unforgettable events to flow back to consciousness in an apt and chronological order.

Being the fondest of my Father (of blessed memory), I was not denied the opportunity of listening life-and-direct to this Gargantuan Teller of past happenings in Wazobia. That was at a time when the family vacated to my paternal soil for the forty-one days after-burial ceremony of my paternal mother.

This Wordmonger creature held my fancy in many ways. Though at the time, she resided in a rural village, but her sense of civilization and modernity is incontestable. Noticeable along the pathway that connects her gate made of bamboo tree to her thatched-roofed hut of pin-like windows are stones carefully painted in white and black, giving the aisle a cosmopolitan look.

Dad had earlier briefed me about her profile: A retired professional secretary who doubles as a childless widow. She was addressed Mama Aduke for this reason-Aduke being her first name not a name of a child. She had flown back to her ancestral soil after an official safari as a white collar salary earner (call it reversal of fortune. She damns not care!). Her migration to her home soil was after the tragic demise of her husband: A man whose love was the scent that perfumed her life. She had lost him to the terminator of all times in a ghastly motor accident two decades ago.

Presumably, her sterility had influenced her decision to taking into hobnobbing with innocent young minds. There by, allowing us the luxury to lap up affection from her as a kitten guzzles milk from mother cat.

The air around her was habitually wet with wisdom that crystallized from experience and reflection about local and universal truths and all other forms of knowledge. She was a historian per-excellence.  She was a wordsmith and a wordmonger who hypnotized ‘spirits’ and humans by her sheer power of eloquence. With her mouth she escavated past stories. To her, a people without a past are a people without memory. They have no knowledge of how to construct today and how to shape tomorrow. It’s no doubt that she’s the third and fourth eye of Wazobia: Memory and Imagination.

“As a woman in the flush of her youth when beauty is unmistakably natural with breast ripe enough to cushion a man’s head,” she paused silence reigned in our midst like solitude in a graveyard. Hundreds of pin-pickable eyes fed on her simultaneously casting gaze that had curiosity buried in it. Uncle moon was very helpful as he looked down at us from a majestic vantage with wide-opened eyelid. “I was all-woman: well-rounded, soft-bodied and a feast for all eyes! I had all the soothing features that appeal all eyes and titillated masculine heart.” She continued in a contrive tone that carries the sophistication of gifted Storytellers.

“I worked as a secretary to a bigwig Manager of a reputable business institution for a period that spanned through thirty uninterrupted years. In sum, judging by my experience in that office, I can’t but confess that in Wazobia, to collect, you need to connect! My Boss, a man in his fifties with spectacular matted moustache was not only a sexual pervert but also a dangerous and bossy creature once he ascends the throne in the miniature kingdom of his office. As a practice, sexual encounter with female staffers was a gateway for them to get effected their ‘deserving’ promotion to higher cadres. To female Job-seekers, romping with them on bed was a ticket for their initiation into employment. While dealing with female contractors, sexual gratification is also a facilitation to his award of the contract such a ‘corporate harlots’ vie for. Of note is the fact that there was an equilibrium sort of agreement between the two parties. While my Boss collected a taste of their waist in the form of spine-tingling sex, they on their part are connected having stylishly but gladly gone whorish to submit their naked self to him in bed. In sum, anyone who seals this pact with him, his hand scribbles as the recipient of the promotion and contract respectively.

Gender violence was just too prevalent a malaise in Wazobia!

And as for the male folks, my Boss went about the ‘collect-connect’ thing in a different dimension. ‘If you truly and really need this contract awarded to your establishment, you will have to join my clique.’ was the exact statement he belched to them on phone when they cold-call him on their ‘the-contract-must-be-mine’ quest.

To put clearly, Occultic induction into a secret confraternity of which he was a member was the passport for any Contractor to secure contract in his establishment. And should in case you want to ask me as to what they do there, ‘I don’t know!’ is all I can say. But, an exception to the above trend is nepotism. That was if the subject happened to belong to my Boss’ bloodline”. Mama Aduke said in a tone laced with awe and satire.

“Mama Aduke, what is the solution to this social migraine called connect-collect?” one of the girls, chinwe by name asked demurely exhibiting the problem-solving trait of a solution-provider.

“That’s a brilliant one young one” she professed. See, many a student of the school of spiritual wisdom oft-choose the path of supernatural warfare to control the connect-collect syndrome. They are wont to burying their heads in fervent prayers whilst not forgetting to fortify such intercession with white-fasting. These set of puritans receive unexplainable favours neither by submitting their body to people like my Boss nor by succumbing to occultic induction.” Mama Aduke explained.

Abruptly, an eastward wind blew hardly, blasting our fragile chest with its whirlwind. Nearby shrubs and grasses bow in obeisance to her terrific blizzard. “kkakakakaka” a nerve-racking Mister thunder announced the on-coming of Master rain. We dispersed from our point of convergence running helter-skelter to seek refuge under a nearby shed while we waited for the arrows of rain to hit the soil before we depart to our respective abode.

Like pus from a ripe boil, the sky urinated heavily on the earth!

“Rain, rain go away

Come again another night

Little children want to ..…”

(A labyrinth of the past)

…Kip da Optimism Alive!

A SCHOOL CALLED UNISELF

‘Kayode Oyero

à “You can't be loaded and not be needed.” – O. J. O

Tears flowed freely down his cheek like waters from a mountain fall. His eyes crimsoned like burning embers of fire. Though as human being we’ve got peculiar ways of expressing our grief. While women are naturally dispose to quick sobs, men by the programming of nature are often emotionally disengaged and resilient even when flogged by the most pathetic scourge of life.

But in an instance where by a full grown man wails hysterically like a stubborn kid hungered by a disciplinarian mother, then you know ‘water don pass Garri’ as its being used to describe situations that has gone out of hand in local parlance.

He’s a potential father whose wife is eight months pregnant. He has just lost his white collar job in a sought-after corporate firm located at a country’s economic nerve-center and business capital. He’s a victim of the numerous work force downsizing embarked upon by most organization in Wazobia. An extant aftermath of the presence of marauders in the land!

*****

Away from the pathetic episode above, I recall as if it occurred only yesterday seated amidst men of the pen fraternity sometimes last year during a monthly editorial training section when he cleared his throat with the force of a concrete mixer, then uttered with the persuasive mildness of an itinerant Evangelist who scouts for Converts. He said: ‘for you to be a man of relevancy and distinction,’ he paused allowing his words to percolate the minds of his addressees, ‘you need to be a man of constant learning. You need to be an eternal student at the University of Self.’ He submitted amongst other prudent admonishments.

Barely a year after, I recalled this bit amid countless others when I resigned to the closet of solitude making a roll-call of events that lately unfolded in my sojourn in this ‘vanity world’. And before long, legion of thoughts sprouted in my mind like cactus in a desert. Then I began to stew in the pot of unpalatable thoughts as to what the astute Managing Editor of the foremost Socio-political Weekly Magazine where I had undertaken my media attachment meant by being an ageless student at an institution he christened ‘University of Self’; UNISELF for short.

Fortunately, it wasn’t long when one of the warring thoughts ousted its contenders and thereby called to occupy the entire space in my heart. And as an aftermath, I ruminated in the direction of the ‘winner-thought’ like an exuberant young Lover whose heart is filled with the caressing thought of a beautiful countess.

To him, the ‘University of Self’ engenders constant self-capacity development through reading of information cum educational materials and listening to sagacious life coaches through value-adding audio materials, attending seminars and workshops.

“Quite haplessly”, he noted that to many, “reading is a time-wasting venture, consequently shoving truism to the common axiom: ‘If you want to hide something from a black man, detail it in a book.’

Little wonder why your contemporaries climb the pedestal of promotion to top seats at the workplace while you are still there reeling with a portfolio for donkey years like an untroubled germ-infested solution in a gully during dry season? The rationale is not far-fetched.

Entrepreneurial wisdom demands Proprietors of organizations to value through remuneration and promotion staffers who add value to their organization via productivity.

To be a man of value is to be a Caterpillar that devours the leaves of books because embedded in it is the ideas that you need to be a solution-provider at the Workplace. Ideas rule the world! This necessitates that you must be an Idea-generator to remain relevant at the workplace. Reading avails one the opportunity to cruise in the ship of unending ideas that serious-minded wealth creator needs to escape the rat-race of eternal subservience. It makes for exclusivity. Remember the golden rule that he who has the gold makes the rule,” he tendered.

 *****

Again, just like a meandering river, my mind drifted during my nolstagia tour to the story of a partially literate but active and affable Salesman who sells five-times put together of what his marketing colleagues sell in a week in a day. Though of a junior rank, but he’s no doubt a man of uncommon strategy and marketing wits! Then, after months of consistent fattening of the barn of the organization’s profit, his day came (your day will come). His issue was raised in consideration for promotion at the board meeting of the firm where he works.

Just as I had asserted in my recent work: Attaining the top is not free, it costs a fee that swimming through enmity-infested Ocean is one that is inevitable for aspirer of enviable positions, antagonistic ‘ogas at the top’ among the board members raised  opposition to his potential elevation saying the vocabulary power of the debated-to-be-promoted man is sub-standard. “His sentences are so incoherent. I wonder how he wins over the heart of clients who presently are our cornerstone patrons.” One of his antagonists expressed in a laudatory but mockery tone. So goes on and on in the air of the air-conditioned state-of-the-earth boardroom rebellious voices rising into the sky the way steams of vapour escapes a closed-lid pot on fire into the atmosphere.

And tired of their sentimental and nonsensical din and in a bid to insulate the poor but result-yielding man whose promotion is being debated from the sting of the scorpion tongue of ‘ogas at the top’, the Board chairman who has kept mute all through the heated argument of rebellion said in a pre-emptory tone: ‘WE ARE HERE TO SELL AND NOT TO SPELL.’ So was his promotion effected with immediate alacrity (A prayer to all those who are not found wanting in the area of value-adding in their respective firms but yet denied the reward of promotion by the so called ‘ogas at the top’ who indulge in what I call ‘I’ll occupy till my children graduate’, don’t go dismay. Soon shall you break from the one hundred Lilliputian nails that impale you to an official status for donkey Years).

Aside metaphysical undertones, one would discover on a tacit watch of the issue on the front burner that complacency is the cause of all official stagnancy. Just like a self-satisfied and over-confident brilliant student who does not bury his head in studious vigils swallows the bitter pie of failure so also do many White-collar-so-called individuals who are okay with their information level suffer demotion, to sound mildly, official stagnation.

Let me sound a caveat before I’m being misquoted. Exploring one’s potentials is a fantastic thing to do (like in the case of the hardworking junior staffer heralded above.). But, the business of credentials acquisition is also one that must not be allowed to suffer. Don’t forget that ours is a dispensation that glorifies the ‘certificate mentality’. This is unarguably an era of certificate conscious business landscape. Again, this reminds me of another story of two good jolly friends who worked in the same business establishment with a National Diploma Certificate as their educational qualification.

While friend B reeled in self-satisfaction of the stipends he called salary, friend A was cognizance of the ‘obtainables’ that are obtainable at his turf of operation: the opportunities that may abound in his extant firm in the yet-to-come but fast-approaching future if he bags a senior qualification.

Pro-actively, friend A enrolled to be under the tutelage of a reputable professional institution and thus bagged a ‘senior qualification’ after the spelt number of years. Luckily, an opening in the form of an internally-advertized vacancy with the educational requisite of what friend A just bagged was announced afterwards. I need not complete the story. But a deductive point is that friend A’s intellectual capacity is not one to be equated with friend B’s poised and diminishing brain power. Their viewing lens of the world is far wide apart!

In actual fact, people who are not informed are deformed. If you're not updated, you're outdated. Those who know are always in the flow while those who don't know lie down in the low. The boardroom is not a bedroom. The boardroom is a place for busy brains not for sleeping brains.

Dare to be a man of value!

Dare to be indispensable!

Dare to be peculiar and spectacular!

Dare to be the last man standing!

…Kip da Optimism Alive