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