from Certificate-to-Doctrate; A Corporate Journey

 

from Certificate-to-Doctorate: A Corporate Journey

The first five lessons I picked up along the way...

When I tried to enter the corporate world from a teaching job, at the beginning of my working life, I was rebuffed for more than two years! Nobody took my Bachelor of Science in Physics as serious corporate competence. Later on I would learn that some of the greatest CEOs in Kenya, such as Michael Joseph of Safaricom, had Science qualifications as their entry points to an illustrious corporate career. However, at the time the market could not read the way I was thinking and rebuffed by attempts. 

So I had to go to night school while teaching for another year to prove my competence at the illustrious Kenya Institute of Management, enrolling for a certificate in business administration. Small qualification, but it opened the door for me to join Sean G. Hawkins (we called him SGH) at KHI Training. As they say, the rest in this story! My entry into the corporate world was not dramatic, but in that process I learned some major lessons. Lesson number one; a certificate is important! It opens people’s eyes. It makes them look. I later followed that small certificate with more insignificant correspondence (todays online) courses in accounts, management, personnel & Industrial relations, time management, presentation skills... Needless to say those seemingly insignificant certificates leap frogged and fortified my position as a corporate trainer, business strategist and human resources consultant. 

Of course my mentor saw my potential long before I fully understood how the corporate world worked. He sent me on a one-week training program with real CEOs and Senior managers on a Strategy Development & Implementation course conducted by an Ashley Management College consultant back in the 80's one month after I joined the company! Lesson number two; get yourself a mentor who can see further than you can imagine! You may not agree with your mentor, but if they can see 20 to 30 years ahead of you, you will thank them later, much later, after you have enjoyed what they tried to get you to appreciate back then!  

At some point in my career, I wondered, as most people do,"how I got here?". I looked back and began to see what my mentor may have seen in me. He leveraged on my five years teaching experiences and diploma together with my passion for management and bet that I would make a trainer in time. He was not wrong. Lesson number three; leverage your background and basic skills to give you a career distinction, blend and inimitable character. 

No experience, education, exposure or expertise is wasted, unless you make it a waste of your time. I remember the one and a half years I spent working as an accounts clerk after high school in the basement of a government office. I hated the job with a passion! That was then. Later in life I would start my own business. Guess what knowledge base I pulled out of the dustbin? You guessed it. Yes, Book keeping! I am by no means an accountant, but I know enough to keep cash flows going as a lifeline of a succesful business!  Lesson number four; learn from what you do NOT enjoy! 

At some point early in childhood, I got this idea that I could be a writer. However, there was no evidence in the ungainly preteen to that effect back then. To date I really cannot boast of anything beyond a C-grade in English literature throughout my entire education.  But I was so convinced of this interest and consuming passion, that since Ms. Kinuthia’s grade 5 English class at Nairobi Primary School (NPS) more than 40 years ago, I have never stopped writing - this or that. I never gave up writing because of my grades! I wrote for the love of writing, “writing for writing sake”! Fast forward. To date, I have written a few research and academic papers, a few books and the essay you are now reading! There is a song about this, "Children hold on to your dreams", by the Wee Gees - look it up. It will inspire you and change the way you think about how your childhood aided your career! Lesson number five; Never let go of your passion. Not every skill you have can or will be certified by an education program. Some of those lateral skills are invaluable to keeping you alive on your corporate journey. It is what headhunters call , “added advantage”, like another language or interest in “swimming” if you are gunning for a career in the hotel industry. These five lessons, I think, were entry requirements. Let me know if you find them helpful. I will pen some more later as the journey continues…    Go for it!       

Allan Bukusi

Leadership Vs Management

 

...Leadership asks, "Where do you want to go?" Management answers,  "This is how to get there!"

AB

The Spirit of Wisdom

 

The spirit of wisdom

The reason why people in Africa associate wisdom with old people is not because they are old, but because wisdom itself is old. It looks down on the present and the future. Ideas may be new, repeated, fashionable and true, but wisdom is as old as the hills. If you can calculate the age of the hills and valleys, then you will understand how old wisdom really is. Wisdom is as ancient as the days of time.

Allan Bukusi

God provides;

 

God provides; the rest of us must Work.

Allan Bukusi

Woman of Faith

 

Professor Faith Wariara Nguru

Character, courage, capacity, counsel and commitment came in a deceptive, diminutively statured package that wielded power gently. Six hours of tribute was not enough to eulogize, describe or celebrate the accomplishments of a life that belies its age and contribution in time.

I thought I knew you; but, I did not know of you. Humility hid a prodigious authority under the cloak of duty, meekness, faithfulness and integrity. In you I find that loyalty has a new meaning in leadership; double deputy, assistant, secretary, commissioner, mentor, preacher, big sister, friend, wife, mother, peacemaker and professor. That testimony is not mine. It is from far and wide; in the news I heard coming from the NEWS. From important people before whom I could never stand.

A gift of light is gone in the night. No, I never really knew you. But now that it is night, I remember the light. You were so small, yet such a great soul. Gone quietly without a fight, Having done all with all thy might; for one you loved both day and night. What more could I say. Your maker must be proud of you. There is a new light in heaven. Fare thee well Woman of Faith. Fare thee well Faith, fare thee well.  

Allan Bukusi

It's Time for Leadership Beyond the Leader

 

The performance of the second generation post-colonial amalgam of modern nation administrations in Africa was tied to the experiential reality of its leaders rather than the institutional capacity of its polity. Each leader believed they were better than the former and certainly superior than the other leaving little room for the wisdom of consensus to emerge on any matter under the sun. This meant that the potential of these nations always remained greater than their performance.

This may be a good sign though, in that leadership in Africa, can only improve as demanded by its polity over time. Indeed, in another two generations it may seem quite odd that leadership in African ever displayed the political morass that is perhaps characteristic of  the present. A great hope, but a good hope nonetheless.

As both the empowerment and expectations of the people buoy each other in voice, deed and increasing demand, leadership will be forced to deliver higher levels of institutional performance rather than depend on the fragility of its leaders. This is leadership beyond the leader. Depending on the fragility of the person rather than the purpose and function of the position is bound to be a disappointing show in the short run and an ill-advised choice in the long run.

Allan Bukusi

How to Start a Business on the Road to Nowhere?

 

The truck raced through the winding dusty road in the middle of nowhere. Every other weekend it ferried goods from who knows where to there and back. The people in the hills used to tell what day it was from the trucks subsonic roar and toxic dust cloud that could be seen billowing from miles around. Nothing else exciting passed that way on any other day. The spot was marked by a dip and a top, but that was all there was to see in between the savannah to the right, the grassland to the left and the cliff drop from the top into the vast valley below. The road, though untarmacked was the shortest, most convenient route to there and back. The driver had no interest in the space, but it was an ideal place to make a short call in the bushes before descending from the top of the hill into the rambling plains. 

But if you stood still for a day or two you might notice a thing or two. Some distance away was a watering hole for the local pastoral clan. The combined cattle harvested the wild grass and kept it trim and gleaming in the hot sun into the horizon on their circular sweeping weekly route from one season to the next. As fate would have it, the local women too competed for the water on a daily basis, just a little upstream hidden among a small group of trees. The shaded washing arena was not too far away from a dilapidated primary school, where students came with bare foot shrieks combing the grass from the hills all around to the tin roofed learning pens that did not quite fit the term class room. The children raced through the plains to the gong of an old tractor axle, hung on a tree, that no one knows whence it came. One strike of the gong could be heard for miles around. The shrill student races took place in the warm morning rays that wake up the sun and then back to the hills in the midafternoon serenade just before sundowner. Some teachers rode bicycles; a wonder of technology to the pure young minds devoid of tablets.

In this unlikely space came the mogul. He set up camp a few meters away. Just visible from the dusty road. In a dusty shack held together with chewing gum he settled down to watch and wave at the crowd that passed by at various points in the day. They all pointed at him, his shack and then at their heads. They actually thought he was mad. But everyone minded their own business and told everyone else to do the same and keep their distance. Nothing, for sure, could come out of this – whatever it was. The safe place to be was in the hills.  

But by and by, as children will be, they stopped by. The moguls first installation was some pencils and sweets. The sweets were free, but the pencils, for school, were for a very small fee. His first enthusiastic customers set the hills ablaze with the written word, in the breeze, on the backs of trees and at the watering hole. The mogul added scented soap to his box of tricks. Soon the word was out and the womens' water route incorporated an optional D-tour for a piece of beauty and dobi at the price of a bar. It did not seem to matter that the mogul who sold the bar lived in a dilapidated shack by the side of a dusty road to nowhere. 

So day by day the children passed by for pencils and sweets and the women were guaranteed a clean sheen and clothes shine from across the road. The herders on their weekly rounds realized that the shack was not moving and so hung around in the hills to watch the daily traffic swills. But the hills were cold at night and when they heard that the mogul had matches in his box of fixes, they sent down their own to make sure they had a light for the night. And so it went on. The truck continued to race on its regular round, but it no longer caught the attention of the people in the hills. 

And so it went on the children running to and from school buying pencils and books, the women drawing water buying soap and a drop of paraffin to light the candles at night. In fact, at night, the once dark hill side was quite bright. The herders came for matches and gum and the teachers bought some pens, chalk and read recycled newspapers as they pumped their bicycles on the way home. The place had become quite a crowd. One day the lorry stopped by to find out what was going down. The lorry pledged to come by with salt and sheets next time round and so began the commercial town of nowhere.     

The town began, not because the mogul had set up a shack, but by doing so he had changed the daily round of those he found and, of course, he was going nowhere.  In time the shack became two and three. A place where one could stop  for oil and grain, and if the herders were good, you could get a cup of milk. The lorry round now announced new stock and its stops became market days when herders sold their cattle while everyone else made quite some noise throughout the day. Interestingly, nobody remembers the name of the man who started the place, but I think he must have been called pioneer or something near.

How life had changed in that place. But it is not because the mogul had anything to sell, rather he touched, changed and transformed the people’s daily round on the road to nowhere. If you really want to start a business, you must be prepared to take the road to nowhere until it becomes somewhere.

Allan Bukusi