UKZN – PhD Winter School, 2020

UKZN – PhD Winter School, 2020

 

I had the privilege of attending the UKZN PhD Winter School Class of 2020, South Africa the last couple of weeks. I would like you to know that there are few things in life that come along, change your perspective, shake up your reality and give you courage to move on in life. This course was like that. It was a horizon to horizon experience that, like pilots say, allows you to see tomorrow. There is no way I could thank all those people enough who put all this together and Tembisa knows it is true. But to the Class of UKZN-PhD Winter School 2020, just know you are all the best! I wish I had a picture, a signature or certificate, but that don’t matter now because I got things in my head I can never forget. There is so much more I could tell, but here are 14 things every PhD student in the World should know;

1.  A PhD is a research degree, you are the PI, Langba
2. Buy a book, you are a PhD student, Langba
3. Do what your professor says; you can save the world later, Turnage
4. How did you generate this data? Smit
5. I don’t know everything, but I know enough to be dangerous, Paguyo
6. Immerse yourself in your topic, Perry
7. Look for a wedge in your topic to find the research question, Sundaram
8. Numbers don’t tell you everything, Richardson
9. The more you read, the better you write, Williams
10. The researcher IS the data collection tool, Dyson
11. What are you passionate about? do that! Marshall & McClinton
12. You are a scholar activist, Banks
13. You are an inside outsider, outside insider, Alexander
14. You just don’t write essays, you produce knowledge, Banks

The Law Cannot Save Us; Lets Make a Social Contract!

THE LAW CANNOT SAVE US

LET’S MAKE A SOCIAL CONTRACT

In a recent case in these COVID times, a widowed mother had to lock herself in the house and call the neighbors for help. The son, living in the outhouse on the compound, was in the habit of demanding money from his mother whenever he required it. The son, a college graduate, was not interested in doing any work for a living. As fate would have it, this time his mother did not have money. The neighbors came to the woman’s aid, in response to her call, saving her from a threatened beating. A few days later the mother came to plead for her son’s release from custody. He was released because she was not willing to make a statement convicting her son of any misdemeanour. Instead of having the matter dealt with in a substantive jail term as per the law, she staked her hope on society.

This story happening in many generic forms in these COVID times. The pressures of life have risen to “distress levels”. What kind of social contract can sustain us in times like this where we face rations and restrictions are imposed by a condition well beyond our control. Is this a special or unique time or are there lessons we can extract from this season to take us into the future? What will help us resolve our social crisis in times like these where the “law” is handicapped. The answer I believe lies in committing to a five-fold social contract.

The Fear of God

The first frame of this social contract is to acknowledge that God is overall and in control and that He has not lost control. This requires faith, but taking the law into your own hands is not to get even, but to deny and despise the presence of God. To take the law into your own hands is to advise God that He is not doing his job and that He needs a little help from you. To address the God of all creation on these lines is an effrontery if ever there was one. It is to challenge authority only slightly more powerful than a police station. You may not call upon him regularly, but it behoves all of creation to fear him for maintaining the Universe. If we all observed this law, we would resolve half the problems of the legislative universe.

Truth

The second frame is to observe the truth. Lies inflame and entangle and make a mess of relationships and life. They waste the jury’s time trying to find it and make a mockery of anyone who calls himself an upstanding member of society. Truth. Truth is absolute and it is liberating. If everyone told the truth we would not have these family innuendos between husband and wife, children and would be good neighbors. The Bible counsels that the truth will set you free. But it can also earn you forgiveness speedily, speed your way in business and in every endeavor in life. In truth you will not need to look back for anything. It will resolve the problem of integrity and chastity. You will only have to speak once. The next action in repentance will be to work out how to make things right. The truth is not the truth because you said it. The truth is the truth simply because it is the truth. It is a scholarly, enlightening and empowering discipline to pursue the truth. You will do well to make this your life’s call.

Wisdom

The third frame of conflict resolution is wisdom. All cultures are the accumulated wisdom of the ages condensed into practices that to negotiate and resolve issues in concert and character without loss of social standing with others. There were no jails. Your family culture will have a conflict resolution framework that will work for you and allow you to look wise if you follow it. Religious teaching offer plenty of advice. The Bible instructs a four-step process that if you exhaust you will be free of all sin in the matter. Wisdom is important because it helps you negotiate and resolve solve problems on a daily basis, before they become a crisis. When you become a wise, people will seek wisdom from you. Indeed, if you are wise you will have no problem with the law. But if you must be a fool then the fines you must pay to carry that title will wear you thin and grim.

Peace

The fourth is the frame of peace. Peace is not the absence of war, but it is the absence of violence against another. It is a conduit to prosperity of soul and the health of the body. It is the gift you receive when you do not give way to stress and chose to seek redress. Peace is a principle of life. It is sought after as a condition of success. Do not give up your peace on any account and in this you will rise to your full potential. While peace is challenged by the emotions of anger, regret and guilt - you know what you must do to release yourself from these false wizards of destiny. In as far as it depends on you live at peace with all men. It is possible to walk away.

Respect

Finally, respect. I do not have to love my neighbor to live next to him, but I can resolve to do him no harm by respecting the way that marks the boundary between my house and his. It is not the boundary wall that marks my respect, but the fact that I do not waste time to plot and plan to disturb his peace by my presence or agents of my presence. Respect is to acknowledge the good in others and respect good in yourself. To respect is to live above your passions and pride. It may require that you humble yourself and perhaps agree to humbled to the extent that good may come out of it. Incidentally you cannot respect others if do not respect yourself.  There is no justifiable reason to force respect. It does you and others no harm to stay in your space. Stay safe.

Education is an Industry!

Education is an enterprise

Education is an industry. You may look at it as a process of civilization, but unless you consider it to be an enterprise, it will not make you wealthy.

The New Normal: Adapt, Adopt, until you become Adept!

The New Normal: 
Adapt, Adopt, until you become Adept!

Many a business finds itself in challenging situations because their pre-COVID-19 customers, suppliers and work skills that they relied upon are simply not available and in many cases not there at all. Many of the old skill bases that were needed to run businesses depended on paradigms that have been collapsed by the pandemic and will take time to rebuild. Banks are having to reschedule loans; landlords have adjusted terms just to be able to keep their tenants. If they let them go and stuck to contract terms, they would not be able to get other tenants for the property, at least for the short term. The lack of customers and the changes in consumer priorities are forcing businesses to rethink their business models and develop strategies for new products, services and service delivery that fit into the new normal environment.

What does this mean for the average business? I call it “average” business, not because the business small, big or medium sized, but because every business must have a core strategy for survival that enables success. The average business will be thinking about the “basics” before it moves to thinking about competitiveness, growth and market share. In other words, the average business must first of all continue to exist before it can thrive in the future. The average business must adapt, adopt and become adept at meeting the demands of the New Normal. While most people will think of this as a short-term measure, it is a major organization success competence. James Oliver Rigney Jr, the American author said, “The oak fought the wind and was broken, the willow bent when it must and survived”.

When I put the question to a business seminar on which organizations would survive in the New Normal, 75% respondents said those that were flexible and open to restructuring, this was against options that included “innovation”, “customer focused” and “financially secure”. The business responses of the organizations described in the first paragraph do not make conventional business sense and rescheduling loans is not a profit generating activity. However, in the circumstances it does appear not only prudent, but very wise. Indeed, these businesses have bought themselves time while acting to reposition themselves in the New Normal market. As they adapt to the new conditions, they will adopt practices that will become part of their organization competencies, business repertoire, knowledge base and understanding of the market. In time they will become adept and gain superior and competitive skills at profiting from these sacrificial adjustments. They will succeed in the long term because they were willing to adapt, adopt until they became adept!  

How To become an Entrepreneurial Employee in the New Normal

The New Normal
 Entrepreneurial Employee

The term “entrepreneurial employee” sounds like some sort of paradox, but it need not be. During a training forum for employees on how to cope with the New Normal, it became clear that the dependent employee of the past would not fit into the New Normal environment. The old paradigm on the employee’s complete reliance, dependence and “allegiance” to an employer was put to question. The fact that the nature of employment has changed means that employees also need to change with the times. Depending on your employer to pay your rent, insurance, health care, mortgage payment and secure your bank loan has been put in serious jeopardy.

The COVID-19 pandemic has provided two signals that the New Normal employee needs to consider seriously. The first is that you can lose your job. In fact, the job is not yours and was not yours in the first place! Second, your terms of engagement can change. Indeed, many employees are either on a reduced pay structure just to allow them to keep a job. Two things emerge from this scenario. First the employee has more time on their hands and two, employees need to manage and supervise themselves. In other words, employee dependence on the employers has shifted to managing their own time and productive activity. If you haven’t got it yet, all I am saying is that employees have been forced into the realm of personal enterprise.

In the realm of enterprise, you must think for yourself, plan for yourself and work for yourself. A major shift from the old days of employment. In the world of enterprise, the employee thinks like an entrepreneur and plans his day, organizes his time and engages income generating activities. If you have a contractual obligation to work half-day, you can use the other half of the day to engage in other productive activity. You can plant a kitchen garden or “balcony garden” in couple of pots around the house to get some food on the table and help you spend less on groceries. You can engage in teaching and home schooling your children to read. You can also coach the neighbor's kids to play the violin at a fee. You can negotiate with your employer as an independent contractor to assign you other jobs apart from your previous position. You may, for example, take over the office cleaning contract or take up a commission sales assignment to drive your personal enterprise. This will require both humility and flexibility on your part. If you believe you are an accountant by birth, by design and by death you may never be able to humble yourself to a salesman position.

As an entrepreneur you must think about investment and multiply your sources of income. You must build your own house and look after your own enterprise to survive the long term. You must look after your own interests as much as you receive a wage for the services you provide to your former full-time employer. Many employees struggle with this form of “disloyalty”, but the reality is unless you look out for yourself no one else will. You simply must become an entrepreneurial employee.  

Click here to download the App and become and learn to be an entrepreneurial employee

Master Class: How to Lead Corporate Transformation, in the New Normal!

Master Class
How to Lead Corporate Transformation: 

The New Normal

Kindly accept my personal invitation to register for our Master Class on the principles and practice of transformation to equip you develop a “strategy to Success” model that will help your organization navigate the current global industrial slowdown occasioned by the corona virus pandemic. The Pandemic has ushered in a new and challenging economic season termed the “New Normal”. The Master Class is designed for Corporate leaders, Company and Organization managers, Institution administrators and Function supervisors responsible for initiating learning, change and innovation in a business.

Allan Bukusi will present practical business models based on his recent researched study on How to lead corporate transformation that are urgent and relevant in this season. Click here to register for the Master Class Thursday 18^th June 2020 from 10.00-1200 EAT on zoom. The Master Class will empower managers to design strategies and effective business models to move the business forward, successfully tackle the present and prepare for the future growth. You are encouraged to attend the Master Class with an office colleague so that you can share and determine how to follow up and implement ideas shared on the program in your organization.

Equipping Employees for the New Normal

Equipping Employees for the New Normal

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on global trade and local business is reshaping the work environment. Employee – employer relations are becoming more plastic in the New Normal. Indeed, there have been significant job cuts and layoffs in markets around the world. The implementation of “social distancing” has forced employees to work from home and show proof of productivity before they are paid. What used to be “performance management” has become a “productivity challenge”. Yet, employees still have personal goals, career aspirations and development plans to achieve in their own lives!

Click here to register for our business forum on Thursday 11^th June 2020 from 10.00-1200 EAT on zoom. You will find out the core skills and key competencies you need to keep your career on course, prepare for your next work assignment and realize your personal aspirations in the New Normal employment environment.

Regards,

Allan Bukusi, 

Author of How To Prosper in Employment.