Complete Workmanship

Friday again. Usually having to write the update is not a thing that gives me a headache but for this time alone, it is a bit of an issue. It of course, is because I happen to be on a 24 hour duty call at the Gogo Chatinkha Maternity Wing. Showed up in this hole at 6:00 am and I will be leaving tomorrow at around 8 or 9. That's is what makes life fun as a medical student.

Being in the middle of where the work is, I could not think of any other thing than workmanship. I always try to think of ways of fixing our man made issues and I think one of the issues that are hindering development is the issue of lack of workmanship.

I once had a chance to chat with Mr Sharma or Sharma Industries and he happened to sharehis hiring policy with me.. He told me as to how he doesn't like giving a certain nationality big jobs because of their tendency of working with their eyes on the clock, always waiting for 5 pm to knock off without thinking about what the implications of leaving will be on the productivity. Mike Mkali also echoed the same when he was asked about what sort of employee he wants to have. He clearly said that most business owners nowadays would rather have partners than employees because employees are mostly concerned with how they can benefit from entities rather than how companies or organizations can benefit from them.

Well. We have a starting point. I am sure that many would identify with what I am talking about here. Probably some of us are in the same spirit of taking jobs just as a means of survival other than a way of making a difference. Most of us are not in our dream careers, anyway and we get to wonder as to why we should care about the interests of the employer, who probably doesn't care about our interests.

If you look at the root cause of the whole thing, it might arise from something as deep as our very school system, but I do not think that explaining that would be good for a Friday update. To offer a better explanation, I would say that this lack of workmanship comes from lack of responsibility among intellectuals.

To prove a point, I would like to point out that for someone to be a complete workman, there are four important elements that have to be present namely proper skills, proper knowledge, right attitude and motivation.

Proper knowledge. I like to think of every field as a language. When a person is studying engineering or medicine, what they firstly have to do before they go into the field is to understand a new set of terms and the sort of communication mode the people use in the new field. Vital. Everyone needs to have this theoretical knowledge and that is why we are spending so much time in colleges and other training institutions memorizing books. Tough but necessary. It's for the knowledge because impractical as it may seem, it comes in handy sometime later.

Skills? Of course this is the application of the knowledge into something a bit more tangible and meaningful. Skill is more or less like the field application of the knowledge and this is very important in the actual work. I personally believe that knowledge without skills is almost useless, unless if you are otherwise in the academic circles.

Attitude. Now this is one element that a lot of us have been missing. Most of our trainings have been focusing on developing skills and knowledge without any emphasis on attitude and this gas affected almost all the other elements. People have gone into fields of study and work that are ideally interesting but failed to make achievement because of attitude issues. Ill attitude directed towards work, people at work and everything to do with work leads to poor yield of work and if you look at things in retrospect, bad attitude towards education leads to poor skills and knowledge, again leading to poor workmanship.

To the last point of motivation. This is the word that has been grossly misdefined to the extent that people don't get it for what it is. Others have twisted while others have narrowed it's very meaning. The point, however, is that motivation is just the drive that keeps a person doing something. The interesting bit is that the problem we have is not lack of motivation, but rather that people do not have sustained sources of motivation. To be blunt, most of us work for money and do not look beyond it for our source of drive. That is why some people go into a workplace and do not hesitate to steal at the first access to resources. That is the very reason some people move from job to job, doing the very things that are against their convictions. Poor sources of motivation.

Having pointed out the problem, it is time to suggest the solution. Not rocket science on this one. If we look at the four elements I have talked of, they are anomalies that are easy to treat.

I think it is high time that most of us who think of either owning businesses or working started looking at progress as our motivation. It is very easy to look the other way, taking it from the fact that whatever we are working on does not directly benefit us. The better way of looking at it is that of balancing between our needs and the expectations of the one who hires.

Self development is another element that we need to think of. Attaining the appropriate skills and knowledge is important to every workman, self employed or otherwise. If it is not for the development of self or the one who hired, let it be for the nation because with the growth of every entity comes national development.

As intellectuals and young professionals there is a need for us to think about the future. We need to embrace our responsibilities to accumulate the right knowledge and skills and webshould always strive to have the right attitude towards our work and everything surrounding it as that is the only way to progress.

Money will always be a need but there has to be a time when we look beyond it for the greater good. We need to have a driving force that is beyond food on our table and maybe then might we be talking of true development in our communities and country.

Ready for the change?

I hope so.

Reporting from the COT (don't ask me what that stands for).

Random Thoughts on a Friday Evening

Great expectations create frustrated men. That is what I read from the story titled the case of a prison monger in some book called Looking for a Rain God. You probably read that too, and might be wondering why I have decided to bring that up on a Friday evening. Well. I personally believe that the statement was either inaccurate or incomplete.

For some reason, I think that in as much as great expectations create frustrated men, they also have the potential to create dreamers and people who have visions who in turn become achievers.

So what are these great expectations and who has them? Well. Me of course. And a bunch of others who joined the medical field looking for guaranteed jobs from something called the Malawi Government and its Ministry of Health (why do they call it a ministry, anyway?)

Yes. I am talking about the 48 or so doctors. They are not 51 as we have been made to believe because some of them were not Malawians and they are back home; probably driving Nissan Tildas by now while their Malawian counterparts are languishing at home contrary to popular expectation they had they would be employed by now.

Some might wonder why this is such a big deal. Yours truly will lay it down for you. The thing is that when you graduate from the College of Medicine (sukulu ya ukachenjede ya za chipatala ndi mankhwala according to one George Limwado) with and MBBS degree, the degree does not make you eligible to practice. The point is that you need to work under supervision for some good 18 months of fun before getting certified by the so called medical council before you can have the license to practice. The original arrangement is that the government is supposed to pay the new graduates as they do the working in this 18 month period, but for some reason the government has decided that it does not need these doctors (implicitly).

There is one serious implication of that. Newly graduated doctors will not have a chance of practicing unless if the government decided to sort out the issue.

Result? Others have gone out while others are languishing at home. Probably wishing they had applied for Law studies after their premedical sciences. What a waste of 6 years.

Recently I was asked about how I reacted when I heard that the government was not hiring, considering the fact that I am in the next batch of medical graduates. Well. I will share what I said. This is very demotivating considering that we went in thinking of job security, anyway. On the other hand, it got me thinking that things are changing and we need to change and that is where this post becomes universal with everyone having a thing to learn from it.

I have heard a couple of times that the government is broke so we might need to brace ourselves for tough times. In fact rumor has is that our dear boma is considering wage reduction, so if you were celebrating on the premise that you are not a doctor, you need to “rethink again”. Back to the medical personnel, nurses whose deployment was reversed are still at home and I don’t think things will be any different for the Malawi College of Health Sciences students whose results have just recently been released.

Moral of the whole rant?

I have learnt in this year that most of us get caught by surprise in things that are not supposed to be surprising in any way. Consider a parent sending a child to a free primary school (and yes, thanks to Bakili Muluzi for that). The parent does know that the next level of school is secondary school which is not that free. Guess what a typical Malawian Parent does? Wait till the child gets selected to secondary school for him to have some short lived joy before starting to think of where he is going to get the fees money. Nanji akamapita ku koleji. That is where our friends from the west beat us. I am not saying everyone can manage this, but if all the capable people could think of doing this, I think some of the demonstrations by intellectuals would have not been happening.

Here we are. Always surprised by not so surprising things. Unfortunately this has spread like a cancer to the whole nation. We hardly have a vision as to where we want to develop and graduate to and the only vision that governs our country is the ruling party’s bid to win the next election. This is probably why many intellectuals know that there is a whole lot of unemployment and hostile business and investment conditions but are not acting on it. They want to be in for the surprise after graduating and staying without a definitive occupation for two years. Ladies and gentlemen, this whole issue of kukanda (Prince Muta uses this as another word for unemployment) is real but I am sure something can be done if we begin to look at it from a reasonably far distance.

I could write all night, but if we are to go back to where we started from, the main point is that these unmet needs should not create frustration in us. To everybody who reasons, this whole national crisis or whatever you call it should be a source of opportunities to make a fortune and impact.

One Dr Benjamin Mosiwa once said that intellectuals need to be thinking in terms of graduating as solutions and not as problems to the country. What he meant was that no one needs to graduate with nothing to do in mind, because in that case they just end up adding to the bad statistic of the unemployed. Something to think about.

I do not feel obliged to lay down what “doing something” about the future we want to have should be about. I believe that it is a tailor made thing based on personal aspirations and goals (assuming that we all have some). I hope this has provoked some thought process in you, and that you will not get surprised by something you clearly knew was coming.

Great expectations create something, but what will that something be to you? Will it be frustration or a brighter future?

Thoughts random. Yet not too random.

Tilombe…

Goal Setting in Four Questions

A couple of weeks ago (if not last week) I shared something about redefining success. Important to note was the fact that the mention that the redefinition of success was something that would follow the setting of goals. Goal setting is yet another interesting thing that is yet to be embraced by many, young and old alike and that is because most of us do not believe in the importance thereof.

I wouldn’t want to go into details on the importance of goal setting, but common sense has it that is you set your goals then you at least wouldn’t be living a random life and getting whatever life throws at you for yours. People who set goals also set standards for the sort of quality of life they live and the manifestations of these have been proven.

Many would ask the how question. There are so many times that people talk about setting goals and writing them on paper, sometimes without giving a clear way of how to go about it. Well. That is one thing, but on the other hand, my experience has it that some people have given goa setting a rough and “not so user friendly image”. I have had my fair share in that. I was at some point (in 2013, I think) given a 22 page notebook in which I had to write my goals and what I wanted to achieve by 2023. Not a bad thing, if you think of it, but I was barely 20 then; and expected to envision my life at 29. Write my rubbish and all, but it taught me a lesson that I needed to have some good foresight of the future me.

I have every reason to believe that in as far as goals have to be concise the 22 pages I was given were a bit of an exaggeration, and that is why I would like to share another view of how goal setting could be done with simple questions that everyone could ask himself or herself; the what question, the how question, the when question and the who question.

The what question. This is about asking yourself what has to be achieved. There are so many aspirations that a person might have in life and the constant posing of this question to the inner self is one important step to working towards and thus achieving any goal. If you think of it, there is a very minimal chance of achieving something that you haven’t thought of achieving because there is no possibility of working towards it.

Everyone might have an aspiration, but it is not enough to envision yourself driving a nice car. That is too vague and you need to be as precise as “I want to drive the Range Rover Evoque Victoria Beckham special edition”. Add the model to that too. Now that is precise and worth calling a dream.

One thing we don’t have to ignore in this step is the difference between a want and a need. It is said that men do not grow old but their toys just get bigger. That is what is said in reflection to the attitude of men of liking luxurious things. Women are not exempted, anyway, but the idea here is that some luxuries are not worth including in our goals. Think of something that will add value to your life. One Dr Cornelius Huwa (Oh, yes! Him.) who spoke to us in our foundation year orientation taught us about assets and liabilities; things that add money to our pockets and drain from it respectively. Well, he said we need to think of accumulating assets. Something worth remembering and considering in the “what” question.

Having gone through the first step of knowing has to be achieved gets you to the next stage where you can think of how you can get to achieve it. Yet another neglected area and this is what makes a difference between people who actually set off to pursue what they have envisioned and those who stay behind. You might agree with me that there are many people who do have many wants and aspirations who never bother to think as to how they precisely can achieve whatever they desire to achieve.

The how question should be guided by the aspirations at hand. Every goal, be it financial, health, spiritual, academic or social has some way or ways to it and these are the ways that have to be explored and noted in order for one to achieve their goals. In short, one needs to knowwhat it takes to achieve the goal.
Then there is the who question. This in its shallow sense entails that one knows who can help them reach their goal, be it friends, mentors, family or anyone who can be of help. It is important to know that not everyone close might share and believe in the personal dream you might have and as such dreams do not have to be shared with people who have the potential of not sharing with them. The reason is simple and it is that they usually end up choking the dream before it comes to come to actualization. They will even bewitch you for it, sometimes if you believe in that sort of thing. Dreams need to be shared with people who can fed them and add value to them.
On the other hand, there has to be an element of giving to any dream. If you think of it, most times we visualize our future and successful selves in terms of us only. I was once asked the challenging question some time which made me realize that I need to factor in the benefit of others in my dreams. This particular gentleman once asked me what I would do if I got all I ever wanted overnight, be it academic credentials overnight. That is when I realized that it is easy to attain my goals and build myself a little ball of self-comfort forgetting the others who could benefit from my resources, financial or otherwise. Something “munthu aliyense ogaya” needs to think about.

Another important question is the when question. This is just about the timeline of the achievement. Some would tell you that eventually “aliyense amaiphula” (everybody gets to prosper) but to be frank I would rather drive an Audi A8 while I still have a feel for speed other than when I am in my 70’s in which case I won’t have eyes fit enough to push it to 180 kilometers per hour. The “when” of a goal matters, because setting timelines to goals is also a key prophylactic measure to procrastination.

Adding more words to this writing would not add any value to it. The short message is just that we need to get into the habit of setting goals by asking ourselves the simple questions, but those which matter. It is important to have a precise idea of what exactly you want to have to the detail, how you will get it (legally, of course), when you need it and who you want to help you and to benefit from your achievement. Then comes the element of putting it down on paper and revising the goal if needed.

Of course these things do not do themselves so there is need for working out the goals to make sure they are achieved. Yet another area that differentiates dreamers and achievers. Topic for another day.

I hope this has either added or removed something from your life. I am okay with either, so long as you haven’t remained the same.

The Manual

Friday again.

As alluded to on the Richie Online Facebook page (which some of you have chosen to have the boldness not to like up to date), this Friday we will do less of the jokes and more of business. Very important considering the fact I talked about the previous post (on redifining success) that we all need money.

The most conventional way in which people earn a living in Malawi is through labour; skilled and unskilled alike; and the fact that you are reading this means that you are probably going the way of the former (skilled labour, that is). Issue is that, however, employment is hard to come by these days if we are to look at things in realistic terms. I am told that the figures from the National Statistics Office entail an unemployment rate of 50% among the Malawian youth and some go on to suggest that the figures are cooked to obsecure the true picture on the ground. Whether the latter is true or not is of little significance because half of the country being unemployed is already too toxic and paralytic to the economy of the country.

Here is the thing. People who are employed are more likely to be financially stable and and with financial stability at individual level chances are that the country will also be financially stable and this unemployment rate surely has a crippling effect on the economy in those lines. We shouldn't be, therefore, surprised with the general outcry and the increase in the number of fingers to the government.

To add to the already existing problem, the government which is busy training people seems not to be in the mood of hiring. There was once a time when teachers used to be employed straight from the TTCs and when doctors would have a job barely 3 weeks after accessing their finals results? Now? You know, of course.

All complaints raised, we need to realise that their are some people who are on two or three high paying jobs. And yes, in the midst of these some are prospering in jobs and businesses alike. There are people who are getting jobs whilst in college while some stay for years at home without proper jobs. Realizing what accounts for this difference in fortunes will help us realize and probably cover up the gap that is there between many of us and financial prosperity.

To the point solutions.

The first of these of course is about hard and smart work in everything we do. Most of the people who spend time reading my posts are intellectuals or newly graduated. Interesting group of people which can be careless and myopic. Sometimes many of us disregard our performance in work places and institution forgetting that they may have a strong bearing on our future. Probably high time we realised that the impressions we give with our grades and work performance have an ability to make us or break us.

There was a whole statement that was made in support of marginal passes in college. At some point people even made the "Ku College Bola 50" Facebook group. It is this spirit and that of thinking we don't have to work hard in workplaces that is killing most of us young people, leading to unemployment on the personal level.

Another solution that most of young people could use is the realignment of priorities because most of us got them twisted. One Pastor Ken Mlomba once posted on Facebook as to how sorry he feels when people have all the smart gadgets while claiming they have neither business capital nor school fees. That is how we see things nowadays. We give so much attention to things that do not matter leaving out the ones that do. Talking of resources that are misplaced, it is not just monetory but time too. The time most of us would spend social networking could be invested in self development but most of us do not take up the task.

I have known how some people transformed their lives when they began seeing every resource they had as an opportunity to have something greater; every single minute they had as an opportunity to self develop. High time everyone followed suit.

And then comes another important one. One thing some of us need to do is to understand the concept of baby steps and learn to know that progress is progressive, meaning that it is a process and not a one time event. Most of us nowadays would want to get there without going there. Practical? Not at all. We want to get to the best positions in our companies without rising through the ranks. The reality in this world is that there are little chances that it will happen that way. That goes to my friends in entrepreneurship too. You don't expect to start a business today and be like Thom Mpinganjira the next day. Doesn't work that way. We need to learn to walk in baby steps before starting to run. It is the little things that are available; jobs, school and business opportunities, that will lead to greater things later.

There is another popular excuse that goes among young people. Most would point the big people in higher positions, be it in the public or private sector for their problems, citing that the people higher up arebnot giving young people opportunities. One Dr Matthews Mtumbuka once said that people who want to get things done do not wait for an opportunity to be handed to them, but rather they go and take it from where it is. Frowning at the statement? Well. I agree with him.

Most of us sit and expect opportunities to come our way, but there is a slight chance that someone would leave the comfort of his position to hunt for his competition. That is why us as young people need to be proactive enough if we are to get what we need for progress in our lives. Sometimes it makes sense to shake up people who matter till they act on our requests. I have every reason to think that no one would resist to grant an opportunity to someone who goes to them and gives them a reason to give the opportunity. The problem is that most of us demand stuff beyond us. We need to see what's worth and work on ourselves; building in that CV and knowledge profile before going to whoever and asking for a job or whatever opportunity.

Trust me, people are looking for people they can hand opportunities to and if they haven't found you, it is just that you are not doing something right to make you the right person. Sounds harsh, but it is true.

Meaningful connections. For some reasons these work and are infallible. Make friends that add value to life and are relevant to your career and aspirations. Very important. I mean, if you are in a field and you have contacts with people who are higher up; and of course you talk to them on the right things, chances are that when there is an opportunity it will come to your Whatsapp inbox before it gets to some newspaper. That is not corruption of course. I mean, between someone who I know and someone I don't, all factors constant I would go for someone I know. Simple logic, but most of us are failing to apply and are surrounding ourselves with friends that drain us instead of adding value to our lives. Something to think of.

I could continue to type and to say a lot, but the point is to really just break free from the sort of thinking we have regarded as conventional for long. Job applications shouldn't be restricted to big positions and to vacancies. We need to seize every opportunity as it passes by and to stand in opportunities' way by getting in touch with relevant people. We need to be proactive and to ask for what is rightly ours other than let others give us a measure of what they think we deserve. Priorities need to be set right and lived by. Self development needs to be at the heart of everyone and we all need to build a name and a CV worth showing out.

If we could sort these things out, it could as well just be enough to survive and maybe enjoy the so called harsh economy. I must say that these things are best tailored to aspirations and do not work crude. I hope you got the principle.

Consider that the second epistle.