Festive and End of Year Message – The Importance of being BRAVE

Last year, 2022, I spent five months in Nigeria. I left in August.

I had spent some time in a remote and rural part of Imo State. I was working for a company with a wide range of assets concerning the palm oil industry. My main role was to see a specific modernization program to fruition, but  meanwhile, I had responsibility to keep a wide range of assets ticking over.

In these kinds of situations I always feel the need to scrutinize and shadow all aspects of operations. On one particular night I decided to shadow security operations against palm fruit poachers.

At one stage of the patrol we came into unavoidable conflict with poachers. One of our group had his arm almost completely hacked off.

The next day, I was inside a palm fruit mill, and I slipped and fell inside a concrete recess. I busted up my legs some. I got some roadside medical attention in Amafor town, and was back on duty the next morning early.

Some questioned why I felt I needed to be so hands on. Leaked opinions ranged from being Brave, to being naïve or just plain crazy.

What exactly is Bravery?

Merriam-Webster Dictionary says it is ‘the quality or state of having or showing mental or moral strength to face danger, fear, or difficulty’.

I think there are different kinds of Bravery. It is possible that sometimes we perceive the existence of Bravery where it may not be present, and we fail to see the presence of Bravery when it is.

And so I come to the ‘featured image’ of my article: Please meet Doctor Kimberley Abraham.

Now, the thing we can see about Dr. Kim from the feature image,  is that she could easily be producing endless pictures in different outfits, that are easy on the eyes.

They could be accompanied by endless stories about ‘being human’ or ‘being authentic’, and ‘on the way to work’ moral lessons. They are not.

Doctor Kimberley Abraham is an Oral Surgeon.

She is one of the most foremost in a country where I spent many formative years – Trinidad.

Her posts on LinkedIn frequently illustrate graphic Dental Surgery content. Though Dr. Kim’s description of  herself as an ‘Oral Surgeon’ will also extend to pointing out that maintaining the health of this ecosystem does not just involve the teeth, it involves the whole mouth.

That type of content isn’t easy to win SM traction for, but Dr. Kim does it anyway.  Where you see a train wreck separated by two lips, Doctor Kimberley Abraham sees the most amazing of rough diamonds, ready to be dug up, surface ground, and polished.

And yes, these posts do sometimes ‘tank’. but Dr. Kim will be on LinkedIn again soon, producing more of the same.

This, to me, is a type of BRAVERY.

How would I describe being BRAVE on LinkedIn? Well, for one, it’s about not trying to ‘game’ the system to get metrics, and grow community.

A runner up prize for being BRAVE on LinkedIn goes to Inez Willeboordse of Jobnet Africa. Posts are straight to the point. Videos start with a short intro.. followed by corporate slogan – ‘gain profit and time by finding them top 5% management candidates IN, not ON, the market’ and then directly into one of a series of customer challenges and what Jobnet Africa’s solution is.

A bit formulaic, and there are only a limited number of specific challenges that Inez feels sells JA best, so it can seem a bit repetitive, but that’s also important for product and brand reinforcement.

You won’t get any silly stories from Inez about someone being loaned a pair of shoes on the way to an interview, nonsense polls about toxic workplaces, nauseatingly repetitive content about the difference between a boss and a leader, or how a candidate dashed someone money for a taxi fare on the way to an interview, and ended up getting the job because ‘authentic’ qualities were important to the company culture and the person who was dashed the money was, lo and behold, the new boss!

Inez avoids producing this kind of content that is designed to drive LinkedIn metrics by resonating with the semi brain dead, and that makes her content appear to struggle with traction. She doesn’t allow that bother her, and that to me is being ‘LinkedIn BRAVE’.

Over the year, an interesting new feature is doing a ‘purposefully engineered’ poll, and then following up with a post some days later, using the poll results to drive the marketing thesis. Inez has also managed to secure a series of video interviews with satisfied clients. These very visual testimonies are huge and worth infinitely more than any business can say about itself.

The Triangle of Fit

The Triangle of Fit is important as an expression of value for anyone who has some level of Geo-Mobility.

The more locally a person wishes to stay to where they have been engrained with human qualities since birth, the less important the ‘GEO MARKET’ part is, and the triangle flattens to a straight line.

Unfortunately, on LinkedIn, the people that illustrate Geo Market most, are those that least need to demonstrate those credentials. They are flatliners. The people I feel most need to illustrate it, are those who make no effort to do so at all.

From personal experience in Nigeria, I have found those most needing to illustrate the apex side of the Triangle of Fit are expatriates from emerging economies in South Asia, ACEAN, China and The Middle East.

So a story about two guy named Anil and Essien.

Anil comes from Uttar Pradesh, a place in India. He worked in Nigeria for almost 4 years in a company off the Abeokuta Expressway near Sango Ota. It made plastic water tanks, buckets, and crates for the brewing and CSD industries. Anil knew about ‘Rotational Equipment’ (RE)  to a point of obsession and could tell you anything about any new design coming out anywhere. You could debate the merits of a particular engineering design with him for hours. He was 37 when he went to Nigeria, and had 12 years experience in  three factories with RE at home. Anil was married with three children, none of which ever came to Nigeria.

Essien was from Uyo, Nigeria and reported directly to Anil. Essien had two passions, his membership of an up and coming church where he was an assistant pastor, called ‘Shallow Soul Ministries’ and his love of the latest Nigerian music, particularly if it was promoted by Don Jazzy. It’s unclear if Essien knew anything about RE. He never spoke about it to industry peers the way Anil did.

A few years passed. Their employer was affected by the Forex ban for supply chain imports. They weren’t able to source raw materials of consistent quality and in good time for efficient production continuity. The company closed. Both of them reached out to me for help in their job search. Despite 12 years relevant experience at home, Anil is looking to the Nigerian market for employment continuity, not his domestic one.

So.. I go on LinkedIn to see how their contributions over time measure up. I’m not too concerned about the bottom right aspect of the ‘Triangle of Fit’ because I know both from that factory, and that’s good enough for me. I want to probe Essiens’ content on Profession Fit, and I want to probe Anil’s content on Geo Market Fit. On Essiens’ I find several posts about events at ‘Shadow Soul Ministries’. I find a lot of comments on posts made by Don Jazzy’s production team. Nothing there at all about manufacture of plastic water tanks, buckets, or crates.

Meanwhile on Anils… I find a street carnival procession, somewhere in Uttar Pradesh. I find comments about a local election somewhere in Uttar Pradesh; photos of a relatives wedding in Uttar Pradesh; a goat being rescued by some folk in flash flood water, in Uttar Pradesh; a truck in trouble on a hillside road, an excavator tries to help recover it, both fall down the hill into a ravine somewhere in Uttar Pradesh… (non exhaustive list).

Where is his Geo Content? I’m not expecting to see Anil ‘getting down’ at a Don Jazzy event, or worshiping at Shallow Soul Ministries, but I’m expecting to be taken on some sort of content journey that shows four years assimilation effort in Nigeria, since its the market where he wants a reappointment. He hasn’t even got as far as ‘Weitin dey happen’. Meanwhile, Essiens’ content should more resemble the way Anil speaks about technical things.

They want me to expend my free time, and risk my reputation on recommending them, when they won’t even generate LinkedIn content showing they can recommend themselves. Both only made populist choices to retain resonance with legacy communities. Not good for their career necessarily, and not very LinkedIn Brave.

Ndubuisi Ekekwe and the fine art of Tribalism Evasion.

Tribalism in Nigeria as many other nations, is a complex dynamic that is almost akin to a fusion of xenophobia and racism. Navigating it to balance the recognition and appreciation of other tribes while at the same time, maintaining a sense of belonging to ones own, is politically challenging and delicate.

I’ve not come across anybody in respect of finding the right level here, who gets it better than Ndubuisi Ekekwe.

Ultimately a thesis should be able to stand on its own merits, not on the public perception of who is sponsoring it. In the challenging world we live in, this does not always become realized.

 

Prof. Ndubuisi however, is regularly forced to remind some of his respondents here about the importance of approaching content with impartiality.

He will frequently be drawn to say ‘Before you have read a word of my thesis, you have first read “Ndubuisi” ‘ (approximate wording). Meaning: Since names in Nigeria frequently reveal tribal origin, Prof. is cautioning the respondent to impartially analyse the content, rather than dismissing it as coming from the perspective of an Igbo centric ‘loading’.

Ndubuisi Ekekwe puts himself in the firing line for this kind of targeting all the time. This is a type of LinkedIn BRAVE

As Francis Oguagu put it today: ‘Here, the message is irrelevant, it’s always about the messenger and his origin’

My final shout out is to the breaking news artists and subject matter expert journalism, especially on the tech side. This kind of content isn’t written to resonate with anyone in particular. In its most naked form, it doesn’t have a narrative. It isn’t anything in particular. It just ‘is’.

Firstly there is the ‘house’* team at Tekedia Institute. In no particular order – Samuel Nwite ; David Gani Tiamiyu Ismail

Shout out to dis0wned on the Discord Server.

Thanks go to Peter Oluka and  Joan Aimuengheuwa  of TechEconomy Nigeria were the first to announce our creation and marketing of the first Web 3 domain in the world – 9jacom.

We would also like to thank  Isaac Umunna at News Express Nigeria and Bukola Olanrewaju at Business Remarks for carrying stories about 9ja Cosmos.

A shout out also goes to George Onyewuchi for including us in his programs.

We can’t thank all the people we need to on LinkedIn, particularly those in the blockchain space, as we would inevitably leave out someone, resulting in the opposite of our intent, as you are many! You know who you are.

Media, Journalism and Information Dissemination can be tricky, and sometimes it can that you don’t get to write the news, the news gets to write you!

(Unless you happen to be in the US and go by the name of Tucker Carlson).

A big shout out for those working to keep the heat on the issue of Ukraine. – Emil Lokotosh , Olena Sosenko, Robin Horsfall

These are all types of LinkedIn Brave.

For me, well, I will keep with my articulation of ideas around Web 3, Blockchain, Metaverse and NFTs which I do understand not everyone agrees with.

For 2023, you will all have to work to find your own version of BRAVE, both in, and beyond LinkedIn

I will end from almost where I began… leaving you with a quote from Dr. Kimberley Abraham –

‘It’s human nature to talk about what we HATE about our jobs   But since that negativity doesn’t do anyone any good, let’s do the opposite.  What do you LOVE about your work?’

Onward in 2023 we go!