She is indeed estimable. She raised the Wojcicki sisters—YouTube CEO Susan, pediatrics professor Janet, and 23andMe CEO Anne. Esther Wojcicki, a high school journalism teacher, dropped some hints on how to raise successful people, using a methodology – TRICK methodology – she had used on her girls. Updating the methodology, she left some lines in a Fortune interview. Her words: “The only thing we do now is confiscate kids’ phones, which is ridiculous. They don’t learn anything; they just learn that the phone is forbidden fruit”. She thinks we need to guide kids on “how to use your phone ethically, how to use technology for information” over blanket decision that results to raising a “nation of sheep”.
Wojcicki, or “Woj,” as she’s known to the 700 teenagers enrolled in her popular Media Arts Program at Palo Alto High School, came up with her own philosophy after many years of teaching and parenting. She lays out the secrets to cultivating effective and ethical leaders in a new book, How to Raise Successful People: Simple Lessons for Radical Results. Her tried-and-tested formula? It all boils down to TRICK, a catchy acronym that stands for trust, respect, independence, collaboration, and kindness.
These are the components of TRICK – trust, respect, independence, collaboration, and kindness. The full interview is here.
Wojcicki, or “Woj,” as she’s known to the 700 teenagers enrolled in her popular Media Arts Program at Palo Alto High School, came up with her own philosophy after many years of teaching and parenting. She lays out the secrets to cultivating effective and ethical leaders in a new book, How to Raise Successful People: Simple Lessons for Radical Results. Her tried-and-tested formula? It all boils down to TRICK, a catchy acronym that stands for trust, respect, independence, collaboration, and kindness
“The ultimate goal of TRICK is creating self-responsible people in a self-responsible world,” – to achieve this one could take a lifetime, going by how being responsible has become such a premium.
Some fine insights from her views: raising a nation of rule followers, a real virus that has bedevilled academic institutions and business entities till today.
I am also curious about why there’s no word in the dictionary that directly defines what it means when another person succeeds, without necessarily meeting your own expectation; perhaps because humans are naturally selfish. So we tend to view success only from the perspective of seeing people delivering what we want them to do, not whether they did so well bar your self-interest; something to think and research on…
When we do not allow people under us to try things and possibly make mistakes, creativity dies; and accusing them of not being good enough becomes self-indictment.
It is always painful when good people who once came together now want to go their different ways: divorce leaves wounds in the hearts of men and women. The way they do it in America is exceedingly unfortunate. Yes, little things that could easily be resolved break people apart. With everything institutionalized, the players – man and woman – have only paid agents of commerce to discuss things that have no place in commercial connotation. The counselors are clocking hours as they try to settle disputes and are bounded by many ordinances that creativity in extremely complex issues is stunted.
Think back in your village when men made it back from cities with their wives so that some issues can be resolved. The parents will call some trusted elders and confidants, and right there, they will explore solutions. If that one fails, they will try from the woman’s side, meeting the parents or elders. At the same time, the man who had served as an intermediary in the marriage is working hours to fix the problems. Simply, before people decide to call marriage off, real efforts have been exerted to see if they could stay together.
For all the goodies in the beautiful America, the marriage system demoralizes. They have taken out the bringing of families – just two people signing documents, and nothing but that. That was why a man earlier this year married and divorced within four days. In Nigeria, if that happens, you will shock family members who traveled from across the country as they are sure to still be hanging around after the marriage.
Africa, despite our challenges, does better in this space. Marriage disputes bring communities and families together. If MacKenzie Bezos, soon-to-be ex-wife of Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos, has been a Nigerian, the marriage of 25 years might still be there despite the paralysis the man brought to their union. Sure, Jeff made mistakes but this woman is largely open to forgive. She allowed the man to take 75% of their Amazon assets and 100% of the other entities. She gets 25% of their Amazon assets which is worth about $39 billion.
The Bezoses announced the dissolution of their marriage in January and finalized the divorce just days ahead of her 49th birthday. MacKenzie is now worth about $36 billion, making her among the richest women on the planet. In her divorce statement, she said she was “happy” to give her ex-husband 75% of her Amazon stock and voting control over what she retains, while he takes complete ownership of the Washington Post newspaper and Blue Origin, his rocket venture.
From her actions, you can see a great woman trying to live out a culture which she was battling over. She took 25% and left many billions on the table. In the most challenging moment in her adult life, I guess, she showed so much admiration and respect to Jeff. Left to MacKenzie, she would have simply said: “Jeff made mistakes, not perfect. Yet, we will stay together to fix the issues”. Many at her level will call her weak for putting on with a man that looked elsewhere. Yet, that was the real MacKenzie. Her praises for Jeff in this issue, and her admiration of the past she had with him, and her written tales, tell me that if not for the peer pressure of pack-out-and-leave, Jeff will not become single in weeks. And MacKenzie will not also.
Weeks before divorce, the Bezos were going out together to events
The Nigerian Woman
Simply, without peer pressure that if a man had fallen to adultery, divorce is the only solution, MacKenzie Bezos and Jeff Bezos will still be planning their futures together. The admiration and respect they showed each other weeks before the divorce in events showed a communal meeting like the African type would have fixed some of these issues. That makes me to conclude that if MacKenzie Bezos had been a Nigerian, bringing her community in the process, they would have handled this better.
If Africa does not have anything else to brag about, at least we beat the West when it comes to families and marriages; we do not just give up indiscriminately on those areas. I just hope that our modern day ‘all knowing activists’ won’t push our people to embrace divorce as the new normal; our system is still much better in that respect.
America is a broken place, when it comes to families and husband and wives issues, and it’s always a big mistake when men and women think everything should be ‘institutionalised’, with government coming into these things. At the end of the day, you only destroy homes and breed desolate people who have no taste of happiness anymore.
Just like the legendary Einstein opined years ago, only two things are infinite: the universe and man’s stupidity, and he went ahead to state that he wasn’t sure of the former, while there is no doubt about the latter…
The Creator made marriage or family the way it should be, but in man’s ‘all knowing’ syndrome, that penchant for stupidity, we managed to turn everything on its head, and now we have disaster staring us everywhere you turn to.
Fix marriages, fix families, and you have a decent and thriving society; anything else is just a joke.
Another comment
I do not agree with this school of thought. Because African marriages tend to last longer does not mean that they are better marriages. When an African woman is encouraged to stay in a disrespectful, abusive, or infidelity ridden marriage, we should not clap for ourselves. Views like this continue to perpetuate the cycle of downplaying the impact of major issues affecting African families, particularly African women who have very little recourse.
Can we honestly say it’s better for a woman to remain in a relationship despite the African man maintaining mistresses and concubines, as is often the case?
Our sons then grow up to believe that it is somehow our right to be forgiven. And our daughters are conditioned to just accept and move on.
Kudos to MacKenzie for not sitting on the sidelines on this one. Yes she’s entitled to 50% of Jeff’s assets, but she is mature enough to know that she doesn’t need it. $30bn can create a whole new life for her.
My response: Mr. …. no one said any should stay. I am not sure there is any criminality here like abusive etc. Here in U,S, people get married and divorced within days. In the blog, I linked a celeb who filed within 4 days of marriage. My grand point is this: it does not have to be that way. A celeb divorced the husband because the man corrected the son in loud voice. You can extend this but I think Africa is better in many ways here, from my angle. Some of these things can be resolved, not just via divorce.
Someone’s response on same lead comment: Abdul, is having broken homes a better option? Certainly not. It’s very easy to frame “abusive relationships”, but the damage caused by encouraging people to part over things that with care and attention – they can be resolved, is still substantial. No matter how you look at it, Africa still have a better system than whatever that is out there, children whose parents are together are more stable mentally and emotionally. We cannot afford to ask people to embrace divorce, just because someone felt cheated, it’s colder outside. People should be more responsible, but nothing guarantees good behaviour all the time; humans will remain humans.
The federal ministry of education dropped something this week: illiteracy level in Nigeria. Watch the number – 60 million illiterates in Nigeria – as you pursue that digital strategy. It is a very significant number which takes away a huge chunk of the 180 million people in population. Largely, when you take out the pre-readers (at most 15 years by literacy classification, 44% of population), you may have only about 40 million literate adults since 60 million adults are already classified illiterates. (About 80 million Nigerians are aged at most 15 years which means you have 100 million remaining from 180 million. If you remove 60 million illiterates, you are left with 40 million adult literates in the population.)
Sonny Echono, Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Education, says nearly 60 million Nigerians are illiterates, assuring that literacy centres will reduce the high percentage of illiteracy in the country.
Mr Echono made this known on Thursday at the Federal Government College Otobi, during the inauguration of a pilot Literacy Centre for the North-central zone.
The permanent secretary expressed regret that the illiteracy rate among the youth and adults is high, saying that the literacy level at the lower cadre of the colleges is also alarming.
As the Permanent Secretary ministry of education noted, the number is increasing. In other words, adult illiteracy in Nigeria is growing. In 2015, adult illiteracy for Nigeria was 41.3 million; today, it is now 60 million. Adult illiteracy of Nigeria increased from 24 million in 1991 to 41.3 million in 2015 growing at an average annual rate of 21.00 %.
I commend the government for doing something about this through this literacy school initiative. Besides, they need to add community-driven initiative that works with mosques/churches and village leaders. In my village where I can say we have close to 99% literacy rate (my state, Abia state, has literacy rate of 94.24%), community women leaders run the show.
Comment #1: As always, Nigeria is a strange place. Ordinarily, you would expect the illiteracy level to depreciate substantially over the past years, because the younger people were all expected to receive basic education; but it turned out that the opposite is the case. Again, to make blanket statements such as “60 million Nigerians are illiterates” is misleading too; when my home State is nearing 100% literacy level, so a clear distinction is needed, to get some people up and running.
No State in the entire northern region reached 80% mark, the few that crossed 70% are predominantly the minority tribes in those areas, so there is a clear relationship here; that’s where major enlightenment and awareness need to be directed. The federal government doesn’t have much to tell people from my State, its focus should be heavily directed, with laser-focused attention on the States that are simply below baseline.
Yobe State has 7.2% literacy level in a country that operates “federal character” regime, and one is still searching for the meaning of injustice? Most state governors in the north should just vote around 70% of their annual budgets to Education alone, the numbers coming from there are just pathetic.
Comment #2: And this figure is coming from the ministry which makes it likely to be a discounted account of the true picture. This fact even makes it more cringing.
Huawei Technologies, the Shenzhen-based Chinese telecommunication equipment maker, saw a 25 .01 percent rise in profits as a result of its continuous investment in research & development which has seen it develop innovative products that have improved the customer experiences in its markets. It posted net income of CNY 59.30 billion in 2018 while its revenue for the year jumped by 19.50 percent to CNY721.20 billion.
According to its 2018 annual report, Huawei invested CNY 101.5 billion (14.1 % of its sales revenue) in R&D ranking fifth in the European Union Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard. Guo Ping, Huawei’s rotating chairman, said at the release of the report that Huawei’s R&D expenditure over the last 10 years had reached more than CNY480 billion.
According to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) data on patents filed, Huawei filed 5,405 patent applications in 2018, placing it in first position among all companies globally.
Asia-based innovators filed more than half of all international patent applications via WIPO for the first time in 2018 on significant growth from China, India and the Republic of Korea, capping another record-setting year for WIPO’s global intellectual property (IP) services.
[…]
China-based telecoms giant Huawei Technologies, with a record number of 5,405 published PCT applications, was the top corporate filer in 2018. It was followed by Mitsubishi Electric Corp. of Japan (2,812), Intel Corp. of the U.S. (2,499), Qualcomm Inc. of the U.S. (2,404) and ZTE Corp. of China (2,080). ZTE Corp., which was the top applicant in 2016, saw a 29.8% drop in the number of published PCT filings in 2018, its second straight year of declines. The top 10 applicant list comprises six companies from Asia, two from Europe and two from the U.S.
Huawei won the award for Supplier of the Year 2018, and Best Innovation 2018, at MTN’s Annual Supplier Award ceremony in Dubai, based on performance metrics such as quality, delivery and support, account performance management, innovation and meeting MTN’s compliance and risk requirements.
About 197 Fortune 500 companies use Huawei’s products, and in 2018, they sold 200 million phones getting 14.8 percent of global market share, and placing them in second position to Samsung Electronics. It has 36 joint Innovation centers across the world, 176,000 employees and 79,000 R&D employees.
Asia is now the majority filer of international patent applications via WIPO, which is an important milestone for that economically dynamic region and underscores the historical geographical shift of innovative activity from West to East.
Director General, WIPO, Francis Gurry
African companies should learn from Huawei and invest a significant portion of their annual profits on Research and Development to come up with products that will compete in blue and red oceans in order to consolidate their market dominance.
Just as you decide to apply for the Paystack-Lambda School income share agreement education – you get training free, to pay from your future paychecks – please note this: it could cost you up to $25,000. They have capped the future pay at $25k. Yes, there is a huge opportunity cost there. You are looking at 9-month remote software training and the possibility of paying $25k for same in future. Make those decisions yourself.
The ISA [Income Share Agreement] for African students is a little different from the ISA for students from the US and EU, in recognition of different economic conditions. As an African Lambda School student, you only pay the ISA if you’re making over $15,000 a year (or the equivalent in your local currency). If you don’t find a job, or don’t reach that level of income, you’ll never pay a cent. If you do meet the minimum requirement, you’ll pay 10% of your gross income monthly (before taxes) over the course of 5 years. The amount is capped at $25k.
The U.S. wage base is $50,000 but they have made the African one $15,000. The Lambda School is a 9 month immersive training program that gives you the tools and training you need to launch a new career. The program trains people online to be software engineers at no up-front cost. Instead, students have the option to opt into an Income Share Agreement where they pay a fraction of future income.
When you have nothing, all agreements really look fantastic, until you worth something, then you begin to question everything. In Naira terms, that’s over N8M pay out in five years, and if Naira tanks, it could be over N10M. The catch is that you only pay when you are working, but when you now have a colleague who goes home with full cheque – while yours is punched with 10% drop; you are likely to feel ‘cheated’, but remember where you were coming from… No free lunch, just make sure you possess both the mental and emotional capacities to make this sort of decision, once you are in, you are locked!
That calls for some decision. For me, I would use the following parameters to make that decision. 1 ) Are they going to provide me with a job after the training? 2 ) Are they going to provide me with all the facilities I need for the training apart from the training content? That is to say, are they going to provide me with laptop, internet, and electricity for the training? Or maybe access to any training facility?
