This is from a LinkedIn comment on the piece titled – The biggest failure is NOT fixing things that lead to failures.
One of my greatest pieces of wisdom on time management cleverly linked to success & failure! Period! Even greater than my masterpiece “Eat that frog” by Brian Tracy. Thanks, Ndubuisi Ekekwe
As I noted in the piece, I hold this principle that those that come on top are not always the most gifted but those that plan BEST.
“I was a bookworm in university: yes, the too-much reading type because I knew I was not the smartest in class. But I knew if I worked hardest and smartest, I would come on top. That is a principle I apply in life: put extra efforts to mitigate deficiencies in capabilities and quickly learn and advance.”
Yes, the real issue is not the failure but not dealing with elements that keep causing failures.
I wrote a long piece in Harvard Business Review (print) on this, using the engineering process of tracking “noise” and “failures” in inertial sensors while working on an accelerometer for iPhone. In that piece, I explained the core engineering challenge: how do you design for high reliability? Simply, you need to know what causes failures and deal with them, from silicon to production.
As you do that, let it become a positive continuum where even though failures may still occur, you keep reducing the rate of failure until you hit your optimal threshold. You must understand that failure because it is part of success. Measuring failure and why it happens are key components of what matters
We work with many global and local entities, helping them to understand the state of commerce and industry in Nigeria. To do this work very well, we build database of firms, quarterly tracking indicators and many things. This process is done fanatically as we want to walk into Boardrooms and Workshops with arsenals of the […]
It is a serious issue and one I do not have the moral fiber to discuss since I also resigned a job and left for America many years ago. Yet, because commenting is free, I will go ahead. There is a big exodus happening in Nigeria right now, and the destination is Canada. When I say exodus, I mean real type like the one described in the recorded Exodus. Lol.
As at 2017, there were over 11,000 Nigerian students in Canada. They hardly go back to Nigeria after graduation. Canada will gladly keep them to work because of their skills acquired through relatively high international school fees paid by parents from back home. This is a win-win situation: Canada gains from the inflow of revenue through international school fees from Nigeria and other foreign lands, retains the highly skilled hands after their graduation; Nigerians and other foreign nationals find abode in Canada and partake in the robust economy under a relatively peaceful and prosperous society.
Today, as I write, a company in Victoria Island is shutting down a department after all staff received the Canadian immigration visas. They are going to Canada, and Canada is asking for more.
If you have a top-grade team, managing the Canadian risk is a big issue now in Africa. But finding answers will be very hard: you cannot take away the rights of people to put their services whenever they desire. Yes, the ILO guarantees many times including the rights of people to freely work without impediments imposed on illegal contracts.
Canada has a more friendly immigration policy than most developed nations
Yet, if the Nigerian government has not seen this trajectory, it is blind. Our problem now is not training and developing talent, but actually keeping the talented people in Nigeria. Most young developers are moving into Europe to code, and some living in Lagos are actually working outside Nigeria, receiving payments via wire transfers. So, that your neighbor who does not leave house, in the day, may be working in Amsterdam via his laptop! It is very crazy as I had a Nigerian entrepreneur living in U.S. who told me he was going to Lagos last month to hire three software engineers. It is a slam dunk decision: he would save tons of money doing just that!
Of course, you know about the exodus of doctors from Nigeria. If you check the class of 2010, from any decent medical college in Nigeria, I am sure more than 90% of the doctors are outside Nigeria. Those finishing this year will be off by 2025. And yet, government massively subsidizes medical education only not to have a plan on how to retain the medical graduates. See it this way: Nigeria is subsidizing medical manpower in UK, Canada and Australia where most of our doctors relocate. I hinted on a partial solution in a piece in Harvard Business Review. But that is just someone with no real or imagined power writing.
Nigerian leaders must get real – this country is bleeding talent!
The problem with this post is that more than 50% of the probable commenters are ‘guilty’, including the author! But in the spirit of commenting being free, everyone is highly welcome.
It’s a quandary, with no clear solution. It is not easy to remain in Nigeria, especially when you have the means to run away. It is also not easy to convince another person to stay, when the person’s world seems to be crashing on his/her head. Even those who are holding on at the moment may soon run away as well, once they run out of ideas/excuses on why they must remain here.
Staying in Nigeria requires a special talent, which only few people have, the rest are waiting for their turn to run away, so do not think the people you see around or call from the other side of the Atlantic really want to be here; they are also counting days. At least we have handed governance and fixing Nigeria to average people, then waiting for the almighty ‘fix’, so that we can congregate in Nigeria and sing “no place like home”, it may never happen!
The greatest damage they did to us was colonisation, which didn’t end with independence, it continued, especially psychologically, which is even more powerful.
You want to start that web startup. You have looked left and right, within Nigeria, and came to the conclusion that no single company was in that territory. So, you extrapolated, I have no competition. Unfortunately, that you wished so does not mean that is the state of things. There is a diminishing abundance that comes with Internet: you are global and local at the same time. So, are your competitors! Because internet is unbounded and unconstrained, most times, a local company faces competition from any part of the world. You need to have that in mind and not judge an idea based on solely if there is a local firm already in that space. And when you start, do not fall under the illusion that growing number of users will fix all problems. Simply, measure what really matters as you grow.
NB: A pure web business is a business where all activities are operationally served within the web. A hosting company is a pure web business since the service is 100% on the web. But an ecommerce (for non virtual goods) is not a pure web business since it has a major offline component which is physical delivery of the purchased goods items.
In this videocast, I discuss what I am calling the Law of Diminishing Abundance of Internet. It is a construct that some companies become poorer even when they are growing in numbers of customers reached.That applies to industrial sectors like publishing and telecoms. The lesson here is that risk in any business model must be examined from the lens of this mirage abundance which Internet has provided in some sectors.
The biggest victory in life is victory over your time. If you master your time, you will win your future. Greatness has been achieved not because of special talent but rather via total dedication, perseverance and commitment through mastering of time. A man who cannot manage his seconds will wander through the boundless of time.
Tenacity is critical because without it, any mission could be lost. In business, I have come to understand that one of the most important skills is the capacity to do the best possible job at the shortest time possible on something with the highest impact. Yes, everything must be bounded by time because without that time consciousness you will not make progress. The world will not wait for you – you have to fit into the world as defined by 24 hours in a day.
Have a process and see how that process aligns with your goals in life. Students, look carefully, the bests in your classes are not necessarily the smartest but those smart enough to manage their clocks. Because the world is bounded by time, defined within 24 hours a day, companies and schools look for those “bests” as they have overcome by managing time. The best companies, the best universities, and the best leaders want them because if they continue on those paths, they will add values.
But managing time does not mean spending lesser time on something; it’s simply knowing what to spend time on, to advance that mission. Do not be like the lifeless feather which when tossed into the stream wanders wherever the stream current moves it. Be like the dragonfly which even though enjoying the mild current defines its path.
All paths of careers are defined by the ability to manage time. A man who is overwhelmed by the limitation of the unbounded time quits. Yes, “I have decided to settle for C because I cannot cover all that would help me compete for A”. Do not show any pity: he wasted his time and the rationalization for poor grade cannot change the state of his records, for life! Do that many times, the person will turn a failure in everything.
Sometimes, poor grades could be due to misalignments: you applied for course A, you ended up with Course B because you just wanted to matriculate for college education. But we also have extremely lazy students who made bad choices: sleeping when others were studying. Not fixing those attitudes would result to future life failures.
