Defining your Future

I attended a meeting over the weekend. I had the opportunity of being addressed by a senior colleague, who I consider a friend and mentor. She’s simply amazing. Here are the excerpts of the address and hope it motivates you to define your own future.

• Have a vision – continually ask yourself what your vision is. Write it down and stick it in a conspicous place, where you can put your mind to it.
• See what you are prepared to see. If you focus on the negative, be prepared for the worst.
• Seize the day and fulfill your dream or goals to achieve success in life.
• Look within you; what do you feel? There’s never a particular age for excellence. YOU CAN CHANGE THE GAME.
• Have an inner dream (ignite your fire).
• Look behind you, what have you learnt?
• Leadership is not definite within a particular stage.
• Define what’s important and what’s not.
• Struggle to be part of the top 20 (I mean acheivers).
• Integrity is what and who you are.
• Develop yourself (dont’wait for your employer- this is the biggest calling of leadership).

Finally, I leave you with this chinese proverb:

“If you want to plan for a year, grow rice; If you want to plan for 10 years, grow trees; If you want to plan for a decade, grow men” .

What’s going on?

Working with people in an organization usually requires a lot of tact. Today, a colleague of mine at the Head Office sent a nasty mail carefully couched in polite terms to make it seem non threatning. I sent a response back using carefully worded thoughts which was aimed at hitting below the belt. Sometimes, I just can’t stand the unnecessary superiority exhibition that goes on within the workplace. Honestly, it’s infuriating. This brings me to another careful observation that I have made within the workplace. Have you noticed how a lot of people have thrown caution to the wind and casually express themselves in improper use of the English Language?

Granted it is not our mother tongue but, it is useful in terms of business and social communications since we live in a country with 251 diverse tribes. How else can we express ourselves better? We are not like the South Africans who were able to develop a new language (i.e. Afrikaans) for their larger populace in order to ease communication amongst indigenous and caucasian South Africans. While our lowering educational standards can be one of the reasons, I am of the firm opinion that we require a continous individual development program for better use of the English Language. Oftentimes, I shudder when listening to the radio during one of these call back programmes. I cannot help cringing when someone expresses themselves improperly while trying to air their opinions. I would have loved to state some of the way and manners in which Nigerian express themselves poorly but time will not permit me today. I guess ‘Jenifa’ is a good example that I can think of right away. So, I ask…..what’s going on?