Who does not want to learn?

The business book Bill Gates is recommending to friends and colleagues right now https://t.co/XqXrr6wG2g

— CNBC Make It (@CNBCMakeIt) May 31, 2020

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Heyyyyy, what kind of work do you want?

Low-stress, Productive, Repetitive, Fun, Flexible - we don't all want/need the same things in a job.

Here is a wonderful resource page on JOBS FOR LAZY PEOPLE 

Here is a previous post on 'ODD' Jobs that may just be right for you



You may also like: Unbundling Women's Work

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Food Business inspiration

"With more than 6,500 locations across the country, Taco Bell is one of the top fast-food chains in the U.S. " - CNBC

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onboard

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#allwell

“The person you report to at work can be more important to your health than your family doctor.” - in McKinsey Insights 

As working people spend more of their waking time on the job than anywhere else, employers are in a unique position to be a good influence on health & general #wellbeing. Interesting insights from @McKinsey & @neuroleadership https://t.co/O4YfuqSqbt #wellness

— Jessica Mills (@JessMillsMHR) November 5, 2018

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The art and science of #wellbeing at #work https://t.co/20Olr3FORR via @McKinsey #wellness #HR #workplace pic.twitter.com/Jn0TQvbzKF

— Amr Heikal (@Heikal_Amr) July 19, 2016

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No buzzword left behind - A reflection on the primacy of bullshit in corporate life

" A century of management fads has created workplaces that are full of empty words and equally empty rituals. We have to live with the consequences of this history every day. Consider a meeting I recently attended. During the course of an hour, I recorded 64 different nuggets of corporate claptrap. They included familiar favourites such as “doing a deep dive”, “reaching out”, and “thought leadership”. 

There were also some new ones I hadn’t heard before: people with “protected characteristics” (anyone who wasn’t a white straight guy), “the aha effect” (realising something), “getting our friends in the tent” (getting support from others).

After the meeting, I found myself wondering why otherwise smart people so easily slipped into this kind of business bullshit. How had this obfuscatory way of speaking become so successful? 
... people working in bullshit jobs need to do something. And that something is usually the production, distribution and consumption of bullshit. "  

LOL.  You have to read this.   Really.

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Click every link 😄

Why can't we all get along?

Myers-Briggs J and P types

Perceiving Types and Judging Types, we can all get along and work together.
Sort of.




But first, we should learn more about the other. 
For example:

Some of the strongest business types are J personalities.  

One of the biggest differences between judging and perceiving types is how they make decisions. Judging types are more decisive [while] a lot of hippies are P personalities, and enjoy jobs outside the regular corporate world. 

 It may seem like the hardest thing in the world to mix these two tribes in a workplace, but it seems to be happening a lot.  Comments?

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Experienced and unemployed?

Youth unemployment has been with us for a while, but consider that even for "grown-up-adults" (who in many cases have tasted of the fruit of nicely-paid employment) the struggle is getting quite real  😎  No, really it's not funny.  😅

Ageism is a thing.  Trust California to take it to the extreme.  
“We Want People Who Have Their Best Work Ahead of Them, Not Behind Them.”  
Well, ok, that's just more business for this cosmetic surgeon: A few months ago, a 26-year-old came in seeking hair transplants to ward off his looming baldness. I told him I wouldn’t let him. His hair pattern isn’t even established...  Ok, that was funny.

2015 chart showing median employee age at leading US companies

Here are gripping battle-stories, mostly told by older workers and entrepreneurs.  They speak of the need to constantly upgrade skills, they speak of overwork, of workplace culture and sometimes faking the young-people behaviours to fit in, of the possibilities of exiting the race... I suppose many of them can become successful entrepreneurs? 

On the policy-level too, we should be thinking about how to apply all the abilities of all the people, and in particular, how to apply the accumulated wisdom of older workers, that is, how to 'turn grey into gold'. 


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Sources Linked // recommended reading:

• State of Youth Unemployment in Kenya (by Boaz Munga and Eldah Onsomu for Brookings Institution - Africa in Focus, August 2014)
• These Charts explain the current state of unemployment in Nigeria (in Ventures Africa, August 2016)
• The Brutal Ageism of Tech (in New Republic, March 2014) 
• The Stressful Lives of Older Tech Workers (in Business Insider, November 2015) 
• State of the Service 2011-2012, Chapter 05 Ageing and Work Ability (by Australian Public Service Commission, November 2012) 

The business of Information Technology services in Africa - Under-40 CEOS

I recently discovered this fantastic series of video interviews.

Here are two that you should watch (or have your kids watch) in order to develop the ability to become a technology-business leader par-excellence. 

FAB interviews Farida Bedwei of Logiciel.



...and Wole Faroun of Netplus.

Totally awesome.  Worth discussing. 

Enjoy the holidays, and come back for MORE.

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Apply Now. Now.

Grooming For Greatness aims

• To assist Fellows in mapping their own life-specific goals and ambitions.
• To provide access to learning resources, leadership grooming, and top-notch mentoring 
• To meet the demand across Africa for greater, meaningful interaction between leaders of industry and those who wish to follow in their footsteps.

Just click and apply (minimum age 25, deadline extended by one week) 
Trust me.

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We Love Biographies - billionaires connected with the Information and Communication Technology space

Absolutely copied the 20-page 2015 Tech Billionaires feature on forbes.com to create this single-page version.  For images, and for click-monkeys, please go to the original.  

1. Bill Gates
Net Worth: $79.2 billion
Bill Gates is once again the richest person on the planet, a title he's held for 16 out of the last 21 years. He recaptured the top spot in March 2014 after a four-year run by Mexico's Carlos Slim Helu as No. 1. Early on, the stellar performance of Microsoft, which he cofounded in 1975, boosted his net worth but he's been steadily selling his shares in the software company for at least 15 years. He unloaded one third of his remaining stake over the 12 months through February 2015. That included a gift of shares worth $1.5 billion to The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in November 2014, which brought his lifetime giving up to $29.5 billion. Gates, who spends most of his time focused on philanthropy, laid out some decisive goals for his Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in his annual January letter. While continuing to work on improving U.S. education and global health, the foundation is also committed to getting Africa to feed itself and wants to help spread mobile banking so that the poor can transform their lives.

WiPro's Azim Premji, Oracle's Larry Ellison, AliBaba's Jack Ma, and friends.

2. Larry Ellison 
Net Worth: $54.3 billion
Larry Ellison is arguably the first Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur to live large and fast. He never met his biological father and was raised in a middle-class Chicago home by his great aunt. After building databases for the CIA, Ellison founded database software firm Oracle in 1977 and has overseen its tremendous growth--revenues in fiscal 2014 grew to $38.3 billion. In September 2014, Ellison shocked the business world by announcing plans to step down as CEO; he is staying on as Oracle's chairman and chief technology officer. A sailing fanatic, he's the main backer of America's Cup winner Oracle Team USA. Ellison has continued to gobble up properties on the Hawaiian island of Lanai, which he bought for a reported $300 million in 2012, and is said to own every hotel room on the island.  His daughter Megan Ellison has found success as a film producer; her Annapurna Pictures produced hits like Zero Dark Thirty and American Hustle.
3. Jeff Bezos
Net Worth: $34.8 billion
Despite a rough 2014 marked by the failure of Amazon.com's first smartphone and continued pressure from investors, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos started 2015 strong. Amazon.com won its first ever Golden Globe awards for its original television series "Transparent," for best TV series and best actor in a comedy. Now Amazon is gearing up to jump into the movie business. No longer just an online retailer, the Seattle-based company is responsible for everything from providing servers to host web content to selling diapers. While investors continue to question if the company is spreading itself too thin, Bezos, who still owns 18% of Amazon's shares, will keep on investing in new businesses that he believes will make customers more and more dependent on the brand. Bezos studied electrical engineering and computer programming at Princeton, then worked for hedge fund D.E. Shaw before founding Amazon in 1994.
4. Mark Zuckerberg
Net Worth: $33.4 billion
Facebook cofounder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has led his social network to new heights, even as some younger users have grown tired of it. Revenue grew 58% in 2014 to $12.5 billion, supported by a jump in mobile ads. Some 1.4 billion people around the globe are on Facebook, and those users are watching 3 billion videos a day on the site. Its Instagram unit has more than 300 million users, while mobile messenging app WhatsApp, which it purchased for $19 billion in cash and stock in 2014, has 700 million users and is growing. Zuckerberg is aiming to turn virtual reality headset maker Oculus VR, for which it paid $2 billion in 2014, into a next generation computing platform. First, however, Oculus has to come out with a product. On the personal front, in October 2014 Zuckerberg plunked down $100 million for 700 acres in Hawaii on Kauai's north shore, sources told Forbes. Zuckerberg is also philanthropically active: he and his wife Priscilla Chan committed $25 million to fight Ebola in October 2014 and $75 million to a new trauma center at San Francisco General Hospital in February 2015.
5. Larry Page
Net Worth: $29.7 billion
Google CEO Larry Page runs what is arguably the most influential company of the digital era. Besides dominating in online search, with a 65% share of the global market, there are now more than a billion active devices using its Android operating system, one for every seven people. Page oversaw a string of acquisitions in 2014, including programmable home thermostat maker Nest for $3.2 billion and video monitoring outfit Dropcam for $555 million. In October 2014, he transferred most of his daily responsibilities to Sundar Pichai so he could focus on longer-term strategy. A clean energy advocate, Page's network of houses in Palo Alto use fuel cells, geothermal energy and rainwater capture. In November 2014, Page's family foundation gave $15 million to aid the fight against Ebola.
6. Sergey Brin 
Net Worth: $29.2 billion
Google cofounder Sergey Brin runs Google X, the secretive division of the search engine company that focuses on risky projects, such as smart contact lenses, airborne wind turbines and the ill-fated Google Glass. In January 2015, Google announced it would stop making the current version of the augmented reality spectacles, which had become Brin's signature accessory and were slated to be sold commercially. Brin made headlines in the fall of 2013 for his affair with a 27-year old Google executive, which caused him to separate from wife Anne Wojcicki and reportedly sparked a rift with Page.The son of two academics, Brin emigrated to the U.S. from Moscow when he was six. He founded Google with Page in 1998, when they were both computer science Ph.D. students at Stanford University. Google has 40,000 employees in 40 countries and still dominates online search, with a 65% share of the global market.
7. Jack Ma
Net Worth: $22.7 billion
Former English teacher Ma captured the world stage like no other Chinese businessman in September 2014 with the record-breaking $25 billion initial public offering of his e-commerce powerhouse Alibaba Group on the New York Stock Exchange. His Ant Financial Services Group, is pushing beyond its Alipay online payment business into financial services, including a consumer money market fund and a private bank. Ma has said he plans to take it public in China. He also has more than a dozen other investments, from a stake in a soccer team to a film production studio. An active philanthropist, he sits on the board of the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences with fellow billionaires Mark Zuckerberg and Yuri Milner. Ma has claimed that he got rejected from Harvard 10 times.

8. Steve Ballmer
Net Worth: $21.5 billion
Steve Ballmer retired as CEO of Microsoft in February 2014 and didn't take long to move onto his next job, boss of the Los Angeles Clippers. In August he closed a $2 billion purchase of the team, the highest price ever paid for an NBA squad. Ballmer's passion for basketball is nothing new. He began buying season tickets to the Seattle SuperSonics in the 1980s, and Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, owner of the Portland Trail Blazers, encouraged Ballmer to buy a team of his own. He failed in two previous bids - one to buy the SuperSonics in 2006 and another to acquire the Sacramento Kings in 2013 - before purchasing the Clippers. Detroit native, Ballmer dropped out of Stanford M.B.A. program to join Harvard classmate Bill Gates 1980 as employee number 30. He officially became Microsoft's largest single shareholder in April 2014, as Gates continued to sell shares as he diversifies his fortune.

9. Laurene Powell Jobs
Net Worth: $19.5 billion
Laurene Powell Jobs is making more of a name for herself as a political and social influencer, more than three years after the death of her husband Steve Jobs. She is the founder and chair of the Emerson Collective, an organization that focuses on using entrepreneurship to advance social reform and help under-resourced students, and College Track, a nonprofit college completion program. In conjunction with President Obama's "My Brother's Keeper" program, Emerson Collective and its partners announced a $50 million commitment in July to collaborate with certain school districts to design better high school programs. Powell Jobs is among the top donors to Ready for Hillary, a super PAC that has already raised millions of dollars in support a Hillary Clinton presidential run. She also makes regular visits to Capitol Hill to discuss pathways to citizenship for children of illegal immigrants, an issue she describes as "a waste for our country not to have the human capital that we developed." The Laurene Powell Jobs Trust is the largest individual shareholder in Disney, with a 7.7% slice of the company, a result of Disney using its shares to buy animation studio Pixar, run by Steve Jobs, in 2006. The Disney stake is worth more than $13 billion. An angel investor, Powell Jobs is a backer and board member at startup Ozy Media. She also sits on Stanford University's Board of Trustees.

10. Michael Dell
Net Worth: $19.2 billion
Michael Dell says his computer company is thriving since he took it private in October 2013. The business no longer has to disclose its financials, but Dell claims it is growing faster than its rivals Oracle, IBM, Cisco and Hewlett-Packard. He founded the eponymous company in his Texas dorm room with $1,000 in 1984 when he was 19. Four years later, it went public with a market capitalization of $85 million. By the time Dell took it private again in 2013, the company was worth $25 billion. He still holds a 70% stake in the company, but he keeps most of his fortune in his private investment firm MSD Capital, whose wide array of investments includes the the Four Seasons in Maui, PVH Corp. (parent to Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein), and DineEquity (operator of IHOP and Applebee's). Dell and his wife started the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation in 1999 and have since given away more than $1 billion, putting most of their money toward promoting education in the United States, South Africa and India

11. Azim Premji
Net Worth: $19.1 billion
Tech tycoon Azim Premji's Wipro, India's third-largest outsourcer, reported a 9% rise in net profits to $348 million in the last quarter, on the back of new business from clients such as Levi Strauss and Cairn India. But it still lags rivals like Tata Consultancy Services, flagship of the Tata Group. Premji has denied rumours that his son Rishad, who heads strategy and also overseas Wipro's $100 million venture capital fund, will be appointed on the board and named as vice chairman. Premji's private investment arm has picked up stakes in e-tailer Myntra-now part of Flipkart, which is India's Amazon. com, and e-commerce company Snapdeal. Premji is among Asia's most generous tycoons, having given away more than $4 billion of his fortune. Wipro was set up 70 years ago by his father as Western India Vegetable Products.

12. Paul Allen
Net Worth: $17.5 billion
Paul Allen went to the same private Seattle high school as Bill Gates, dropped out of Washington State to work at Honeywell in Boston, then cofounded Microsoft with high school buddy in 1975. He left 8 years later, after being diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease. He has been living large ever since, as the owner of 3 megayachts known to land at places like Cannes and the Sochi Olympics. He plays guitar in a rock band called the Underthinkers and owns an aircraft company aiming to put people into space. He also has three professional sports franchises. He bought the first one, the Portland Trail Blazers, for $70 million in 1988. Local politicians talked him into buying the Seattle Seahawks for $288 million in 1997. They were just trying to keep the team from moving, but it turned out to be a great investment. The Seahawks are now worth $1.33 billion, coming off of two straight Super Bowl appearances. Plus he has an interest in the Seattle Sounders, the most valuable Major League Soccer team in America, worth $175 million. A two-time cancer survivor, Allen has given away over $1.5 billion, including a half billion to his Allen Institute for Brain Science, which studies the brain's connections with health and disease

13. Pony Ma Huateng
Net Worth: $16.1 billion
Ma Huateng, also known as "Pony" Ma, turned Chinese Internet firm Tencent into a giant on the back of profits generated from online games, offering them alongside free services like messaging. Tencent's weChat mobile texting service has attracted nearly 440 million users who are introduced to Tencent's revenue-generating offerings. In the past two years, the company has taken stakes in logistics firm China South City and e-commerce firm JD.com to make more inroads in e-commerce. Ma, chairman and CEO of Tencent, has made good use of his computer science degree, obtained from Shenzhen University in 1993.

14. Robin Li
Net Worth: $15.3 billion
Robin Li is the CEO of Nasdaq-listed Baidu, China's largest online search company. Through acquisitions, Baidu has bolstered its wireless business, and it is working full speed on the next generation of search through voice and image recognition. After getting an undergraduate degree in information science, Li obtained a master's degree in computer science in the U.S. in 1994, and worked as a consultant at a subsidiary of Dow Jones. He later joined search engine InfoSeek in Silicon Valley as a senior engineer. Li cofounded Baidu in China in 2000. He has become more involved in politics; in 2013 he became a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.

15. Shiv Nadar
Net Worth: $14.8 billion
Shiv Nadar, cofounder of the $6.5 billion (revenues) HCL Group added $3.7 billion to his fortune on rising shares of software outfit HCL Technologies, which reported net profits of $1 billion on revenue of $5.3 billion in the year ended last June. The company caused a stir in the IT industry when it rewarded its best performing executives with such perks as a Mercedes Benz car and foreign vacations. Nadar's newest venture is in health care: he's set up HCL Avitas to build a chain of clinics in partnership with John Hopkins Medicine International. He denied reports that he was mulling selling out of HClL saying his daughter, Roshni, who's CEO of holding outfit HCLCorp., wants to keep the business.

16. Lei Jun
Net Worth: $13.2 billion
Known by many as the Steve Jobs of China, black-jeans-and-t-shirt-wearing Lei Jun co-founded fast-growing mobile phone maker Xiaomi in 2010 with his friend and fellow billionaire Lin Bin. Xiaomi has become hugely popular because its phones offer the high power of rivals at a much lower price. A serial entrepreneur, he also chairs gaming company Kingsoft. Its spinoff, Cheetah Mobile, which provides mobile application software, went public in New York in May 2014. Another company backed by Lei, Internet services supplier Xunlei, went public on the Nasdaq in June 2014.  He also chairs U.S.-traded YY, a Chinese social site he co-founded. He sits on the board of Wuhan University, where he earned a BA in computer science in 1991.

17. Hasso Plattner
Net Worth: $9.1 billion
In 1972, Hasso Plattner and four colleagues left IBM to found German software company SAP (Systems, Applications, Products), which went public in 1988. He has served as chairman of the supervisory board since May 2003, when he stepped down as CEO. Now a market leader in the B2B space (enterprise and mobility applications, analytics, databases, cloud computing services, etc.), SAP has over 74,000 employees worldwide and generates annual revenue in excess of $20 billion. Passionate about promoting scientific and technological research, innovation and entrepreneurship, Plattner founded the Hasso Plattner Institute for IT Systems Engineering at the University of Potsdam in 1998. At HPI, as the institute is known, he serves as a professor of enterprise software systems. He also has a business incubator and venture capital fund, Hasso Plattner Ventures, to support young entrepreneurs in the IT sector, and a foundation that has made contributions to institutions in South Africa to support medical research on HIV/AIDS and promote healthcare and health education, as well as projects providing daycare and sports activities for children. In 2008, Hasso Plattner Ventures Africa began operating in Cape Town with a $50-million fund. In 2013, he signed The Giving Pledge, thereby committing to give at least half of his fortune to philanthropic causes either during his lifetime or in his will. (Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates formed The Giving Pledge in 2010, originally seeking to enlist American billionaires.) A sports enthusiast, Plattner sails competitively on his yacht, Morning Glory, as well as skis, snowboards and plays tennis. Also an avid golfer, he owns Fancourt Golf Estate, a luxury golf course and hotel in South Africa's Western Cape province, a region where he likes to spend time. In the U.S., Plattner is an investor in San Jose Sports & Entertainment Enterprises, which owns the San Jose Sharks, and other related properties as well as managing the city-owned SAP Center at San Jose. In 2013, Plattner bought out two of the partners in SJS&E and began serving as the Sharks' representative on the National Hockey League's Board of Governors.

18. Eric Schmidt
Net Worth: $9.1 billion
Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt has sold off some of his Google holdings to diversify his assets and gift stock to nonprofit foundations, but he still owns more than 4.5 million shares of each class of Google stock. He earned an electrical engineering degree from Princeton and a PhD in computer science from U.C. Berkeley, then worked in software at Bell Labs and Xerox PARC. In 1983, before its IPO, he joined Sun Microsystems where he led the development of Java and rose to chief technology officer. He headed Novell before serving as CEO of Google from 2001 to 2011. He now serves as Google's global ambassador, traveling to Cuba, Myanmar and North Korea to promote an open internet and taking a seven-city tour of Europe after a European court ruled in 2014 that people have a right to be removed from search results. His Schmidt Ocean Institute is working to preserve reef habitats and study pollution. He is also a founding partner of Innovation Endeavors, a venture capital fund that invests in emerging technologies that target global markets.

19. Hiroshi Mikitani
Net Worth: $8.7 billion
Hiroshi Mikitani, Chairman and CEO of Japan's biggest e-retailer, Rakuten, is always on the hunt for a deal. His latest acquisition: Ebates, an online rebate site in the United States that allows people to earn cash back when buying goods at stores like Macy's and Home Depot, which he bought for a cool billion.He heads the Japan Association of New Economy, a group of technology companies that work with Japan's Prime Minister Abe to ramp up the country's economic growth. Mikitani is building a $20 million-plus home in Tokyo's trendy Shibuya ward; he's also made the U.S. his second home.

20. Klaus Tschira
Net Worth: $8.6 billion
In 1972, Klaus Tschira and four colleagues left IBM to found German software company SAP (Systems, Applications, Products), which went public in 1988. Tschira retired from the company in 1998, and stepped down from its supervisory board in 2007. Now a market leader in the B2B space (enterprise and mobility applications, analytics, databases, cloud computing services, etc.), SAP has over 74,000 employees worldwide and generates annual revenue in excess of $20 billion. For many years in its estimate of Tschira's net worth, Forbes excluded the value SAP shares held by his charitable foundation, believing them to be irrevocably owned and controlled by a charity. It turns out that the foundation, founded in 1995, is a limited liability company with a charitable purpose, over which Tschira has full control. One of Germany's largest philanthropic organizations, it has provided over $350 million in funding and in-kind donations to promote science, mathematics and computer science in schools and extracurricular settings, and to support research projects by young scientists and to improve the communication skills of scientists. "I can create more benefit for society by directing the money than if I left it to the state through taxation," the benefactor told the Wall Street Journal. A trained physicist, Tschira has taken up astronomy as a hobby, and has an asteroid between Mars and Jupiter named after him

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Financial Markets, an excellent, excellent introduction

Trust me, you will want to spend a few hours a week taking this online course that is currently available at the unbeatable price of ... an internet connection.  Financial Markets begins NOW, this week, and runs for eight weeks.  It may get addictive, like my previous Coursera courses. 

Coursera + Yale university.  Financial Markets.

Prof. Schiller (Nobel Prize in Economics in 2013) who will be teaching the course, says in the introduction "finance is a very important technology.  It has a mathematical basis.  It has a intellectual underpinning that makes it a infrastructure for our, our whole economy.  And I want this course to help people  understand this technology so that they are not buffeted by it, so they can react to the technology and its opportunities constructively in whatever walk of life they choose."

There will be a guest every week, and in week one it's Hank Greenberg (of pre-bailout AIG).  

Get started with Financial Markets. 

Process thinking

I once worked in a place where things would often go wrong, and the question on the boss's lips would be "Who...?" as in "who did this?" "who was in charge of this..." so that the person would be in trouble and presumably the problem would go away.  

Engineering processes

As an engineer, I found this to be the most puzzling thing.  Why waste your time on such an irrelevant question as "who"?
Because the more important thing should be maybe "what" happened, and then "why" it happened, and then "why" that happened, and in that case you find yourself with the "root cause" which you can fix (along with the team, the who's that run the process) and then hopefully that issue would not crop up again.

Good engineers are lazy

 Along with the inclination to abuse the "stupid employees" was this baffling habit of designing stupid processes, ones that put a great deal of strain on the boss and the people, and that relied more on hard work than on intelligence, and still produced a high error rate in the results.
I think the missing knowledge was of something called Process Thinking.  Process thinking is important.  It will make you calmer, and make your work many times easier and your results a lot better.

Individual and society

So too in my country in Africa, we think relationships are key to everything.  In the name of basic relationships (what does my wife or my father think of me is the familiar question) we have institutionalized actions that harm self and harm the larger population too.
We think in small groups (I better pass my neighbour, God give me promotion) but ignore the self (does this make ME happy, can I sleep at night?) and ignore the whole too (is this the right thing to do, does it hurt somebody else?)
This mindset is understandable because we've come so recently from small worlds - small village, small ethnicity, small clan - but in the current world we all see that it doesn't produce very good outcomes.  Individuals are frustrated and the country is poor.  Working harder may not solve the problem.  Defeating your neighbour, "feeling rich", getting promoted, "achieving success" may not be the answer. 

Engineering systems

Even on the political front, have some not tried to solve our misidentified "leadership problem" by replacing people?  But we come to the realization that no, we must re-engineer systems instead.  We must fix a risk-reward system at the individual, group, and institutional level.  This is to say, we might think of a country or an economy as an abstract thing, or as an organism, or as a machine, in order to repair it. 

School for intelligence

This is why I respect a good engineering education.  It's one of those things that (hopefully) prepares you to understand systems (like the human body, the global economy, or the market for films) and processes (like the workflow at a branch office, the election of a president, the Arab spring).

a sketch of a helicopter by Leonardo da Vinci 500 years ago

A decade ago, I read that engineering was "the new liberal arts" degree. Along with whatever specific facts and knowledge it might give a student, it would develop his/her critical thinking, systems understanding, process thinking, and design ability.  Then also it should broaden knowledge of the world and importantly of self.  It is a good training for an uncertain job title in an interesting life. 

Cartoon showing laziness as the mama of invention

 Links for more learning
Lazy engineers: Unusual habits of good engineers
Process Thinking: It can make you happier at work and at home
Policy analysis: The Nigerian subsidy example, The technocracy example

This is how much I pay for internet in Lagos

Visafone Nigeria $1 = 160 Naira

Five to ten thousand naira per month, for service that may be much improved from a few years ago, but is still very limited/limiting.  How much do you spend on internet monthly?

How to motivate your employees

Cool article on workplace incentives and motivation.  It focuses on the factors external to work itself such as: friendships/relationships, comfort, and psychic reward.  I like the cartoon pictures, so I'm reusing them here.
Source: How to Motivate Your Employees (Wikihow.com)

Create a Friendly Work Environment

Create a pleasant atmosphere

Use Food

Take advantage of wall space

Casual dress days

Recognize and Reward Your Employees

 

 

Develop Great Relationships in the Workplace

How to make work better

Wall Street Journal Daily Poll: Suggestions for improving corporate culture

Is your corporate workplace a healthy one?  What would make it more so?  (Comments)

Dude who outsourced his programming job to China

Bob was his company’s best software developer, got glowing performance reviews and earned more than $250,000 a year.
Then [his employer found that] Bob was paying a Chinese firm about $50,000 a year to do his work, then spent the day surfing the web, watching cat videos and updating his Facebook page.

Source: How a 'model' employee got away with outsourcing his software job to China

More from the same article:
“His code was clean, well-written, and submitted in a timely fashion.  Quarter after quarter, his performance review noted him as the best developer in the building.”
but
"Looking at his web browsing history, investigators found that Bob spent his workday checking sites such as Reddit, Ebay, Facebook and LinkedIn and watching cat videos. Then he would type an e-mail at the end of the day to update management about his “work” and left at 5 p.m."

Funny or not-so-much? 

Falling prices for phone calls and internet

Very exciting how competition improved service and pricing in telecommunication in Nigeria.
Who's switching to Airtel?
BusinessDay reports that "In the coming weeks, Nigeria’s highly competitive telecommunications market will witness sweeping squeeze in call-rate prices following Airtel Nigeria’s move to crash prices of mobile phone talk-time to as low as N9 per minute from the current industry rate averaging N35 to N42 per minute across networks...

Analysts view Airtel’s move as strategic for market share as it intends to invite new subscribers on to its network and wrestle existing ones from competing networks. This, of course, will boost revenue in the long run as Airtel will enjoy better economies of scale through reduced cost per unit of delivering services as volume increases...

[meanwhile] The internet download price slash has forced prices down to as low as N3,000 from N10,000 in less than three months with MTN leading the slash race. Industry experts believe the price will in no time drop to levels comparable to UK charges which is currently about N1,250 or 5 UK pounds sterling"

On the other hand,
I wonder how much competition is planned in Nigeria Electric Power: not as much as one would like. Instead we have excuses about how inefficient it would be to duplicate distribution and transmission systems. This means that while there might be multiple players in power generation, we would try again and see if a government transmission company would replenish its infrastructure and give reasonable performance. No way. If we want decent electric power, we must duplicate first, harmonize later. It may seem wrong, but it's going to be right.

Useless Bank of Africa

I'm so tired. Why am I tired? Ah yes, it's because I'm hungry. Why am I hungry? Because I've been roaming around trying to get internet to do some "work" (such as type this blog, hehehe)
Why can't I get internet at the office in spite of having sacrificed a workweek and my good health to get authenticated for the new Unilag internet? Because it's switched off but the room it's in is locked and the internet office can't fix it and I'm not willing to sacrifice another day and my health...
The business news in Nigeria is very good. Let me explain: Bandwidth. Let me show you:
Competition forces telcos to reduce tariff on data services
•Internet users in for good times

Going by the increasing number of undersea cables coming into Nigeria, both finance and market watchers say the nation’s highly competitive telecommunications market appears poised for a tariff war.

Speaking on the development, which they already estimate will spur exciting times for internet users in the country, they told BusinessDay that most operators are spurred by the prospect of boosting revenue from internet services as voice tariffs continue to fall. To this effect, data services has now emerged as the new ‘competition war front’ for telecoms firms.

Since the liberalisation of the telecoms sector in 2001, internet access market has remained untapped while voice services thrived. For years, and until the last few weeks, the only cable system serving Nigeria’s internet needs was the South Atlantic 3/West Africa Submarine Cable - a submarine communications cable linking Portugal and Spain to South Africa, with connections to several West African countries along the route. MainOne cable and Glo-1 have already commenced commercial services.

Equally, the West African Cable System (WACS) - an initiative of nine countries (including Nigeria’s MTN Group), which comes with a high capacity submarine cable system linking Europe, West Africa and South Africa is, at the moment, under construction.

Analysts who spoke with BusinessDay confirmed that some telcos are already taking advantage of the enormous bandwidth on offer from these new cable systems to lower internet tariffs, strengthen existing services and produce new solutions that promise to transform the economy.

Leading the pack in the area of pricing, meanwhile, is MTN Nigeria which has reduced its monthly Blackberry Internet Service (BIS) tariffs from N5, 000 to N3, 000. This thus rates it as the cheapest in Nigeria currently.

According to Kenneth Omeruo, an internet analyst, for other telcos to stay competitive, they will have to lower their respective BIS tariffs. This, he noted, will translate into more Nigerians getting connected to the internet at international broadband speeds and at more affordable prices.

However, in a swift response, second national operator, Globacom, which has its own self-feeding submarine cable - ‘the Glo-1’, has also reduced the price of its 3G internet service by 25 percent. Now, Globacom’s internet subscribers can enjoy data limits of 6GB on its ‘Always Max Package’ for only N7, 500 from the previous price of N10, 000. Moreover, insider sources disclose that Zain is also making plans to introduce a new promotional package that would see BIS tariffs fall to as low as N1, 500 monthly.

Some GSM operators have also introduced new bundled product offering, with the pay- off being free internet service. Only recently, Etisalat and Samsung launched the Samsung Galaxy Tab, a new smart device that allows users to enjoy PC (Personal Computer) like web browsing, e-mail-on-the-go with an optimised user interface. The Tab comes with an Etisalat SIM card which offers 25 minutes of free voice calls, 25 free SMS and more importantly, 250 MB of free internet access every month for one year.

Similarly, Globacom and leading technology solutions provider, Hewlett-Packard (HP), have introduced an innovative offering that enables Nigerians to own top-end internet-equipped netbooks. Under the special bundling offer, customers can get Glo 3G powered HP netbook for N34, 000.

Without doubt, data services have become the next frontier in Nigeria’s telecoms industry even as the voice segment reaches saturation point, analysts have submitted. They added that telcos would however have to pay keen attention to data services as a new revenue generating stream.

The analysts believe that even as telcos focus more on internet services due to the proliferation of submarine cables, the cost of internet access will continue to drop significantly as more bandwidth capacity becomes readily available to the market.

Lanre Ajayi, president, Nigerian Internet Group (NIG), who spoke with BusinessDay at the weekend, said: “Telecoms operators are increasingly paying attention to the internet. The reason for this is that voice services is reaching saturation point. They are looking at data as a new revenue generating stream. This is also why they have rolled out their 3G and GPRS services to their customers.

What we are seeing today is not surprising to me. We are witnessing the effect of having more than one submarine cable in the country. With three cables fully active in the country, there is an abundance of bandwidth capacity available to telecoms operators. They have no options but to offer innovative data services to their subscribers at lower costs. The trend will continue and we hope when other cables berth on the country’s shores, the cost of internet access will become even more affordable and improve Nigeria’s digital index and internet penetration rate,” the NIG boss noted further.

So now, though very belatedly, Nigerians will have access to internet phone, video phone, reasonable Internet speed, better prices, studying online instead of bothering with antique educational institutions (I'm not saying Nigeria is horrible, I'm just saying the world is changing so fast that school may be too behind-the-times for some kids.)
The other reason I haven't had breakfast really is that I needed to send someone a little money. Remembering that I can't do this electronically - there is a lot you can not do in the banks - I decided to use the ATM to withdraw the cash from near my bank branch office after which I would take a =N=20 ride to the person's bank branch office to deposit the money and then start my day. As you might have guessed, even this didn't go so smoothly. "Issuer or Switch Inoperative" was the message from the machine. If you live in Naija you know that means no juice.
So I thought again, why is UBA (United Bank for Africa) fighting with their service provider (Interswitch?) Or why would they shut down service three days (so far) in one week?) Is it because they want all their customers to revert to other banks? Unlike on Sunday when I was stranded on Lagos Island - that day, I was supposed to take a friend out to lunch and theater: nothing - and on Tuesday - also a holiday, banks closed for Eid, and I was going to take mum out for her birthday but SHE ended up giving me money hehehehe - today I was right by an open bank branch.
The friendly lady in the bank told me of the customer service phone number at the back of the card. Lesson learned: next time something goes wrong, call customer service like you would do in yankee/jand/wherever. Assuming you have money for phonecalls (which will become cheaper soon yippee) and the phone network is up you have "service" and ... She said it might soon be fixed.
Since I didn't want to line up inside the bank for an over-the-counter withdrawal (one hour of my life, plus when it reached my turn they would ask "did you bring your withdrawal booklet?" and I would actually laugh out loud because they always have a test question to deprive the undeserving of their world-class service), I waited at the ATM enclosure, a small house with maybe six machine with one or two "dispensing" on usual days while one or two let you "check your balance." Today no UBA customer would experience the thrill of checking balance. Only Issuer or Switch Inoperative.
I watched a bunch of people come and leave with no juice, and I saved a few people the effort by announcing the machines don't work. As they left, more than one of them muttered Useless Bank of Africa! Now that's the way to deal with these things, with wit and humour, while Americanas like me go lodging complaints and action-planning.
I was reading my newspaper (of course somebody asked to borrow one) when I got bounced by a security guy who suggested I wait elsewhere but not in the shade of his useless ATM house. Then decided to go home - the sun has been firing on an cylinders these days so, not fun - to get a few notes I had kept there, then I went to the other person's bank to make the deposit of little over 50 dollars.
Mission almost accomplished. After a few quarrels with the musical security-check robot hallway - go back, try without the keys, try without the bag, lift up your cell phone then walk slo-owly, no, walk briskly (walk "sharply", as we say) - I finally got into First Bank, listened to some guy complain about how he needed some service that was (of course) impossible for the bank to perform, probably a withdrawal, and then made the deposit.
Yeah, so am I planning to do any research today? Dude, let me get breakfast first.

The newspaper has more good news: the handling of the banks' crisis in Nigeria yielded a plea-bargain and jail-term, which is more than any other country can boast, so we're teaching the Americans. With this kind of good PR and a united financial team, that good investment money is on its way in. Al hamdulillah. Please just celebrate: don't spoil it by saying that Ibru is actually not in jail but nursing her heart in the rich-man-hospital.
In other news, Basel III exists, although many countries haven't even got through the first set of regulations yet.
The newspapers were fun. Philip Isakpa and Funke Adetutu (I'm not ready to change her surname even if she is) and Victor Ehikhamenor (and - one week later - how could I leave out Dayo Elusakin) keep up the tradition of the humour that makes all things bearable. I love you Naija.