Category: Articles (Page 13 of 14)

Nigeria Would Have Been Our Pride

October 2, 2019 / David Alade

This flag,
Our Anthem,
Our Pledge…

Together, they would have been our pride. Unfortunately, it’s our greatest misery, a necessary evil that we the youth seek constantly and vehemently to be dissociated from.

Our waking thoughts, dreams and aspirations are to escape the quagmire that has befallen the country. We dream of another land, another citizenship, another option. Not because we want more than is dew any human, no not that we are greedy and ask for much, not at all. All we want are necessities of life, infrastructure, and good governance. But the power that is has chosen to play politics with all and prioritize the selfish interest above national interest. This put us the populace at the politician’s mercy.

This is a write-up to add to the mirage of voices that claim nothing is worth celebrating about the 59 years of Nigeria. Nothing works, all are in shambles, despondency and in-operability.

I recollect dreaming as a young boy about the world of possibilities, unbounded and equal. While I understand my dream as a young boy may be overly optimistic, it can be added as well that Nigeria has inadvertently reduced the probability of succeeding even at the most mundane things. Life is just hard being a Nigerian.

We get denied opportunities simply for being a Nigerian
We get our dreams limited because we are Nigerian
We spend a lot to escape Nigeria

Oh! Nigeria you have failed us. You have failed the generation you dreamt of blessing. You have disappointed the generation you promised a glorious future assured prosperity.

One of the poignant lessons from the movie Odyssey was when Poseidon said to Odyssey…

“The gods will not do for man what man must do for himself”

I believe the same message needs to be reiterated in the ears of Nigerians and probably printed on every banner that is on the country. Our solutions lie in our hands and no amount of prayers or otherwise will cause a miracle from wherever it is desired to change Nigeria.

We must solve our problems ourselves and not looking up to anywhere for the solution.

Nigeria you have failed us, yes, but we know one thing, if history will be corrected, the correction lies in our hands.

Originally published here

Optimism Is Still Your Best Bet

September 27, 2019 / David Alade

I receive newsletters from James Clear weekly. This week’s edition is too compelling not to amplify his thought. He said:

“Optimists win in the long-run because their miscalculation of how long it will take or how likely it is to succeed motivates them to give it a try.
If you knew how hard it would be and how long it would take in the beginning then you might not try in the first place.
You can’t guarantee success, but you can guarantee failure: never try.”

Pessimists are good at one thing, on the contrary, they “know” exactly how long and what probability of success lies in any adventure. Because of “their knowledge”, they are deprived of ever attempting anything. Invariably, denied also of the likelihood of ever achieving anything. Be an optimist, you have more to gain than being otherwise.

Examining the habit of an optimist

In James Clear quote above, 3 things exemplify an optimist

They believe they can achieve the impossible in a short period

They may not necessarily achieve it in that short period and in fact, they rarely do. Yet, they still maintain the momentum. As James noted, “If you knew how hard it would be and how long it would take in the beginning then you might not try in the first place.” There is beauty in not having complete knowledge of the process but your eyes must be focused on the end that you envisioned. This is the habit of an optimist.

They are not sure about the future but they still try

While all gaze is fixated on the end, optimists are still skeptical about the outcome. Except that their skepticism is not enough to push them back from attempting the impossible. Be an optimist.

They know that doing nothing guarantees failure

Here’s how they think, if I do this, what assurance of success do I have? say 15%.

If I do not do this, what assurance of success do I have? Guaranteed failure!

That’s it for them. They had rather attempt a 15% possibility of success towards a thing dear to them than accept a 100% guaranteed failure for not attempting. Be an optimist.

Given the choice between being an optimist and a pessimist, I urge you to go for the former. The reward from the former is more compelling.

Side note: A pessimist is generally not liked in most settings. While everyone is suggesting how to make something work, a pessimist will be proliferating the “gospel of how it cannot work”. This makes everyone naturally repel working with a pessimist.

And remember:

We grow by people. People are our reason for success. And if these people repel you, success by natural cause repels you. It’s an endless loop that ends in failure. Optimism is still your best bet.

Originally published here

How to Improve Your Productivity With A Normal Distribution Curve

August 27, 2019 / David Alade

Statistically, when a population is normally distributed, 99.7% of the population surrounds the mean with a dispersion of 3 standard deviations. Let me break that down in layman’s terms.

Given a population of 100, and say an average age of 30, if the distribution of the population looks like that of a bell shape, then when you pick a member of the population at random, you can be sure such will have an age between 3 + or – 30, i.e. age range between 27 and 33 (assuming standard deviation is 1).

Now, how can knowing this help you improve your productivity?

When we encounter challenges in the race for excellence, we usually think about what we are facing is new and our plight is unique. If the principle of bell-shaped distribution holds, this cannot be true, so we can confidently discard such thought of unique plight. But discarding it is not just enough, we must seek ways to lift ourselves out of the plight.

Knowing that our condition is not peculiar will force us to seek answers from those who have gone through similar condition before.

To illustrate this, I will take two students for my example. Both under the normal distribution curve. Dave falls within the bound of 99.7% and Jenny falls outside of it (what statisticians will refer to has outlier).

Both of them encountered an issue with a mathematics assignment, Dave will easily conclude that if I am encountering this issue, an average person is most likely also having the same issue, in this, he can find rest and try forging forward either by calling for collaboration or by whatever means deemed fit. Can you recollect the last time you failed a paper in school and immediately you said to yourself, “I can’t be the only one, an average person probably fail as well,” this explains why you would think that way.

Let’s assume Jenny is on the positive side of outliers, that is, she is more intelligent than the average class member. Facing the same problem, she will confidently believe everyone in the class is facing the same. Knowing this will help her to think about a way out of the situation, either by reaching out to senior colleagues or help from the lecturer. She knows help may not come from classmates because they fall within the bounds of the average.

Knowing where you fall on the curve

To know where you fall on the curve, you need to pay attention to yourself and how you weigh within a given cluster. We belong to different clusters per time, and while we may not be best at all, we can be better at some beyond others. For each cluster ask yourself, how do I perform in this area, average? below average? or above average? Your answer should help inform where to seek help from when it’s needed and how to manage your failures.

After knowing where you fall on the curve, it may be worthy of note to tell you that you may work on moving yourself closer or farther from your current state depending on where you fall.

Productivity is all about enhanced performance and knowing your position on a thing, which some call self-awareness will improve your output on a continuum.

Know where you fall on different distribution curve today and work on improving your condition as needed.

Originally published here

What’s In It For Me? – Become A Better Negotiator

August 5, 2019 / David Alade

Every day of our life, as we move around, and interact with people, we conduct one form of negotiation or the other. Negotiation is such an integral part of our life that we have even failed to realize we are engaged in it on a continuum – while boarding a bus, while buying at the market, while speaking with our children, and while talking with our boss. Indeed, we negotiate every day long. But how can we master this art better? How can we become more artful? How can we ensure we get the maximum benefit from a deal? These and many more related questions are worth pondering on if we all agree that negotiation is an everyday art for us.

When negotiating a condition, the major mistake we make is over-fixation on ourselves, what can I get from this situation? How can I get 100% of my request? How can I get this deal for the least possible price? We ask these questions continually and it is the bane of bad deals.

What our focus should be on is a win-win situation. To get a win-win deal, we cannot afford not to have an answer for the unselfish painstaking question that all counterparties always ask: What’s In It For Me?

What’s In It For Me (WIIFM)?

If you are entering a negotiation arena without having the answer to this question, you have most likely lost your strength even before the beginning of the negotiation. For every deal, there must be something for all parties, and if something you highlighted is valuable enough to the counterparty, then you know what area of ‘weakness’ to harness for your benefit.

WIIFM works in two powerful ways while negotiating

If you are proposing/leading a deal, knowing what’s in it for the counterparty will help you in weighing your options if you are willing to offer the value or it will be a bad deal if you offer such value.
- For example, Dave is willing to buy a plot of land from Jenny for N200k, a land which will ordinarily go for N120K. It behoves Jenny to answer the question, what’s in it for me Dave? Is he seeing something about the land that I can’t see yet? Is there a treasure hidden on the land? Are Dave’s ancestors buried on the land and Dave will pay any amount to make sure he gets the land? These and many more questions will help you to know what’s in it for me Dave and why he is ready to accept your offer. It can then inform your decision about closing the deal (if the piece of land is precious enough to Dave as to pay any amount) or cut the deal (if valuable treasures are hidden on the piece of land that is worth more than any amount Dave can pay).
If the other party is proposing the deal, it will be nice if you know what’s in it not just for yourself, but for the other party as well. While the other party might be proposing a juicy offer, you should understand that ‘it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest.’ This realization should push you to know what’s in it for such party beyond what’s written in black and white.
- For example, Jenny is proposing to employ Dave for wages of N200k. If Dave considers this offer either too good to be true or too low to accept, then it behoves Dave to find the answer to the question, what’s in it for Jenny? What is the work culture like? Will Jenny take all my time and I won’t have time for other parts of my life? Does Jenny have a history of offering so much and defaulting? Does Jenny think lowly of my value to have offered such low wages? Answering these and many more questions will help you to understand why Jenny is offering so much or so little and in effect inform your decision.

You see the question WIIFM is a universal one, and it can remove a lot of hurdles and make negotiation position clear, if you are diligent and painstaking enough to find the answer(s) to the question.

Introducing BATNA – A Powerful Negotiation Tool

Whenever I talk about negotiation, another powerful tool I always like to mention is BATNA – Best Alternative To A Negotiated Agreement. While WIIFM will help you to remain critical about your negotiation, BATNA will help you know when it’s time to walk away, when it’s time to raise the bar, and more. Importantly, BATNA helps you to set a ‘price’ floor for your deal.

How does BATNA work?

When you are about to negotiate a deal, more often than not, you tend to have more than one option. Say you can do any of the following: sell your car or continue using it, or give it to your sister or donate it to charity, or more. You see options abound with corresponding benefits. Of all these, your BATNA will be the one you derive maximum value from (say giving it to charity) before going to negotiate the next one (say selling the car). When you set your price for sale, the minimum you will be ready to accept must be either equal to the benefit you will derive from the next best alternative or more than it, nothing less.

Understanding this will help you to know what price the buyer will mention that will make you say “I will rather give this to charity than sell it to you,” and there lies your power. If you don’t know your BATNA before going to a negotiation table, you might end up with a bad deal for your car.

Originally published here

Driven – To Achieve Anything In Life, You Have To Be Driven

August 3, 2019 / David Alade

“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.

We are hunted on a continuum by our desire for greatness, success, and influence. The question remains, how can we achieve our quest? How can we make sure we walk the right path? How can we ensure our hands don’t get burnt on this race? I have a simple answer to that, wrapped up in MLK’s quote above – Be Driven.

MLK said even if your responsibility is that of a sweeper, be so driven about it that heaven and earth will attest that you did your job well. We tend to miss a lot when we are in pursuit of a goal, we usually think no, this is not part of what I bargained for so I can’t do it with all my energy. We fail to realize that in the end, we are a sum of all our actions and inactions. This attitude of not giving our best to the task at hand is responsible for the conditions where a lot of people find themselves right now.

In the popular story of Joseph, we realize that a lot of activities that led him to become a Prime Minister in Egypt did not seem to portray so from the onset. How will being a Chief of Slaves be part of the training that is preparing me for my dream? How will being a Master of Prisoners ever lead me to dine and wine with Kings? It never adds up. Funnily enough, that is how it always seems for driven and goal-oriented individuals, it is always the end that justifies the process.

Think about your current situation, how can that failure be part of the process? How can working in a company like this be a precondition for the attainment of my goals? How can I be jobless at this age and still attain financial freedom at 40? When you are called to be a street sweeper, be driven so much about it and do it so well that heaven and earth will attest that you did the job well. This includes giving your best to that current boss that seems to not appreciate your effort.

To achieve anything in life, being driven is a prerequisite and giving your best to whatever you find your hand to do per time is the evidence we have that you are driven indeed.

After you have done your best, whatever comes out of that is your success, for a simple reason you’ve done your best and you couldn’t have done more. Regrets only come when in the end you realized that if only you had done more, you would have attained your target.

In your current situation, give your best.

In your current employment, give your best.

In your current endeavour, be known for excellence.

Originally published here

We Should All Become A “Victim Of Exposure”

August 3, 2019 / David Alade

I have had conversations with several people looking for a job, looking to make a career change, looking to make the next pivot in their life and many more of the similar divide, one thing is common to the majority – they do not know what to do.

Victim of Exposure (VoE)

What does it mean to become a victim of exposure? I coined this word a couple of months ago while reminiscing on some significant events of my life, juxtaposing this with the what I’ve seen in other people’s life. I realized that if only the majority I referred to earlier had before the present expose themselves to information, moving on to the next stage of their life wouldn’t be a problem.

To become a victim of exposure then means exposing yourself to as much information as possible on a continuum, whether you consider such information useful to you now or not.

Important to note from that definition is whether you consider the information useful for you or not at a point in time is of irrelevance, becoming a VoE requires that you sap in all forms of information available to you per time.

How will you benefit from becoming a Victim of Exposure?

Those who have become VoE are those who have an unbounded mind. Having unbounded mind mean when it’s time for you to make a decision, you have a lot in your mind to consider before concluding. To illustrate, take a recent graduate who studied English, if such is not a VoE, such will be limited regarding career options. If as English graduate the only career choice that comes to mind upon graduation is becoming an English teacher/lecturer, then you need to quickly thread the part to becoming a VoE.

In simple terms then, what being a VoE does for you is to expose your mind by the mirage of information you have fed it and help you to make informed decisions when the need comes.

How can you become a Victim of Exposure?

This is the easiest question with a simple answer. As simple as the answer is though, it may be tough to implement.

The simple answer is that you should continually feed your mind with quality information. Be wary of garbages.

Go now and become a victim of exposure.

LinkedIn Summary

Accumulation of capability construct
That is a term I learnt from Ndubuisi Ekekwe.
Basically, it’s about the compounding effect your effort to become a better version of you can yield if you weary not.
While it is easy to see how the accumulation of capabilities plays out for a corporate body, it may not be so obvious for individuals.
A corporate body can recruit the best of the best, can invest in the best asset, can pull the most innovative marketing stunt and can iterate through innovation at scale.
For this construct to work for an individual, the best way I’ve come across is the accumulation of knowledge. Knowledge accumulates and compounds, even when it seems not to. And the effect of compounded knowledge is what we see play out in those with compelling views on different topics.
As you journey on, I urge you to consider knowledge as an ad-on worth possessing.
I wrote once about “Becoming A Victim of Exposure” you should read that as well.

Originally published here

What Goes On Behind Buy/Sell Mandate? A Beginner’s Guide to Stock Investing

July 16, 2019 / David Alade

Investing in the equity market is as seamless as saying buy/sell this for me. The real work lies behind the call to buy/sell. Why did you sell or buy or hold? What were your considerations? Your strategy?

Behind every buy/sell order lies 4 fundamental things. Liquidity consideration, Profitability consideration, Overall Company Financial Health consideration and Capital Gain/Dividend consideration. You really do not want to buy any stock without first considering these four things, but that doesn’t mean these are the only considerations, they are just fundamentals, remember.

Liquidity

For anyone looking into equity investing the first thing you really want to consider is how liquid the stock is? What does it mean for a stock to be liquid – it is simply how easy it is to buy and sell the stock without affecting the asset value? A stock will be regarded as perfectly liquid if you can buy it for N7 and sell immediately for N7. To stress that point, it is the availability of the market for the stock.

As you go into equity investing, your first consideration will be liquidity. Your next question is how to know which stock is liquid? The answer to that is to check the Exchange website for top traded stocks. You may want to do this for like 2 weeks to be able to capture all stocks that are liquid. Create an Excel Sheet to save your findings, equity investing is not a play, Microsoft Excel will come helping a lot.

Do that and you have your liquidity question answered. The next you want to consider is your strategy which will follow below.

Capital Gain and Dividend Consideration

This is really about your strategy, do you care for capital gain or dividend?

Capital gain is the increase in the value of the stock you own. Capital gain would be said to have occurred if a stock you bought for N7 has appreciated to N10. That will be about 48% increase in value.

Dividend is the money companies’ payout to investors that own a share of their stocks. This is typically paid yearly (some bi-annual). If you own 10,000 units of a stock, and the company declared a dividend of N2 per share, you will receive N20, 000 as a dividend.

Now the question is which do you care for? Capital Gain or Dividend?

History has it that young people tend to value capital gain over dividend. That’s because really, it’s about growing your wealth not about having more cash, dividend put cash in your hand, and capital gain increases the value of your investment.

Once you decide on your strategic need; dividend or capital gain or both, your next concern is how do I know stocks that pay a dividend and those that don’t?

To answer this as well, get your Excel Spreadsheet ready you will do a bit of work, remember equity investing is not a play. You have earlier determined which stocks are liquid, those stocks I encourage you to go to their websites and navigate to “Investors Relation” there you will find the company’s financial statements. Download it up-to-the last 5 years (2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 and 2014). 5 years is just good enough, but not less so you can see the historical pattern of dividend payment.

Go to the page where the Income Statement is and below you will find the dividend declared for that year. If nothing, the company probably didn’t pay dividend for that year. Keep your 5-year record to know how much they historically payout in the dividend. Now you should have your questions on dividend answered.

If your focus is capital gain, just on the Exchange’s website (or Bloomberg), find the stock and view it’s 5 years historical trend at least. What is the pattern? Growing? Declining? Static? This should inform whether you should choose the stock.

Company Financial Health

This is a deep and somewhat complicated point. It will take more than an article to scratch its surface. Basically, you want to look at the whole financial statements, Balance Sheet, Income Statement, Cash Flow, Management Composition, and Corporate Governance. You see it’s a lot. So no deep diving on this.

Profitability

To be candid you don’t want to invest in a company that is not making a profit (yet). On a global scale, a lot of technology start-ups have been listing on NYSE with no profit but only Part to Profitability (PtP). But stocks like these takes more effort to understand, in that beyond the surface level analysis, you must understand its operations, and vision and the very PtP. If you don’t understand the business model, be wary of investing in such stock, I recounted my experience making similar mistake here.

But really, you may want to start with companies that are profit-making. And to know them, go on the financial statements you downloaded, and from the Income Statement, you will see their Profit after Tax (PAT). Use that to determine profitability, and going as far back as 5 years is also key.

What goes on behind buy/sell mandate?

The above is just a tip of an iceberg regarding what a typical equity investor will consider before giving a mandate to his/her Stock Broker. Do you still want to go into equity investing?

Disclaimer: this is not investment advice nor is it a call to invest, it’s basically for knowledge sake. Also, opinions are mine and do not represent that of any organization I am affiliated to.

Originally published here

My Personal Experience Investing in Nigerian Stock Exchange

July 10, 2019 / David Alade

I just finished another level on my CIS (Chartered Institute of Stockbrokers) exam, the learning points were intriguing and I couldn’t wait to participate in such a busy market as financial markets.

Beyond the CIS curriculum, I learned some other needed tools that are considered imperative for success, including Asset Pricing, Company Valuation using different methods, Financial Modeling, Japanese Candlestick among others.

All these were just exhilarating and I couldn’t help but find a way to put my knowledge to test, and I wanted to do this with actual money, not any demo trading. I should mention that around this period I read the book “Intelligent Investor,” so I had the theoretical understanding of value investing. And yes, I had what a typical Nigerian will call a “change” (Nigeria way of saying small money), so up I initiated the process to get my CSCS number and buy my first stock.

A novice mistake on NSE (Nigerian Stock Exchange)

From my reading of Intelligent Investor, I inferred that to be a value investor, you need to have at least a sizeable capital that is worth putting on equity for long enough to benefit from both capital gain and dividend. I did not have that capital and my ‘strategy’ was to benefit from capital gain, through buying and selling of stocks.

The first two stocks I bought were [withheld]) and [withheld]. Why did I choose these stocks?

I chose [withheld] because earlier I had a couple of people discussing the stock in my broker’s office, and they said “[withheld] is at a historical low, and the last time it was that way, [withheld] just ordered that all available stocks on the floor of NSE be bought. That triggered demand to be more than supply and hence the stock price jumped up.” They concluded by saying, such might happen again. The enthusiastic novice in me, just brought my hard-earned money and bought [withheld] with no analysis per se but with the hope of benefiting from market inherent inefficiency that I cannot even confirm. I will leave you to complete the story of how that went. In the stock market, hope is not a strategy.

[withheld], I bought it because of my illusion and fixated mind on the power of Japanese Candlestick. I bought it when the war between the bulls and the bears was strong and none gave in for the other. But historic trend shows the bears have been winning the war all along, so the natural thing according to me was for the bull to win the next face of the war. Chuckles! You will need to complete this story as well.

Purchasing those stocks taught me lessons that remain until today. You don’t invest in a stock because of ‘what they are saying’ nor because of one-sided story you choose to believe, have a holistic approach of analysis, and let it be in consonant with your strategy. The strategy you must have set before any analysis.

A novice choosing a broker

When choosing a stocking broking firm, I just registered with next available around me. I did not try understand them nor did I pay attention to what their performance was nor what previous customer have to say about them. The repercussion of this was a lesson well learned.

This was a hard-learned lesson that cost me money and I do not intend to make a similar mistake going forward on this journey. I gave my broker a Buy order for a particular stock, this time I did a proper analysis, at least so I thought. The order was not executed until the stock had appreciated by about 30%. The 30% should have been my gain but unfortunately, it was to my disadvantage, and after they executed the order the market started correcting itself. I had to pull out of the stock at par but suffered brokerage fee.

A novice’s lessons

My entire reading had been about US equities market, arguably the most efficient financial market in the world. I thought Nigeria will obey the rule of thumb in equity trading, no it did not. Inefficiencies dwell on NSE (remember my [withheld] expectation, it’s a typical example).
Choosing your broker is key to your success no matter what strategy you choose to adopt in your trading. This is because the ecosystem is a volatile, reactive and sensitive one, swiftness is key, any sluggishness will cost you a fortune.
Never invest in a business you do not understand. Warren Buffett is credited to saying this and I can corroborate the validity notwithstanding the one who coined the statement. If I had understanding, [withheld] wouldn’t have been an option for me, it was that time a stock trading at tandem with value and the point I was referencing that triggered my hope in it was an example of an overpriced stock, benefiting from the gross inefficiency on NSE.

I have learned these lessons the hard way. There is a new wave of rising interest in investment opportunities and equity will always be a consideration, that’s why I thought it worthwhile for me to document my experience so the next novice won’t make similar avoidable mistakes that I made.

Originally published here

Getting Any Job is Hard Work and Luck

July 10, 2019 / David Alade

This will be about how I landed my first job, things that I did, how I did those and the thought process that was involved. I highlighted the main points of every story as a call for action for you as you search for your own job. I concluded by stressing the fact that getting a job requires hard work, do the hard work and lady luck will favour you with time.

The common theme I noted when I was about rounding up my National Youths Service Corps (NYSC) program was that in the domain where I was searching for employment, a lot of my peers (competitors) have relevant experience to boost their CV and I had none. The second observation came from my inference, if I and XYZ are applying for a job and XYZ has relevant experience (internship), will the employer prefer me to XYZ? I answered NO to this question. From here, I knew the cards that I have shuffled to myself will not favour me if I don’t act smart.

This seems like the story of almost every graduate in Nigeria, no internship experience, nothing unique to set him/her apart from the crowd, hence, no job till now.

Getting a Job is Hard Work

Once I was clear from my strategic analysis that I am at a disadvantage, the next ploy for me was devising strategic moves. I did my SWOT Analysis, and I was strict about it. I asked questions like the following:

What am I good at?
What kind of jobs can I take up?
What certification(s) do I need?
What skill(s) can I develop to set me apart?
Those that I believe are better than me what do they have that I don’t? Etc…

After asking these questions, a lot was clear to me. I needed experience (wherever that will come from), ICAN, strong MS Excel skill, financial modelling skill and writing skill. Those were what I came up with.

For the skills requirement, I paid for an online course on Udemy to learn Excel and Financial Modeling. ICAN, I was preparing for it already and for writing skills, I started writing (arguably the best way to learn writing). All those were the ‘easy’ part, how do I gain experience is a tough question? I did 3 things.

I started investing on NSE (Nigeria Stock Exchange) because investment banking was the domain I targeted. Why I did this was simple, to have a hands-on experience with securities trading. Suffice to say I lost money and made money (lol), but till today the experience remains.
I messaged someone I got to know on twitter that owns a Financial Journalism company that I will be relocating to Lagos and would like to work for him for free if he would allow me. I was glad he gave me a free ticket to show up at his office once I get to Lagos. I should quickly mention that I didn’t have to. But the gut, resilience and determination to get a job were there.
I started putting myself out to the public that I am intelligent (remember Ndubuisi Ekekwe said, “The only valuable skill are those that we know that you have”). I did this by writing ‘every day’ on LinkedIn and people were paying attention and noticing me.

Intentionality will do you more good.
Playing the victim game won’t get you anywhere.

That was my hard work.

Firstly, I understood where I was and where I wanted to be

Secondly, I diagnosed the reason for the gap between those two positions

Thirdly, I worked hard to bridge the gap

If you too will do these three things, you will be setting yourself up for landing your first job and maybe luck.

Getting a job is Luck

I mentioned earlier that in the long run, I didn’t have to work for free, that’s because hard work paid off or let me say lady luck smiled on me. I like to say lady luck favours the one who tries, that’s a fact I have come to believe.

Between all my effort to get a job, I was constantly applying for jobs advertised on mainstream media, until today, I didn’t get a reply from any of them. My strategy and luck met because of my No. 3 action point (putting myself out there by writing). If you are conversant with Tekedia, you should have come across this article, how to get a job in Nigeria. I am a product of the manifestation of what the article preached even though I got to read the article much later.

On a faithful week, two CEOs reached out to me from LinkedIn if I would like to take up a position in their firm. Coincidentally, around the time when I needed a job, they also have a position to fill, one was not in consonant with my skill, the other was and that was my luck (the skills I acquired came in handy when I started the job). I took up the position and relocated to Lagos, remember even if the job didn’t come, I still would have relocated and work for free for another CEO. You need to be much determined and strategic about your pursuit.

That was my Luck

But you see, lady luck only favoured me because I made an effort. If I had not decided to improve my writing skills which led me to writing on LinkedIn for people to see I am intelligent, I wouldn’t have gotten the two job offers.

Firstly, take responsibility for your life

Secondly, take action. Put in all the hard work that is required

Thirdly, hope that time and chance favours you and pray to your God.

I have told you my story of how I got my first job. But there is a thing I noticed among we graduate, our first problem is not knowing what we want and if you don’t know what you want, it is difficult to forge a way forward. That you studied Geography does not compel you to study the geographic space for the rest of your life, that you studied Yoruba does not mean you should teach Yoruba. Expose yourself to career options, LinkedIn will greatly help on this, one of the things I did then was to check on people’s profile and I saw the vast difference between the course of study and career part.

To land your first job or any job I must say, you need to put in the hard work and lady luck of her own accord will smile on you with time.

Originally published here

How To Make Great Decisions

June 17, 2019 / David Alade

Life defining decisions always require a leap of action, we find it hard to take these actions as we move forward in life. The reason for this though not considered in this article, I will be taking time to take us through “how to ensure we are making a worthy decision in the light of three purviews.”

The purviews are not a guarantor nor would they be painted to serve as one, but they tend to reduce the probability of us making a harmful decision.

There is something we all know about making a decision: we all know it will either make or mar us depending on whether we make it, when we make it, and how we make it.

There is another thing about decision that is not always so obvious; it requires a LEAP, a leap of action. Life defining decisions always require a leap and many times the leap is demanding hence we fail to make it.

How do we ensure that we make the right decision at the right time and take the required leap per time? It remains a puzzling question and the answer I’ve come up with may surprise you.

The first thing I realized about this puzzle was that, while some decisions appear right on the go, some are contemplative, i.e. it’s a great decision to be educated no one will or should contend that (right on the go), on the other hand which avenue should I use in pursuing my education can be contemplative hence requiring a leap either of monetary investment or time investment.

The second is, the majority of our life-defining decisions are contemplative. Unlike should I sleep now or not, questions like should I marry, who should I marry, should I attend grad school and should I quit this job are highly contemplative questions.

Third, because the majority of our life-defining decisions are contemplative, we cannot always be sure whether we are right or wrong. To make all decisions on the altar of right or wrong will leave us in an undeserved perplexity, because it is neither right to attend to attend grad school nor wrong not to attend. It is much deeper.

If we cannot always be sure whether we are right or wrong on life-defining decisions, then I think it behooves us to conclude on another metrics beyond right or wrong upon which we can make contemplative decisions.

The new metrics I came up with are under three purviews.

Purviews because are not a yes or no decision metric but a metric that helps us reduce the confusion within our contemplative decisions.

The 3 purviews are:

Second-Party Purview
Self-Settlement Purview
Sliding-Time Purview

Second Party Purview

Law of large numbers in mathematics tells us that “with an increasing sample size that tends towards meeting up the population size, we tend to have a true and representative global mean of a distribution.”

It’s not a complicated way of thinking, the law is simply saying with more opinion that you get from different people regarding your contemplation, the more you are able to access the veracity of your decision based on different idiosyncrasies.

These are sample opinions you should get.

Opinion from those who seem to be always antagonistic
Opinion of those who seem to be supportive
Opinion of those above you and that of those of your peer and when needed those below.

As much as possible get all second party’s view on a decision that you can get. The beauty of this is that they will see things differently from you and help refine your thinking based on their own experience. You will benefit from the wealth of knowledge and judgment of those whose opinion you sorted.

Don’t be afraid to ask others opinion I must add, a friend that went through the first draft of this article has this to say, “I have found that whenever we are reluctant to subject our opinions and thoughts to others to judge, it is because somewhere in our heart we know we are wrong and we know others will point it out to us – and we don’t want to face the truth so we hide away” – you want make sure this is not the reason for your hesitant to get a second party opinion.

Don’t be fooled though by the folly of the multitude, sometimes multitude can be wrong and that is why you have the next point which will be discussed.

Self-Settlement Purview

A decision whose upside and downside you cannot accept should hardly be considered at all. This purview is really about you, your experiences, idiosyncrasies, and judgement metrics. Like I mentioned earlier, it’s not about right or wrong, it is about your readiness for what you are considering.

All what you are made of plus the opinions you’ve sampled from the first purview come together at this point so you can think your decisions through and make a call regarding your leap.

I put this in number 2 because you really may not be able to consider all views/angles yourself until number 1 is done. With number 1 done, you tend to think more clearly about your options.

The self-settlement is about you being ready to take and accept the decision.

Sliding Time Purview

“Don’t make a promise when you are happy and never make a decision when you are angry” is still a valid caution. The tendency is there that your life-defining decision requires that they be made when you are not mentally ready to make such, as much as possible buy yourself enough time to think clearly without emotions on the decision. What you want now and in 3 hours you don’t want again is an example of decision that sliding time purview will greatly help to fix.

Let time slide and see if you still want to abide by that decision.

Sliding time purview is well known and can be a very useful tool. Remember an observer cannot truly understand a system of which he himself is a part, sliding time affords you the opportunity to separate yourself from the system for a while.

With this said, plus your careful consideration of the spirit of the word, you are on your way to living a life where you have less and less decisions to regret in life.

Ask another person about it, don’t take unilateral decisions, take time to consider all points of view before deciding, and after you’ve decided, before execution, allow time to pass if it’s possible. You should hardly go wrong. This is a needed loop as you journey on in life and make life-defining decisions.

Originally published here