The catalyst to business Growth in the 21st Century
A collaborator sees positivity but opponent sees negativity at all time which can kill. Career and business synergy; the catalyst to creativity for relevancy in Africa. #Beacollaborator © Business Life Africa
Introduction
Partnering with your competitor is it possible? Yes or No! If we want to use Thinknology pattern to form a word it will be 'partnertition' which is illustrated as career and business synergy.
PARTNERTITION
Don't search dictionary for the word meaning, it is not there yet, but will soon be. It is a novel contraption bringing together partnership and competition. It's the concept of partnering with your competition. Sounds strange? Please come and free yourself from the ingrained we versus them mentality for a while. Be open minded for the next five minutes and get a breath of fresh air. The marketplace is shark-infested. Staff are poached at will; all it takes is a better salary, a higher grade, so a colleague today becomes a competitor tomorrow. HR recruits are not just buying the best hands, they are willing to pay more for the relationships the new recruits dangle before them. It's a game and we all play it. If it's a game then who loses? Everybody walks away from the table in the hope that he got the best bargain. In other words, a win-win situation was created only to be lost a few months later as the game shifts to a different venue.
It is the organization that loses, but they are able to cover their losses by using the law of averages.
Win some, lose some but always stay afloat. The poaching game is played in search of bigger market share. However, today we know that a bigger market share cannot be sustained without a better customer service and the search for an enduring customer service culture must therefore, begin with a deeper analysis of the structure that supports this friend and foe phenomenon. Imagine a day where everybody that has ever worked in your organization contributes to your market share by active or passive contributions. That's not possible, your head is screaming. Hmm!
Imagine if each marketer that had to leave your company will not be able to take away his customers and will have to start afresh to build a new client list because not even his family members will switch their accounts. Imagine what will happen if you can lock these accounts into the safety of your vaults forever. You think it's not possible? Think out of the box. Imagine if you could develop a system that enables you partner with your competition in such a way that you lose nothing!
Case study
Downright crazy? Yes, but possible and not only that, it's the way the business world is going. What are you doing with your friends or competitor for survival? These great people started by partnering with their friend. Are you also ready?
Why should Glo, MTN, and Zain agree to sharing the same cell sites? (Partnertition)! Why should Aljazeera, CNN and BBC share the same satellite? Partnertition!
Programmers are very good in different way. Backend developers needs to partner with frontend builder for effective and efficient product that cannot be fault. Why do banks allow customers of other banks to use their POS and ATMs? Partnertition. Media is not left out as Prints partners electronics, online and radio. Can banks solve their system downtime by collaborating with a competitor whose volume of transactions is a fraction of theirs, building a backbone with enough capacity for both organizations? Partnertition!
Will it work in our environment where people are so protective of their territory? In the real world the people working with your competitors are your friends and family members, does it not make a better sense to just collaborate than tear each other apart? But a structure must be worked out first. A structure that ensures you don't lose in the partnership, but in fact become the organization of first choice. Your strength maybe their weakness and your weakness maybe their strength. That is an idea that is not too hard to believe in.
You can start now; hold each other in such high esteem that the bond not only becomes inseparable but produces better results. That is power of revelation. It is only in such unity that the customer can get a WOW! Service. It is only then that you can hope that every partnership with your competitors will leave you as the ultimate winner. Everything is possible. I believe. Do you? Start collaborating!
Business and Health
Mrs Lola Olorunfemi, founder DSG Health Consulting Canada and Africa, an entrepreneur, active Board of Director with the Legal Nurse Consultants Association of Canada and a Masters level Registered Nurse both in the United States and Canada. She is also a published author and co-author who was inspired to serve, empower and educate after helping a child overcome tonsillitis. Lola has extensive experience in various areas of nursing including medical, surgical, telemetry, stroke, psychiatry (adult and geriatrics), home health and long term care. She is also a nurse educator and nursing faculty member.
She advices during the Business Life Africa 4th edition that it is important to re-create the way we execute and do business because it is good to incorporate being healthy into everything we do. These health categories; Physical, emotion, financial and spiritual health are not Superior to other, equal attention must be paid to all.
What I meant is that spiritual health is as important as physical health. Take care of your physical health before we think everything is spiritual. Mental health is equally important as physical health so also is financial health, emotional health and so on, she emphasised
She also asked When last do people checked your blood pressure? Considering the event of things in a time like this, research shows that 60% of the death recorded during the Covid-19 pandemic are caused by fear which led to high blood pressure and cardiac arrest. A regulary checkup is recommended daily for people diagnosed with high BP and weekly or monthly for those who have a highly stressful job.
DSG is working on an app that would enable to access good health at the corner of your house to consult doctors for any diagnosis and fix appointment. We partner Glintsight Communications in Nigeria to make this a reality, she said.
Career Synergy: Building products Together.
Leke Ekundayo, System administrator, Anchor University, Lagos.
A brief x-ray of career shows that it is different from job. Leke dissected according to his own definition of career that it is what someone can do, doing and willing to continue to do tiredlessly with little or much renumeration.
You might not totally agree with me with that definition, but all successful people and thousands of people went to school to only learn to read and write and came out to do something that make them happy. Now we have all faced the lockdown in all our locations, during the period the career of some blossom while for some it becomes blunder. What is your career? Are you doing the job that fits your career or you are just a square peg in a round hole. By the time you are in a life career and on that job of your career the sky will not even be the limit. Just a few more words on career.
The lockdown makes all to stay indoor for a long period. Communication moved from physical to virtual, telephones and computers became the major tools, but very many felt that mastering the computer keyboard might not be profitable. I thought somebody will see the necessity of adding typing full finger on computer keyboard will enhance his/her career. But how many actually adopted this, whereas, thousands had time to watch this or that, laugh and be happy about nothingness, he declared.
What is your career. When did you add value to that career of yours? Think about it.
Now synergy - what a big grammar. We were told that synergy means 1 + 1 = 3 or more. As the adage says, two heads is better than one. Synergy is when two people come together to work and the output of the two is greater than the output of the individual output. People says TEAM is an acronyms for Together Each Achieve More/Much. That is synergy
Career synergy is possible in Africa. But we are always looking for the European to come and partner with us. We have the energy, intelligent, resources and the gut but we need the push.
I once worked with two partners, one an Engineer and the other a Lawyer, coming together to form a consultancy service and they did a lot. Consulting for World Bank then.
Career synergy come up when you realised that a tree does not make a forest, it is only when we work together that much can be achieved. This platform already has many people from different work of life. We are here for a push and by God grace we will get the push. Why do you need a career synergy. Because you cannot do it alone. Because you cannot go far. Remember the adage that to go fast - go alone, but to go far - form a synergy. Obviously, birds of the same feathers flock together, does this give synergy, I dont think so. Probably the feather in this case must be that we have the same gut, the same willingness to succeed
How can birds of different feathers (career) flock together - through synergy. How?
1. Cooperation - Willingness of all to come down from the ivory tower. Ability to compliment each other and not confrontation and accusation. Be ready to contribute your own qouta, be willing to go extra mile give more to get more.
If you are the type that always complain then cooperation will not be possible. If you are the fault finding and the correction is not constructive, cooperation will be difficult. If you can not bear all thing, cooperation will be a fluke. Hence select your partner wisely, do not yoke yourself to a person that will call white, black and call black white.
This is an example of a synergy that DID NOT work at cooperation level. My former boss, that earlier mention wants to go into another synergy with other people, they started planning at the cooperation level, remember company is yet to kick of, but when they got to sharing formula everything scattered. Even when the business is yet to start.
Greed destroy the foundation of that synergy. I was also in cooperation with somebody for a business. It was quite funny. I had a social science background but my career is in sciences. My partner had a science background but his career was in the social sciences. We had a good time together, he having science background goes out to look for science related jobs, but I did the execution as that is where my career lies.
So cooperation must be solidified. Better still do not enter into any gentleman's agreement, let everything be written down in black and white.
2. Coordination - This has to do with each person doing his/best. Each person must be able to accomplish his or her own job in the partnership
As I said before career is not necessarily what you went to school to read, but your area of passion. When you are passionate about something, you do not need anybody to pursue you before you get involved. You also want to always improve to meet up a higher challenge.
You can read books, search the internet the greatest library in the world just to be effective and efficient at every point in time. Partner that is not coordinated can not form a good synergy. You cannot yoke together a cow and a goat, there will be problem So be sure that the person to form a synergy with has the capability to perform what he/she says can be done.
3. Complimetary - This is my final point. When two professionals come together to form a synergy the result will be different. For example - Two computer expert come together to form a synergy it will be 1 + 1 = 1
However, when a computer expert and a marketer form a synergy then the result will be 1 + 1 = 3. The computer expert does not feel superior to the market, that is the spirit of cooperation and the marketer is also coordinated.
My last story: I knew a computer expert that wanted to form a synergy with a marketer. The marketer said, I can sell this product, while the computer expert said I am willing to sell the product. They agree on the formular 60:40
Who can tell me the person that has 60%. I need our response here, can guess right? Well actually it was the marketer that had the 60%.
This business also flopped because of greed. This get rich quick is killing us in Africa. Philip Emeagwali spent over 18 months in isolation to produce the fastest computer in the world, yet he was not the marketer. He is a Nigerian, but one of his computer is not in Nigeria.
Where, when will this synergy start in Nigeria. It can start with you and I. You as a founder needs a Funder. He concluded.
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