DROPED LETTERS FROM THE WIND: Time to relearn! Onakpoberuo Onoriode Victor Thursday, July 10, 2014 Prologue As the self strives to actualize certain hallowed proclivities, there is a sudden sharp awakening realization that one is not alone; that one’s effort to “become” can never be in isolation of relational forces within his immediate circle and those beyond. The wind travels as a free entity only temporarily hindered by physical obstructions in its path. Our thoughts, our will and passion to express the abilities of the self and stretch to the limits of existence, may also be temporarily hindered by obstructions in our thought path. Every obstruction in a man’s thought path can only be self-generated or created. It may have been triggered by a suggestion, however nothing can have command over a man by obstructing the peace of his thought path, except he has considered it and accepted it as a possible consequence within the experience of his own existence. All men are born free (not minding the condition of their heritage). But men grow to become bound as they learn by experience to gravitate towards fear. Freedom is of light and is as the wind, but fear is of darkness, a man here cannot see his path and he is as a dead weight sinking deeper to the depths of the sea. So, we have people who are free floating as the wind and those who are dead weights. It is the nature of the thought you either create or accept that turns you on as a being of light or off as a being of darkness. Nothing is an imposition we are always left with the power of choice, “for to reject or to accept”. A Shared Union In the dynamics of leadership, the burden of bearing the liabilities of conflicts from a relational union is functionally a shared responsibility, because it is a system of intersecting mutual relationships. In electronic systems, the singular act of replacing a bad component can restore normalcy of its function. However, the contrast with a humanly driven system is that, the mere removal of a defective worker has no direct, definite guarantee of system improvement (in some cases it may). This is because, though our behaviours are subjected to the direction of rules and ethical stipulations (which should produce predictable outcomes) our perception of rules (acceptance/rejection) is not a static experience; rather in some instance it may be an evolving opinion as permeated by the limits of our frame of reference. Also, though there may be a formalized mode of communication with its artificial interfaces, our interconnectedness in most cases is held in place by the steady streaming of subjective human emotional affiliations as opposed to the established corporate culture. So our frame of reference and affective disposition is what may at any instance influence the expressed attitude towards the direction of governance and the management of conflicts within a shared union. This tells you that, in a humanly driven system, every human entity is vital to the overall success or failure of that system. For any system to run smoothly and achieve its goals, the frame of reference of the human drivers that is; where they are coming from, what they believe in relation to the cardinal mandate of the system/organisation must be evaluated. Apart from this, their affective disposition towards the system and its governance, that is; how they feel about the system, its rules, policies and the approaches with which set goals are achieved must be assessed too. It is not enough to pride in having a very large workforce, effort must be made to identify the emotional peculiarities of these human drivers, if their learnt tendencies and attitude will provide sufficient emotional space for the genuine accommodation and personalization of the thoughts of actualizing the organization’s goal and imbibing its work culture. A man may profess the rules of a system, teach them, yet he is emotionally averse to those rules; he does not believe in them! Yanking out such unbelievers as one would a diode in an electronic circuit board, may in a human system mean, pulling down a vital network of that system. This is because that singular individual over time may have forged some emotional affiliations with other vital forces within the system, who may express negative affective dispositions towards the system should such action be taken. But in cases where the deviancy of the individual has become a widely observed obstruction to the governance of the system, then a yank off may pose no threat, but may actually provide a means for introducing fresh inspiration and motivation into the system. Any system you notice where the cardinal mandate setting it up is being achieved (and the people are highly motivated) is a system where much of the human drivers are believers of the doctrine of the supremacy, unity, functionality and integrity of the system, in full conformity with the spirit and letters of its legal creation. A system where people are more at home blabbing away about the rules/policies of the organisation, but with the same breath making subjective rationalizations why the rules may not be implementable, is a system of unbelievers; salary collectors though! One major challenge to the effective and efficient running of systems in Nigeria is our recruitment process. Whether it is as a result of the present fad of outsourcing I cannot tell, but there seem to be an over emphases on cognitive assessment in our recruitment process. Even here, you will find that test items are structured more to assess ones “ability to recall facts” (knowledge). Other very important components of the cognitive domain are left out. This means that someone who can memorize some relevant facts may very well score high in such tests. Whether or not such a person on getting the job would be creative, be able to apply the knowledge that would be available to him, synthesize facts from related subjects and make reasonable evaluations from them is another issue. What we should rather be doing, is to structure our selection process for it to be able to identify best fit for specific job roles. So apart from identifying basic professional requirement, there must be in place a valid test instrument or programme (simulation) that should be able to measure the emotional/personality configuration of applicants. The test should be able to identify the given frame of reference of the would be employee, his/her stable affective disposition (temperament), their learnt attitude within certain scenarios related to the role to be performed, thought patterns, beliefs held, perception/attitude towards the organisation etc. All these are very important because when it all gets down to that fine moment of personal service, it is attitude that fuels behaviour, which propels the human who drives the system. In a practical working sense, we can have a competent professional but yet with a bland attitude to the advancement of the system. Although he is skilled, his negative affective disposition towards the system sets him in opposition to imbibing and believing in the corporate ideals of the organisation. As such giving himself, his skill as solutions to the challenges of the organisation will become a very uninteresting sloppy ride. He may end up being a clog in the wheel of progress than an asset to that organisation. What we have been having as a fall out from some recruitment exercise (public service) is a situation where more people pass the test of knowledge but end up failing in the test of attitude required to power the system to maximizing its true potentials. Government policies die unnatural deaths on white papers, simply because we have more people who are emotionally averse to those policies/programmes than those who genuinely believe in them. Hence the service integrity expected from some of these institutions, is merely a theoretical supposition on a policy paper.( Integrity is not the buildings of government institutions, but rather the overall learnt attitude of the human drivers in direct conformity with the spirit and letters of the ethical norms which should govern that institution). This is also the reason why another system of ethnicity, religiosity, and godfatherism is presently running parallel to the established ethical sanctity of our government systems (institutions) and rendering them impotent. The danger in all these are that now, a work culture is emerging out of this counterfeit system, which is now gaining global recognition as “The Nigerian factor”. What is the government approved cost of issuance of international passport, driver’s license, oath fee...? You know what you paid! If nothing is done urgently about this counterfeit infiltration of our government systems (through an illegal work culture from human drivers who bear no loyalty or love for Nigeria) soon it will become a huge crime not to give bribe, gratify police men, embezzle public funds etc. Then, on paper we will have our written corporate ethics, but in practice this counterfeit would be operational as the norm. We already have within our fold certain thought patterns which potentially can fuel attitudes that can strangulate the system, for example; “no carry government for head”, “chop I chop”,”e no matter”, “wait for your turn”, etc. Imagine an applicant coming into the workforce with all these negative baggage, how in this world can we ever expect patriotic conduct from him? My suggestion is for us to institute a recruitment policy that will have a 70% emphasis on the emotional component (attitude, beliefs, perception, personality etc.) including the other higher levels of the cognitive domain (analysis, application, synthesis, evaluation) of the applicants and a 30% emphasis on his professional qualification. This is because an employee with a “not too high sounding” professional qualification (just first degree) but having a positive affective disposition towards the ideals of the organisation can actually be trained on the job to become professionally competent. He also will be a more loyal steward to the system than a cocky, “know it all” professional with a really putrid attitude. The present threat calls for us to begin to functionally redefine our present concept of literacy. If 80 years ago, literacy meant “the ability to read, write and speak English”, 80 years later, can that concept provide the assurances of the leadership, technological, educational advancement of Nigeria within the next 20years? 80 years ago, reading and writing may have made sense as a concept of literacy, but in the present rapidly evolving competitive global community, there is no room for any sterile postulations with no direct impact on stimulating creativity, localizing scientific thoughts, functional education etc. In the past up until now there have been many unpatriotic blabbers of government policies; also there were many well-intentioned programmes of government that never met up to the original intent of their design. This is not necessarily because of logical inconsistencies in their creation, but rather because of a pervasive work attitude immune to accepting the progressive transformation of the Nigerian state. At this present time, our call is for the government to look at its power house (the workforce) and work out a review of the present selection process, so that it can provide 95% reliability in the recruitment of credible professional Nigerians into its fold. If this can happen, we would have positioned Nigeria structurally to compete favourably in the global arena. Only a patriotic workforce can build a nation and preserve her integrity…. but patriotism is first a learnt attitude. What is your affective disposition towards Nigeria; how do you feel about Nigeria? God Bless Nigeria.
Posted on: Fri, 11 Jul 2014 16:11:43 +0000
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