Ashesi U - educating tomorrow's African leaders

Patrick Awuah is working with others in Ghana to transform the education of future leaders:  http://www.ted.com/talks/patrick_awuah_on_educating_leaders.html

The mission of Ashesi University College (http://www.ashesi.org/) is to educate a new generation of ethical, entrepreneurial leaders in Africa; to cultivate within our students the critical thinking skills, the concern for others and the courage it will take to transform a continent..

What wonderful news!

How we handle applicants

"We will respond only if you are shortlisted" has become (almost?) the industry standard for handling applicants.  I understand why.

 

And I suspect I am close to expressing a universal feeling that I am never happy about it.

 

The reason is this.  Applying for anything requires one to put a really "best effort" into the application.  To do less than that is a tacit private admission that "I am not serious about this opportunity".  For many sincere professionals, this process of really investing oneself in that application produces a form of commitment (shall we call it "the commitment seed"?), even before the potential employer can say yes or no. Frankly, as one who has tried to offer the best of myself in my career, I see creating this seed as an important individual risk to take - always!!.   And as an experienced manager of people, I also know that this seed although invisible, is important evidence of the ability to grow commitment, making the motivated applicant a great potential asset to the Team.  I water it whenever I can.

 

You can see where this is going already.  :-)

 

As an acknowledgement of the effort taken to apply and to go beyond the industry standard method of treating applicants and the seed of commitment, I respectfully recommend to all firms and managers that they generate individual responses once they have run their selection processes.  With modern software, this can be done with a minimal set up cost and requires only a trigger to the system by a very junior staff person to send the several letters required.  Almost every marketing company generates a letter with my name in it, offering to sell me something.  International development consulting firms have that model available.

 

Nurture the seed.  Nurture the Team.  Nurture the effort.

Finding like minded people

I have worked in "international development" for 30 years and live in Thailand.  I want to cultivate networks of committed people who see that the key transformation required for reducing poverty, creating peace and solving the plethora of problems and worries that beset us (insert all previous, current and future causes), is personal transformation.

 

This does not mean you have to acquire any beliefs, views or opinions.  Nor does it mean you have to become a spiritual recluse, monk or a nun.  It means that you have start to see how your own mind is an essential player in how you create the world as it is - its problems and its joys.  Like all people who work, I have acquired certain skills and experiences that are displayed in a CV of who "I" am.  What I see in the organizations I have worked in is that they are by their nature dysfunctional because they spend no time or effort getting beyond the CV and into shared responsibility, ego-reduced relationships and ways of managing the confused feelings and conflicts that arise in the workplace.

 

If organizations are to become even slightly better at what they do (reducing poverty, improving access to education, increasing political participation, improving egalitarianism in sharing of planetary resources) they must be managed by people who appreciate and take up the challenge of being awake and facilitating the same in others who work for them and for whom they work.  In fact, this requires one to be a full time student of one's own mind in order that one is able to negotiate the desire to own and take credit for the results.  Having a practice that encourages this and rehearses one's ability to step outside the personality view, the views and opinions and the doubt thrown up by thinking is essential.

Can we do something together?  Please get in touch!!  :-)

Mindful use of financial systems...

Recently I was saddened to receive word of a former colleague and friend (called X here) whose mismanagement of funds had been revealed by an audit. This kind of event can be more common in some environments, and we can learn so much from it.  
  
I had heard from a distance about the outcome of the audit and was disappointed to hear of the rather long history of X’s dishonesty. On the positive side, this has now provided X with a wonderful opportunity to take full responsibility for her action, to make a clean breast of this and to reexamine his own standards of behavior. Far better for X that it was discovered - for her ultimate health and happiness. He cannot be spared the full consequences of her/his actions. 
  
For those of us who observe this event and the suffering and embarrassment that X is going through (and will go through), it is a wakeup call to us to apply the highest standards of honesty and transparency in our own behavior in our jobs. Whenever we are called upon to deal with other people's money, this deserves the absolutely highest level of awareness and transparency. For those who believe their honesty is above reproach, the most important reason for this is to guard against lapses in memory (e.g. "I'll write that transaction down tomorrow" - is simply courting disaster.)  

Another important reason is to take full advantage of the accounting systems so that we remove temptation from others around us who, in a moment of weakness, might succumb to temptation made available by our own lack of proper management procedure.  
  
What I'm saying is that when this kind of thing happens is not only X’s karma that is functioning. 
  
I too bear some responsibility for this situation as I was unsuccessful in my attempts to get the necessary financial documentation from the project. In that sense I have compounded the misery that X now faces, since she might have been presented with the opportunity to confess to this much earlier had I and others been successful earlier.  
  
We have a wonderful opportunity (because of the availability of so many great teachers of the Buddha's gift) to cultivate mindfulness practice and with that the insights into the shallowness of the way in which we normally experience the conventional reality. Surely, waking up is a full time job. "To take responsibility for where we find ourselves" is as appropriate at work as it is at home! 

What do you think of this?