This might sound shocking but I’m going to say it anyway. Teamwork is over-rated. Right from school, I’ve never seen the good in the thing. At school, a group of students would be given an assignment. Some people would do exactly zero work yet everyone would get the same marks. And in the work place,…
Before I started working, I thought being in an office would be a bit like being in class at university – you didn’t like everyone in your class but somehow you all got along. I was pretty wrong there. While in class you can mostly ignore people you can’t stand, in an office, you sometimes…
I’m a big fan of goals. I’ve made annual goals since 2005 and monthly goals since 2010. I have never achieved all the goals on any one annual list and the times when I’ve achieved all my monthly goals have been few and far between. Strangely enough, that has not reduced my enthusiasm for goal-making. …
One of my favourite blogs is Penelope Trunk’s . In a post of hers, she talks about how people who are happy at work have two or three friends in the office. And perhaps it is true. When there are people in the office you are close to, you can gripe about your boss (as…
Like most recent graduates, when I got my first job, I was broke. The job involved writing (yay!) and sales (not-so-yay!). When I was hired, I was told I needed to dress semi-formally because I would be seeing clients. That was an immediate problem because while I had quite an array of jeans and spaghetti…
Do you ever feel like you have lots to do but no matter how hard you try, you can’t seem to get anything done? Sometimes, the feeling is that there’s so much to do that you’re terrified and the easiest action to take is no action. I think most people feel that way at some…
With the American presidential elections being in the news, my mind turned to politics, not the American or even Nigerian kind but office politics. Before I got my first job, I wondered what office politics was. I mean, it’s not like people voted or anything. What did it all mean? Ah, the naivety of youth!…
When I was being interviewed for one of my first jobs, I asked what my role would involve. My interviewer, who later became my boss, told me that amongst other things, I would have to make presentations to clients. He paused at that point clearly waiting for me to groan in dismay but I didn’t. …
I first came across the idea of managing your boss in a Harvard Business Review article some years ago. Until then, I had no idea you could manage your boss. Wasn’t ‘managing’ what a boss did? However, I was intrigued so I read the piece. I have to admit, I don’t remember much of what…
If you study a science or engineering course at a Nigerian university, at some point , you’ll be required to work as an industrial trainee or intern at an organisation where you can learn the practical side of the course you are studying. These days, some non-science students are also required to be industrial trainees…