Run your life like you run your job

As you jot down your resolutions, it’s worth pondering why it’s easier to achieve corporate goals than personal ones. Here’s a thought-provoking take on how to run your life like you do your deliverables at work.

I spent all of yesterday doing up my new year resolutions. Yeah, I know new year’s resolutions don’t work for most of us, and by the end of January, I probably wouldn’t remember where I wrote them down. Just like my resolutions, you probably have yours penned down, and year after year, nothing comes out of them.

While you are doing your resolutions, your evil boss (bosses are usually evil in January) is also writing up your deliverables for the year. Despite the daydream of sending a hit squad after her, by March, you have already fallen in love with the goals and all pumped up to achieve your corporate objectives. Guess what, come December 2017, you are probably done with 70% of the madness lined up for you at work. Unfortunately, you won’t be getting a bonus unless you do more than 100%. That itself is a big if!

Wait, hold up!

Come to think of it; you find it hard to do things that would make your life better and successful yet you can easily, even with your worst performance, hit a sizeable level of achievement of things that would make your boss richer at the end of the year? Ironic!

A question that keeps me awake at night – what if I can run my life just the way I do my deliverables at work?

After ruminating about this for a while, I figured out the reason why: immediate and delayed repercussions.

Immediate repercussions

We are all geared to respond to positive and negative stimuli like overworked Pavlovian dogs. If you touched a life wire, you get shocked. If you cross the road without checking properly, the Danfo driver who drank adulterated paraga would run you down. Everyone knows of the immediate consequences of bad behaviors, so we simply avoid them.

The same happens at work, if you don’t deliver on the targets or KPIs set by your boss, you probably going to get a one-way ticket to HR and your ass would be out of work. If you are consistently late to work, one day you would do it one more time too often; You will most likely be scouring LinkedIn for openings the week after. Don’t even think about getting drunk at work or slapping someone; that kills you faster than a speeding bullet. No wonder nobody fights in the office!

The average professional does reasonably well at work and a miserable job of his career.

Delayed repercussions

So what happens when you don’t do that certification you, the world and I know is going to give your career a boost? Because your punishment is chilling in the future and you probably can’t hear it whistling.
You promised yourself a change of job, but the efforts to tidy up your CV and start networking is proving too hard. Of course, a new job won’t come, and with the economy taking a tumble faster than a beached whale, you can be sure that your life would be more miserable by December 2017.
If you don’t quit smoking as you have promised your wife or girlfriend for the past five years, one more cigarette won’t have your lungs give up immediately. But like a nicely marinated croaker fish, it takes a while, but once your lungs are nicely roasted, nobody has been able to invent a means to un-roast it.

You find it hard to save for your mortgage down payment, but you could easily find extra cash to rock the clubs Friday nights and hit the Bahamas with your homies for the summer. You pay more than your EMI in rent. Nevertheless, you are the one who is driving a cost-cutting proposal for your company and saved $10M last year by canceling some office perks, downgrading everyone from 4 to 3-star hotels while on travel, and discovered that nixing the free coffee and buns won’t kill employee morale. You didn’t get a dime in bonus for that; you were freaking doing your job! By the time you are fifty, your rented apartment would have appreciated in value, but none of that comes to you.

The Key

So I figured out that if an immediate repercussion could be tied to the fantastical new year resolutions, maybe there could be an impetus for one to achieve them.

Have achievable resolutions

Have goals that are reasonable and achievable. I mean you are smart; you know what I mean. If you try to swallow something too big, you are probably going choke and die. Same for goals too audacious for your good.

Don’t have too many resolutions

Too many cooks upturn the pot, scattering the evening dinner all over the kitchen floor. Too many resolutions mean you would be scared of the daunting tasks after the enthusiasm of January 1 has gone. At best, don’t have more than 5.

Be answerable to someone

Share your goals with someone you admire and respect. Not wanting to disappoint them is a strong incentive to achieve. I mean, who wants to look like a wimp to her boyfriend? Well, unless your boyfriend is also a wimp. If so, maybe your first resolution would be to get rid of him.

Move with the right crowd

Psychologists have studied peer pressure for as long as humanity. They weren’t called psychologists then, though. Most of the bad habits I have today I got from my friends (don’t ask me what they are but I can tell you who they are). Fortunately, my grades in school turned for the better when I started hanging out with the right crowd. If your friends are loafers, you would be one. If you want to have a superlative career, start being friends with those whose lives you admire. In trying to copy them, you could end up even better than them.

Run from negative people who never see anything good in life, they are like a prick to your enthusiasm balloon. Instead of floating to the sky, they make you fall like a lead.

Bad habits can be good

Trust me, pure envy and jealousy can be a game-changer if it drives you in the right direction. Have you ever gone to the mall and you see your old school buddy more successful than you, who tortured you by introducing his trophy wife and his Bentley Bentayga? You probably burned with jealousy but instead of having schadenfreude, why don’t you prove that you are better than him? Just drive yourself insane to achieve your resolutions, and you can have much more. Be careful of getting a trophy wife, though, you can lose all that money faster than you made them.

Time to go

I’m going to try all these methods on myself this year, and I hope they work. If they don’t, we can review other methods by 2018.

With all seriousness, you owe yourself a good life. Fortunately, you have all it takes to succeed, after all, you are a star at work. Apply the same skills you use to balance budgets, deliver projects, learn new skills, take care of customers, etc. to your life and you would see amazing results.

Happy New Year everyone!

Report on Perception of Digital Bank in Nigeria

The emergence of small and nimble digital banks, known as challenger banks in other climes, is disrupting the concept of banking and financial services. Interests from the average customer have been very strong, in particular among the millennials. However, most of these have been confined to Europe and North America save for two large digital banks in China; WeBank from TenCents and MyBank from Alibaba’s Ant Financials.
While nothing seems to be happening in Sub-Saharan Africa in general and Nigeria especially, does it mean the FinTech revolution would never reach us?
A study was done in November 2016 to gauge Nigerians’ perception of digital banks and if they are inclined to bank with one if it comes on the scene. A total of 2,000 recipients were surveyed out of which 326 responded. The target group was mostly middle-class professionals, the type typically targeted by challenger banks.
The result of the study has been condensed into the following easy to understand infographics.

Why are Nigerian brands not on Nairaland and other local social media platforms?

Nairaland was social media before social media became anything in Nigeria. While it has failed to match its potentials, at least when compared with what Facebook and others have become, it retains its potency. In fact, every time a top Nigerian brand gets slammed on the site, the Executives quake.

Despite the impressive page views, none of the major Nigerian brands have a presence or spends on Nairaland. And it’s not about Nairaland alone; same goes for most homegrown social media websites such as World Junction, Naija Pals, etc.
Is there something wrong with local social media websites that the average Joe like me doesn’t know?
Social media has become so critical to branding and marketing that companies that don’t do it are practically toying with death. Well, nobody is going to get shot for not going online, but it’s now an existential risk eschewing social media.

The significance of social media in Nigeria cannot be overemphasized. Nigerians are said to be the most mobilized country in the world where 76% of all internet traffic run through our mobile phones despite the crappy data service served by the Telcos. Nigeria also has the highest number of Facebook users in Africa. I don’t know if that counts for anything but at least, it got Zuckerberg to get on the plane and see what’s happening out here in Lagos. So a company that doesn’t reach out to eyeballs where they congregate is only wasting its time.
You only need to visit profile pages of major companies in Nigeria to see how important they take social media. Hardly do you find any of these companies without dedicated teams just creating content on Facebook, YouTube, etc. on a daily.

This is apparent because social media companies are no longer small boys. Check out the following facts: Facebook is worth a whopping $331.39B as of December 2, 2016, while Mark himself is now the 6th richest homo sapiens, worth $51.7B, just from sharing updates and videos of cats and naked girls. Snapchat, which was invented just like yesterday, has been valued at $20B. Microsoft just bought LinkedIn for $26.2B (Just give me the change on top, I swear, I will stop ranting forever!). Facebook bought Instagram and WhatsApp for a combined $20B.
The smallest of the major Social Media is larger than most countries; Facebook (1.79B) is bigger than China (1.4B).
Ok, we get it, social media is important!!
With all the money spent on social media, why are Nigerian social media sites not benefiting from the spends? Or why are Nigerian companies not spending on Nigerian websites?

So many arguments exist:

The Nigeria social media environment is not big enough.
Some argue that social media in Nigeria is not big or the local websites don’t attract viewers. The assertion is simply not true as there are metrics to show otherwise. Nairaland has more engagement in Nigeria than Facebook. It currently ranks as the 7th most visited website while Facebook comes in as 8th. Many major stories are broken on Linda Ikeji, Bella Naija, Nairaland, etc. Those who love tatafo know where they tune their antennas.

Nigerian social media is unstructured for structured brands
Home grown social media in Nigeria is like Oshodi market where area boys reign supreme. That is true, a trip through Nairaland is like walking in a Brazilian Favela. But Nairaland is tame compared to Reddit, where vitriol and porn rain down like typhoon. Top brands, such as Amazon, HTC, Red Bull, Ford, Nordstrom, etc. are making a kill on Reddit. Reddit has also hosted top names like Bill Gates, Obama (yes, Obama!) on a section called AMA (ask me anything).

Nigerian brands prefer foreign platforms
Colonial mentality or social media imperialism where nothing homegrown is good enough? However, when you figured out that Linda Ikeji bought her N600M mansion in Banana from money made online in Nigeria then the argument falls flat!
So the question is – why do companies in Nigeria shun local social media. I’m not talking about advertisement but creating a profile and reaching out.
Telcos, banks, and Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG – there is an acronym for everything) are the largest spenders on marketing in Nigeria. I don’t know the fraction of the global spend of $23.68B that came from Nigeria, but I know it should amount to something substantial, at least from the Nigerian perspective. What if a portion of what we spend is diverted to social media websites such as World Junction and Nairaland? If the world is expecting a 26.3% increase in spending on social media ads in 2017, shouldn’t Nigeria grow even much more?

Why I may not know the actual answers to this debacle, I know they have to do much more to become the platform of choice for brands and advertisers. They need to engage more, provide robust tools needed for targeting, curating and analytics. Going back to basic level, they even need business development executives to go after potential brands.

Who shall tell our stories?

I have spent the last few months reading, researching, and discussing with many payments industry experts about what the new wave of FinTech and payment innovations mean for the world, Africa, you, and most importantly me.

I’m sorry that I have to use the FinTech jargon. Just like big data, cloud, etc. FinTech as a buzzword is already annoying the heck out of me!

Opinions, just like the sands of the Eleko beach, are many, cheap, and quickly forgettable. However, what is not disputable, is that a lot of innovative things are happening all over the world and it is likely that the financial world as we know it may be gone soon.

Meanwhile, if I ask the average Joe or Jane, as the case may be, about the companies leading these packs, you get fancy names like Atom, WeBank, Ant Financials, Stripe, N26, Monzo, etc. Everyone is talking about BlockChain, Open Banking, PSD2, Trump, etc. So where is Africa?

Before anything else, I need to say that Africa is not a country!

I’ve had the opportunity to talk to many companies doing fantastic things in different countries in Africa, but the average African doesn’t know about them. Yeah, you want to mention M-Pesa? Vodafone invented M-Pesa for Safaricom in Kenya and Vodacom in Tanzania and partly funded by DFID.
While the world is begging the USA to start doing instant interbank transfers, Nigeria and other countries like Zimbabwe have been doing it for centuries, but who knows? Outside of Africa, more people know about UK’s faster payments than Zimbabwe’s ZIPIT. Does ZIPIT means “to keep quiet”?
Tax collection is a mess in Nigeria, but the TSA platform from Remita is sufficiently more advanced than what can found in other countries, but who knows?

mCash, recently launched in Nigeria, promises to upend merchant payments but hardly did the story get beyond the border before it was rudely sent back home.

MyCash is a pure-play digital bank in Zimbabwe running out of a tiny office on a shared infrastructure, but I can bet that you are reading about it here for the first time.

Africans may not have achieved the level of development seen in western countries and Asia, but not everyone has been sitting around climbing iroko trees. However, while we may be furiously developing payment and other technology solutions, hardly do we get the word out.

If we think others will tell our stories, we may have to wait until chickens grow teeth. Letting the world know isn’t just about the beautiful 15 minutes of fame that everyone craves, but more importantly, to encourage our youth that good things are also possible in Africa.

Even though the technology behind M-Pesa may have come from Vodafone, the airtime it got spurred the rapid development of mobile money across Africa, and it is one of the good things exported by Africa to the world.

We need more beautiful stories to be told. But much more, we need storytellers.

mCash would change the future of payments in Nigeria

mCash, leveraging USSD, revolutionizes payments in Nigeria. Available to 28 million users, it bypasses POS challenges with instant settlements and broad accessibility, potentially transforming electronic payments nationwide.

The Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS), along with numerous banks, have launched mCash as an alternative payment system in the populous country in Africa.
mCash rides on USSD and anyone can easily use the code to make payments at large stores, corner shops, etc. The mCash payment system, which is automatically available to over 28 million account holders in Nigeria, can be used with any smart or feature phone.
The Central Bank of Nigeria has been pushing electronic payments in Nigeria for years. The elaborate program, dubbed Cash-less Nigeria, was driven massively in partnership with banks, switches, schemes and other stakeholders. The results have been fantastic as electronic payments in Nigeria is on a tear.

Despite the massive success of the Cash-less Nigeria program, merchant payments using Point of Sales (POS) terminals have not been as successful. Payments at POS terminals have been bedeviled with a lot of issues: High cost of terminals, which has been exacerbated by the devalued Naira. Poor telco data/GPRS infrastructure. Overregulation of participation and fees, which has made the business to be highly unprofitable. The list of issues goes on.
It was no surprise that banks started pulling back. Many at times, merchants desirous of having terminals are not given because they may not have enough transactions to allow the banks breakeven.
Not deterred by these, NIBSS and some banks rallied around to design a new payment system which would latch on to the recent success of the USSD banking in Nigeria.

Rising from the ashes of mobile money in Nigeria, another failed experiment in the quest for a cashless society, banks quickly repurposed their USSD codes to connect directly to bank accounts instead of mobile wallets. As the average Nigerian is already used to using USSD codes to load airtime or select call back tunes, there was an immediate affinity. USSD banking in Nigeria now has more users than all other channels apart from payment cards.

The mCash payment system allows account holders to dial their bank codes or a special general purpose code and then pay any merchant. The paying customers and merchants do not need to be with the same bank. The transactions ride on the existing NIBSS Instant Payment infrastructure. Merchants get settled instantly instead of waiting until the next day as it would be for POS transactions. Banks do not need to create additional back office processes as the payment transactions are treated like regular NIP transfer payments.

Even the merchants love the new system as they would not need to pay interchange or MSC.
This is a new payment system and the jury is still out on how transformational it could be. It has all the potentials of a successful platform: reach, ease of use and cost to merchants.