adminBen Chiganze A Bass Fisherman’s
ApproachMy daughter came to me and asked me the meaning of work. To be frank I had never bothered to Google or check in my dictionary the meaning of work. I replied “Kushanda” (vernacular meaning for work). My daughter insisted that she wanted the meaning in English. Cassel Popular English Dictionary says work is an exertion of energy (physical or mental) effort or activity directed to some purpose; toil, labour . . . ; employment as a means of livelihood; that which is done, an action, deed, performance or achievement; a thing made . . . ”
My mind retraced back to my experience in the Claims department in an insurance company in 1995. Back then there was a guy nicknamed “Wheels of Africa” (herein referred to as “Wheels”.
In brief he was a professional gallivanter. He would hardly spend two hours in the office though his work was primarily office work. He was responsible for handling one of the biggest insurance portfolios then (Anglo American Corporation). Given the magnitude of its business back then it was managed by an equally big division at Minet Insurance Brokers headed by a Divisional Director.
Wheels would always come up with various excuses to leave his work station, among them; taking uncles and aunties to hospital, going to his children’s school, going to see the doctor and visiting the brokers (where I am reliably informed that he would just leave a memo and quickly disappear.)
He spent the few hours in the office fighting with brokers over the phone, in particular with a broker whose famous initials were BRP. Among some of his defence lines were “BRP, you cannot tell us what to do here . . . you can never teach us how to do claims properly, . . . I have 10 years’ experience in this job I know how to process claims, . . . you can never accuse me of inefficiency when you don’t understand our systems here . . . learn to be patient, I will advise you of further developments in the due course.’’ Alternatively he would use highly technical insurance terms to try and intimidate the Trainee Brokers.
After a couple of years the inevitable happened. He was summoned to the general manager and politely shown the letter which Minet had categorically stated that they don’t want Wheels to handle any of their portfolios. This marked the beginning of the premature end to Wheels’ insurance profession.
Did Wheels exert his energies (physical or mental) to fulfil a purpose of the organisation? Is the interaction between Brokers and Insurance companies designed to be battlefields?
Wheels of Africa confused work with leisure time. He allocated too much time to leisure at the expense work. He started most of his days by playing and later on allocated less time to work related issues. Consequently his work suffered. He overstretched the patience of most of his brokers. An honest day’s work is 8 hours but Wheels just put two hours. With all due respect Wheels was a thief specialising in stealing company time.
Consequently, he was always on the phone fighting with brokers over unfulfilled promises or work which had not been done timeously. As much as we crave for good/happy working environments we tend to forget that these conditions are created by toiling. At any workstation, there is a time when one has to toil in order to achieve the set objectives. In fact positive toiling is directly related to happiness and job satisfaction upon achieving set objectives.
Fire-fighting is one of the most undesirable methods of executing work. Fire-fighting must be used as the last resort not as the first port of call. You must allow yourself to be reactive all the time. Reacting to complaints all the time makes the tasks at hand less interesting. Failing to be proactive or responding on time creates bad blood between you and your customer. A work station is never interesting if it is a battleground for wounded customers.
A lot of people mistaken aspects of conversation such as unproductive arguments and unnecessary intimidation as tools for fulfilling an unfulfilled commitment. As much as unproductive arguments or intimidation enables you to buy time, they are not an end on their own. I still have to meet a customer whose needs were diverted, postponed and forgotten as a result of mere intimidation.
Employer’s time is also stolen by employees who spend most of the working hours doing their own work instead of what is stipulated by their contracts. The employees and Management in this category are physically present at work, but functionally absent. Though a lot of people hate sweating, sweating brings along with it satisfaction. There is nothing which is as satisfying and enjoyable as accomplishing a difficult task.
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