Of the relevance of school teachings

One thing that strikes me as odd is that most students seem to memorise lessons just to get a "pass" mark at the next test and then hurry to forget all about the notions learned, instead of finding practical uses for them in their daily lives.

Although I didn't enjoy my years of studying management for various reasons, I did grab a few notions I keep using to this day and made them so much part of my everyday reasoning that I seldom stop and think "hey, that useful bit? I learned it formally in school 20+ years ago and see how it comes handy now again!"

Now that I hear a lot about the relevance of what is taught (or rather, the lack of it) in schools everywhere and in Ghana in particular, I've decided to give it a serious and organised thought and pick at the most useful habits, ways of analysing a problem and dealing with everyday situations I can trace back to what was, I can assure you, a very dull period of my life. I intend to write a series of posts which I hope will help give students motivation to look beyond the next test and the grades they need to get a "pass" in the subjects they're studying to detect what materials have the potential of being lifelong props for their whole thought system.

The last two posts (First come, first served and Project Evaluation Review Technique (PERT) and Gantt charts) are the first in this series. Please keep coming to this blog and see what's new here and how old school teachings can be useful in your everyday life.

Project Evaluation Review Technique (PERT) and Gantt charts

Although this business management technique seems to be slightly more difficult to comprehend than the previous one (First come, first served), it actually makes the management of tasks and organisation of work much simpler.

Let's start with a general definition of PERT:

"PERT is a method to analyze the involved tasks in completing a given project, especially the time needed to complete each task, and identifying the minimum time needed to complete the total project."

Simply put, make a list of things to do to bring about a desired result, and how long each of them will take. This is something each one of us can and should do, be it in our personal or professional lives, in order to get a clearer idea of steps to our goal and predictable speed of achievement.

Let's draw a table where Column 1 would be titled "Task", Column 2 "Duration", Column 3 "Prerequisite."

Once this table is complete, we will want to get a better, graphical idea of the timeline and tasks that can or should be run concurrently. An exemple follows.

We'll then draw a network diagram, also called Gantt chart (developed by a Mr. Gantt), described by Wikipedia as follows:

"A Gantt chart is a type of bar chart that illustrates a project schedule. Gantt charts illustrate the start and finish dates of the terminal elements and summary elements of a project. Terminal elements and summary elements comprise the work breakdown structure of the project. Some Gantt charts also show the dependency (i.e. precedence network) relationships betweek activities. Gantt charts can be used to show current schedule status using percent-complete shadings and a vertical "TODAY" line as shown here. "

For simple projects, a piece of paper, a pencil and an eraser will be good enough. For more complex situations, there are numerous software which will help you draw a chart from organising next Sunday's festive lunch to developing a new airplane. You may try your hand at one for free here. Another interesting source is here. These are not recommendations and I don't endorse either of these companies or their products. These suggestions are inserted only for illustration purposes.

Although PERT and Gantt are old news in most of the world, they still provide robust project management methods. I'm sure trying them will open you to a whole new world of possibilities and make previously insurmountable projects a collection of streamlined, easy to manage smaller tasks.

Readers, I will appreciate your feedback here. Please let me know whether you think this article opened new possibilities for you and how you intend to use them. Conversely, if you don't think these suggestions useful, please let me know why, and what would be a better way of tackling project management in your line of business.

First come, first served

In an attempt to provide constructive suggestions to improve customer service, which some would agree is rather lacking here, I will offer here short posts describing principles that can be applied easily in all areas of business, be it in street hawking, trading, or utility hotline management.

The first of them is "First Come, First Served". Wikipedia explains it as:

"a service policy whereby the requests of customers or clients are attended to in the order that they arrived, without other biases or preferences. The policy can be employed when processing sales orders, in determining restaurant seating, on a taxi stand, for example. In Western society, it is the standard policy for the processing of most queues in which people wait for a service."

It seems to me that applying this principle strictly will help bring more order in most businesses, relieve the operators and attendants of the headache of conflicting priorities and alleviate the public's frustration.

Readers, I would like to get your opinions on this. Do you think it a good idea? If not, why? And what would you suggest instead?

Commenting is not complaining

A very long absence, due to my doubts about how useful it is to discuss everyday topics in this blog or anywhere else, when more often than not commenting on situations is considered disgraceful complaining.

I've therefore decided to give it another try, this time with what I believe could be workable suggestions. Exposing an issue AND suggesting improvements. Time will tell if it works. Readers, I thank you in advance for your constructive criticism.

The ultimate cake tin shop

One of my hobbies is baking cakes. I even toy now and then with the idea of a change of career. Of course, I do use state-of-the-art silicon cake "tins", but if I had to revert to the old aluminium ones, I know where I would buy them:

It's just opposite the place where I pay my broadband connection. This is a true Ghanaian business. A few years ago, there was only corrugated tin available here and cake tin makers had to hammer the sheets flat before giving them their final shapes. I am not sure it's still the case, but even starting with a flat sheet, it's skilled and inventive work.

Ovens are also built locally. I'll post a picture here soon.

Entrepreneurship

If you knew me a tiny bit, you could probably say that I don't yield to facility. Sometimes (often, actually), I wonder whether I should rather acknowledge I don't easily yield to reason. Take this: when I first visited my father's country 30 years ago, I fell in love with what I discovered and decided Africa was the continent where I would live when I grew up. Well, I did grow up and since 2000, I have been trying to make this dream come true.

You would think that fulfilling a child's dream means living happy ever after. Forget it. I find it mightily difficult to function here. Not moving to Africa as an employee or even a volunteer, with a company or a NGO having paved the way for me and providing a safety net in case any problems arise, means that I often come head-on with any type and amount of issues, and that I have to face them alone: I decided to create a company which, in itself, is a challenge, wherever you do it.

Doing business in Africa is a whole different world. You encounter ways of doing things you weren't prepared to face and which, frankly speaking, seem very odd at times. It is likely that I made a lot of mistakes, some of which I am probably not even aware of. I know I keep blundering again and again.

Let's face it: when you come from Europe or North America to set up a company, chances are that those you will meet in the process (officials, partners, employees, etc.) will take it for granted that you have come to take advantage of a cheap and pliable labour and make a lot of money on their backs. If it is not your case, it will take a lot of time (if not forever) to overcome some of those people's prejudices.

The blame is not all theirs: most people won't consider expatriating unless they can make a bundle in the process. Well, being an utopian, I went with quite a different agenda. I intended to give work to young African graduates and help them make a transition, as smooth as possible, between their formal training and the international markets at large. Because I tested dozens of candidates, literally from Tangiers, Morocco, to Cape Town, South Africa, I knew there was quite a gap, which I set out to bridge. It was at the same time a training programme and a job that I wanted to offer.

2.5 years later, I can say I haven't made a bundle, quite the contrary. I'm not surprised, it was not my aim. Of course, it would have been nice to do good and get rich at the same time, but not very realistic. I spent the first 18 months sleeping between 2 and 5 hours a night only, because of the staggering amount of work involved when you want both to help people increase their skills and have a usable output to deliver to your international clients (who have no idea of your dreams or circumstances).

A lot of what you are going to read in this blog will tell you about my professional experience of the last 2.5 years and nice (and less nice) asides. Why am I doing this? To warn the utopians that reality is not always rosy? I knew it wasn't and it didn't deter me. To let off steam now and then? Probably. To stop boring my friends to tears with accounts of my trials? Possibly.