Welcome to the June 11th edition of Faith & Life Lessons.
You will see this email full of tidbits from my week. My goal is simple. I hope that from how I live my life, you can find a thing or two that helps you as you try to live a life that matters. I am always trying to do one thing - make Christ-focused decisions in love, work, and life. And this was my week.
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The Story of My Week
As part of the government's strategy to minimize the re-occurrence of more demonstrations, they turned off social media access.
Whatsapp, Twitter, Instagram, youtube and anything that smells like social media was turned off.
It was a bit of a funny situation to notice that I had not received any WhatsApp messages for almost 12 hours when it was first implemented.
I got the memo later on.
But you probably guess, most people found a solution around it by installing VPNs.
Well, the government upped the ante - they turned off mobile internet access. You remained connected if you had a fibre internet connection - which most homes have in Senegal.
The last time I experienced a government-sanctioned internet blackout was when I went to Ethiopia for work.
The reason was more interesting.
According to them, due to exam malpractices in the past during the final exams for secondary or high school students, they decided to turn off the internet for the current exam run.
Yep, they turned off the internet so kids wouldn't send leaded exam answers to each other via social media platforms or emails. And the rest of the country suffered for it.
It had me smiling for a bit. Though it made working there challenging. But we pushed through it.
Thank God, the internet siege in Senegal is over.
It saved me from having to do our weekly family karaoke night using old videos on my hard drive.
I bet that's the least of most people's problems.
Well, it's me seeing the funny side of it all.
Things I Learnt
1-Show up With a Winning Personal Structure: One of my kids had a piano performance during the weekend. One of the pieces he was meant to play was a duet with another kid.
The mum and I had tried to arrange for both of them to practice together. But things didn't work out.
Everything happening in the country and a family situation for the other family meant the first time we all met was at the venue of the event.
When they played together, you would never know that they had not practised together before.
They were both in sync and their performance went seamlessly.
How was this achieved? Using a consistent repeatable framework for their individual practices.
Once both of them met, the framework aligned both of them easily.
This taught me the need to ensure that how I show up must be based on a framework - a world-class framework.
A world-class framework that works in every environment.
And this is what I am going to continue replicating in the important aspects of my life.
I want my life to be open to such scrutiny that it stands well wherever I might fight myself.
2-When a Leader can be Trusted: My head office was trying to negotiate with a member of my team for a role.
The role included an acting period after which if confirmed, he gets a significant bump in compensation.
During the acting period, he gets an allowance and clear targets which he has to meet before the full confirmation.
Conversations between him and the head office had been on for a bit about the acting allowance. After the last offer they made to him, I asked him what his response is.
His response was the surprise.
He said he would ordinarily not have wanted to accept the offer but because he believed in my vision for the team.
That was an interesting turn of events that I did not expect.
It reinforces the fact that providing a clear vision for a team can sometimes motivate more than monetary rewards.
Anyway, now I have to make sure we deliver on the vision so that it does not just become something nice that I said
Postscript
May your integrity give power to your words so that people trust you and are willing to take risks for you. Amen
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Tola - The Everyday Disciple
I help Christians like you who want to live intentional lives incorporate their faith into everyday life so they can make Christ focused decisions in all areas of life and truly live to make an impact and make God happy.
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