I have seen a pattern amongst many people in life; the pattern of quitting when times get tough. Quitting is perhaps one of the easiest things to do because it requires no effort at all. Quitting on your business, quitting school, quitting relationships, quitting on goals that you are pursuing.

I once heard a man say that “quitters never win and winners never quit.” There is a story in the book “Think And Grow Rich” in which a man bought a mining field. He dug and dug for gold and found nothing. He had expensive machinery and he dug and dug with it and still nothing.

After getting FRUSTRATED and DISCOURAGED he quit and sold his field to another guy. This guy started off right where the other had left off and he just dug 3 feet deeper and hit gold. He became an instant millionaire. This is a true story, look it up in the book. The guy who sold the field was 3 feet away from hitting gold, but he threw in the towel early.

We must pay a price for success of any kind. If you are looking for success in marriage, business, your career, and school, etc...there is ALWAYS a price to be paid. The price tag is different for everyone, but none the less, a price must be paid. We wonder how some people seem to attract success,How?

The reason can be because they have paid the price. The price was either paid with another company or during some other point in their lives. If success was all cup cakes and ding dongs then it wouldn’t mean anything to us. How can we know the difference between bitter and sweet until we have tasted both of them? The same goes with life. We must know how it feels to fail, to feel like nothing, to feel like a loser. It is in those moments when it is the easiest to throw in the towel and quit.

“Remember that all who succeed in life get off to a bad start, and pass through many heart breaking struggles before they “arrive”. The turning point in the lives of those who succeed usually comes at the moment of crisis, through which they are introduced to their “other selves” Napoleon Hill

In my opinion failure is only failure if we do not get up once more than we fall down and if we do not learn from them. I have failed in many many many things in my life. What keeps me going forward? My WHY keeps me moving forward. Your WHY is perhaps something different than mine. Your reason why could be many:Wife,husband, children, parents, retirement, religious beliefs,money etc… you must find out what your reason is for moving forward. If you have no purpose (in your career, business, and relationship, etc…) then you will just be like a leaf that goes where the wind takes it.

EQUATION FOR SUCCESS

Decision + ACTION= RESULTS

It is that simple. Sometimes hard. But it is as simple as make a decision, take action and persevere until you succeed. Failure is virtually guaranteed if you do nothing.

N.B.
If there is a career/job/interview question you would like answered or have something to say please leave a comment below. We will answer through an article. www.careerpointkenya.com

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For many Kenyans having a job defines who we are. A job will determine where you live, eat and even the people you associate with. If its a well paying job, chances are that you will have a quality life-whatever that means! If you are poorly paid and overworked then you know what follows.

But have you thought of a scenario where you didn’t have a job? where you work up in the morning and crafted the direction you choose for yourself. For many of us the mere thought of being jobless makes us stressful.

However, there is a minority of Kenyans making it in the world of self employment. That’s why i would like you to visit this link and learn on how to survive without a job.

Click here and learn more on reasons you should never get a job.

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By James Kimani.

Early in my career, I had the opportunity to listen to a talk by a leading HR Manager on “managing your manager”. I don’t recall much about the talk, but one item that stuck with me was his advice, “Never argue with your boss, because even if you ‘win’, you lose.”

At the time, I was young and cocksure and tended towards confrontation in my interactions with co-workers. If I disagreed with somebody, we each threw down our best technical arguments, wrangled over the problem, and may the biggest geek win. Being “right” was the most important thing. So the HR manager advice seemed outright wrong to me at the time. Of course one should argue with their boss! If they were “wrong”, then let’s mix it up and get to the “correct” solution.

Flash forward a few years later and I was working as a Senior Systems Admin. We were trying to roll out a new architecture for supporting our developer workstations, and I was clashing with my boss over the direction we should go in. Worse still, the rest of the technical team was in favor of the architecture that I was championing.

True to form, I insisted on going for the no-holds-barred public discussion. This, of course, transformed the situation from a simple technical disagreement into my completely undercutting my boss’ authority and basically engineering a mutiny in his group.

Matters came to a head at our weekly IT all-hands meeting. Because of the problems our group was having, both my boss and his boss were in attendance. Discussion of our new architecture got pretty heated, but I had an answer for every single one of my boss’ objections to my plan. In short, on a technical level at least, I utterly crushed him. In fact, in the middle of the meeting he announced, “I don’t need this s—”, and walked out of the meeting. I had “won”, and boy was I feeling good about it.

Then I looked around the table at the rest of my co-workers, all of whom were staring at me with looks of open-mouthed horror. I don’t think they could have been more shocked if I had bludgeoned my boss to death with a laptop. And frankly I couldn’t blame them. If I was willing to engineer a scene like had just transpired in our all-hands meeting, how could they trust me as a member of their team? I might turn on them next. Suddenly I didn’t feel so great.

I went home that night and did a great deal of soul-searching. The HR manager words came back to me, and I realized that he’d been right. Admittedly, my case was an extreme situation, but if I had followed the manager’s advice from the beginning, things need never have escalated to the pitch that they finally reached.

The next morning, I went in and apologized to my boss and agreed to toe the line in the future, though it certainly felt like a case of too little too late. I also started looking for a new job, because I realized nobody there really wanted to work with me after that. I was gone a month later, and my boss lasted several more years.

My situation in this case was preventable. As I look back on it now, I realize that my boss and I could have probably worked out some face-saving compromise behind closed doors before having any sort of public discussions. Of course, sometimes you find yourself in an impossible situation: whether because of incompetence, malice, or venality on the part of your management.

In these cases you can sit there and take it (hoping that things will get better), fight the good fight, or “vote with your feet” and seek alternate employment. The problem is that fighting the good fight often ends with you seeking alternate employment anyway, so be sure to start putting out feelers for a new job before entering the ring. Sitting there and taking it should be avoided if at all possible– I’ve seen too many of my friends’ self-esteem totally crippled by psycho managers.

Bottom line is that one of the most important aspects of any job is making your boss look good whenever possible.

This doesn’t mean you can’t disagree with your boss. Just make sure that you don’t have those disagreements publicly and make it clear at all times that you’re not attempting to pre-empt your manager’s authority. “Managing up” is a delicate skill that needs to be honed with experience, but as a first step at least try to avoid direct, public disagreements with those above you in the management chain.

James Kimani is an IT Consultant based in Nairobi.  If you have a job or career related experience to share forward details to careerpointkenya at gmail dot com. Website: www.careerpointkenya.com

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Have you ever received poor service from someone you expected should be helping you as part of his or her job? The answer is almost certainly “yes.”

And, if you’re like most people, you have probably also experienced the frustration of working with someone who made your own job more difficult.

In both cases you may have wondered, “Why don’t they just fire this person?”

Firing someone may seem easy in theory, but it is often a last resort for an employer. A bad employee’s supervisor may know that the employee isn’t performing up to snuff, but that supervisor — or the company — may have what they consider to be a good reason for not firing the employee.

Whenever you encounter someone who you think deserves to be fired — either in your own workplace or elsewhere — consider if any of the following might be the reason the bad employee is still on the job:

1. The employee has a relationship with someone higher up.
This is Kenya hence this reason coming tops. A relationship doesn’t necessarily have to be romantic or family, although either is a possibility. In many cases, the relationship that keeps someone from getting fired is friendship. The bad employee may not perform well on the job, but may be a drinking buddy for your boss, or may simply be someone that senior management enjoys having around the office.

2. The boss relies on the employee.
when a supervisor depends on an employee, the supervisor is less likely to attribute poor performance to the employee’s ability or attitude, and more likely to attribute the poor performance to forces beyond the employee’s control.

3. The employee brings more value to the company than he or she costs.
Maybe the employee who jokes around and wastes other employees’ time at meetings is also a brilliant worker whose productivity has resulted in significant revenue for the company.

4. The boss thinks it could be worse.
Even if everyone knows the employee is not pulling his or her weight, management may fear that a replacement could do an even worse job. This fear is compounded if the company has previously had other people perform more poorly in the position.

5. The boss is afraid of the employee.
If there are concerns that an employee might sue the company or possibly become violent if fired, it may take longer to let that employee go. If there’s a threat, the company needs to consult with legal or security experts and put appropriate measures in place before letting a bad employee go.

6. The boss feels sorry for the employee.
In such cases, a boss is sympathetic to the employee, and not to those whom the employee’s actions may be hurting. The boss may worry that if the bad employee is fired, he or she won’t be able to find another job. If the employee needs the money to support a family, has health problems, or has recently experienced another life challenge, the boss may feel it’s best to let the employee keep the job.

7. The boss doesn’t want to go through the hiring process.
It takes time to review applications, conduct interviews, check references, and train a new person. The boss may believe it’s easier to deal with the consequences when the bad employee messes up rather than deal with hiring a replacement.

8. The employee knows something.
The employee might know something embarrassing about the boss, but it’s more likely he or she simply knows historical information that the company needs today. For example, if the employee is the only one who knows how to operate an ancient piece of equipment that the company still uses, your employer may need to keep the employee around.

9. The employee has everybody fooled.
In their book “Snakes in Suits,” Paul Babiak, Ph.D. and Robert D. Hare, Ph.D., explain that a surprising number of workplaces employ psychopaths. While psychopaths make up 1 percent of the general population, Babiak and Hare found that 3.5 percent of the executives they worked with “fit the profile of the psychopath.” Psychopathic employees are pathological liars who get away with doing little or no work. They charm senior management with their “leadership potential,” con co-workers into covering for them, and successfully blame others for their mistakes. If you’re the only one who sees what they’re up to, you’re in a tough spot. Sometimes it’s the whistle-blower who gets fired, not the snake.