When employers want staff to join their company, what really do they want? A general answer will be that they seek persons who can fit into job roles in the company. A job is essentially a set of responsibilities that contributes to the production of goods and/or services in the organization.


The writer desired a career in the military as a teenager, specifically the Nigerian Air force. I fantasized very much about the prestige of the work. When I became 20 I realized it wasn’t a career for me. In the armed forces, compliance with orders of superiors is a cardinal principle. The chain of command is almost always sacrosanct. If your commander gives you an order to get something done, there is little room for disagreement with or even discussion about the order. I would like an environment where we can discuss the order and probably give my views. I prefer an environment where the better ideas ‘win’. That is not the setting of the military. In fact asking questions too much about a plan or strategy by a superior officer may be considered insubordination, and there are consequences for that.


Is that not what is obtainable in most companies too? Instructions are given out and employees are harassed to carry them out. That may be true but the important difference is that a person can resign from a firm at any time while resignation from the military may be disallowed!
(This is not to disparage career in the armed forces. The military is certainly one of the most noble professions; reliable and disciplined. But someone like me with a deep quest to engage my environment may not thrive there).


When many organizations (both in the government and private sector) put out job vacancies, who they really want are DUMMIES.


Dummies do want they are asked to do without serious evaluation of what they are instructed to do. The MD of Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA), Hadiza Bala Usman, spoke recently at a Youth Leadership Training of the ‘travails’ she had in her career. That woman is as far from being a dummy as you can get. She worked at the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE). At a time when the agency had a new director general she found that her work lacked meaning and motivation so she decided to get leave of absence. She wasn’t granted the leave of absence so she resigned. When she was working at Etisalat Nigeria, her ‘job’ at the regulation department of the company required making presentations to the telecoms regulator (NCC) that her firm had implemented some regulation when in reality they had not! (I am convinced this was not limited to Etisalat and that all the Telecoms giant were (are?) involved in this). She also resigned after 6 months when she could no longer stomach the duplicity of the industry. Now as the MD of Nigeria Ports Authority (the first woman appointed to the post) I hope also that she will be able to resign if she is being pressured to do things that are not consistent with her principles.


Dummies don’t use their initiative on the job. They act like wheel barrows. They go as far as they are pushed. Why then do organizations prefer dummies to people who are self-directed? The reason is that good dummies won’t give them unexpected ‘problems’. They are fairly predictable. They are standardized individuals. Managers in such organizations therefore have a perception of control. Employing dummies is how they ensure order (but there is a much better way to ensure order).


On the other hand, initiative-taking individuals are ‘dangerous’ people. However, they are dangerous only to managers and leaders with small minds. For organizations led by people who have good understanding of unlocking people potentials, it is so much bliss to have initiative-taking individuals as employees. They have a keen sense of responsibility. They don’t need to be controlled because in any case they are difficult to control. They are like the educated people that Henry Brougham described:

Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave.


Initiative-taking individuals are ‘controlled’ by strategy and statements of purpose of the organization and not by whimsical directives of superiors. While dummies are just content with just doing what can get them their salary at the end of the month, self-directed persons draw from within themselves to highlight protracted problems and sometimes offer solutions to them.


In Stephen Covey’s view, “Employers and business leaders need people who can think for themselves – who can take initiative and be the solution to problems.” Organizations who prefer dummies to self-directing individuals are really shortchanging themselves. There is a limit to which such organization can grow because almost all creative outputs by the organization emanate from management/owner. Sometimes the CEO can indeed be a genius but even then if he surrounds himself with dummies, the organization’s performance will be much lower than it is capable of. But in the case of the one populated by self-directing staff, creativity and initiative can come from all across the firm.


Sometimes I wonder at the helplessness/uselessness of the Federal Road Safety Commission officials on the interstate roads. Some motorists speed on when they are flagged down by the FRSC men. The poor officials have to jump out of the way in order not to be knocked down. (Bribe-taking by the officials is a matter for another day). But many of them are not concerned enough that the essence of their presence on the roads is being violated regularly. If I was in their shoes, there would be two clear options before me. First is to escalate the issue of recalcitrant motorists to the highest level in the commission and demand that an effective method of penalty be devised to sanction these motorist. And if the commission does not show enough commitment to the issue, the second option is to resign. When initiative-taking individuals stay too long in environments that are ‘dummified’, they start to lose their ingenuity.


Even though most firms seek dummies as employees, there are certainly those who look out for persons who use the initiative.


Olusola Aladejebi does work in building effective people systems in organizations. He also writes on Leadership and Organization architecture.

http://mouthpiece.com.ng/job-vacancy-dummies-only-apply/