SAGAMITE: Do you understand your drivers? They are the critical and traditional keys to success in life.
Sagamite is a bachelors graduate from one of the UK’s elite universities after an early life in Nigeria. He is an experienced management consultant that has worked with firms in a diverse range of industries both in public and private sector. His experience provides him with a catalogue of versatile and arcane knowledge. His current interests include logical structure of opinions/arguments, entrepreneurship and human psychology. He prides himself on his organic, objective and independent thinking, so the audience should expect a significant number of his articles to be contra-popular belief. He is one of Nigeria’s leading objective-Contrarian thinkers about life’s generally accepted conventional wisdom.
Yes, that headline is true. Evaluate yourself. Do you really understand your drivers?
No, I don’t mean your Kabirus, Wasius, Kasalis, Bom-boys, Bonifaces, Baba Go-Straight etc that chauffeur you around in your or your benefactor’s private/company cars or even in public transport. I mean the ability to reason through issues and understand the factors that create the issues.
The ability to understand this is fundamental in being highly effective in your work, rising to the top at work or being successful in entrepreneurship.
Issues and challenges are inevitable things one would encounter in life because of life’s complexities and the interdependences of our life as social animals with individual limitations. When I refer to individual limitations, I mean the differences and the personal attributes that restrict human beings from functioning optimally. For all social animals in the animal kingdom, there is usually a hierarchy; those that rise to the top are normally the ones with one attribute: brawns.
Normally in the wild, “brawns” is the major attribute that ensures the rise to the top, especially amongst apes. As social animals, we humans also face an hierarchical culture. Fortunately, we are special and sophisticated animals with an ability to be more advanced, hence we rely on two attributal options: brains or brawns.
In less sophisticated societies, the “brawns” is the key tool, but in societies with advancement, “brains” is the key tool. As the world becomes more globalised, advancement appears to be the only viable option for societies.
Getting to ensure you are one of the ones at the top of this hierarchy requires a good understanding of drivers. Drivers are a fundamental part of thinking and the basis of virtually any field of life. Be it in top education, politics, manufacturing, entertainment, sports or whatever.
Why does gravity work the way it works? Why do certain regions of a country vote in certain ways? Why are reality music competitions very popular? Why has Arsenal not won anything in 8 years? Oops!
The focus on and understanding of drivers is what led to the major developmental difference between the Western civilisation and the rest of the world (especially Africa). This was one of the main reasons why they could technologically progress and become powerful enough to colonise us and why they continue dominating us and the world. Unfortunately, Africa is not realising the importance of this ability to understand drivers and use it to resolve, manage and plan for issues. Many are just comfortable (like their ancestors) to defer all need of understanding to some transcendental being. That is seen as acceptable and foresight in parts of our society. Even our rulers have noted this and use it as an avenue of deflecting their incompetence (e.g. when planes crash or economic challenges occur, instead of a thorough investigation of drivers).
Understanding drivers is very important for problem solving, opportunity identification and even emotional bonding with others.
Anyone with an ability for using drivers to address these three things will almost always rise to the top. It is time we all start engaging deep thinking to understand drivers and using the knowledge to make positive and progressive changes.
One of the ways to understand drivers that I can recommend for personal development is to learn the Fishbone Diagram (also called the cause-effect diagram). That is a powerful tool used in the business world to understand drivers and use the knowledge to respond to the company’s challenges. Start learning how to develop the skills to be successful in life.
Whaao, this is educative and highly informative. Thanks Mr Sagamite for sharing this.
This is highly inspirational. Thanks for sharing.
This is just cool, we expect more from you.