What Is “Work”?
I was watching a video on NTV’s website the other day and they were chasing William Ruto & Sam Ongeri after Raila had supposedly fired them because (I guess) – the reporters wanted to see if Ruto & Ongeri were going to obey Raila’s “order”.
Anyway, as I was watching this video, I heard one of the reporters mention that Ruto was in his office by 6 a.m. that morning and I started thinking to myself that wow…he gets to work quite early and I’m sure he’s day isn’t over until about ten or eleven at night (it’s a good 17 – 20 hour day).
So, when I heard that, I started thinking about “work” and what it all means. Moi himself was many bad things, but nobody ever accused him of being a lazy man. In fact, I remember reading an account where he talked about a typical work day for him: He’d be up at 5 a.m. in the morning on the treadmill. Then, by 6 a.m. he was in the office and many times his days didn’t end until 1 or 2 a.m. in the morning! Again, he too was putting in long days in the office, but what was the result of all these long days? A collapsed economy after working 24 years of putting in 20 hour days.
Raila himself is known to be put in long hours at the office and I’ve heard his aides say that they’ve had concerns about his health because of these long hours that he puts in. I’ve also known a couple of MP’s in Kenya (one who was elected & was an assistant minister & one who was nominated) — and these people are not lazy. They put in enormously long hours: Campaigning, meeting constituents, attending cabinet meetings, etc, etc.
However, like I mentioned earlier, these long hours don’t seem to be producing any real tangible results on the ground, i.e. the country is still poor, their constituents for the most part are still very poor, there’s rampant corruption, etc, etc…
It’s not like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs who set out to create companies and you can then see the actual production that has come from their years of sweat or if I were to use a fairer example and compare them to other governments around the world, you can see the progression when people really “work”. E.g. If you look at a country like Singapore — It started out poor, but slowly their “work” started to pay off.
So, I suppose you can answer this question from an individual point of view in terms of what is your measurement of real work? And in this case, I’d assume that for most people working in the private sector, the benchmark would be how much money your bringing in day to day i.e. I mean, who works for nothing?
However, in terms of Kenya, what the heck do these politicians do all day? Like what exactly are these long hours of work producing?
@ke,
Working long and hard to break the law or to obey the law ?
Clearly not much.
I suppose running Kenya is the hardest job in the world, and they want to distribute the tasks against more politicians.. more ministries, more MP’s etc.
Some are trying to build the ladder, meanwhile others are chopping it down. Since we are all into 2 bob theories, mine is that, Kenya just has too many problems, that as soon as you solve one, 5 others rear their head… might as well learn to be dynamic and adapt!!!
Disproportionate asymmetry is the real issue. In other words, if you complete your portion of a task in half an hour, but have to wait half a day it took the other person to complete their portion, you can have put in a whole day and only accomplish two tasks.
I recall a conversation with a friend who had been hired by the Harvard Institute as a consultant to the Ministry of Agriculture. He told me that after several months of working in the ministry he was approached by one of several clerks he passed every day on his way to his office. The man asked him if there was anything that he could do to help him, at which my friend indicated that he was running econometric models and therefore the task would be a little above the capabilities of a clerk. The man indicated that he had a degree in economics and mathematics. Some further discussion revealed that all the “clerks” were college graduates with degrees from everything from geography to MBAs. My friend began to assign these “clerks” tasks like getting accurate statistics on various crops in Kenya and globally. Assess what it would take to have value added products produced in Kenya verses exporting our resources for production in Europe. My friend said he literally was treated like a god because he gave people tasks commensurate to their education and provided responses to issues they raised relative to their assignments in a timely manner.
I wonder how many people in Kenya willing to put in a hard and honest day’s work give up because their supervisor is unqualified (or realistically, unwilling) to utilize them effectively.
And, the hard working minister waits for completion of tasks that was he informed could not be performed in house. Hence, well meaning foreign aid that is spent on lucrative consultancies.
Quite an informative view. Stick around Gemboy
Look at these very very busy men..busy in their own ways
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KpTa...../zuma1.jpg
The problem with Kenyan Leaders is they want to micromanage everyone.
You can see Kibaki’s management style has brought improvements in all sectors. Because he lets people work.
The economy despite all the Political drama is 3 times the size of what it was in 2002 and is almost 1/4 of the economy of South Africa.
The secret is work smart not hard…
JK,
Please save us your sycophancy. If Kenya is doing so well why are living abroad ?
And don’t say you’re studying. Everybody knows you’re a sociology major. Sociology major simply means you were so sorry at socializing that you had to take classes on it(Sociology=Mshamba). You should change your name to J.J.Kamotho.
“I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.”
Oscar Wilde
I oftentimes think it’s more of the supervisor, especially in Government, being unnecessarily proud and unwilling to accept that he doesn’t know everything.
This absurd system is ingrained in our culture and many of you may see it when you visit the village. Walk up to the elders as a Kijana and you’ll find them very unwilling to listen or even acknowledge you have something substantive to say.
I in Nairobi with Europeans and Americans. These guys work flexible hours, tour the country, go on holiday and eat out almost daily. Yet, they manage to achieve more than what the average African worker does. The secret is working smart not working hard. Be very clear on what you are supposed to do, how you are supposed to do it, and by when. Otherwise, you can spend the whole day running around in circles and achieving nothing.