The Banking Consolidation…..
Enter Soludo with the banking
consolidation and reforms, banks were scrambling to survive. It was a case of
acquire, get acquired or die. We had to transform as well, we embarked on an
overhaul of our IT system, moving from Kapiti (a truly ancient version of it)
to finnacle, we also acquired two banks, Nigerian American Merchant bank and
Cooperative Development bank! It was a clash of cultures, software systems and
accounts.
I know everyone had their fair
share of pressure but IT ehn, e no get part two (second to none, for those of
you who don’t do pidgin). It was bad enough that we were already perceived as “those
people that cause trouble and make our work hard” by other units of the bank,
then now there was so much more to deal with. We were doing Monday to Sunday,
closing very late and in the midst of this I had to deal with the mainland to
island commute and be at work for 7, 7:30 and we wonder why life expectancy has
dropped to 45years. Tufia! (i.e God forbid)
It was obvious we needed new
direction and a strong leader on management level or close to save our drowning
IT unit. Then came Mr. Oni, a high flying all rounder from Accenture. The task
ahead of him was huge, but he did all he could to measure up. At this point
however, I was feeling like I was in a tornado, no purpose, no direction, no
hope. It was that time again, I had to get out…….. To be Contd.
Life Skills Learnt
- Be prepared! The banking
consolidation favored those who saw the future. They were in the know.
- It’s not obvious in the post, but I learnt to “document” every single thing. I
would try to tell my boss (before Mr. Oni) something verbally and he would say,
“document it” by this he meant through a mail (for mail trail) or a memo. This
was a period of immense heat and you could get fired for any slip ups.
- I was on every committee you can
imagine like the IT steering committee for one, it was like I had secretary
written on my head. Well I learnt how to write minutes from being every meeting’s
secretary and believe me, it’s a skill! Lol
2013…….06 June, 2013
At the end of each day, especially
the not so fruitful days, I sit down and review the day, did I achieve
anything, what did I do, what did I not do and then I look for things that I
need to do better or new things I need to try. I need to step up my marketing,
seriously step it up, this is a no brainer and sounds so very basic, but it is
not at all (especially when there is no money!)
I recently found out that one
young Ife student who attends my church runs a social media marketing service, Oyamagng;
he’s a twitter maestro and is not doing badly for himself. He runs social media
campaigns for small growing companies like me. If you run a small business, or
need to introduce a new product, you should try them out; encourage young
enterprising students who are not yahoo yahooing! Anyway I have engaged the young man, we’re one
week into this father’s day campaign and I’m feeling his work.
I now have a new handle called
@asktrezorlandia, its dedicated to answering questions about gifts e.g. what
can I buy for my boss, what can I buy for my daughter, what kind of flowers
should I send for a birthday and so on. I thought about setting it up a while
back but never came round to it, then when I engaged oyamagng and gave him his
brief voila, I check my twitter timeline and what do I see “introducing
#asktrezorlandia a platform for getting ideas for gifts”! Talk about running
with a brief, this boy is on fire. So I had no choice but to sharply go and
create the handle that had been in the cooler for yonks. I do hope the handle
@asktrezorlandia would be to gifts what @Gidi_traffic is to dealing with Lagos
traffic. AMEN!!! J
I also finally sent out that mail
introducing Trezorlandia as a supplier of corporate gift items to the people on
the list I compiled. I figured, I can send to the ones I have for now and I’ll
send when I have more. If not I would still be compiling this said list a year
from now. By the way, I didn’t get one
single reply, imagine that. Maybe I need to re-word the body of the mail or
edit the subject, I need ideas! Uncle Leke Alder where are you?
Entrepreneur tips
- Do something every day that you
haven’t done before. No matter how small. Nothing is irrelevant; continuously
improve on the finer details of your business.
- Just do it! You’ve been playing
with this thought in your head for some time, how do you know it’ll fail
without even trying?
- Build a team, we know you have
skills in every area, still you can’t do everything yourself. Dispel the
thought that you have no money to pay for services, consider forming mutually
beneficial alliances with people and other companies.
