Dear Segun,
I have been writing to you these past years mainly to intervene in your struggles as a young man trying to find his way in a fractured society, where true mentors are just as rare as our ambitions are many. In the strain of my past letters, the dominant note was for you to focus on those important things normally overlooked by young people in their haste towards material well being, like competence, character, patience, hope, love and faith. For in the end, to be merely educated or talented without these virtues or values is like trying to drive a powerful automobile engine without tyres.
However, the learning period is over, and the time has come for you to stare destiny in the face and demand what it has for you. No organization or social frame work can articulate that for you. Moreover, in these present times, we are running out of options as both leaders and institutions fail in initiative. Gone are those fabulous days when it was enough to just come out of school with a job and career path carved out for you, and all you needed was just to coast along.
The challenges now are more complex and would tax tour creativity. It would no longer suffice to depend on your employer to provide the answers. You must now come up with value adding solutions and services yourself. And to do so, you must assess your competencies and discover that service or product which you are uniquely placed to offer, either directly to society as an entrepreneur or to your organization as an intrapreneur. This is crucial for in the coming days only those who add uncommon values would get ahead.
We are now in the era entrepreneurship, especially in an economy where the state and its people are increasingly clueless and care less. This is the time to embrace your dreams and decide what innovative path to take. That path for some may lie within a more creative role in paid employment or it could mean launching out to start your own business. If you are in paid employment, it is time for you to think like a boss, and become as relevant to the bottom line as your employer. Otherwise the current economic gale might leave you exposed as disposable chaff with little value to add.
Here are some questions you should continually ask yourself: what is unique about me and how can this add value to me or to my employer? What is my vision and what steps am I taking to create the future I desire? How indispensable am I to the growth of my organization? Remember this is the entrepreneurial era and creativity is the key for the next level.