"LIVE YOUR DREAMS AFRICA'-inspiring hope to people's dreams

 

 

Live Your Dreams is aimed at helping individuals live their lives to their full potential and inspiring hope to people's dreams

 

 

 

Kindly like the Facebook page: Live Your Dreams Africa, and invite your friends as well

 

Follow us on twitter: @LYDAfrica, tweet with the hashtag #LiveYourDreamsAfrica

Writing The Perfect Cover Letter To Land That Dream Job

It goes without saying that the job market has become an incredibly competitive and noisy place. In fact it has become harder than ever before to get your voice heard above the rest of the crowd.

In the current market, most recruiters will expect to get hundreds of applications for any post and it stands to reason that the better the role the higher the amount of interest there will be.

Top Tips for Improving Presentation Skills

Whether you are a CEO managing teams of people, an employee looking to boost your career, or a freelancer pitching to important clients, one of the biggest challenges you face is getting your message across in the clearest form possible.

When it comes to communication, and it does not matter which sector you happen to be working in, I have always felt that the way in which you deliver your message is just as important as what you are actually trying to say.

In other words, you can come up with the most insightful and innovative thoughts but if you deliver them in an ineffective manner then it is likely that no one will take it in. To put it another way - if your content scores 7/10 and your delivery which scores 9/10, this can work a lot better than 9 for content and 7 for delivery.

Japheth Omojuwa: They won’t tell you why we did the #NISProtest

We are doing this because on the 15th of March it wasn’t us but on the next recruitment exercise, it could be any one of us.

Over 17 Nigerians died. They died due to the negligence and greed of Abba Moro. Abba Moro is yet to to be prosecuted and we are here to remind Nigerians that 17 people died.
They will of course try to discredit us. They might send down thugs to start a screaming fit within our lines. They might even start a fight or two so their police and civil security men to intimidate, harass, and possibly arrest us. They will do anything they can to take attention from what matters: that greed and negligence resulted in the death of over 17 of our comrades.

PHOTO: That moment when Omojuwa, others were arrested in Abuja

Social media activist Japheth Omojuwa was yesterday arrested by men of the NSCDC during a peaceful protest to obtain justice for those who died in the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) recruitment.

Mr. Omojuwa who is also a YNaija columnist has clamoured for further investigation into the death and the sack of the minister of internal affairs, Abba Moro, who blamed the March 15 stampede and the resulting deaths on impatience on the part of the job-seekers.

Mr. Omojuwa was arrested along with five other protesters including public relations professional, Uche Briggs, Ikeolu Senbanjo, Tosin Adex, Calvin Lawan and one Mr. Ogunmola.
They have since been released after spending hours in SSS custody.

Corpers Protesting For delayed Allowee

 

 

Hundreds of National Youth Service Corps members today on Whatsapp in Nigeria made demonstrations against government  over its failure to pay their final allowance for the month of March.

 

Please pay our allowance (see pictures)

CONFAB: Day 7: Nigeria National Conference Plenary – Live Update

Good morning readers. We are here again at the National Judicial Institute, venue of the National Conference. As promised, we are here to bring you updates on what happens right inside the hallowed chamber.

WOW! NYSC BATCH B CANCELLED FOR JUNE-MINISTER

According to the Minister yesterday in an emergency meeting with NYSC coordinators, they have come to a decison of cancelling the batch B group of NYSC due to insufficient funding.

However, in order to have a proper funding for Corpers, the batches would be in Two groups which are March and November.

Details below....

The One Thing Successful People Never Do

Success comes in all shapes and colours. You can be successful in your job and career but you can equally be successful in your marriage, at sports or a hobby. Whatever success you are after there is one thing all radically successful people have in common: Their ferocious drive and hunger for success makes them never give up.

Caution: When KPIs Turn To Poison

Just imagine you put some KPIs in place and instead of measuring and improving performance, they lead to the opposite: A mindless chasing of numbers, resulting in reduced performance.
KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) should be the most important measures used by companies, business units or project teams to track their progress against strategic goals. A well-designed set of KPIs ought to provide the vital navigation instruments that give everyone an understanding of current levels of performance. However, in practice, these well-intended KPIs can turn toxic.
One reason why things go wrong with KPIs is that they sometimes turn from a measure into a target. I believe that when a KPI becomes a target it stops being a KPI. Let me give you some examples:

• An electrical wholesale group put KPIs in place to measure the relative sales performance of branches. It then created league tables and rewarded the best performing branches. The result was, stores that were hundreds of miles apart chased the same customers and even undercut the geographically closets retailers to the customer. In many instances, deliveries were made from the central warehouse to the shop hundred of miles away, only for this shop to drive the parts back near the warehouse where they undercut the prices of the local store.
• A police force introduced KPIs to measure its performance. The government then turned some crime statistics into targets and measured every police force against these targets. As a result a lot of gaming took place to improve the numbers, but not necessarily the underpinning performance. For example, one police force was told by their chief to prioritize burglaries of multiple-occupancy households because the system would count each occupant as a separate solved crime.
• Another classic example comes from a Russian nail factory. When the government centrally planned the economy it created targets of output for the factory, measured in weight. The result was that the factory produced a small number of very heavy nails. The country didn’t only need massively big nails so the target was changed to the amount of nails the factory had to produce. As a consequence, the nail factory produced a large amount of tiny nails.

For me, a KPI should help to measure how well we are delivering on our key goals and strategic priorities. The data generated from the KPI should then inform decision-making and where appropriate, lead to actions. This means, the purpose of a KPI is to inform, or provide some objective data.
It is really important to understand that no measure is perfect or complete. There is a hint in the name KPI, where the I stands for indicator – it indicates performance, but never provides a complete picture.
I often use the analogy of comparing KPIs to a torch. You are trying to light up a room but your torch will only give you one spotlight. The same is true for a KPI, it will only give you a spotlight and leave other parts of the room in the dark. If we have a number of torches we can light up more of the room and get a better picture. This again is similar to using a set of KPIs that shine the light on different aspects of performance.
If we now use this imperfect measure as a target it means people can deliver great results on the spot that is lit up, but ignore the large areas that are left in the dark. This is a bit like telling children to tidy their room and then saying that you will only check this one corner of the room, and if that is tidy then they will get a treat. We all know what will happen, the one corner will be spotless, but all the toys will be stuffed under the bed and into the cupboards. And believe me, as a father of three I know a thing or two about that.
If we use KPIs as targets then we get what we measure, and nothing else. However, if we use KPIs as indicators used and owned by everyone to identify areas of improvement, then they become powerful enablers of improvement. A subtle, but vitally important difference.
There is one added complication. In order to be meaningful, every indicator needs a target or benchmark. But this target is more of a reference point to tell us what good or bad looks like and not the overall goal to aim for.
KPIs are powerful tools if they are used as indicators to measure the delivery of the goals. However, if the KPIs become the goals, then they turn into toxic material that will inhibit performance improvement.
What do you think? Do you agree or disagree? Have you got any experiences with toxic KPIs? Please share any of your views on this.