Doing Nothing
A chat with Damola Morenikeji
Hello,
We decided to take our weekly “thoughts worth sharing”, up a notch, so we had a robust conversation with Damola Morenikeji, a parallel social entrepreneur, and the Ag. COO of Joy Inc.
Enjoy!
What was the turning point for you in your career choice:
I think the turning point was the realization of how much more the world needs, and how much more we can do. And that came in 2015. And at that time, I'd already spent like six years of experience in the social sector, leading nonprofit initiatives around global education.
And I just thought that we could be able to take the same lessons we've learned in the social sector, and apply technology innovation, apply the lessons, we can learn from the rate of progress that exists, and applied to it to solve some of these big problems in our little way.
When you read a lot of startup newsletters, what you see is how rapidly the world is changing. So we keep asking ourselves, how are things going to change and how do we keep up with it?
But rather, in 2015, what I did was, I asked myself, What are those things that are not going to change? what exactly are the most important issues of the next 30 years. And I came down with a very shortlist.
The list had about six things in it. One of its was that: One of the things we will deal with in the next 20 years would have to do with our agency as humans and our interactions with machines or as I'll prefer to say "automated and intelligent systems".
Thinking in line with all of this I was like I'm not an engineer, I do not write code. However, I realized that I'm interested in policy and making sure that intelligent systems, in the long run, benefit humanity as a whole.
To make sure that we're not building machines, or whatever, building codes, writing code, building products, that also taken our biases, without improving on the state of the human consciousness, you know. So those are the things I was thinking about. I had a few other things on my list. I noted in my list that education was very important. Don't forget before then I'd had a few years working on Education Policy.
Those were the things I thought about when I had to make a career change. And I didn't just make the change. I had to undergo, like a few steps. So one of the first things I did was to step down as Executive Director for AllforDevelopment, the organization, I founded in 2009.
And I joined the first innovation hub in Ogun State, as a research and strategy lead. So that was the learning process for me. From there, I went to contribute to the ethics and governance of AI initiative, Artificial intelligence, and CTF at Harvard for a few months, then came back to the country helped build what we now know as Joy Inc. So really, for me, career change is still in a continuum. The most important thing is, at the end of the day, after several years, the overarching goal is still that my work or my body of work, supports other people to do things that contribute to the long term future of humanity
What's the one piece of advice you will give someone with just starting out
Be curious and learn. That's the advice. Be curious and learn why things are the way it is. let curiosity lead you in questioning things. That's the way you're going to find out what works, why it works the way it works, and what doesn't.
Learning comes when you're now trying to change something. And reality fights back or a system fights back or some cultures fight back. Then, you try to learn why you're feeling that resistance. But, sometimes it's best to follow the path of least resistance.
Learning also means you are humble enough to regard reality over your ego.
What's the one piece of advice that changed your life?
Ah, (Laughs)
If you can, don't delegate your agency to someone else. And the reason I said it is that this advice is something I've had come to over and over again, sadly, from experience, where I had a feeling about something, but second-guessed, myself or second-guessed my process, and thought, oh this person seems to be an expert in this, Let me follow what they say instead of what I'm thinking. And rather than help make that decision on my own, I put it out. And either we end up doing the same thing. Or worse, we end up doing something that doesn't work, I'm going to go back to the first thing that I thought about and worked, you know. And well, I know that there is a part where, one, you need to get beautiful counsels from others, learn from the experiences of others. While that's very valid, actually, I also think that we have the responsibility of making decisions for ourselves, irrespective of what 1001 People say, yeah, so don't delegate your agency to someone else.
I also think that another piece of advice that also changed my life is, so was accept responsibility. It sounds simple but always take responsibility. I see a lot of young people and young professionals blaming someone else for their states, you know.
How do you deal with setbacks?
Okay,
I try to understand why. Why exactly did this happen? And I try to be very honest with myself. I think it's Ray Dalio, that talks about radical transparency in the workplace because we have a moral responsibility to be radically honest with ourselves, I would say we also have a moral responsibility to be radically honest with others.
Now, people confuse radical response, radical transparency with being brutal in feedback, you can be radically transparent with people while delivering feedback, with love.
I ask myself What exactly did I not do? What exactly did I do? Right? What exactly can be done better?
I just slow down, there is no need to rush. You can't get a baby by getting nine women pregnant in one month.
I'm a planner. So I try to see exactly what is wrong with the system and process that we have already put in place? What are reality and life teaching me that I’m failing to answer? So that's it. I tend to answer those questions. I'm also open to feedback from people I trust.
If the need arises, then I just stop, do nothing. I embrace that.
Because we missed what we ought to do because we have been busy, so busy, trying to do more.
So busy trying to convince ourselves that the best way to get out of a setback is to just keep doing.
Then from that moment of reflection, you can come up with what you need to do.
Now the part of focusing on doing is sometimes is the difficult part of this. And if it's not there, that whole process of dealing with setbacks is incomplete.
Sometimes you realize the action is doing nothing, and if that's the action, it has to be a conscious decision to do nothing, rather than leaving it to chance or life.
As we said, it was a robust conversation, you can read more about Damola here
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