The future is today.
Adewole Fasina
Happy Weekend Friends,
First, we would like to tell you that you rock! Thank you for sticking with us every weekend. This week, we had a chat with The People Engineer, Adewole Fasina. Wole is a human resource consultant at Kimberly Ryan Limited.
In this letter, he talks about celebrating the good in people, not letting go of our reality, and being in charge of our passion.
Enjoy.
What was the turning point for you in your life/career choice?
Just like any other person, I went to school and I was pretty good at maths, physics and science subjects. So, the day I was to fill out my jamb form, (then they didn’t have online platform, so we have to get a brochure), my dad got a brochure and brought it home. That day was close to the deadline so we had to quickly pick a course of study in school. So we sat down and looked at the courses and since I was very good in maths and physics, it had to be in Engineering. I checked Engineering courses: mechanical engineering sounded like a mechanic, I wasn’t sure I wanted anything in that line, but the other one that jumped at me was civil engineering. My dad was a civil servant, but he’s retired now, so since my father was a civil servant, that sounded like it made sense. So, I thought, ‘since I’m good at maths and physics, and also my dad’s friend was a civil engineer, let me pick this civil engineering’. I got into school, then I realized that I kept struggling with it because I lacked interest in it. I realized that I was more interested in things that had to do with people, so I found myself reading books - my friend’s books on philosophy and psychology and I wouldn’t read or study my own books; and of course, the result showed for me (laughs). My grade was very poor in school so that made me start thinking more. I was like, ‘what exactly do I want to do’.
The first time I would meet an HR professional was during my IT in my 400 level. It was at an Engineering firm and I was in the field as an engineer. I observed that the man (the HR person) would just sit down in the office and whenever he comes to meet us on the site, everyone would respect him. I was wondering how this person could do that. I didn’t make my decision then but along the line when I started asking questions and trying to figure out and understand myself, I then realized that I don’t struggle with people. It always amazes me why people struggle with people. Once I get to a place it is easy for me to make friends and blend with people. So I said, ‘okay I think I like people, I understand people. I read online about what people who are like that do, and I saw that there was something called Human Resources. Then, I remembered that man and I started reading more about it. I did a few courses until I made my decision that this was what I think I am made for. It has to be people. Rather than engineering blocks and staying with buildings, I’d rather engineer people, and that was how I got it.
How did your parents feel after you had spent 5 years in school, thinking you’ll become an engineer, and you announced that you wanted to become a Human Resource person?
I think it’s a two-part thing. First of all, I am very lucky to have parents that are very open-minded, especially my dad. If it’s what makes you happy, he won’t force you to do anything. Secondly, they didn’t really have other options because I finished school with a third class. When you finish with a third class, your options are limited in the first place. You’re not going to get the big jobs, so that also helped them to manage the expectation that their son was not going to get a job at Julius Berger. They had people, friends and all that who could help, but whenever anybody was willing to help me and they see a third class on my CV, they just go silent. That kind of managed that part, but in terms of entering the industry itself, I think my own entry wasn’t straightforward like other people’s. I didn’t have the right bits of advice from people that guided me, so when I started reading about human resources, I realized that part of what they do is training.
I was in Warri then. So, I came to Lagos for a training organized by Sterling bank for entrepreneurs, and after the training, I got the number of all our facilitators. I called one of them that was quite friendly to me, and I told him I wanted to work with him. He said his office is in Abuja so that kind of limited the interaction. I met the other person too, his office was in Lagos. I started disturbing him, and so when he asked me what I could you do, I told him I could write business plans. I was just excited to work with someone in that field. So, I started working with him, I followed him to training, carried his bags and set up his laptop for him. I started designing the PowerPoint for the training, and because of all these, I started reading too. After I left that man, I met another person again that someone connected me to; he is an HR person, and he also trains people. I started working with him, following him for training, carrying his bag, and setting up his laptop.
I remember the first day my boss told me to train, (my first boss) it was the training we had with one of the international companies and it was for three days. I was the one that designed the PowerPoint slide, so as we got there, he took the first day. On the second day, he just called me. He said, ‘Wole, I will be coming late, so take the first session’. The first session was to run between 9 am and 11:30 am, and he called me that morning. So, I went there, set up the laptop, and I was looking at the people, and they were looking at me. One of them now called me because they were mid-level managers. He said, ‘where’s your boss’ and I answered, ‘I’m the one taking the training today’, then he looked at me and was surprised. That was my first time taking a training program. That training gave me a bit of experience.
At this point, I wasn’t really being paid, so it was just money for transport and stipends here and there. So, that was my entrance into Human Resources and from there I took some other courses.
Also, whenever I was with people in the church and they mention anything about HR, I let them know what I could do. I went to meet some of our pastors in the church who I knew were consultants. I said, ‘Sir if you have anything like this, I can do it’. I volunteered and sometimes they would tell me, ‘Wole, help me do this.’ So that was how, little by little, I started gaining insight till I finally found my way to a top consulting company.
I would like you to speak on the importance or power of service even at the expense of you not getting paid sometimes.
I think it cannot be overemphasized. Service is the platform for success. Let me put it that way, the more you serve, the more value you give. The more value you give, the more you are rewarded for your value. I think it’s pretty straightforward. When you serve, it propels you for something greater. I think one important part that people always forget is, as someone said, we overestimate what we can do in one year, and we underestimate what we can do in 5 years. People start their lives and they are already looking at the next 6 months; they want to quickly get the reward in 6 months, but they underestimate what can happen if they use the first two or three years to really learn and understand what can really happen after those two, three, four years. Rather they focus on the immediate saying ‘I want to quickly do this and get my money now,’ but it really doesn’t work that way most of the time. It works more like - serve at the beginning, look at the long run and after a while, it starts coming back to you. That’s what I would like to say to anybody that is young: be calm, it’s only a matter of time before it will be seen. I think that’s one thing that we need to learn early in life because if we don’t do it early in life it will affect what we will achieve later on. Service gives you a platform, the platform might be free at that moment because they are not paying you for it but the truth is that you’re gaining the experience and nobody can take the experience away from you. Wherever you go, you would use the experience.
How do you deal with setbacks?
My first setback was when I finished school. I finished school with a third class. In Nigeria where jobs are few, you can imagine how tough that would be. Secondly, was the fact that I’m coming from a different job path. One of the challenges I faced was that people didn’t believe in me. In the early stage when I tried applying for jobs, nobody would get back to me, and that’s why I had to accept the truth that this is my reality.
We might have big dreams but should never let go of our reality.
And I realized, ‘Wole, this is your reality, it will be difficult for anyone to employ you the way you are. One, because of your third class, and secondly you don’t have any experience.’ When I met the first boss that I talked about, he would promise me money but he would not pay me, so I was disappointed a lot of times. There was a period when we had a training program to go to in Kano for one of the commercial banks. I prepared the slides, and he told me, ‘oh Wole, I will buy a ticket for you.’ I think I had sent my ID to him so he could book my ticket, only for him to call me one evening that, ‘Wole, sorry I’m already in Kano now, I am sorry I didn’t tell you, something came up. There’s something in Lagos I want you to handle.’ Of course, he was lying about that something in Lagos, he just didn’t know how to say that he had to travel alone. That went by, and that was a very big disappointment, it was a setback because I was already growing while working with him, I was training already. Secondly, the first day I met my second boss, I met him in a hotel in Lagos. As I got there, he was training NNPC staff. When he finished, I came to meet him at the lobby. He said, ‘Wole, can you tell me about yourself.’ I told him and his response was, ‘I have heard you, but sorry I cannot present you to the kind of clients we have. He said that to my face; he was like, ‘I’m so sorry, I wish I can do more but with the type of clients I have, I can’t present you to them because they are top-tier clients but thank you for coming.’
I looked at him, disappointed, I said ‘thank you’ and I left. As I was going home I was thinking about it, but something told me that this is the kind of person I need to work with, so I sent a text to him and said thank you very much sir, but I would still like to work with you, and I will still follow up with you. He didn’t believe it, and of course that was how we started working together. The first time I flew in an aeroplane, he had to pay for it because we went for trainings in Port Harcourt and Calabar. We travelled and did so many great things together. At one phase, I realized I wanted to move to a proper consulting firm, not just trainings, because Covid really gave us a challenge in the training business and I realized I had to get something better. Trying to get a real consulting job was difficult because I didn’t have hands-on experience or organizational experience. But part of what helped me was the fact that I had developed how to express myself. So, in the process of an interview when they ask questions, I know how to answer because of the kind of work I did before.
When I resumed as an HR consultant, it was a bit challenging for me because some of the people that brought me in were aware of my precedence that I am a third-class graduate because the MD told me that he had never hired a third-class graduate. So, I came in with people being sceptical about my work, doubting if I can do it. But it only took a while for them to know that I knew what I was doing and I was ready to learn to improve. Two things that helped me were my faith because I’m a Christian, and also there were times I read books on disappointment which gave me a bit of understanding of how disappointment works from God’s perspective. That kind of helped me to know that it’s part of the process and secondly because of my early failure, it helped me to learn to accept the reality of the situation and because of that I’m able to sit down with myself and think through things so that I’m not reacting to things.
What was that one piece of advice that changed your life?
I think one of the things that helped me is knowing that what is worth doing at all is worth doing well. If you want to do something, just do it well; that is one of the things that really helped me. Even when I know I’m not happy about it, the moment I commit that I will do it, I just do it well. There’s one piece of advice one of my mentors told me. He asked, ‘Wole, what’s your plan for the future’, I told him. He said, ‘okay let me tell you what I understand about the future, the future is today. What you do today determines the future. Don’t look at the future as what you want or expect, look at it as if, if today is right, tomorrow is right, but if today is wrong, tomorrow is going to be in trouble. So don’t worry yourself of the future, just think about today and do the right thing today.’
What are things you’ve done over the years that made a big difference for you?
I think the first decision I made was to serve God, that was the biggest decision. Also, it was one of the turning points for me. It gave me a sense of purpose.
The second was reading, I had two friends in school then. Both of them were always reading, and they knew so much, so I started reading and studying. It really changed a lot about me. Once you commit to reading when you start talking, the substance is different.
The third thing was that I had to work on my passions. I used to be very passionate about football and politics. I always argue and want to make my point known. One day, I read a book about being in charge of your passion so I told myself I had to work on my passion, especially football. In the 2018 world cup, I told myself I wasn’t going to watch any match; it didn’t make sense to me then because I loved football and Nigeria was playing. In a way, it helped me to realize that I can control things that I am really passionate about, even politics. I am very opinionated because I read a lot of history, and I had to control it too. I might be in a place where people are talking about politics and will not say a word now. It has translated to every part of my life where I’m able to control myself.
What good news/thing in the world is being overlooked?
I think the thing we have that we don’t talk about well enough is people. We easily see the flaws in people. I feel we don’t talk about the good part of people. For example as an HR, hardly will you see someone sit down for an appraisal and the appraisal is just to tell you that you are good. The appraisal has been set up to find out your flaws so you can improve. Until something bad happens, they don’t call a committee for you. We focus a lot on the bad part of people and don’t really see the good side of people and we wait till the bad part comes before we even communicate. I think we can do more of communicating the good part, telling people how good they are or how good they have done.
What's something that makes you feel hopeful for the future in the work you do?
The excitement for me is to see people improve and that’s one thing that really excites me. To get to a point where HR people are not just policemen who are waiting for you to mess up before they send a query, but they are really there for people to help them improve, and have real conversations with them. Where I work now, I have to oversee thousands of staff so it gave me the perspective that people are not that bad at their performance. What excites me is helping people to manage their performance as an HR person, helping them do better than what they do, and helping them identify themselves even while doing the job they are doing.
If you had the opportunity to travel back in time to see your younger self, let’s say your 15-year-old self, what would you tell him?
I would tell him that what is worth doing at all is worth doing well. Looking back at my life I would have done some things better. I failed at some things not because I was not brilliant but because I just felt ‘I don’t like this thing so I won’t do it’. I would tell my 15-year-old self that, ‘even if you don’t like something, the fact that you are committed to it, do it. Don’t think about yourself, don’t be selfish, and think of the effect of what you’re doing or of the effect what you will not do will have on other people. Once you’ve committed to it, it has an effect on someone so it’s not just about you at that moment. Secondly, calm down, and just take your time. Don’t overestimate what you can do in one year and don’t underestimate what you can do in five to seven years, so take it one pace at a time. With time results will always come.
What is the one piece of advice you would give to someone just starting (in your space)?
So what I’ll tell them is what I said earlier, don’t overestimate what you can do in a short while and don’t underestimate what you can achieve in a long time. Take your time, have your plan; take it a step at a time. Results might not show immediately but if you are consistent for real, it’s only a matter of time, results will show. So don’t underestimate what you can achieve within a span of a long period, it’s consistent growth, don’t look at your neighbour who is growing faster than you. With consistent growth, everything will fall in well at the right time.
What are you reading or listening to currently?
So, I listen to podcasts. There’s one I love listening to, ‘The Ed Mylett Show’, and I also listen to Charles Swindoll. He’s a pastor, and I love his brand of teaching, I listen to him a lot. And consistently my best author is Philip Yancey, I read a lot of his books, and I am always looking for his articles just to ensure I’m up to date. I have started watching Netflix once in a while too. I just finished watching Kung Fu Panda part 1 and 2 again.
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From AllforDevelopment.
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