Ruminations on an Inauspicious Career and Being an Old Weed

Aweh fellow Ruminants & Groupies in day 465 of Re-Modified Lock Down Level 4 and alcohol free.

Period as a semi-retired pensioner: 91 days

So firstly, Nerine is on the mend and slowly recovering from Covid. Oxygen and temperature good. Feistiness returning daily.

The topic of today’s Ruminant Pink Friday ™ is going to be some self-indulgent navel gazing occasioned by it being mid-winter and my tendency to seasonal affective disorder amongst my many other disorders which Nerine, very helpfully, reminds me of daily.  The most serious of these other disorders is, self-diagnosed, narcissistic personality disorder and there apparently is no effective medication for this. It really is all about me, you see. It is 3 months since my rather inauspicious corporate career ended. My career was inauspicious because I am, of course, rather inauspicious, and auspicious people, like Donald Trump, have auspicious careers.

This does however beg the question of whether you can have an auspicious career at an inauspicious organisation. I am of course well placed to be a good judge of the inauspiciousness of my own career, narcissistic personality disorder notwithstanding. Inauspicious organisations can deem themselves to be auspicious (iconic) by simply stating they are auspicious on the corporate screensaver. I have my own personal rather old fashioned and simplistic metric for auspicious companies: those that create long term shareholder value. Having said that I fully realise that the best people to determine if an organisation is actually auspicious are auspicious people with auspicious careers.

I have also recently had another insight that organisations need to be weeded and our honourable and auspicious minister of labour, Thulas Nxesi, reminded me whites need to be weeded out of private business. https://www.politicsweb.co.za/documents/ee-amendment-law-needed-to-speed-up-transformation. They have already been weeded out of government. This is the same Thulas Nxesi who helped cover up Nkandla and arranged the fire pool demonstration. https://www.businessinsider.co.za/jobs-ministers-thulas-nxesi-and-khumbudzo-ntshavheni-history-with-nkandla-and-vr-laser-2019-5. So huge credibility there.

Up to now I have not thought of myself as a weed but upon reflection I realise that I was a corporate alien invasive weed. Thanks for the insights Thulas. Weeds are very resilient, and every organisation has them. They are particularly concentrated at the corporate head office and in service departments with HR leading the charge. Some of the toughest and most resilient weeds are however in the strategy department. So, it is no accident that this is where I ended up. Weeds do not end up in things like operations, supply chain or customer relations where there is real work to be done. In South Africa weeds are also white.

Although I was voluntarily weeded out of the corporate environment, I have replanted myself in a weed patch in more fertile soil as a blogger and part-time consultant (and with Nerine being ill, a very reluctant cook and household manager). The ageing white consultant is one of the hardiest species of herbicide resistant weed in South Africa. Now I am an inauspicious blogger, but the slim possibility still exists that one day I could still become an auspicious blogger. I am also not aware that there is a transformation drive amongst bloggers, and I suspect we will operate under the radar. I am a resilient old weed.

Weeds are a human invention and are wild plants growing where they are not wanted and compete with cultivated plants. In nature weeds are an essential and necessary part of the ecosystem. Weeds play a key role in transforming inhospitable environments into new habitats. https://blog.primrose.co.uk/2017/04/13/why-weeds-are-good-for-the-environment-and-your-health/. The obsession with weeds says more about us than we think. There is no perfect weed free world out there.

This does bring me to the topic of young white weeds. It might be better for my sons to aspire to not be South African weeds and to plant themselves on foreign soil where weed classification is different. Not everyone is comfortable to live the life of a weed if they have the choice. Thulas and his predecessors have been weeding for a long time and his successors will most likely continue weeding. The old resilient weeds of my ilk will die out and perhaps Thulas will ultimately get his wish of a weed free South Africa.  

Thank you for all the helpful suggestions and comments. Please keep them up.

Regards

Bruce