Where does competence come from?
How some people are so good at what they do 💪
In my first days at MTN Nigeria (a telecoms company), March-April 2023, I felt stupid.
In weekly meetings, managers looked at a data dashboards with sales figures for the past month/week. In seconds, they could tell you what went wrong — how one economic event affected revenue on 28th April, other possible reasons why sales dropped, and which initiatives we could launch to cover up the gap in revenue for next month.
All I saw was numbers rising and falling, nothing more. Of course I felt stupid.
“Mary, why are you terrorizing me?”
Mr Friday was seated at his desk, looking at me with a funny smile. The kind that’s says — this girl has come again.
This was either June/July 2023. I was in the MTN Brand and Comms team for my last job rotation. It was the only team where I didn’t do anything data or numbers related. I worked in the MasterBrand sub-team, responsible for creating, supervising and getting every ‘high level’ marketing communication on billboards, television, fliers, buildings, social media, etc.
My job was simple. Let’s say MTN Foundation (charity arm of the company) wants to create a billboard for awareness of an upcoming event. They would send a brief about the ad and its objective. My team vets it then sends out to one of our media agencies to work on it.
The agency designs the visuals, usually a few different alternatives, and sends to us for feedback.
For certain projects, it was MY job to take that draft visual that the agency created and show my teammate.
- When teammate approves, I show a senior brand analyst
- When he approves, I’d get final feedback from my Senior Manager (oga pata pata of the MasterBrand team) before showing it to MTN Foundation.
And my Senior Manager(SM) was Mr Friday.
This day, I was asking him for feedback on a different project, but same approval hierarchy. I’d asked him for feedback (on two other projects) earlier that day, and here I was again. It wasn’t even noon yet. Ok maybe I deserved being called a terrorist 😅
Then he stared at the project on his large screen for what felt like eternity. Eventually, he said:
“Who is supposed to see this visual? and what do we want them to do?”
It was a digital flier for MTN Vehicle Tracking, a service that helps fleet owners locate their different vehicles. The request from the team was to create a digital banner (static image post for social media) and physical flier to advertise the service.
The visual I got back from the agency showed a large truck on a highway, surrounded by grass and hills, with text on the top right — a call to action, and a few major benefits of MTN Vehicle Tracking. Before showing my SM the flier, the only corrections I noted were that the text was too small, and the color used made it (the text) less readable.
“We’re trying to convince fleet owners why they should buy the vehicle tracking product”. I swallowed and my throat felt dry.
He smiled again. “Yes I can see that, but this image doesn’t look Nigerian. This doesn’t look like the typical truck in Lagos or Kano, and this road doesn’t look like a Nigerian road. If you want people to use the service, you need to paint a picture of need that the buyer can relate to.”
Again, that feeling of stupidity came fresh in my mind. I kept asking: “How do they look at a problem and in seconds, know the right answer, or variations of answers that could work. Where does the knowledge come from?”
I eventually brought this rant to Mr Friday one day after office hours. I mean, what are terrorists for? 🤷♀️
After I asked the question in so many ways, he looked at me and said something along the lines of:
“Making better decisions, knowing what improvements to focus on, comes from experience. Managers have spent years making such decisions and seeing the outcome. You can’t replicate it in just one year.”
“Oh”. That makes sense. It was annoying, but it made sense.
I was beating myself up for nothing. It’s not that I wasn’t smart enough. I just hadn’t spent enough time making decisions, learning from them, and improving. That will always take time.
Now I’m asking: what have you felt stupid about recently?
Maybe something you think you should be an expert in, but you’re not quite there. I hope this changes your perspective. Make the best decisions with as much knowledge and skills as you have today.
Tomorrow’s decisions will be better 🤗🤗🤗
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