Modupe Ogundare: No One Should Do It Better

As a key-staffer, you have probably spent the last two years at work non-stop without so much as a leave. Now the management has finally approved a one-month vacation for you and nothing else matters.

Of course while you curl your toes in the sand and let your hair fly on some vacation, you can’t really leave your work unattended and you most definitely cannot take the organization with you. Also, getting everything ready for your vacation only to have to answer emails and phone calls several times a day while away doesn’t sound like your idea of vacation. And you most definitely do not want to come back to an overflowing Inbox because folks on the other end don’t care that you haven’t had a vacation in years.

You are then left with the option to train some other person(s) to carry on your job, and this is exactly where your greatest challenge lies as you have no idea if the protégé will do a good, excellent or better job. Of course you don’t have a problem with him/her doing a good job. Come to think of it, you wouldn’t even mind an excellent job (after all you trained him/her). It only becomes a problem when the protégé does a better job.

You know that moment, when you return to work only to realize that your absence wasn’t really felt.Of course they missed having you around, but your job was done so well by your back-up that they hardly noticed you were away.

At this moment you are thinking of everything: your value, your position, and even your job. I mean you’ve always been a great employee, you’ve never stopped amassing knowledge, but everyone gets comfortable at some point and you certainly did not anticipate this one. Another thing is, you particularly get edgy in the face of competition, and it’s gotten even worse now that your boss seems to always want your protégé in the room when discussing projects he’d naturally just talk to you about.

And that brings me to the point where I ask if it is weird to  wish that nobody else can do what we do the way we do it or even better than we do it?

It reminds me of this dude who used to work for an organization, and on leaving for a better position elsewhere kept checking in to see if anyone was doing his former job better. In his opinion, the organization cannot should not find anyone to replace him and even if they did find someone, the new guy can’t be as good and professional as he was. Another really hilarious example that comes to mind is the classic case of checking out an ex’s new partner just to get the satisfaction that you are the best deal (like there’s some sort of measurement for that anyway) and that your ex can never get anyone as *fiiiiiiiiine* as you. Well if God is yet to answer your prayers on that, don’t lose faith – your ex might just get a troll for a spouse.

It also reminded me of the first time I heard that most people hold back on knowledge for the fear of becoming obsolete. This negated everything I knew as a youngster (giving makes you feel good). Folks are now raised to believe that letting others know what they know puts them in some sort of jeopardy when we should have been made to understand that the defect is not in watering others but in leaving ourselves dry. It’s the reason why leaders are afraid of delegating, the very reason a designer will refuse to share intricate details of their trade with protégés, the reason a photographer will hoard the knowledge on taking shots from advantageous angles (I came across a disgruntled follower saying this on one of our social media platforms a while back; and though I’m of the opinion that no one is obliged to give you anything for free, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to set up a training and share some insightful tips you know).

It got me thinking and I wondered if it is considered weird to hoard your expertise/knowledge in a particular field just so the other person doesn’t come out better? Is it even weirder to want to be better? If not, are there better approaches to being better without being bitter?

Share your views with me!

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