The future is failing: An observation on generational incompetence
The driving force behind any enterprise, especially a startup looking to disrupt a stagnating sector is people. Human capital is the ‘special sauce’ that distinguishes the winners from the never-made-its. We’ve all heard versions of this story over and over again and while any business leader I speak with absolutely agrees, it is scary that so many of us have wilfully allowed a generation of losers to enter the workforce.
Let’s be honest with each other, the capacity required by most modern day organisations in Tanzania is far removed from the capabilities of the talent pool available. Unfortunately, like so many things, this is a product of inherent structural inequity, myopia and shortermetitis by our policymakers and a tendency towards shallow ideological edicts over deep system reform. A Wimpy kids diary isn’t the problem, a wimpy workforce is.
In my 12 years plus as a business leader, I have been responsible for hiring and managing hundreds of employees. Cumulatively I have employed over 350 individuals and have seen a worrying trend — the bulk of our university graduates have been systemically undereducated, racked up student debt to obtain a worthless degree and have very few of the skills to be competitive in the job market. All of this at very little fault of their own.
I hire a lot of interns. Not because of their relatively low cost to company (although that’s nice), but because interns are a great way to gauge the intangible qualities of a prospective employee. Ambition, Curiosity, Problem Solving Skills, Integrity and Grit. Having an intern on board for 3–6 months before either bringing them on full time or having them re-enter the workforce is also a good way to help young people unlearn a lot of the bad habits that come with a rote learning education.
For the most part I have had very positive experiences with the interns that I have brought into my businesses. Most of them ended up contributing far more value than I had expected. I’m confident many of them likewise gained critical real world experience and skills. A lot have gone on to high responsibility roles (within my business and beyond).
These interns have tended to have similar backgrounds — educated mostly in private schools within the country or region, have a diverse set of interests and still exploring what it is they want to pursue as a career, come from families that have instilled the importance of applying yourself to anything you do and only finished school up to their high school diploma (A-Levels). They would join my organisation because they were taking some time off before going to University (usually abroad), usually because finances were an issue to make the move immediately.
These experiences unfortunately biased me to assume that the future is bright for the Tanzanian talent pool. These young people were self-driven, assertive, communicated well and were willing to take risks. Often times they were self-taught in the technical skills of their job through YouTube or online courses and sometimes gave the formally, technically trained on my team a run for their money! These young people are not the norm however. They are the privileged few that won the genetic lottery to be born to parents with the means to enrol them in private schools.
In early 2023, I had a conversation with an ex-colleague who left my organisation to join the University of Dar-es-salaam as an Associate Professor and Phd candidate. I mentioned to him that it would be great to tap into the talent pool that exists within UDSM and provide internship opportunities that would hopefully add value to the students and inalipa alike. I entered my name on some form and registered my company as a work placement entity.
Fast forward to Sunday July 23rd at 1342hrs I get an email from the Coordinator of the Career Counselling and Alumni Centre of UDSM. The email simply read
“Kindly receive attached letter for your information”.
The email had a PDF attachment with a table which included 10 names of students and their majors. This PDF also casually stated these 10 students would be showing up to my office the following morning for a two month work placement. No prior notice, no previous communication, simply a list.
That evening I started to receive calls, WhatsApps, SMS’s in various levels of courtesy and formality asking where my office location was. I responded to those that I could, however, as the calls started to pour in from 11pm onwards I just ignored them.
That Monday, of the 10 names on the list, 7 showed up. I had the capacity to accommodate 3 at most. So I had my team start to have mini interviews with the students while I called this Coordinator of Career Counselling and Alumni Centre to tell him that of the 10 I could only accept 3.
And so 3 students were selected and joined us for the 2 months. Each student was allocated to a specific internal team and project. Like with all the interns we’ve had in the past they were meant to embed themselves into our organisation and hit the ground running. One of the students, let’s call her Violet, was part of a project team that I was directly managing.
This team that Violet was a part of was a B2B focused sales and partnerships team that spanned many different parts of our business. I asked one of my colleagues to take her through an on-boarding of our business so she would have sufficient context on what it is we do and why we do it. I then asked him to take Violet through some of our standard sales material and setup a mock pitch that she would do for me and some of the other executives.
Violet began her mock pitch on a Thursday afternoon. She was told that we would be role playing. She should treat us as though we are prospects and her job was to convince us to be customers or at the very least a warm lead. Violet introduced herself as coming from a company that was not mine. She presented what this company that was not mine does and the services they provide. These services were not provided by inalipa. She then read two to three slides verbatim from our sales material. She ended abruptly waiting for feedback. We asked some basic leading questions, hoping they would guide her in the right direction. They did not. She looked at us blankly for a few moments. The colleague that was given the task to on-board her broke the silence by jumping to his feet, clapping excitedly and saying “Excellent job Violet!”. I gave him a death stare.
I was distressed. Annoyed with the unwarranted applause and the false praise. Shocked that someone who was meant to be one of top performing students in the UDSM Business School gave a pitch worse than my 7-year old niece could deliver. Scared that Violet was so under prepared for what the world would throw at her. I took a deep breath, turned to Violet and said:
“That applause is totally unjustified. I am going to be honest with you because you are an adult and deserve to be told the truth. Your presentation was horrible. Not only was it far below the standards I expect, it was far below the standards any employer would expect. It is clear that we will get very little value from you over your work placement, however, I don’t want you to leave here without gaining value yourself. Over the next 7 or so weeks that you are here, I would like you to proactively shadow me. You will sit next to my desk, I will involve you in everything I’m doing. I will try and instruct you and provide you direction on key skills you need to build. Effectively, you will be co-CEO with me and I hope during this time you will gain something. I will not seek you out though. You will be required to be proactive and engage me. The ball is in your court”.
For the next 7 weeks I saw Violet twice within the office. She avoided eye contact and never once spoke to me again. As for the other two students that came for their work placement, they attended for 3 or 4 days and then disappeared until the final day of their scheduled placement to get the required paperwork signed.
While I know it is dangerous to make generalisations from this anecdotal experience, however, since then I have interviewed and engaged with close to 20 other candidates. I’ve hired 3. All three of that were hired attended private school. 2 have a university degree. All of them self-taught. The rest were mere analogues of Violet.
We have a problem. We have a growing population pursuing upward social mobility and financial independence. They believe the path to that goal is to make it to University and get a degree. They are being failed by the system and victims to their families lack of means. Meanwhile, we have public debates about Football, DP World, CCM Executive Committee Members, Beef between Diamond/Jux/Kiba and all sorts of issues that have very little substantive impact on the employability and future prospects of the Violets of Tanzania.
The future is failing. Can it be fixed?
