The Splendour of Networking

CredoWriters: Wakdok, Samuel Stephen.



Building of lives, physical structures, enterprises and services are at the core of existence. Nothing existed which was not first built and nothing was built which was not first created or perceived. There are many more things that have been built and can still be built, but one which has taken a prominent role is building of relationships. Relationship building permeates family, physical, emotional, business and international relationships respectively.



Relationship may be defined as a significant connection or similarity between two or more people or things or groups; and especially as regards the way they behave toward and feel about one another. Relationship shows our affiliations, rapport, bond, correlation and association with one another or with other members or group in our society or different circles. No man is an island; this cliché has over the years defined the basis on which relationship must exist in all spheres of lives. And this relationship is what I prefer to look at as networking.



Networking simply is the process or practice of building up or maintaining informal relationships, especially with people whose friendship could bring advantages such as business/social opportunities. Take for instance when God decided to create man he entered into a relationship with man where man will serve and worship God and God will be man’s deity giving man life and blessings. When a man marries a woman or a man dates a lady it becomes a network where both parties stand to benefit from each other. Even in school we benefit by associating with serious or intelligent students who either spur us or teach us when we are lost. When business associates form groups such as mergers or cartels or even partnerships these kinds of relationships provide networking opportunities for them to benefit from economies of scale. Networking has taken a more central role now with revolution in both knowledge and information& communication technology (ICT). Taking a cue from broadcast networks it is easier and cheaper for a media outfit with a network of stations to reach many audiences at a time and hence maximize revenue from massive advertisements due to their wide coverage. Same for computer networking where the internet or central server provides a platform for many computers or processing units to interact with each other. Bringing this into human networking, we stand to benefit and maximize our potentials by building networks around us. We will gain in terms of knowledge and information, business and job opportunities; family and social activities, religious and spiritual growth. Building network is as important as maintaining these networks. No relationship is important if we go into them and just abandon them. They become more useful when we maintain them and even upgrade them.



Have you imagined what happens to you if you do not maintain contacts and someday you have an urgent need that any of them is in position to address? Let’s say you care less to keep in touch with your mechanic and someday, your car suddenly breaks down far away from town where you have no one to call for aid? Visualize you had established a rapport with your mechanic, will he not leave anything he is doing and come to attend to your car no matter how odd the time is? Or do you think money can solve all the problems all the time? Look at critical areas of human need today like health, law, security, banking, insurance, business, etc and see if you have any kind of relationship with a professional in each or some of these fields. Why not make friends with a doctor today so that you can call him /her when ever you have an emergency and you may just need medical information. Why not find and build a contact with security agents today to enable you make that urgent call when the need arise since 911 does not work in this country. You can even make friends with a lawyer who will advise you informally and for free in case you need a legal advice or you need to go into a contract. How about knowing that banker whose area of competence is more than yours or different from yours. Even in the office, we can build our networks with the people who work with us on the same desk or different floors because we need them.



As we need them, they will also need us or our services. As we see the need in others we must also make ourselves needful and useful by becoming experts in our professional and informal lives. We must be willing and able to place ourselves to be available when they need us. Networking is a wonderful opportunity which gives room for synergy. We must give as much as we take, we must learn as much as we teach, we must also improve the relationships by updating our capacities to be and remain relevant in the networking equation.

Networking in this present day makes it possible for us to tap from the pool of talents embodied in others; it enables us to tap our own potentials in the bid to remain active and relevant. Networking teaches us about the interdependency evident in the fact that we need each other and even businesses need each other whether as competitors or as holding companies; as linkages or as markets. Networking gives each of us a social value or economic value since we have the opportunity to develop our resources. We make money from networking and also save cost from this.



Building and maintaining contacts is the key to surviving in a highly competitive world. Information and communication technology has made it easier by compressing space and time, thus we can network across distance and beyond mere physical contacts. Let’s keep building if we have already started, let us start building if we have not started, most importantly, let us not only build but let us maintain our networks. As the world keeps moving from analogue to digital, from manual to automation from physical to fibre, we can not afford to shy away from upgrading our own networks. At the height of it, is when networks build networks between and among themselves to harness the boundless opportunities which integration affords all.



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WINDOW OF FORTUNE

CredoWriters:Wakdok, Samuel Stephen.





How many times have we out of anger, frustration, fatigue, fear, hatred, laziness and even sheer mediocrity lost other opportunities because we shut ourselves in or out by failing to leave a window open? We pass opportunities by shutting ourselves out and opportunities pass us by because we shut ourselves in.



We have lost the will to try other pastures because when we discovered the present pasture we threw all to the wind, locked ourselves in this and believed that we have attain the best. We have lost the faith in our ability to dare because we didn’t leave any window open for possibilities to believe in our selves. We are living on the dexterity of those who left their windows open and pushed their frontiers to build enterprises while we have limited our selves to their whims and caprices.



Even in love sometimes we fail to love again because the last time we did we got hurt or disappointed hence we said never again; and this came with shutting of the doors and windows to everyone and anyone including those who unknowingly to us are the right people we have been born for. Even plants can not survive if they are isolated and locked away in rooms without window, because they need air, light and sun to grow. What more of we humans and how much more for the human mind, heart and will?



No matter what we face now or we have faced, we need to leave at least a window if not a door, and we need to leave a pigeon hole if not a window. No matter how good life is, it can still be better and no matter how bad life is, it can still be worse. This window we leave makes it possible for our good lives to become better and makes it possible for the bad life to have an opportunity to become good else it can get worse; because there is always a motion in life, nothing is static.



The desirability for us to take charge of our emotions and decisions makes it imperative for us to allow a vent in and out of our lives. This vent gives us the advantage over those who live in a sealed world. Living in a sealed world whether in affluence or penury has already foreclosed our ability to gain more or change our fortune for good.



The golden opportunities of life come at different times and outlooks, they major way to benefit is to leave a lee way that we can use to tap into those opportunities. Leaving a window open no matter our circumstances in life makes it possible for us to smile again, love again, gain again, achieve again, excel again , fly above our inadequacies and discover our destiny.

The Agony of a Baking Powder

CredoWriters:Wakdok,Samuel Stephen.


Once upon a time, I was non-existent; I was happy where I was because I was no where.

I had nothing to fret and worry about. I could wake and sleep at will and travel everywhere at anytime.

I was really a free being because I was not even in being.

The baker and the flour had an affair and they decided to start baking.

Good, homemade bread tasted so sweet and people rushed to buy and eat.

The increase in demand led to a surge in production.

The profits were coming and so was the market expanding.

At the rate the flour was been used to bake the bread, the baker knew it would run out of fashion and it was going to cost him more to sustain the rapid purchase of flour to keep the bakery at optimal point.

They introduced the production possibility curve concept and baptized it as Isoquant. But something was missing. For the curve not to obey diminishing returns they needed more dough with less flour.

From my wilderness of freedom they cajoled me into the baking process and called me a baking powder.

Little amount of flour combined with Sammybest gives more dough for higher loaves of bread.

The market kept booming, the people ate enough and the baker smiled home with more silver.

I bear the mixing, endure the heat and undergo the transformation.

I see how my captivity aids a small portion of flour give birth to many loaves for the accomplished baker.

I am mostly locked in a tin or tied in nylon without light or air, when I am brought out it is not to get some fresh air but to be added to the dough and sent into the heat.

Like an animal fat I get heated and evaporated, at the end of the process everyone sees the bread and the coal but no one remembers me because I have gone

But since I am just some powder and I have no mouth to eat the bread, I must now wait for miracle.

Now I fret at my existence because I was happier when I did not exist.

Their avarice is my agony.