Edition 7 - Picking a leader for Nigeria

We recently picked a number of countries to focus on this year. Among them is Nigeria, which has been an awesome country for SkilledUp Life.

When picking a leader, we have two choices:

• Pick someone who we have not engaged with before based on their credentials.
• Offer the leadership role to a high performing past team mate on merit.

New blood

The option 1 presents at least two challenges:

• There is a significant learning curve to understand what SkilledUp Life is and it's unique culture based on "daily reporting" and transparency.
• Building trust takes time on both sides and we could find the person we selected may not be the best fitting after few weeks, at which point, we would be stuck with the individual until the 3 months Volunteer term expires.

On the positive side, this will inject new blood into the team that comes with new ideas and new ways of doing things.

Instead of taking the above risk, I was keen on finding a leader from the past. But to select the best, I had to overhaul our team directory which was in a complete disarray.

Data nightmare

I started by cleaning it which took me almost the whole day yesterday. But the outcome was a simplified spreadsheet with data that is easy to process to make decisions.

Cleaning the spreadsheet also produced an answer I have been looking for for months.

Success rate

What was success rate? How many people who were issued with a Volunteer Agreement completed the Volunteer Term in full?

The data revealed a sad truth. It was 40%, i.e. 60% of all those who wanted to be part of our team resulted in early abandonment. These ranges from resignations, terminations and ghosting.

I'm determined to reverse this and achieve a 80% success rate. To this extent, I will be relying on our HR team led by Cecilia K.

Picking the best

The data also revealed the number of skilled volunteers from Nigeria has been very high, i.e. 24% of all who wanted to be part of our team since the inception has been Nigerians.

26% of the current team members are Nigerians. Whilst we knew the numbers are high, for the first time, the data is confirming what we felt.

Those who shone

I have short listed 6 candidates. Among them are:

• Past Head of HR
• Past Head of Support
• Current Sub Team Leader of HR who is about to leave after over delivering her Volunteer term

Whilst it does not matter whether you are a woman or a man, all six who are shortlisted happen to be women.

I have reached out to them and will conduct short interviews (more of chats) over the coming days before announcing who will lead Nigeria for us.

Watch the space!