Welcome to the Afternoon Papers

Hi,

Welcome to the afternoon papers. The afternoon papers series is an illustration of standing on the shoulders of giants. It is a concept that I learnt from one of Africa's celebrated authors Mr Kojo Baffoe, that he claims is also a concept that he got from another author; one that I will let him name in his own publications soon-to-come.

The afternoon papers seeks to be a public journal with a difference. Often times when we go onto the internet we are looking for pieces of information that help us navigate the spaces within which we find ourselves, in a way that allows us to add nuance, perspective and a richer understanding of the world that we live in, and the people around us.

I thought a little bit about the shape and form that the afternoon papers would take. As a start, the afternoon papers was going to be about life, about love, loss, being in the gutter, about passion, and all things under the sun. Then I realized that said things happen to me in pursuit or en route as I traverse multiple journeys. I should say that I am a speaker, a moderator, an author, a corporate leader, a business owner, a caretaker of an NGO, a brand persona and a whole host of personal titles as well. It follows then that the afternoon papers series will be a glimpse into my life and expertise that I'm gathering, both in my professional and academic spaces.

The afternoon papers are going to be your management version of something like Excel guru. A combination of titbits, insights and themes that I think need to be localised to Africa. I remember vividly when I did my undergraduate in information systems, there was a course on human resource management delivered by a lecturer who had actually written a book explaining human resource management principles to undergraduates. I thought it was brilliant that he could take his years of study, understanding and debate and condense them into a simple yet powerful piece of work that somebody who had never dealt with a human being in the workplace,could try and identify with ,and eventually try and practice once they got into the field of work.

I want the afternoon papers to be exactly that and there are specific themes that I want to condense into bite-sized monthly nuggets of information that I hope will enrich your life.

The first theme I want to tackle in the afternoon papers is the progression from being a business analyst to being a head of strategy. The reason why that journey is important is because I've lived it and I think a lot of us are living it even though we may not say so explicitly. There are specific tools and techniques that you garner in the journey that completely transform you from when you thought you understood business process mapping to when you understand organizational strategy formulation, strategy implementation, and finally strategic management.

The second big theme I want to tackle in the afternoon papers has to do with the management of Change. Personal change has been dealt with extensively by Kubler-Ross and other colleagues, and while we will dabble in that a little, I really want to focus on John Kotter's, or Kurt Lewin's variation of change in organizational settings. Organizational change is fascinating in that it involves human beings with have different perspectives having to change to ideally assimilate around a single outcome. I will touch on questions I have garnered being a change recipient, a change agent, and lately a change manager.

I want to tackle organizations and innovation as well in this series. I constantly ask myself the question why some companies are good at innovation and why others suck. This has been one of the big questions of my master's degree; why do some companies suck and others don't. I have begun to discover that there are different techniques that are applied that make some successful at innovation and that make others not so successful and I want to tackle that in the afternoon papers. I want us to be able to dissect what innovation can look like, what it does look like and perhaps how we avoid pitfalls in innovation.

It would really be remiss of me if I didn't also touch on the idea of the future of work. The future of work is important because we are workers of today and importantly we still see ourselves as workers of the future. I want to look at the future of work innovations and implications for us as workers traversing these different settings that the future will present. These are themes that I want to tackle in later editions in the series because I think we owe it to ourselves to begin thinking laterally about where the world is going and importantly who we are going to be in it.

Welcome, I do hope you enjoy!