Many of us were sadly cultured to think that competition is a negative vice to have! Part of it is due to our bringing up and the conditions under which we found ourselves growing up under. If you grew up in a family of eight you know that you for instance needed to stay competitive and be on top of your game, otherwise when Christmas season approached you might never receive any gifts from your parents because perhaps throughout the year you did not give them a good enough reason as to why they needed to invest their already scarce resources. Growing up, my late mother who was most definitely one of my all-time mentor and role model constantly never failed a day to remind me, “anything anyone else can do, you can it better than them.” Mind you this included washing dishes after every meal…and all the house chores you can think of –which many of us are not a big fan of! Of course after hearing this more than enough times, I was fully convinced that I could most definitely do better and improve on the way things were generally done by others. I think this explains part of my personality of always looking to improve anything I come across be it life, work, health, family lifestyles and livelihoods. Like this was not good enough, when I got to school my primary teachers right in our then mandatory morning parades also reminded us “always leave a place better than you found it” (It makes me wonder if the guys who went to the “group of schools” had such mandatory morning drills and parades like we did…. wink wink –not to mention that some of us did not go to kindergarten…such luxuries did not exist in our family of 8 children…. i came to learn later on in life that children actually needed to go to such places but unfortunately I was already in University). The more I listened to my parents and my teachers who did a pretty good job as it, i wondered if mother nature had conspired towards this “do it better” agenda. As much as my parents were not so privileged to acquire much education due to their humble background (poverty) I will be the first one to admit that they were my first and best teachers and still remain the best teachers to date. Though my mother passed on in 2003, my father still remains my number one investment advisor to do date,
In my parent’s eyes, the surest way they expected for me to prove that I got their teaching was by me getting straight As in my primary school. B and C grades were not something we were to sit down and negotiate with my parents because such grades were not good enough. Being a forth born in this family of very competitive children-and especially my very bright most intelligent sister Isabel –being my immediate sister that I followed in line who was exactly 2 years older than me -I had no choice but to style up and do whatever it took for me to get those A grades. If it meant studying all night with the “paraffin lantern light” as you know by now we did not have electricity nor solar lighting privileges in our village. This village girl came to see and enjoy Kenya Power and Lighting Company (KPLC) products when I finished high school during the gap year. Anyhow I did not want to let down my parents or myself, and so I worked extra hard in school to achieve these goals and I always came out amongst the top students in my class. This included being the best- behaved most disciplined student in class. But sadly as I worked extremely hard to bring best grades home I found that competition was real and doing my very best became my daily goal!
Those days, in my mind I never thought in terms of “beating” the other students, all I really wanted was to make my sweet amazing parents proud by making bettering my own academic achievements, and make them more motivated to work extra hard to look for my school fees every term. Soon therefore it became mission critical necessary for me to excel in everything I touched or did. Yes I simply wanted to wash dishes the best way I knew how and in our village milking the cows, washing your younger siblings and baby-sitting them all day, washing clothes and school uniform, cleaning the house, plucking tea and coffee during the school holidays were ordinary chore for us to engage in competitively without complaining! I know in other countries where I have been privileged to live and visit these particular chores would be considered “illegal child labor” but hey….in our household helping your parents in the farm was a tall order and all were schooled on how to do it from a very tender age… and we had fun doing it ….otherwise how and where did we expect school fees to come from at the end of the school holidays and mind you small scale farming was my parents only source of income for all eight of us? And sure enough I would pluck the most tea, coffee and though I was the youngest I was the fastest in doing it. You can only imagine how i became my parents’ darling if not their favorite child with my can-do attitude.
Later on as I grew older and progressed through my banking career abroad, this same competitive spirit that my parents had instilled in me kept me going even through difficult days juggling between part time “self -sponsored” school especially in the rough Boston winters when I wanted to quit school so badly. With every challenge my mind always focused more upon competing with myself. I came to realize that competition can be a very strong motivator, but more importantly for me I have learnt that a competitive spirit becomes the most powerful weapon when you deliberately compete with yourself and learn from your past failures. I remember when State Street Bank gave me an entry level job opportunity where I started out as a data entry clerk, I ended up being the best in it. I would never leave the office until all the work was done unlike my colleagues who would simply clock in at 8 am and clock out at exactly 5pm! Every week I made sure that we processed more data entries than any other bank unit. I simply wanted to do and achieve more and true to my mother’s words I desired to “leave the unit better than I had found it”. I was also more willing to make more sacrifices and work harder and pay the price for that success. I guess having plucked coffee and tea during school holidays made my work ethics very different from what the rest of bank’s data entry clerks did…which most definitely caught my bosses attention and this is how I moved up the corporate America banking ladder purely by merit. I was successful in my banking career not because I was any extra ordinary nor more talented than the next data entry clerk initially but just because I was willing to go the extra mile and make more sacrifices to make things better than I found them. Whenever the bank was rolling out new projects or any new initiatives, I was always the first “dare devil” staff to volunteer my services and expertise which was an awesome experience for me having come from the so called “jungle”. This “can-do” spirit really exposed me to very rare but golden opportunities where I was able learn very sophisticated technology and banking instruments putting me at a superior advantage as opposed to the peers some who had worked with State Street Bank for years. I remember once the Head of Human resources after a heated debate with the Board the bank noticed that their crème-della crème staff were being porched by competitor organizations in the market such as Merill Lynch and Brown Brothers and the bank wanted to kick start a project towards Career Development and Talent Retention for the entire bank. And guess who was the first one to volunteer when that HR recruitment email went out? You know it! Yours truly me. So I applied and they took me in. Mind you I was a few years old in my data entry job in wealth management services department but here I was luckily paired in a team which comprised of Presidents of huge divisions in the bank with hundreds of employees and Chief Officers whom I all over sudden starting sharing same board rooms and discussing with and building innovative ideas around how we can stop the staff poaching menace and how to motivate our staff to stay with the bank through different career development work streams. All over sudden people in other departments and other bank divisions, started noticing me through the work I was championing in the bank and few times i was recommended for positions that were available in other departments without me knowing it. The bank even went an extra mile to allocate me a peer senior mentor to accelerate my banking career growth path. Something was different in how I simply did my work. All over sudden i started getting recognitions for my commendable work ethics. rubbing shoulders with Senior Bank management and the rest was history. I look back today and am forever grateful my “can-do” spirit and above all has been gracious to me.
Of course I did not always win nor always reach audacious my goals. For instance, one of my goals was to fly my sweet mother and father to Boston Massachusetts from my beautiful Kenya just for them to witness my 2nd degrees’ graduation ceremony …this dream failed miserably because unfortunately my mother suddenly passed on in Sept 2003 to a so called “mild stroke”. This to date still remains like a surreal movie especially when I received that dreaded call from my mother’s brother – uncle Ndungu…but nevertheless my mother had fortunately taught me how to lose. She did so by encouraging to always look to the future with courage and hope by doing better the next time I have an opportunity to do so and to try harder the next day. I think it’s very important for us successful people to keep reminding our youths who are so carried away by instant gratification who I often refer to as the “microwave generation” to learn that you can’t win them all. It is simply impossible to always win or be the best the 100% best all the time because we are human beings. As a young parent myself nowadays I see parents pushing their children to win (as often as they win in some major league championships) even when they have not practiced enough. My only prayer is that someone is also teaching these youngsters how to accept defeat in equal measure. Because anyone who competes has to face defeat at some point in life and learn how to rub your dust off your shoulders, pick up your pieces and move on in life. It’s so true sometimes even as competitive we can be we must allow ourselves to learn from our mistakes and sometimes learn from past failures fast. Whichever the case you must the can-do attitude helps to believe that you shall overcome if you stay focused.
Successful competitive people are never afraid to try, because they are never afraid to fail. I have often told my mentees, “if we ever decided to compare knees, you will most definitely find that I have many scars more than anyone else in the room anyday. Why? This is obviously because in this journey called life I have personally fallen down many times and gotten up as many times too.” And yes the Margaret Kimani you see now was not always set on fire throughout her life. I have been molded to the person I have become today as a result of many disappointments, many heart aches and plenty of set-backs. And this is why I believe with all my heart that you can be anything you want to become in this world but yes you must be willing to pay a price. Throughout my childhood and professional career journey I knew that in-order to get something, i had to give up something else…. i personally don’t believe in hand outs and never will! When I was student for instance I knew so well that since I was not as sharp as my sister Isabel I had to give up extra three hours of sleep or more so I could do extra study. Unlike my sister who was born a genius and did not need to study much…for her once the teacher taught in class she grasped 96% of the concept. As a young career mom parenting for me means giving up lots of my previous very social life and fun to just spend the extra quality time to my young family. There will be never enough hours in a day to work and take care of the family time but I have never resented these sacrifices. I always want to support my family well, live in a nicer house, go to the best schools, travel to the best vacation destinations and move into a nicer neighborhood and knew each of these goals had a price to pay. So the can do competitive spirit is what has always pushed me to do more to achieve more making me feel that the price was worth it.
Competing and striving to excel can be a lot of fun! Encouragement from my mother, father and my teachers was extremely important to me because when I look back at my childhood struggles, I suspect that having been a forth born in a family of eight had the biggest influence on my competitive spirit and following my sister Isabel who was so competitive that I had no choice but the very best. When we were children I recall we never had school transport back and from school. Some lucky days when my busy father would graciously drop us off to school in the morning in the legendary blue canter KTS 488 which he still possesses until date and this car still looks as good as new. But now this meant that every day as we walked to school I had no choice but to catch up with my sister’s hasty strides walking to school and had no choice to fall behind on the road or fail to walk to school and be on time for the mandatory school parade. Now I realize that having Isabel ahead of me as an older sister, my role model and my friend exposed me to an exciting new competitive world. Subconsciously, I must have recognized that I could earn a place in such a world if I were only willing to work for it. The beauty is that Isabel and I willingly shared everything and neither of us felt envy for the other. Because of the age difference with my sister, I felt that I needed to strive to keep up with her speed. I had to learn many things to keep up and somehow I guess I was afraid that if I didn’t do well or know as much, Isabel wouldn’t be my friend or even to be around me, Thanks heaven that thought never crossed her mind and she accommodated me just the way I was.
By the time I reached university, my competitive spirit was so deep rooted. I continued to flourish in my grades. Unlike my peers, I decided to finish my campus studies in three years rather than the normal four years which was a big bet as I knew affording the fees for my parents was a really serious struggle. But somehow by God’s grace my can-do spirit successfully managed to convince my father that enrolling in the accelerated summer classes at Kenyatta University would end up saving us more money than the 4 years which was such a blessing in disguise for me as I got to graduate a year earlier than my peers. This said and done I am fully convinced that the best productive competitive spirit is when you make a deliberate choice of simply competing with yourself which simply means you work day and night towards becoming the better version of your yesterday’s version and beat your own past records to become a better human being. I have come to cherish this golden principle that a person competes best when he or she competes against herself or himself which really means that everyone really has a chance to victory otherwise it becomes impossible to motivate or teach people who are at each other’s throats. This is what motivated me to start Nduta Angels Foundation years back which believes that “No child should be left behind” and the beauty is that every day I see many young children’s hopes and dreams come to realities. Some of the young people whom we met and mentored at a very young age have made drastic decisions to become competitive by creating tangible solutions that are solving real problems and have now even graduated and made promising careers for themselves and are now married with families and thriving in life. In my own personal life and career path, my competitive spirit has seen me seconded for positions both here and abroad innocently even now while I am busy minding my business doing what I do best daily. The beautiful part is that as an agent of change, i now see dreams come true for other women in business and for youths in our society which gives me so much joy and satisfaction. The competitive can-do spirit is so rewarding especially when you purpose to create needed valuable solutions instead of competing with others “cut throat”.
Fearless Leadership 