Development Solutions Consultancy

Attitude is an inward feeling, that’s expressed by outward behavior. Attitude can also be defined as the composite of an individual’s thoughts, feelings and actions. Attitude is therefore about, how a person is and that overflows into how he acts. If you study the lives of many successful people to determine what qualities made them successful, it will be clear to you that they all have strong attitudinal qualities. Many people have well developed skills, but their attitude hinders them from successfully talking on great opportunities.

Our attitude is therefore the primary force that will determine whether we succeed or fail. This simple but important knowledge seems to be absent in our educational systems and as a result, most people are hindered from moving forward towards higher and more significant achievements. Good attitudes among a team do not guarantee a team’s success, but bad attitudes guarantee its failure. Continue reading...

A Scheme of Service is a document used in the management of staff seniority, promotion, career progression and remuneration in public organizations in Tanzania. It stipulates the career path of an employee by outlining progression within a job position and between related job positions within an organization. Each job position is divided typically into three grades whereby an employee moves up to the next grade on the basis of completing a number of years; often three years. For example a job of Accountant may have three job positions namely Accountant (iii), (ii) and (i) with (iii) being the lowest. Each grade represents a senior position with a higher salary scale. An employee is promoted from Accountant (iii) to Accountant (ii) upon completion of three years in grade (iii) and so on. As progression between grades is fairly automatic the key criterion for promotion is age on the job. In this way the Scheme of Service has served to strengthen rewarding employees based on age on the job rather than performance.

It ought to be mentioned that the three grades in a job position are exactly the same in job content. Since promotion is, by definition, moving up to a higher level of duties and responsibilities, promotion between grades does not meet this essential promotion criterion. Continue reading...

Successful people are good time managers; in fact, they understand that time management is really life management. Time management is self-discipline in action. The purpose of managing your time well is to enhance and improve the quality of your life. The most important things in a person’s life are their health, their peace of mind and their relationships. Life is all about managing your time well so that you can do the things that are most important to you. This means that, it is very important to know what our values and priorities are.

The best way to start is by developing goals and getting clear on what we want to accomplish. It’s been found that, the top 1% of all successful people have very clear written goals. Having done that, we then prioritize our goals and develop the necessary action plans to achieve them. The next step is to prioritize the developed action plans. We utilize such aids as the Pareto Principle in ensuring our effectiveness. Continue reading...

The late author and teacher Napoleon Hill spent 20 years studying the lives of 500 very successful men and women in the early 1900’s. Most of these men and women were millionaires. He found out that success can be outlined in a simple formula that anyone would be able to understand and follow if they choose to. “What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve”, is one of Hill’s famous expressions.

Hill was absolutely right for in today’s world it is clear that people who have limiting beliefs, hardly tap into their potential which leads them to take mediocre actions and ultimately getting mediocre results. Once they see their mediocre results, their limiting beliefs become even more strengthened, they tap much less into their potential which leads them to taking further poor actions and they keep on getting poor results. This failure cycle continues unless their limiting beliefs are changed. Continue reading...

According to the Tanzania Development Vision 2025 (TDV2025), Tanzania will be characterized by five key attributes come 2025. They are: high quality of livelihood; peace, stability and unity; good governance; a well-educated and learning society; and a competitive economy capable of producing sustainable growth and shared benefits. With respect to a well-educated and learning society the vision envisages, “a nation whose people are ingrained with a developmental mindset and competitive spirit. These attributes are driven by education and knowledge and are critical in enabling the nation effectively utilize knowledge in mobilizing domestic resources for the provision of people’s basic needs …”

While education is provided in schools and colleges in the form of information, learning implies a continuing process of inquiry, answers and further inquiry that goes on in the course of our lives. Through this process knowledge which never existed before is created. Unlike information which is available knowledge that can be retrieved from somewhere, knowledge is required information that is not currently available as such has to be created or generated. Continue reading...

To move from where we are to where we want to be in our careers requires us to take different sets of actions. Change is our own personal responsibility. We only got one life to live so we have to get over ourselves and make it count. Most people get stuck and they keep doing things the same way because that’s how they’ve been told to do. When change has to happen there is always fear.

We are always afraid to try something new, we are afraid that we might make the first big mistake and be pointed out for it. The reality is that people who don’t do anything automatically loose. Now when you take action you may make some mistakes, in fact chances are that you probably will at some point but bear in mind the richness in experience you will now possess that will aid greatly in your coming future endeavors. Continue reading...

The use of data and information is still limited in Tanzanian public organizations. It is not uncommon to see organizations prepare strategic plans without the aid of data and information. Obviously, strategic plans prepared in this way are not strictly strategic and consequently they do not impact the organizations. Long term effects of poor data and information usage leads to non–responsive management resulting into poor organizational performance and even total organizational collapse. Glaring evidence of this is from the public business enterprises formed in the late nineteen sixties and early nineteen seventies but which collapsed and had to be privatized twenty or so years later because they could not respond to their changing business environments.

It may well be argued that even currently there are some public institutions which exist only because they are legal entities and not because their services are demanded by those who benefit from them. They simply survive because of supply based funding. Such organizations have, unknowingly, lost relevance to their customers a long time ago. But why is it that public organizations do not use data and information during strategic planning and the normal management process? Continue reading...

We are all creatures of habit; and habits really do make or break us. By definition a habit is an action that we repeatedly do without giving it any conscious thought. It’s something we automatically do. Our habits are also our physical manifestation of our mental behaviors. It is not our circumstances but our actions that determine our results. When we consistently and repeatedly engage ourselves into an action for a prolonged period of time, it then becomes the way we behave. Our actions consequently shape the circumstances in our lives. Therefore, it is in our best interest to consistently take action that is in line with the good that we desire otherwise we shall not be able to achieve our goals in life.

Good habits may be challenging to develop but very easy to live with as they naturally support personal advancement. Bad habits on the other hand are not only very easy to develop but also very hard to live with and very difficult to shed off. Acquiring a bad habit is like being trapped. A bad habit is really a negative behavioral pattern such as being extravagant or procrastinating. Continue reading...

Strategic planning is a process of preparing what essentially amounts to a winning strategy of an organization for a specified medium term. It is a plan which, for service organizations, specifies results of enhanced service delivery to be achieved in a given period of time. The importance of the plan is that it acts as a well thought road map of the organization for a specified period of time. As a road map the strategic plan is a dynamic and responsive framework which guides the future but it must continually be critically reviewed during development of rolling annual operational plans to take cognizance of any pertinent emerging changes. Still a strategic plan is a winning plan because it seeks to ensure that this time round the organization performs much better than before in terms of serving its customers or service beneficiaries. Consequently, good consecutive strategic plans are important in order to maintain high level of an organization’s service delivery.

Such continuously improved and sustained service delivery has dual advantages. Firstly, it keeps customers satisfied and happy of the services the organization provides. Secondly, as a result of customers being satisfied and happy with the organization’s services, the organization itself benefits in that its existence is not only justified but more importantly its sustainability is enhanced. Continue reading...

At any point in our lives, we can be certain that there are always problems to deal with and obstacles to overcome. Studies have shown that human beings are driven by two emotions; pain and pleasure. This means that we are driven by our need to avoid pain or our desire to gain pleasure.

For instance when things get difficult and tough, most people will not take the initiative to deal with them and find solutions because it makes them uncomfortable. In other words it’s much more pleasurable and comfortable for them to avoid challenges, than to take action towards solving them. It’s easy to point the finger and blame our boss, the government, our circumstances or even our work environment to justify the current position in our lives.

The bottom line is that most people are ready and able to become more successful but many are not willing to become more successful. In other words most people are reluctant to do what’s hard and necessary. Continue reading...