I recruited a young man on the 2nd of December as a marketing officer, his name is Tendayi Matsikinyere, using my unorthodox means. He does not have any marketing qualifications
instead he has law qualifications but l was not hiring a degree but l wanted skills and attitude.
The young man is the perfect definition of a crazy employee that is willing to sacrifice everything for a Company’s vision to come to fruition. He is the equivalent of Christiano Ronaldo if it was soccer, Serena Williams if it was tennis and Lebron James if it was Basketball. It did not take me three weeks to promote him, l promoted him to Marketing Manager, and in less than a month, he was working as the Head of M&J Tech and Group Marketing Manager.
The young man’s work ethics are amazing, and he shocked me every day; he is willing to do whatever it takes for M&J to prosper. I worked with him for more than 17 hours a day, and sometimes we would work up to10 pm he would remain behind working. This other day, we had worked up to 2000hrs, and l was worried about the mode of transport he would use since it was late; he told me that he was driving.
He was not driving Ex Japanese car, no, but an ISUZU Double Cab. Tendayi puts his all into work his main driver being that he wants to leave a mark not to earn the extra dollar. Even though he comes from an Above Average background, he remains down to earth and most of his colleagues did not know until over two months later.
It became easy to push everyone in the organisation to perform, he was now my example of perfection. He would put more hours and sacrifice his time and resources for M&J. When the lockdown was announced by the Minister of Health and our VP Dr General Chiwenga, we were tempted to lower our targets. Still, Tendayi refused; he simply said, “Boss, we cannot lower targets we agreed at Mbizi Game Park at our strategic meeting; it is now only 10 times harder to achieve them. “
That was stunning coming from an employee; without wasting time, we adopted his resolution as management. I have witnessed the expansion and growth of the brand which is now making it easier to introduce ourselves to our clients because of Tendayi’s sacrifices. I have worked with many people both as an employee and as an employer, but l had never seen someone like Tendayi.
He is what Darren Hardy, the author of Entrepreneur Rollercoaster, calls an A employee. I gave him tasks at 1800hrs and expect him to say that he will finish tomorrow, but he would finish in the next 30 minutes. He is one of the few people who convinced me to write this book The Chartered vendor since l was hesitant to do so. I’m happy the book is now at the editing stage waiting to be published before 31 March 2021.
There is one thing synonymous with A players they like working with other players, and they are not intimidated with working with A players. They are also allergic to working with B and C players. Tendayi was not hesitant to fire C players in the team; the day he left, his day-to-day duties he helped me dismiss a C employee in the team.
When Tendayi’s mother was promoted to a Minister’s position, l definitely knew that l was about to lose my best man to her. When he was summoned to meet her, l told him that your tenure at M&J is about to end, your mother needs you more, and the nation also needs you.
True to my suspicion, Tendayi will be assisting his mom in Manicaland; when he told me, l gave him my blessings, but it was clear that he was not comfortable leaving. He loved M&J with all his heart; even on his WhatsApp profile photo, he still has the M&J Logo, that he put the first day he came.
He was supposed to start the next day he was summoned, but he could not; he begged his new bosses to let him finish a week at M&J. He finished and trained his successor with passion, and he spent more hours at work even when he had officially resigned.
Noticing the character of this young man, l convinced the shareholders of M&J to appoint him as the Board Member and a Non-Executive Director. Who said you need to have grey hair and experienced to be a board member?
He showed me that someone does not need to spend more time at an organization to impact. I have decided to keep my best player although he might not be able to work with me on a day-to-day basis.
I’m overconfident that the people of Manicaland will benefit from this skill and unique blessing. I will not tire until have managed to surround myself with at least five crazy people like Tendayi.
Wish you well Director!
