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Building Professional Competence & Understanding Your 'Why' with Dami Onalaja-Aliu
321 Plays1 year ago
Season 3 Episode 2
Bukola chats with Dami, a Vice-President at JPMorgan Chase & Co. (one of the most formidable investment banks in the globe". They talk about the significance of building competence to set yourself up for success. When all is said and done, how vast are you in your field? If we lift the veil what will we see behind it - value or noise? They also talk about the importance of understanding your "why". This is especially important for us as young people so that we do not get saddled by the overwhelming noise going on in the world. This is an episode that you surely will fall in love with.
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Transcript
Immigrant Job Search Struggles
00:00:06
Speaker
I had to lend to drown out the noise and I applied to about 200 plus rows and didn't get a single one. The one thing our education system in Nigeria prepares us for is the ability to lend quickly.
Introduction and Guest Overview
00:00:31
Speaker
Hi everyone, I hope you're all doing very well today. Happy Monday or happy whatever day you're listening to this episode because I'm aware that not everyone listens to the episode on the day it is published. This episode is one that I am very excited by. I am beyond thrilled and elated that I am finally releasing this because I'd recorded this episode in January
00:00:56
Speaker
And I'm more so excited because I sat down with an absolute inspiration, Dami Ono Laja Aliu.
Dami's Journey to VP at JP Morgan
00:01:05
Speaker
Dami is someone that I came across this profile on LinkedIn and the first thing that struck me was how does someone have this many degrees and certification? I think you should go to LinkedIn to see what I am saying.
00:01:19
Speaker
And so I did want to have a conversation with him, not just because of the podcast, but selfishly for myself, because he is currently in a career that I love and I am interested and fascinated by. Dami is a vice president at JP Morgan in their organizational design and strategy team.
00:01:42
Speaker
And just sitting down to have this conversation with me made me realize so much more the depths behind the certifications, the degrees, the accolades, a song that speaks with wisdom. And I'm very sure there's a lot that you take away from this conversation.
00:02:00
Speaker
And I do want to use this opportunity to just shout out to Dami. It's been a sounding board to me this period and I do not take it for granted in any way. So guys, this is an episode that you really do want to plug your ears, your earpods into your ear to
Podcast Goals and Inspiration
00:02:18
Speaker
listen.
00:02:18
Speaker
this is an episode that you want to take a note and a pen just so you can jot down and this is an episode that you definitely always want to refer back to so guys let's get into it all right the growth podcast is a space where we share the real stories behind the stories we take you behind the scenes of the success stories we read and see online we lift the wheel
00:02:45
Speaker
and ask the questions that no one else is asking. To expand your mind and break the limits that society, and quite frankly yourself, have placed on it. And all these is to get you to realise that. Your version of success is attainable for you, which is attainable for you too.
00:03:03
Speaker
Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of The Group Podcast. In today's episode, I have with me Dami. And I don't know, to be honest, like the reason I had invited him on this podcast is because the very first time I came across this post on LinkedIn,
00:03:19
Speaker
I was inspired by all of the certifications and the designations that he had acquired. He had like MVP, SS, MCIPD, speaking like the project management, PMI certification, MVA, MS, like everything. I was like, oh my God, who is this best thing? And so I was notched for that to look at his actual profile and
00:03:44
Speaker
you know, it was interesting to see that he actually went to my alma mater, University of Lagos, and has built his career up to this
Career Motivations and Immigrant Challenges
00:03:53
Speaker
point. So I feel like he is really an amazing person to have on this show today. So thank you so much, Dami, for honoring my invitation. It's really good to have you here. So how have you been? How was your day? Today's a Monday. So what are some of the things that you're looking forward to accomplishing this week? Yeah, over to you.
00:04:13
Speaker
Yeah, well, first of all, thanks a lot. To be perfectly honest, I think you might have given me more credit than I probably deserve, to be honest. Sometimes, when we do qualifications, it's for very different reasons and you don't really realise how many you have until you stop and take account, I guess.
00:04:31
Speaker
But we can talk more about the why behind the qualifications because it's not qualifications for the sake of it as well. It's Monday. I mean, Monday has been busy for me. I started my morning, I've got kids, so I obviously started with the kids in the morning, took my daughter to school, went to the gym. I actually signed up to a gym, thank goodness, to stay my morning in there. And then I actually had somebody reach out to me from LinkedIn looking for support.
00:04:55
Speaker
So I spend a bit of time, never met the guy before, spend a bit of time talking to him and trying to help him as best as I can. And then I spend the next hour in a very similar conversation like this because I also work as a business resource group regional lead for Scotland. So I look after basically what's called the Black Organization for Leadership Development within JP Morgan. And we have about 290 something plus people within this group.
00:05:22
Speaker
And so I was I was involved in a session, you know, to meet everybody and get give them a platform to ask as many questions as they kind of want to as well. And then obviously back to back meetings. And here it gets. So it's been a busy Monday, but I think this is normal, though. Yeah, you know, I can agree with you. Busy Monday. There were a couple of things that I was supposed to turn into the end. I was hoping to work on it during the weekend. And I know I'm not supposed to be working during the
The Power of Personal Motivation
00:05:51
Speaker
weekend, but
00:05:51
Speaker
sometimes it just happens and I was supposed to do it during the weekend but my weekend was so much fun that I just forgot to do it and so I had to spend like the early part of this morning trying to ensure that I would meet my deadline and yeah like it was just so busy but at least I did and you know it's beautiful to hear that you're involved in
00:06:14
Speaker
a couple of, you know, amazing initiatives within your company. So you mentioned the board, because I saw it on your LinkedIn. That's the Black, what's Black organizational leadership development? What? I don't know if I'm correct. Correct me, please. No, you're absolutely right. So it's a Black organization, leadership development. That's exactly what it is. Oh my God. And I just, okay, guess. I think I'm a smart person. Yeah, definitely.
Learning and Career Development
00:06:44
Speaker
Thank you. Okay, yes, so it's beautiful to see that you're involved in these things within your organization because sometimes like this work can be sometimes, you know, when you're doing something that is a bit unrecognized and
00:07:00
Speaker
you know you're not being paid for it but you're just putting in your best because it's something that you're passionate about and I think that's where like I would really like to kick start this conversation from. For me personally like coming over to the United Kingdom and then getting into companies and
00:07:15
Speaker
you know, having to be told, oh, we have this Black organization that you can be a part of. And then sometimes it's like, okay, why do I really need to do this work? But I would like to hear from your end, like, how did you start getting involved in these initiatives? Was this something that just came to you like, oh, I actually want to be a part of diversity and inclusion conversation? Or how like, did you even just start with that?
00:07:41
Speaker
So I grew up in Nigeria. I was there till I was 21. I already came here for my master's degree about 15 years ago.
00:07:47
Speaker
So I understand exactly where you're coming from. And I was actually asked this question recently, like in one of the newsletters that were publishing soon about, you know, one of the challenges I'd face when moving to the UK. And one of the initial challenges was this whole idea, this understanding that you are actually black, because that's not a terminology we call each other, right? In Nigeria, that's not a conversation we have. Like, I've never had a conversation about, oh, you black, we've never had that, right?
00:08:14
Speaker
And so the what racism means and what it means to be black is lost on a lot of first generation people and we kind of have a bit of a reality call when we move here as well. And we also have to kind of be cautious to not make everything be a racist for you because sometimes it's just poor education as well.
00:08:34
Speaker
For me, that was a bit of a shock to understand that I'm that and be labeled as that. And so that was a bit of a thing. But also part of why I kind of got involved wasn't because I was looking for a leadership position or I was interested in bold.
00:08:49
Speaker
I was interested in a particular position within the firm. All I was looking for at that time was I wanted to make a difference. I remember what it was like when I first of all joined. I came into the UK when I was looking for a job and I would apply to about 200 plus roles. I actually applied to 250 jobs. I remember correctly because I had a specific email address that I kept every rejection that I got. So I applied to over 250 roles.
00:09:16
Speaker
And I didn't get it. So while you were doing your masters or? Yeah, this is why I was doing my masters. No, actually, this is when I finished my masters and I applied to about 200 plus roles and didn't get a single one. And I did this thing where I changed my first name and my last name and I used the exact same CV and I actually got seven interviews. I knew there was something. No, you're kidding me. Really? Do you know, I see a lot of LinkedIn posts around that, but sometimes I'm like, are you guys joking?
00:09:42
Speaker
No, no, no. This actually was a thing for me. So I remember this just a bit over. So this is why I go by Dami instead of Ulua Damola, which is actually my full name, obviously. Because I realized that sometimes, because it's very easy to go down and say, oh, they saw my name and they said, oh, you know, it's a black person. Reality is very hard to know unless you're familiar with the name, especially when you live in a place like Scotland.
00:10:06
Speaker
So the truth of the matter for me was that I realized that it's tricky, it's embarrassing, it's weird for some recruiters to actually pronounce your name. I'm not saying change your name. Please don't change your name. Don't hear that because that's not the message. But sometimes you have to be realistic and meet them at the place where they are at. And I think sometimes, because at the end of the day, it's your career. So I shortened it to Dami, which to be perfectly frank, everyone calls me that anyway. Even in Nigeria, everybody calls me that.
00:10:34
Speaker
but having to make slight pivots and slight adjustments to understand the world is not what it should be and you still have to live in that world was kind of a big learning call for me.
00:10:45
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I can imagine. And you know, when you mentioned using Dami, like, I also was using Oluwabukola on
HR Careers and Organizational Design
00:10:54
Speaker
my CV, but then I'd had to change it to Oluwabukola because when I wanted to make a career transition last year, I noticed that whenever I applied to jobs with Oluwabukola, I just don't get called back. But when I changed it to Oluwabukola, like, it actually made a difference. But I didn't realize that that was it.
00:11:15
Speaker
Oh, that's crazy interesting. Well, thank you so much for sharing that. So I think, like, just pigging back to the certifications beat, because I know, like, that was one of the first things I mentioned on the call when we started about how that inspired me to, like, just check your profile and reach out to you. And you talked about how, like, you weren't just taking the certifications for certification sake. There was actually, there's actually a why behind it. So
00:11:41
Speaker
what has been like the driving force behind you, like just wanting to continue to develop yourself academically and also like even professionally. All right. Okay, are you ready for a story? This is a proper story though. Yeah. It's a proper story. Right, so I started school when I was young. Rightfully, wrongfully, so who knows, right? So I was about two years old when I started school.
00:12:05
Speaker
And so by the time I was about, you know, almost 10, I was already in high school. I didn't know nothing. And I wasn't like an exceptional student. So I wasn't one of those cases where you're like, oh, he's really young and he's really amazing. Like I struggled in school. I struggled in school till I got to my, what's SS1, which is I suppose 40 in high school here. And I'd filled, I'd gotten like almost straight Fs in my first term. And second term, I'd gotten like straight Fs.
00:12:32
Speaker
I was on the verge of repeating. I was one of those kids. Historically, I was one of the Israelites. Let your people go. Just enough grades to get to the next class. The cutoff is, I don't know, 50%. I would get 50.01% or something. So I got to this point where I was actually about to fail. I was going to repeat the class. And I remember my mom came to speak to me because my mom and dad are psychologists. So they study psychology. Actually, most of my family studied psychology.
00:13:02
Speaker
and so they were talking to me about motivation and trying to get me to go ahead and as moms as African moms do they try to sweeten the deal and like please do it for me you know I want to encourage you blah blah blah and I was I couldn't see the correlation between education and success like I just couldn't
00:13:20
Speaker
And she tried everything she could do, and this was probably one of the biggest lessons I learned in my entire life. When she tried all of this, she tried to convince me, I didn't listen, my dad tried, and then my dad got frustrated, and he was like, you know what, I have my own certificate. If you're like, don't go to school, right? I don't care. I'm gonna pay for six years. If you're not done in six years, then I don't care. You go figure out how you're paying for the rest of your tuition. Wait, and this all happened when you were in high school.
00:13:49
Speaker
This all happened when I was in high school. And I was about to fill out. And so my mom asked me a question. She said, what do you actually want? Now it's weird because it seems like a silly question, but nobody's ever asked me that before at that time. And at the time, what I really wanted to do was I wanted to go to the UK. I wanted to see what the UK was all about. Like everyone was traveling. I was like, I'll just take my mom. You see all this, your business trips, just take me there.
00:14:12
Speaker
And so my mom was like, you know what, if you get straight A's, I will take you. Now, I want you to correlate a straight F student being given a target of straight A's. Now, I have never worked that hard in my entire life till date. I went and I signed up for classes, I signed up for math class, I signed up for further math class.
00:14:32
Speaker
my teachers would go meet my mom and say, do you know your son has signed up? And she's like, yeah, this is the this is the bill. Here you go. My mom just paid for it. Right. And so I signed up for every single class that I could possibly sign up for. And I actually had straight A's. Really? So I finished with I finished the straight A's. And I remember coming home, you know, getting on the way to the house, like excited with my report card. And my mom was like, you know,
00:14:58
Speaker
My mom was asking me like, don't you like this feeling? Like, is this not a good feeling? Don't you want to feel like this every single time? And I was like, yeah, absolutely. It's brilliant. You know, because I did something for myself. I knew exactly what my target was. I knew exactly what my goal was. I knew exactly how far behind I was. I was realistic in my strategy. I was realistic. I was like, I can't do this by myself. No amount of reason is helping me here. I need actual help.
00:15:23
Speaker
And I finally made it and obviously I went with her to the UK was a lot of fun and I've actually never filled an exam since then. Just a quick question, would you say that the reason you then got this A's was because there was sort of something that you were expecting like a reward
00:15:44
Speaker
I think the reason why is because there was something in it for me. And I realized this when it comes to making change, that no matter how much you talk to somebody, you can run a podcast from now until next year unless they can connect with something that is in it for them. That's true. Change will never really happen. And so this was the same for me, at least in that stage of my life. And if you fast forward this into many years after, this set up a mindset of there is actually nothing I cannot learn.
00:16:11
Speaker
So the first time I went into, so obviously I came from my MBA, I went into a career in learning and development. Actually, when I was with Aviva, I started in financial services. And when I started there, the first job I was given as a learning and development specialist, I didn't have a clue what learning and development was, like not a clue. And I actually bought a book, and I started to read the book myself. I was like, surely the job isn't as easy as,
00:16:36
Speaker
And it's very easy, and I say this to all immigrants as well, it's very easy to focus on the salary and focus on the title and focus, but you should try and at least be competent and be very good at whatever it is you're doing.
00:16:48
Speaker
And so for me, I would buy the book, I would watch YouTube videos, I would look at how you present, how you talk, how you project, do voice projection. I didn't even know that was the thing, right?
Diverse Teams and Cultural Adaptation
00:16:58
Speaker
Voice projection and I would read up on it. And then that led me into doing like, you know, digital learning qualifications as well. Like I have a few more that I actually don't list on LinkedIn.
00:17:07
Speaker
But there's always been a purpose. There's always been a drive. There's always been something. When I did my MBA, there was a purpose to it. I was given an option to study strategy marketing. I think there was supply chain or specialized in HR. I kind of felt like I shouldn't be studying marketing because if I spend enough time in legal or somebody, I will learn in marketing. I shouldn't be studying strategy. Strategy is not that hard. Executing strategy is hard, but writing strategy is easy. I was like, so
00:17:36
Speaker
I should really be studying something that requires actual knowledge, like actual specialist knowledge, which is like HR, which is what I did.
00:17:42
Speaker
So every qualification, whether it's my MBPSS, which is actually a member of the British Psychological Society, my MBA, my member of Chartered Management Institute, or member of Chartered Institute of Personnel Development, IDRPM, or my Lean Six Sigma, Yellow Belt, or any of those stuff, like it's all, sorry, it's not, so any of those qualifications that I have in the backlog, there's been a purpose to it. As a matter of fact, I took, I have Excel qualifications, but that's because I realized I couldn't use Excel to save my life.
00:18:12
Speaker
And I needed to make sure that's not a problem. So what I've done over the last 10 years is I've been realistic about what exactly I'm targeting. So every year I have four goals that I set. One of them is a learning goal. Actually, two are learning goals, but one of them is the personal, soft skill type growth. The other one is a learning goal, like something I am completely uncomfortable in. I don't have a clue, but I see value in it. So I'm not learning to code, and then I will never code, right?
00:18:42
Speaker
So I'm learning something that is useful. So I taught myself how to build a website as an example, because a couple of years ago, one of my good friends actually committed suicide. And I don't, no one really knows the why behind it. But I wanted to build a website called, at the time it was called the underdog tale, which is like,
00:19:01
Speaker
a way for people who are going to difficult times can come together and talk and they can share their stories with other people who have been through it and come out of it. Because I feel like sometimes hearing from a real person makes all the difference than hearing from a shrink and how they've actually overcome it and hearing multiple stories. And I reached out to a couple of web developers at the time. I mean, this is many, many years ago, very decade ago. And at the time they're quoting me like, I don't know,
00:19:30
Speaker
I think you're quoting like five grand to build a website or something and I was like I don't have five thousand pounds like and I think that mindset of it can't be that hard like surely learning cannot be that hard which came from that experience in SS1 was actually what made me spend time learning how to build a website so I spent
00:19:49
Speaker
I can't even like ridiculous number of hours you know trial and error making mistakes here and there. I've built a couple of websites for other people in the past but what this meant though is that it actually served me later on in my career because I worked with the University of Edinburgh and I built their digital skills framework. So I built the website which is www.digitalscales.ed.ac.uk. I designed it, I built it, I put everything in it right and so that's something that I would never have been able to do if I hadn't
00:20:18
Speaker
push myself into an uncomfortable space now do i have a qualification in website development no do i need one absolutely not because it's not really about the qualifications it's about the skill you get from it
00:20:33
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Well, like you've made a lot of amazing points for everyone to put that on in the story that you've shared. For me, like, because when I was in the university, I studied law at the university, but even before I pivoted into law, I, at least my dad wanted me to be a medical doctor.
00:20:57
Speaker
And I did science class for three years, up until SS3. And after that, I was like, I just don't think I'm interested in science, not because I don't think I would thrive there, but medicine isn't something that I think I would enjoy doing.
Early Career Reflections and Immigrant Advice
00:21:13
Speaker
And so for me, it's just like, okay, let me explore what exactly it is that I'm interested in.
00:21:20
Speaker
And so it just pivoted me into this position where I'm currently building my career in HR. Even when I knew that was in what was mainstream, because I had a couple of friends who were like, well, why are you doing HR? I think HR is an administrative position that you shouldn't be doing. But I'm like, HR is a lot more expansive than the administrative part of me. There is a strategy that you can focus on.
00:21:47
Speaker
and especially because right now I'm currently taking my master's program in University of London in organizational psychology and just like really seeing how a lot of when you think about like the employee performance and how that actually links with the productivity of the company and you know ultimately to how revenue is actually being
00:22:08
Speaker
um boosted within the organization like thinking about the psychology behind these it's amazing so for me it's like just really chatting that part and investing in needs just not doing things for the sake of doing it because you think that's what everyone is doing and that's like
00:22:23
Speaker
really something that you mentioned. There has to be a why behind what you're doing. And it's really that why that will drive you through doing it and excelling at it. He also talked about being competent because you find a lot of people just want to come in, make money, and that's the end. But they are actually not building credibility in the space that you're in. And I was having a conversation with my partner yesterday about how time actually tells and separates
00:22:50
Speaker
the competence from the people that are actually pretending. So over time, you can always pretend that, oh, I'm actually good in this thing and I'm creating a boss around it. But if you don't spend that time that you're using to create that boss to actually build competence, taking courses, learning about what it actually takes to become a leader in that space as opposed to
00:23:14
Speaker
Posting that you're a leader when you've actually not be that be that competent time would actually separate you from the rest of the pack and and what you mentioned around competency actually struck
00:23:26
Speaker
it caught and made me remember the conversation that I had with my partner. So I think I'll take this to your career in organizational design. And I don't think I've actually spoken to a lot of people who have beauty career in that space.
00:23:44
Speaker
I would like to know, like, what was it that led you into that? Of course, you mentioned that you had started building your career in learning and organization, but also, like, I'd just like you to talk about how you chatted that part and what really is organizational design, because there are a couple of people that would be listening to this podcast and be wondering, what exactly is that?
00:24:05
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's a good question. I mean, I was in a HR conference last year, and we were speaking to some of the senior leaders from some of the top firms across the country, from BP Shell, some of the banks as well, so some of the very senior leaders. And one of the terminologies, because you have the after
00:24:25
Speaker
event dinner night thingy after all these things. One of the things they refer to, they refer to organizational design as the dark arts of HR, which I found really funny. What? The dark arts of HR? The dark arts of HR. So basically the way they said it was like it's a niche specialized skill and sometimes they wonder how people are actually able to do it in their fullness of what the job actually is.
00:24:51
Speaker
Well, I'll tell you a bit about my journey towards HR Festival. Sorry, towards organizational design. So obviously I started with learning and development.
00:24:59
Speaker
I started with generalist HR, then I moved into learning and development. I spent a while in learning and development and I started to project my career. I started to map out what I wanted my career to be. I also started to analyze some of the more senior people I knew at the time and to understand their background. And one of the things I found out, and this is not to discourage anyone, it's just to create awareness, was I not met a single very senior HR director or HR head of anything that their entire background was learning and development.
00:25:30
Speaker
not a single one. So the only ones I'd met that where their background was learning and development, their job title was head of learning and development. That's the same thing that I see in recruiting as well. You'd find that the pinnacle is head of recruiting or talent development.
00:25:47
Speaker
And so I started to realize, well, this isn't the way for me because I'm way more ambitious than that. So I started to consider what else can be done, what else is in the space. Now, my dissertation in uni was emotional intelligence and effective management, having natural fascination with organizational psychology, psychology in general, because again, that's what I studied.
00:26:06
Speaker
my original degree is in psychology and so is membership of you know I so I read quite a lot in that space as well but again I'm also from a family of psychology so I wanted to understand for me how do we merge this together how do we create the right structure like to actually increase organizational effectiveness because essentially if you had to explain organizational design
00:26:29
Speaker
You can explain it in one sentence. The entire purpose of organizational design is to increase or improve operational or organizational effectiveness. That's it. No matter how you cut the cloth, whether you're looking at staff, whether you're looking at skills, whether you're looking at structure, whether you're looking at strategies, shared values, no matter what you're looking at, it's about operational organizational effectiveness. That's all it boils down to.
00:26:52
Speaker
And when you look at the mix of what it actually takes to run a company, it is way larger than having a good strategy. It's way larger than having a decent structure. Any structure can work with the right people. It's actually way larger than having the right skill set as well. Like there's so many components that are interacting with each other. So you can have the right skills, you can have the right structure, you can have the right strategy. If you don't have the right culture, your company will fail.
00:27:20
Speaker
If you don't have the right leadership hierarchy and you say you want to build an amazing product, but you don't have your product managers and your engineers and your tech world or your tech leads and your design people who actually look at how you use the product, talking together, walking together, it will fill.
00:27:37
Speaker
So part of our organizational design is merging all of these components together and helping an organization see what options it actually has, how to create the right structure, how to align the structure to the company's strategy so that you can improve operational effectiveness.
00:28:00
Speaker
And when we say structure, obviously, we mean people holistically, not just lines on a sheet, not just an org chart. As a matter of fact, one of the principles we preach, at least any good organizational design expert does, is to change your structure last.
00:28:14
Speaker
as opposed to what most people think. So that's kind of what organizational design is. But what led me there was more combination of understanding or combination of psychology and the business side of things, really trying to create a niche area, especially skill. It's fascinating. I love it a bit. My manager is always laughing about this because he's like, you don't really need holidays because you could walk all day. But it's because I actually enjoy what I do. I actually really like it. But for me as well,
00:28:44
Speaker
competence or rather confidence comes from competence. So it's important for me to build the skill set as well. So I love it because I'm good at it as well. So maybe sometimes I can't really separate it. So I don't know if that kind of answers the question. Yeah, it does. And I think this brings me to even asking how
00:29:05
Speaker
would you say someone who is interested in organizational design can chat that part? Because I find like it's something that is quite unconventional. It's not a career that when you maybe ask anyone would tell you to aspire to usually doctor or accountant. So what are some of the things that you can do like in terms of maybe certification or
00:29:29
Speaker
in terms of study or like how can you even chat that part because for me like that's actually an area that I'm very interested in in sort of viewed in that depth within organizational development and even also like people development which of course I'm still a baby at because it's something that I'm still learning.
00:29:50
Speaker
But again, even my path to that is quite unconventional as well, because I mentioned how I studied law, and now I'm doing HR, and then I'm currently in recruiting, but still just mapping out my career into that space. So is there any advice I can give? Yeah, so when we talk about organisational design, very often when you see the field itself, it's said hand in hand with organisational development, and I noticed you mentioned that now.
00:30:18
Speaker
So what you find is you find organizational development and design as a job, for example. So when I worked with Scottish Social Services Council, that was the job title, organizational design, sorry, organizational development and design. Now, the first question for me with anything is always what is your why, right? So what exactly is your why? Why do you want to study organizational design? Why do you want to do more in organizational design? Are you fascinated by operating models as an example?
00:30:48
Speaker
Are you looking to future proof of business or are you looking to improve employee activism or financial well-being? What exactly is your drive for it? What are you trying to develop in this space? If you understand that, then what you will do is you will find opportunities that are not necessarily titled organizational development or design within your company, within your field, within your space that you can help or you can be a part of, you can solve for.
00:31:17
Speaker
One thing I've seen historically is that very often, especially immigrants, we wait for an opportunity to be presented to us. So we wait until we have a job title that is called organizational development to do it. I actually didn't do that. So I would look within the world of learning and development, I would talk to my manager at the time about optimal structure for our team.
00:31:37
Speaker
I would talk to him about what are the skillset and talk about skills mapping. I would read about how to do a skills matrix as an example. I would self-study some of these things. You can't take qualifications. So CIPD has a qualification on organizational development and design. So you can't take official qualifications. Does that actually make you good at the job? No, not really. It's very much an experiential field.
00:32:05
Speaker
So similar to product management, it's very much a field where you need to be involved in some way or some form or some fashion. The other thing as well is you find out that very often some companies don't actually refer to it as organizational design. So you might see them talk about it and refer to it as organizational effectiveness or operational effectiveness instead as a job title. And so sometimes if you're just looking for the job title and you don't understand your why,
00:32:32
Speaker
that gets lost as well. So what I would say is we're in your organization right now, we're in your field right now, we're in your space right now, we're in your podcast right now.
00:32:40
Speaker
Start to actually practice the skill. You lose the skills you don't use. That's just fact. Start to practice the skills. Look at your structure and say, how do we make our structure better? Look at your skill set. Have a skills matrix. What are the things that we absolutely need to have within this podcast that we don't actually have because I haven't developed the skill or my colleague hasn't developed the skill or my team hasn't developed the skill. How do we bridge that gap so that we can be more effective?
00:33:05
Speaker
What are the top podcast people out there doing? Learn from them. What's the point in reinventing the wheel? The whole point of education is that somebody has done the research before and you don't have to go and redo the research to understand what can go wrong. When you're looking to understand your strategy,
00:33:24
Speaker
Think about your strategy in the most practical sense of what strategy actually is. If you end up writing a strategy document, and your strategy document is about 10 pages long, then that is absolute rubbish. Your strategy document should be really, really clear. Focus on outcomes. So don't focus on outputs. Focus on outcomes. Don't say, I want to deliver X, Y, and Z. Understand what your customers want as an example. And say, within my customer space, they need a podcast that does this and this. And be very quantified.
00:33:54
Speaker
improves the opportunity in employment by X percentage and then build a strategy around that quantifiable measure, have a clear objective, have key results and measure that and have a five-year strategy plan so that you will execute over time. That's how you practice that before you get in the space because if I'm hiring for someone in organizational design, I don't actually care what your title is. I want to understand what you've actually done historically
00:34:22
Speaker
that aligns with organizational design, that aligns with that analytical thinking, that aligns with that space. You have to be comfortable with data to some degree as well, because data speaks a lot louder than words does. And so there's part where you can also build your data skills, you can build your data competence. Do you need to be a data scientist? No.
00:34:41
Speaker
Do I want to learn how to swim today? I don't intend to compete in the Olympics so no, I don't need to get that far. I do need to learn how to swim so I don't drown though and I think this is where you have to start to quantify what you are actually trying to learn, how much time you actually have and be realistic about it.
00:34:59
Speaker
But yeah, I don't think there is a blueprint of this is exactly how you go into organizational design. I think your life experience, you, your personality should be reflective of what your passions are. And if it's organizational design, that should be reflected even today. Yeah.
00:35:16
Speaker
You know what, I don't think I'm going to publish this episode because it seems like you're just speaking to me, but I will, I'm just joking. But thank you so much for all that you shared, really. It's not for everyone listening, but for me, because I think I've gained a lot about organizational design than I will if I just probably spend time on Google researching. Because you mentioned that it's something that you don't
00:35:45
Speaker
It's not something that you sit down and learn. It's something that you actually have to be actively working at. And you can do it in any area. You don't have to have a job title to be working in ways in which it can show that you actually have those transferable skills for organizational development and design.
00:36:06
Speaker
Thank you so much. Cause for me, it's just something that makes me kiss me awake at night. Like, okay, so how can I just map this out? But thank you. Thank you so much. I mean, if it helps, I can throw some light on this. So my, my team right now, so by my team, I mean my colleagues, right? So my boss is very big on, on diverse teams and diverse teams is not just, is not even about ethnicity or race or any of that, but diverse skillset, diverse background.
00:36:33
Speaker
So I welcome the team of organizational design experts.
00:36:36
Speaker
And they're all from very different backgrounds. So one of my colleagues, who is actually amazing at what she does, has a doctorate in science, as an example. So she studied, she's a scientist, and she worked as that. Another one of them, you know, a good chunk of my team actually were engineers, so like side reliability engineers, so they're engineers. So from the standpoint, another space as well comes from, you know, HR, just like myself. Like with such, you know, with such a diverse team,
00:37:04
Speaker
But it's because the skill set that you need to actually be successful within organizational design in the truest form of it is transferable. Thank you. Thank you. Great. So I think we should move on to Scotland. You mentioned that you
00:37:23
Speaker
currently live in Scotland. So when you came to the United Kingdom, I know you studied at Aberdeen. So have you been in Scotland all of the while or you've you moved there and then moved to London or like what has the journey been since moving out of Nigeria? Yeah, I mean, I used to come to London quite, I mean, after that first trip, I'd been back to the UK quite a few times after that.
00:37:46
Speaker
and I've been to London a few times. London is nice to visit every now and then. I've never really wanted to live in London because it just looks gritty to me. At least I had Howard I was when I was coming as well. Obviously I have a different perspective now. My brother lives there and I love going to see him.
00:38:05
Speaker
But the other side as well for me is like, I also lived in Wales, I lived in a town called Aberystwyth because my brother, so my house, they're quite, they like school, essentially, right? So they like school. So my brother studied chemistry as an example, and then he has a master's in computer science, and he has one in
00:38:26
Speaker
statistics and data mining. And I think he went to Cambridge for computational biology as well. So he has a couple of master's degrees. My sister has a few degrees as well herself. He's actually just completing another one just now. I think that might be our second master's as well. So he has two undergrads and two post-graduates. And there's only three of us, right? So we come from a house where we like learning. Let's put it that way, like we like learning. And so
00:38:53
Speaker
I lived in Wales and when I lived in Wales, Wales was amazing. It was so friendly. I think there was like maybe five black people in the whole of that town and we all knew each other. And amazingly enough, we never felt black. At least I never did, right? Everyone was super friendly. So my love for Wales is eternal, right?
00:39:12
Speaker
And I wanted to mimic, because I was like, that particular time, there was not really much happening in India. I was like, that's not really, that's where you go to school. That's not where you go to work, right? That's where you go on an early day. Yes, exactly. So I was like, I needed, I walked there for a while. So I was there for about three months. I actually walked as a chef when I was there.
00:39:32
Speaker
But I needed a space that I thought would give me what Wales gave me, like a smallish town. And Aberdeen at the time was like the oil centre and it was like the Grand Ice City, you know, all the oil firms were there. And I was like, oh yeah, let's go to Aberdeen instead. Now, obviously, I quickly found out Aberdeen is nothing like Wales. Why do you say that? Like, what's the difference?
00:39:56
Speaker
So one of the things that hit me in Aberdeen is you don't realise how much of an impact colour makes in your mood until you leave in a city that is completely grey and all the walls are grey. I mean it's called the Granite City for a reason. So all the walls are grey, everything is made of granite, like it's literally just a grey city.
00:40:17
Speaker
And you don't realise just how much of an impact it makes on you and you'd see people like start showing signs of genuine depression. I mean, I studied psychology, depression was something that we read in a book.
00:40:31
Speaker
wasn't something we saw. I mean, if we're going to be depressed in Nigeria, my goodness, we would have been depressed a long time ago since military rule time. It's not even something that we openly talk about. Exactly. So getting there and seeing people mentally break down continuously
00:40:49
Speaker
and was quite an eye opener and my career wasn't always shiny right like it looks like it's been shiny for a lot no I started when I when I came here I was I walked in care so I actually started my career in care which is funny because not very many people know this and I started in care I actually walked in a care home then I didn't actually know what a care home was
00:41:09
Speaker
when i took the job because i thought it was related to psychology and i get to use my degree but it wasn't so i didn't know what it was um and i did that in uni and i think that the changing point how did you get the job when you didn't know what it was didn't did you go through an interview i did they came to the uni right so it was Aberdeen social care professionals
00:41:31
Speaker
they said social care right so when they came to the uni they were like they spoke to me and i was like yes that was amazing let's go we'll be walking because it was like a day center at first let's like yeah you know we're walking with you know people with needs with special needs and i can you know build some assistance here so that seemed like a useful thing to do and then instead of you know going to like care homes i walked in about 60 plus different locations with about 300 plus different users but
00:41:58
Speaker
I'm not upset about it because when I moved to Edinburgh, my first professional role was actually as a quality assurance manager. So I was actually responsible for about three care homes across Scotland. And I know I only got the job because I actually had care experience. So it actually played out well for me. So I've learned that there is no such thing as bad learning, really, or bad experience.
00:42:28
Speaker
There's bad experience, just not bad learning. Yeah, you would learn something from me. That's actually cool to hear. I wouldn't have thought that you worked in care and it's just good to get that other perspective, right?
00:42:46
Speaker
Many people would see your LinkedIn and would think it's always been, oh, yeah, you know, after his master's, he got his amazing job and now he's working in an amazing company. But yeah, it's good to hear the other side of it. Yes. So I also want to get like on a really deeper level, but just understand like what are some of the things that you faced as an immigrant here in the United Kingdom? I don't think people talk about it enough, really.
00:43:15
Speaker
But are there some of the things that you've experienced? Of course, it doesn't have to be like very deep experience. It could be culture shock or anything in general that you think you'd like to share.
00:43:29
Speaker
Yeah, I mean I can talk about quite a lot, but I realize that actually most likely some of your guests in the past or even people in general have heard about the culture shock, the racism and everything else. The one thing I will say that nobody prepares you for, which I think doesn't get spoken about a lot, is the honesty that you need when you land, the ego check you need when you land, right?
00:43:51
Speaker
But more importantly, more important than the ego check or the honesty is actually coming to a space mentally, coming to a space mentally where you realize that you are starting again and you need to be careful what information you're taking. And I'll explain this to you. So when I was in a care world, the guys I spoke to, students and even working professionals, some with master's degrees as well, when I say working professionals, I mean people that were working in the care, right?
00:44:21
Speaker
The guys I spoke to, the conversations we had only had a certain roof. Let's put it that way, right? They could only reach a certain level. And you need to be careful with who you're listening to in terms of what you can achieve.
00:44:39
Speaker
Also, when you speak to other people, I was constantly told that the only way to build a career is through graduate scheme and I had to do a graduate scheme and I had to join a graduate scheme and so I applied to every graduate scheme. I went to so many interviews. I used my money. I was going across all over England. I was getting to the final stages for all the major graduate schemes. I didn't realize that there was another path that didn't require any of that heartbreak, didn't require any of that suffering, didn't require any of that nonsense.
00:45:07
Speaker
And so you need to be really careful who you speak to. And even now, I mean, I have colleagues that are amazing for like, oh, let's go out for a night out. Let's go play, right? I have colleagues who are amazing for like career development. I have colleagues who are amazing for talking about, you know, finances and what we do with money and how we make money extend and how we build generational wealth. I have colleagues who serve very different purposes. And I say colleagues because they are still friends. They're not less because they have a different role to play in my life.
00:45:38
Speaker
I'm just aware of just how far our conversation can get. So the one thing I would say to anyone is just be careful who you're listening to. Don't let anyone discourage you from what your goal is. I was also told by even really close friends that are you sure you want a career in 99 development because it requires you talking all the time.
00:45:59
Speaker
And they might not understand you giving that you speak with an accent. I was told that by Nigerian friends, not even Nigerian. And so you need to be careful with that. They're not bad people. I still talk to them today. They were looking out for what they understood to be the best for me at the time. So they were trying to protect me from heartbreak. But with all the best intention in the world, they were redirecting me from what my ambition was at the time. At that time, all I wanted to do was be the best version of myself in the field I was in.
00:46:27
Speaker
And so I wasn't really, I had to learn to drown out the noise and it is a skill. It does require actual understanding of your why. And this is why I always start with that. Why? Like, why are you even doing this? If you do a doctorate degree, you will get to a point and you hear about this, it's like a, you know, education block. You will get to a point usually around the F3.
00:46:50
Speaker
where you're like why in God's name am I still doing this unless you remember and you were convinced about what your why was you will quit and so for me it's not what doing if you're not really clear on the why and so I would suggest that people just need to be a bit more careful about that because
00:47:09
Speaker
I could have been discouraged many times. I know many people who were, I know many people who went back and came back again because, you know, but I, you know, I also know that the number one, and I'll add this as the final piece, the number one thing I have seen that has stopped immigrants from progressing in the UK or in actually in the US or in Canada, anywhere really, is pride. It's always been.
00:47:33
Speaker
It's the pride, the understanding or the feeling that I studied and I did a master's so you really should be offering me an X, Y and Z paying job. One of the things we do in Nigeria and we don't do very well and I can only speak about Nigeria is that we forget that your master's degree is a career progressing degree.
00:47:53
Speaker
and very often what that means is you have a career that you're trying to progress but we end up doing a master's immediately after our undergrad with no working experience whatsoever and then we're shocked about why we struggled to get a job.
00:48:07
Speaker
There are other things that we do need to change. For example, one of the conversations we're having with groups like Black Professionals Scotland and who are spearheading this in Scotland as an example is what can we do to make sure that employers take into consideration the work experience you bring from whatever country you bring it from?
00:48:28
Speaker
especially if you're an immigrant, and quite a significant amount of companies are actually listening now and saying, yeah, why would we discard Standard Charter, Zenit Bank, you know, duty bank from Nigeria experience and say you have no financial services experience? Our banking system in Nigeria is way more advanced than the banking system here. Some of the stuff they talk about here, I'm like, really? Is that really how slow the process is here?
00:48:51
Speaker
I was like, this hasn't been the case for two decades as far as I can remember back home. So you have a lot of catching up to do. So there is a space there for development, for understanding, for immigrants. Yeah. And it was this video that I just recently watched when Chimamanda was talking about how, as Nigerians, we have this egoistic thing and pride that we carry.
00:49:21
Speaker
which you've just mentioned this evening. But I absolutely get you on being very perceptive and it's not everyone that gives you advice, you have to take the advice from me. And I think many of the things that you've said are things that I've seen, especially within the immigrant community here. I have friends, a lot of us, I would say,
00:49:50
Speaker
Because even when I was speaking to my mentor, she was like, oh my God, you are privileged.
00:49:54
Speaker
Because coming to the United Kingdom, I got my offer to work at Bank of America before I finished university. So she was like, most people that actually immigrate to the UK or the US, they don't have that opportunity. You actually came on an amazing ticket. And so ride on that ticket. Don't let anything sway you or make you feel like you're not what's being in the position that you're currently in. And it was just amazing to see that.
00:50:24
Speaker
that opportunity. A lot of people don't have that. And I think I would also like to share on, because a lot of people right now are moving to the United Kingdom, especially you find people who would come into the UK to study. And for so many people, it doesn't even seem like there is a plan on what they want to do after they studies.
00:50:46
Speaker
Is it that you want to go back to Nigeria? And when you're having the conversations with them, they don't want to go back to Nigeria. But then it's like, what is the plan really? So what do you have anything to say around like how people can can maybe map out their strategy when they come here? Because it's to be honest, I never really had the experience of coming to the UK and trying to find something because I came on a
00:51:14
Speaker
a sponsored visa with a company that was willing to take me in. But yeah, it could be anything based on your experience or something that you saw from some other person that you'd like to share. Yeah, so I mean, what I would say to anyone who's coming in is don't make the same mistakes a huge amount of us have made. So
00:51:38
Speaker
We don't always share the truth as Nigerian sometimes. We like to tell the story of, you know, that your auntie that lives in the UK that is just rocking life when she comes to Nigeria. You don't know she's actually, you know, spending most of her days cleaning toilets here as an example, right? We don't hear that version of the story. We just hear, we just see the money version of the story. What I would say to anyone who's coming in is when you come in, your plan should be skills development first.
00:52:08
Speaker
because you need to work with the three years you have and when I say the three years your first year is really about your master's degree because most of them are coming from master's most of them have undergraduate degrees from back home and your first year is really about you know getting through that and making sure you're focusing off to graduate please don't forget the purpose of why you came in the first place just to get that degree I also know way too many people that are not completing or getting it
00:52:33
Speaker
which is unheard of for a long time for us anyway I didn't know anybody before that before the more recent generation and the reason why I talk about pacing it and you know having a longer term strategy especially in something like what your plans are is I see too many people that are focused on achieving everything as soon as they come out of uni this is a career
00:52:57
Speaker
If you think about any time you've thought about your career growing up, your career was never meant to be that you will become an MD as soon as you come out of uni. That was never realistic for you. You never thought about it that way. So don't change your mind with that. Spend a lot of time developing your skillset. Spend a lot of time working on the places you find difficult.
00:53:20
Speaker
because we take that for granted. I also know way too many people who have had to change field after they studied because they realized that the field they studied was completely saturated. So they had to find a niche area.
00:53:34
Speaker
So spend a lot of time developing that, developing things that you know are actually valuable to an employer. Not things you just feel like doing, right, that are actually valuable to an employer. If you want to, if you feel like doing, you know, arts, then yeah, do arts and do that in your spare time. But if you know arts is not going to pay a bill, then find something that you can do that is actually valuable and you can become good at. Emphasis on the time you can become good at because the expectation is that you're not going to be great at it the first time, which is also fine.
00:54:05
Speaker
The one thing our education system in Nigeria prepares us for is the ability to learn quick. What knows how many of us had to write exams that the lecturer never showed up in class for. Especially if you went to one of the government universities.
00:54:26
Speaker
And you're still expected to pass and write really clear examples of why something makes sense that you were never taught. Do statistical analysis that you were never in class for, that the lecturer never showed up for. And what this has done is it's made us resilient, it's given us grit. Utilize that. Do not lose your Nigerianness when you come in here.
00:54:49
Speaker
Bring all of it. So bring all of that with you. That ability to figure things out, to say, look, I'm hungry. There's no work out there. I need to figure out how to work. I've been self-employed before. I've been self-employed as a consultant. When I worked at the University of Edinburgh as a consultant, I was running my own consultancy business then.
00:55:10
Speaker
I've been self-employed to the point where I actually started to buy and sell cars. I can talk about their experience, right? But within the first time I tried to buy and sell cars, I sold 27 cars within the first two months.
00:55:21
Speaker
And this is bringing your Nigerian ness here that look, we will figure this out. It's not that hard. Nobody's that special. If we were back home, we would have had to figure it out. So we'll figure it out here as well. So I'd say to anyone who's coming in, don't lose that. Don't lose what makes you friendly. Understand the culture, understand that not everything we say or behave or the way we do is actually acceptable in the UK.
00:55:48
Speaker
but don't lose that part that is friendly, that part that is innocent, that sees somebody and is like, oh, this is my guy, and actually tries to engage people by people. It's very important. There's not enough said about the importance of likeability. You know, if somebody likes you, they will do anything for you, right? They will do absolutely anything for you. So don't lose that. And Nigeria is generally, we have a reputation of being very likable people.
00:56:13
Speaker
So don't lose that. Bring that to work. Absolutely. Bring that to your employment. Bring that to your interview. The best interviews I've ever had. We didn't actually talk about the interview. I wasn't asked a single question like competency based or anything like that. I wasn't asked a single one of those. We spoke about football. We spoke about something happening on the street. We spoke about a TV series we liked. And I'm not talking about one interview, two interviews, three interviews. I'm talking about multiple interviews.
00:56:42
Speaker
bring all of that with you. Whatever makes you uniquely special, bring that with you as well. Well, such great points. Thank you so much. I'm mindful of the fact that we are running out of time. But I would like to ask one last question, because I know you mentioned that you were chef at some point. So give me the backstory around that. Where did you learn how to cook? Yeah, I just want to hear about that.
00:57:12
Speaker
Right, so this is one of those, this is one of those ones where I came in and I, so I wanted to buy a car. This is the honest truth of that version of events, right? I wanted to buy a car and I was trying to convince, because remember I was very young in uni as well, right? So when I was in uni, I was probably about 15, 16 when I started.
00:57:33
Speaker
So I was very young and by the time I was like going on 17, I was like, oh, I wanna buy a car, I wanna buy a car and I couldn't buy a car. So I was like, I'll go to the UK and I'll come here. So I'd save money, I'd bought a ticket, bought as cheap a ticket as possible, came to the UK and I was like, I will walk and I will buy a car. And I was looking for a job, I was carrying my CV everywhere, trying to get a job. No one was hiring at the time.
00:58:00
Speaker
And then this guy, you know, spoke to me about, you know, he needs a chef in his restaurant. And I was like, how hard can you be to be a chef? So this is the mindset, right? Like, how hard can you be? Like, it can't be that difficult. Like, if anybody, if somebody else can do it, I can learn it, right? I won't be great at it at first. And so what I did was I signed up to be a chef in his restaurant. I looked at, I asked him about what he typically has as a menu, because they normally have like a pre-described menu.
00:58:29
Speaker
And I took his menu and I spent a ridiculous amount of time actually learning to cook those dishes. What I also did was I would cook for people in the hall, right? So I was in my brother's hall then, his accommodation then, and he had flat meat. And I would get people that are used to those dishes to tell me how good the dishes were or what's missing or what can be improved to make sure I kind of got it right.
00:58:55
Speaker
So I used them as my guinea pig. Officially, nobody had food poisoning, so that's always a good sign. That's always a good sign. And then I would go back into the restaurant and I would prepare it. But I also became quite good at it as well, because then I could then pre-prepare meals, store it. I set it to consider time it actually took to deliver. The first time I took way too long to deliver people's food.
00:59:17
Speaker
Because I was cooking from scratch and then I realized you can pre-prepare meals. There are a couple of things you can do as soon as you come in. Everybody is ordering chips every single day. Chips is a staple meal in the UK. Cut down fries. Just cut it down and just get ready to fry it when people are ready. Pre-fry fries if you need to and double dip them. There was a bunch of handy tips that I kind of figured out along the way. But really the driving force to cooking
00:59:41
Speaker
was actually a need that I needed to fulfill, which is to make enough money to go back and buy a car. Which, funny enough, when I bought the car, because I bought a BMW and I never took it home. I couldn't take it home. I was too young. My father didn't want me to have a car. My mom didn't want me to have a car.
00:59:57
Speaker
And then one day my dad called me and he was like, okay, just instead of pretending, just bring your car home. I was like, I don't know what you're talking about that. He's like, no, no, no, it's fine. Just bring your, you see that car? I know you park it in the hotel down the road. Just bring your car home. I was like, oh shoot. And he wasn't mad. What he said to me was that you can drive, you can have a car. You've already bought a car anyway. On one condition, you have to drive your mom everywhere.
01:00:25
Speaker
Oh my God. That was the condition. And it's funny because my dad, again, like I said, my parents saw this psychology. The reason why he wanted me to drive, I wasn't because she needed a driver, was because my mom doesn't speed.
01:00:41
Speaker
She doesn't like the idea of speed, so he wanted to have to be in the car and watch me drive, so she's very big on safety, don't go to next to that massive trailer or that massive truck, don't go near it, that kind of thing. And every time I'd go near, she'd start screaming, right? And so every time I go near a truck or I'm going too fast, I can still hear her voice even till today, screaming, slow down.
01:01:06
Speaker
So whatever they tried, it actually worked. And yeah, so that's really the story of how I ended up. And I think honestly, like this story goes back to what you said at the beginning on what is your why, because that was really what drove you to then learn how to cook. And then of course, like the why was to get a BMW. Well, yeah, this was really nice. I'm glad we ended on this note and
01:01:31
Speaker
I wanted to say that from the way that you've talked about your parents this evening, I'm sure they're very lovely people. And, you know, they had a hand in helping you to become the person that you had today. So kudos to them. And thank you again for showing up today. I'm honored.
01:01:49
Speaker
Finally, if you like to follow Dami, you can follow him on LinkedIn. It posts really nice thoughtful things. I know I went to your LinkedIn today. I'm sure you would have seen that I liked a couple of posts. That was because I was reading them today. And I was like, oh my God, this is actually very deep. Thank you so much. Thank you. I appreciate.
01:02:10
Speaker
No, thanks for having me. It's a lot of fun. I'm guessing growing up for my parents wouldn't have been the easiest. So hopefully, Mom and Dad, you can hear. See? I think that's all right. But no, thanks a lot. It's an absolute pleasure being here.