Communications, Media & Strategy Gavel

Social Media like life is based on successful application of certain principles that guide its orientation and processes. If we keep violating these principles, things will run out of its course and one will need a lot of energy to drag on.

 At the face value, many think they can do anything and get by with it. Overtime, the errors soon manifest and we need to fix them or we will be grounded. I went to my former college yesterday with an intention to collect my academic transcript. I have heard a lot of stories about how difficult it could be to get academic transcript request there. The impression being circulated was that it may be easier for a camel to pass through the needle’s eye. So I set out early, got there and asked for the process and how fast could I get it? The first instruction was ‘go and pay but do not expect to get it today or very soon’. According to this lower level officer, the officer who handled such request for my faculty had not reported for work.

After making payment, I spoke to someone whom I assumed could help me talk to the officer. Unfortunately, the person was a junior officer to the middle level officer who was in charge. The guy did ‘justice’ to the woman by insulting her. I later requested to see the middle lever officer myself and appealed to him to help me out. His response ‘ I have conscience, some ex-students had booked for transcripts  for close to two years and they are yet to be attended to. So how why should I  attend to you’. I thought to myself, under normal circumstances, proper documentation especially in this age of technology, should getting personal academic records took two years to prepare? Shouldn’t that be resolved within five working days at most? After close to thirty minutes of ‘appeal’ the guy with style walked me out and yet I could not see what he was doing. But   a tone of finality I sensed was ‘except you could get a high ranking officer who could instruct him to attend to me’.

 I left his office and after about thirty minutes I met an old school mate who came around. He seemed to be well connected within the system at least based on our discussion after the usual how have you been all these years?. He helped in getting in touch with this middle officer’s overall unit head who gave him instruction to attend to my need. Like social media, to be successful, the following lessons are important about life.

Never be set like concrete: Social media needs dynamic changes. Nothing is static. Doing it the way you used to do it will create issues. Be creative and innovate each new day.

Never say it cannot be done until you have tried: many of us want to stay within the comfort zone. We do not want to rock the boat. But to move on in life, be sure you are always innovating, looking at what the necessary changes bring.

Pass it on. After getting to my base later in the night yesterday, I called the old school mate to say thank you. His answer was very philosophical. He said ‘pass it on wherever you are too’. He envisaged I may not be able to fix his own issue for now but I could pass the good act around to  people who may need it in my location. Whatever you know in Social media, pass it on, it does not hurt. If you hoard knowledge it may soon become obsolete.

Acknowledge you may be sincerely wrong:  Sometime we may be sincerely wrong without knowing. As a social or Digital media analyst, our conclusions may be wrong but if we are opened it becomes easier to see this. If otherwise, we could go around with this wrong mentality for a long while. The middle level officer in question did say he had conscience. But how has that helped in improving the status qou when he acknowledged people had booked for academic transcripts for close to two years and they had not be attended to?

What is your take?