TheTransition

Each day I ask myself whether I truly understand what I am doing in my life currently, I still get to the same answer, I have a great level of understanding but I still need to learn more and do more until I am at that space when I feel I over understand.

I guess you are asking yourselves, what is she talking about? I may as well take you out of your misery and get right into it. In the year 2014, I was pregnant with my currently 5 year old son. I worked as a High Value Client Relationship manager in a very Porsche bank, an international one to be precise. This is a dream job to a lot of people in the banking sector. At one point, it was mine too. 😜😜 By that time, my husband and I had already been staying with my mom in law since 2013 in a small town roughly 90km from our day to day jobs in the capital city. We had decided to take that move so that we could save on rentals as we had already started building at the farm. I stay at a farm by the way 😁. One of these days I will tell you about that. So to make life easier for my two children then 4 and 2 we enrolled them into schools in the small town so that they didn’t have to do the daily 180km drive which my husband and I had to endure. This move though, meant we only got to see them at night when we got back home early enough before they were in bed. Tough decision to make but I guess we really didn’t have much of a choice. Raise your hands if you are with me here ✋🏿✋🏿✋🏿.

Around July 2014, I decided to seek a transfer from my work place. I wanted to at least be there for the children, to do the school run and for them to have at least one parent whom they are guaranteed they see on a day to day basis besides their granny. This meant I took a knock on my career. Moving from the high segment and going to a branch in a small town to be what was at first called a Personal Finance Consultant PFC and then later on Business Development Manager. My boss at that time who was the Head of Retail Banking told me point blank that the move I was making was career suicidal. I was sure of my decision, I had chosen my family over my own career. I was ready for it. Really ???? I was in for the shock of my life....

I was not at all prepared for my new role. It was far from what I expected. I felt limited and stifled and just wanted to get out of there. So , I got what I wanted in terms of my family but did not enjoy my new job. Oh yes, the place had pleasant people who helped me to settle but from the first day I realized it was not for me. And so I was quick to jump when I heard of retrenchments that were going to happen. I volunteered myself to be part of the people to be retrenched with no idea of what my next step was going to be. By the way, I then delivered my 3rd child in April 2015. My retrenchment was confirmed I think around December that year. The interesting thing is at that time that I volunteered for the retrenchment, the process of appraisal was going on. Since I had been transferred in October 2014 and then went for maternity leave early 2015, my assessment was done by two people, my former Manager when I was still a Relationship Manager and my new Branch Manager At the small town. I had always been a top performer or at my bad times above average thus forgive my shock when I was told that I had underperformed. Upon sourcing for more information from my previous Manager I realized I was not going to get a straight answer because he had also been transferred from the branch. My new boss, she couldn’t say anything because that was clear discrimination, grading someone who was on maternity leave for the majority of the year. This was really infuriating and up till now, I do not understand whether I was graded low because I had indicated my intentions to leave the bank therefore it was politics at play or I really performed badly that year?? My scorecards showed a different thing though 🤷🏾‍♀️🤷🏾‍♀️.

Bottom line, it pushed me to go through with the retrenchment plan and I left the bank in February 2016. All I can say is that I am entirely grateful to the managers who failed me in my last year at the bank. Had they not done that, I may never have discovered my true self. I might have spent my entire life living a life I thought was meant for me but definitely not. I am also entirely grateful for the move to the small town as it made me realize how I didn’t like the repetitive nature of the bank job I had and lack of room for innovation and creativity that came with the particular role I had. Not to take anything away from retail banking, it is very challenging and I learnt a lot from it. It is a great career , it just wasn’t for me.

Fast forward, a year later. I was accepted as a YALI fellow. Young African Leaders Initiative Fellow. A programme sponsored by USAID and MasterCard and administered by UNISA South Africa. This programme is for young Africans dedicated to developing the continent. The one done in South Africa was for the entire Southern Africa with 14 nations represented. I specialized in the Business and Entrepreneurship Track whilst I was there. This is where I discovered the concept of SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP. It was like I was struck by lighting⚡️⚡️⚡️. I was such a business minded person from before hence by the time I went to YALI I was already a co founder of a cleaning business MadeToCleanzw (Facebook) www.madetoclean.co.zw with my friend and ex coworker in the bank. I had never thought or heard of anything called social entrepreneurship. I suddenly understood why I lacked satisfaction in my business. I wanted more than money from it. I wanted it to be in existence not just for the money but to make a difference in society. And that’s how Made To Clean Social Enterprise started and thus my work in the development sector also started.

So initially, I was saying I ask my self whether I know what I am doing and highlighted I need to learn more. Basically I was referring to the impact business. As a social entrepreneur, do I really know what I am doing? Am I sure as an impact consultant I know what I’m looking for? I would love to share with you what I now know about impact business, social entrepreneurship and more. Let’s keep talking.

Till next time.....