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Personal Strategy-Many skills, Half a Brain
Jan 10th 2007 (Published by Sokoni Magazine Oct/Nov 2007)

Multi-skilling is certainly the strategy to adopt for continued competitiveness but it may be necessary to follow your brain’s orientation, writes Management Consultant Mwangi Wanjumbi.

My training and practice in the accounting profession have given me a broad view of money and fiscal management. It was exiting, at first, to practice the principles of accounting and financial management and appreciating others like taxation, economics, auditing, commercial law, statistics and so on. But I later lost passion in the profession, although I did not understand why. It may have been due to the stress related to the manual accounting then before the advent of the fully computerized accounting processes. However, recent research has now opened up my mind in another dimension: I now realize that every profession demands certain personality traits, without which one could easily be misplaced.

Most people land and train in some professions by chance. Most often it is because it is in that profession that they find employment. Others do it due to pressure from parents or guardians, or a desire to please them. Many become attracted to professions that are financially rewarding. These situations may sometimes result in disaster or lost time. It is for example notable that an Information Technologist (IT) is credited with being a conservative person who prefers to work alone and can concentrate for many hours. He is not a people person and is not comfortable in situations involving working with teams. A sales person who incidentally is mostly associated with marketing will, on the other hand be an outgoing person and most of the times a gifted communicator and, most likely extrovert. He is happy dealing and talking with people irrespective of their status in life.

The accountant apparently shares the same personality traits with IT specialists most of the time. According to the psychology of learning, there are two compartments of the brain. The left-brain is credited with logical thinking. Left brained people undertake logical analysis of events, figures and so on. They tend to look for solutions around formulae. Scientists and mathematicians fall in this category. Maybe accountants and IT specialists may be classified in this category of the left brained too.

Luckily, the Accounting profession borrows from many fields, including management, statistics and information technology. One can however be forgiven for remaining hooked to the accounting basics of profit versus losses, expenses versus income, creditors versus debtors and the statement of affairs or balance sheets, especially at the lower and middle echelons of the profession, where the majority is. This could lead to monotony especially for right brained people, who may have landed into this profession by default.

The right brained people are credited with creative thinking. Their mind is pictorial; they are always seeing the bigger picture and above all thinking outside the box. They are credited with innovation, which has changed the world radically over time. But a ‘whole brained’ situation is ideally the most desirable. Whole brained people are able to balance the activities of both brains. They will be creative and at the same time think and act logically. It is not easy to ascertain the ratios of the left brained people verses the right brained people but what appears certain is that whole brained people could be a minority.

Perhaps, it would pay dividends to understand your own, or your children’s brain orientation. This could help in making informed career or business choices early in life. In the meantime, the accounting profession appears to balance the knowledge required in business, save for absence of the marketing content, which is critical. It is no wonder that marketers and accountants are great rivals in any business organization. Probably because the accountant has little appreciation of marketing concepts whereas the marketer has little or no knowledge of accounting, arguing that it is his strategies that brings in all the money. But the accountant will limit the marketer’s access to elaborate budgets and often label him a spendthrift.

Notably, the marketer’s impact on the business is mostly felt in the long run. He identifies current and future market needs and works out ways of satisfying them. His work is sometimes confused with that of the sales person. The latter delivers the services or products to the market as prescribed by the marketer. The sales person may therefore be perceived to be behind success in sales which may rarely be the case. Nevertheless, the roles of the two are critical to business continuity and should co-exist in harmony.

Inevitably, everybody in business requires knowledge on the basics of the accounting profession. Even others aspiring to progress in different careers are not exempted. It does not matter whether one is a doctor, engineer, marketer or any other profession. This knowledge that cuts across professions is the only guarantee for future success. Apparently, knowledge acquired in the accounting profession can easily enable one to be reasonably multi-skilled and maybe even whole brained. But, marketing knowledge is certainly a must for all, especially entrepreneurs. This is why companies take their whole range of staff through customer care training. The Marketing Society of Kenya has incorporated a financial awareness course for marketers in its ongoing training programs.

This knowledge across professions will however be incomplete without computer skills. Surviving in this fast changing world is especially challenging without these skills. Multi-skilling is certainly a must for continued relevance. It does not matter whether one is in formal or self employment. It is the only way to fit in today’s business environment, which demands multitasking situations. Finally, is it not advisable to identify one’s brain orientation early in life and then build on this for continued success?

The Writer Management?Entrepreneurship Trainer  Strategist based in Nairobi.

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