Managing the pressure of premature investment diversification

An African
proverb “you cannot enjoy viewing
masquerade carnival from a single location” is often used to encourage
diversification. During carnivals, various masquerades perform several songs
and stunts in different locations to entertain cheering crowds. Because the
masquerades move around to perform in different locations, viewers keep following
different masquerades from one location to another. Yet, each masquerade patiently
practices, prepares and decorates itself in a private location before the
carnival to attract viewers. Without patiently developing their professional
bases, people seeking diversification easily become baseless speculators flocking
wherever financial wind blows them.  

Some motivational
speakers challenge people to quickly diversify their sources of income and avoid
carrying their eggs in one basket. Yet, they forget to tell people to discover,
develop and fortify their bases as anchor for diversification to avoid
premature diversification. In Nigeria, many pharmacy and engineering graduates
seek jobs in banks and telecom service without establishing in their
professions despite spending many study years. C. Ronaldo spent years to develop
and fortify his footballing base before investing in perfumes, hotels,
singlets, pants and other ventures. Bill gates developed Microsoft operating
systems before his diversification into hardware computer accessories, phones,
bags and software. The main element in sustainably influential people is focusing
and patiently developing something useful to become viable before investment diversification.

Investment
is the act of giving time and effort to a particular task in order to make it
successful.[1]
It is like gradually growing a tree starting from treating, planting, manuring,
weeding, watering, pruning and harvesting before mixing in fruit salad. So, you
require focus, hard-work, patience and sacrifice[2] to
develop a skill, brand, product, career or idea for contributing to the society.
When you have successfully developed and activated your base for social contribution,
diversification becomes easier as collaboration with other devoted social
contributors. But without identifying, developing and activating your base for
social contribution like a well-prepared masquerade, you keep jumping between
professions without social purpose or focus.

Different areas for social investment

The world is
filled with different challenges, problems and needs. Being the prime of
nature, humans work to manage and improve the world, solve problems and satisfy
their needs. All human endeavours to solve problems and satisfy needs in a
society can be categorized under production, administration and security.

·        
Production consists in creating wealth
(products) and using it to solve problems or satisfy needs (services) on the
individual level.

Wealth
includes food, drugs, houses, machines, books, clothes, gadgets, weapons,
vehicles, fuel and other material goods.[3]
They come from applying scientific knowledge on natural resources through
experiments and fabrications.[4]
Three stages in material production include primary production for extracting
the crude natural resources; secondary production for processing the extracted
resources to become useful items; and tertiary production for distributing the
commodities to consumers.

Service
are the intellectual, emotional, social and physical assists we render to
directly or indirectly solve problems and satisfy needs. They include research
and distribution of knowledge, medical care, personal security, music, stories,
drama, companionship, leadership, skills, sports, intimacy, beauty and arts. It
comes from human efforts to discover, develop and use their specific talents
and potentials for rendering services.

·        
Administration consists in organizing
and regulating the activities in the society for peaceful collaboration. It
involves making laws and policies to motivate and support people to discover,
develop, use and trade their goods and services. Because of its central
position and influence, administration employs the services of private citizens
and corporations to fulfil its functions. It collaborates with all sections of a
productive society to establish institutions for motivating, regulating,
supporting and protecting the whole society.

·        
Security, on the societal level, is an
extension of administration which is meant to protect the society from foreign
and domestic threats. It requires gathering information on the society’s
relationship with insiders and outsiders to primarily prevent attacks on the
society. It also involves defending the society when the layers of preventive
measures fail, and the society is attacked. Using different goods and services levied
on the productive members of the society, the administration directs and
coordinates the society’s security.

Though
they are classified differently, these three roles work together to ensure
progress and security for the society. Through nature’s generosity, each individual
has some dispositions and talents for contributing from any role to solve
problems or satisfy specific needs. By discovering, developing and using their
talents, potentials or resources for solving problems in the society, humans
earn happiness, income and dignity. When someone is working on what he/she enjoys
and is naturally disposed to, the work becomes passionate and fun. But
struggling to fit into some booming fields, while neglecting one’s passions, talents
and dispositions may yield extra income, but not fulfilment.

Uniqueness in building each area of social functionality

Individuals
who desire fulfilment from their work identify their passions, social problems or
needs they desire to solve or satisfy. From identifying their social passions,
they find, develop and utilize their talents or skills in addressing their
social passions. The length of time required for attaining maturity varies from
one plant to another: maize (3months), cocoa (3-4years) and mango (3-6years).
After envying the maize’s maturation speed, if cocoa begins transplanting
itself from one land to another, it will never attain maturity. Likewise, if
people keep switching roles in pursuit of higher pay or quicker results, they
may never attain professional maturity. Diversification in this case becomes a
distraction and obstacle to maturity.

Why do people seek premature diversification?

Factors that
contribute to premature investment diversification include:

–         
Impatience
and social pressure: the sight and story of other people’s
financial success can push people to divert their attention to other supposedly
easier routes. Because they lack discipline, some people are not disposed to
long-term goals. They seek immediate result from every enterprise and investment:
profession, relationship, contract, mission or task. Though they may have good
intentions and skills, their desire for immediate result makes them impatient
and unable to have stable social impact.

–         
Socio-political
instability: progressive societies are organized for people
to contribute from any of the three categories of social functionality:
productivity, administration or security. But, due to some political factors,
some societies lack the social structure for progress, especially on
productivity. By disorganizing and obstructing productivity, such political
factors bring mass-exploitation, scarcity of amenities and a high level of
desperation. In such desperation, many people are forced to abandon their
preferred means of social impact, in order to survive by any available means.

–         
Not
having a social purpose (opportunism):
great societies are built by people who respond to social challenges by
devotedly finding solutions and reforming the society. Yet, due to levels of social
enlightenment, some people are so invested in fear and greed that they only
hunt opportunities for personal gain. Such opportunists are like masquerade
spectators without social investment or purpose, who smartly abandon any society
once they stop benefiting from it. To benefit from exploitative social
structures, they can even assist or defend exploiters than work towards social
reform. No society can grow with such smart opportunists who only seek personal
benefits in places organized by other people, or even in disorganized societies.

Managing the pressure for premature investment diversification

By their
natural gifts of reason, creativity and responsibility, humans are the main
agents of progress in the world. As agents of growth, nature assigns them individually
at birth to different societies where they will support and harmonize growth.
Also, nature deposits in each one some specific talents and dispositions with
which they can influence progress in their society. They build progressive
societies by properly developing their talents and collaborating with other
people to develop and use theirs in the society. They invest in other people’s
growth because one masquerade cannot make a carnival. So, managing the pressure
of premature investment diversification can take these few steps:

·        
Find
your social purpose: your purpose is the social issue or problem
that disturbs your mind, and which you wish to solve. It could be hunger,
poverty, diseases, ignorance, social disorder, unproductivity, war, crisis,
emotional suffering or emptiness. You identify the problem which you feel deeply
and passionately wish to solve. This is the area in which you wish to make a
true and sustainable impact. Then identify how you want to solve the problem:
whether from IT, education, sports, medicine, politics, religion or any other.

·        
Find
and develop your means: after identifying your social purpose
and the means of impact, you evaluate, identify and start developing the potentials
and talents you need for it. You develop it through patient and consistent
practice, studies and training to master that specific area of social
contribution. This is the most difficult stage, where people are tempted to shift
their focus to other fields that seem easily lucrative. This stage comes with
the highest level of pressure for premature investment diversification. Those
who pass this stage eventually establish themselves in the field and become
competent for their social impact.

·        
Connect
with the right people: while establishing competence in your
field, you connect with other people in the society for an interdisciplinary
approach to social progress. A mason alone does not build a house. He needs a
plumber, electrician, decorator, carpenter, painter and other professionals for
a complete house. Likewise, while developing means for your social impact, you
connect and motivate other people to master their own fields. After
establishing your competence, you can invest 10 percent of your monthly income
in other serious people’s establishment and expect steady dividends from their growth.[5]
This is the best time for diversification and negotiation from a position of
competence, authority and social purpose.

Food is
not made to beautify itself, but to develop and supply its nutrients to the
body before exiting the body as sh*t. The end of food is not sh*t, but health
in the human body. And food becomes useless if it exits any person’s body
without supplying the required nutrients for which it was eaten. Likewise, the
end of human beings is neither death nor self-enrichment, but making
sustainable impact in the society. And humans live empty lives if they do not
patiently develop themselves and make sustainable social impact before death.
So, you were not born just to make a living, but to make sustainable impact in
your society.

Be sure to put
your feet in the right place, then stand firm

– Abraham Lincoln