Are there any lessons we can learn from the "uneducated" or "less educated"?

School has trained us to think we know it all and are more knowledgeable than those who went to schools different from ours and those who never went to school.

We have ended up with more closed minds than open ones.This is one of the reasons why most of us think someone else must employ us and give us adequate remuneration,our performance not withstanding.

Those of us who have "folded our shirts and trousers" to create employment for ourselves and/or others with a main aim of income generation still find it hard to appreciate the knowledge of the "uneducated" and the "less educated". We are dismissive of what they know and most times want to run what we know down their throats.

I cannot count how many times I have gone to the field to teach customers what to do and how to do it and ended up becoming a student myself. Understanding their way of doing things and how beneficial it has been to them enables one to refine one's packaging of up to date recommended practices.

EVERYONE KNOWS SOMETHING YOU DO NOT KNOW.

*We talk so much about delegating work and employing workers to do our work yet we still struggle to make it work.*There are so many things not within our control that we must always factor in when doing or supervising work.

I have faced at first hand the challenge of supervising agricultural work in rural areas.

When it is a time for carrying out any agricultural activity, the demand for farm labour increases and getting labourers to speed up one's own work becomes quite challenging. Some and sometimes all labourers themselves have personal land to work on at that particular time and do not want to be late in preparing their own land.

This demand for labour force distorts the prices for farm activities and only quick decision makers get the labour force in time.Delay in your negotiations and you will be shocked when you find the labourers working at a neighbour's farm.

Contract out farm work and the labourers will take forever to complete it.If someone dies in the village, it becomes abominable to do any work till after burial.If the burial happens several days after death,you lose all that time.

Pay labourers per day and you are constantly complaining about the high cost for less work done.Sometimes, you have to pay labourers in advance so that they can sort out personal problems first for them to focus all their attention on your work.

*Working with these rural people has taught me to leave the "high world" behind where they know us to operate from and humble myself in order to learn important practical lessons from them.*I have gotten used to asking them pertinent "stupid" questions in order to understand their farming practices and what has worked for them over the years.There is quite alot  of indigenous information on appropriate farming practices that yield incredible results.

The rural populace expect us to know much more than they do.We therefore feel stupid asking them otherwise simple questions whose answers they expect us to have on our fingertips.

IF YOU DO NOT KNOW, ACKNOWLEDGE IT TO THEM.THEY WILL GLADLY TEACH YOU.

NO QUESTION IS STUPID. IT SIMPLY MEANS YOU LACK ADEQUATE KNOWLEDGE ABOUT IT.

WE LEARN FROM OTHERS MORE THAN WE LEARN FROM OURSELVES.

Jimmy Muhinda

#SmallBusiness is #BigBusiness