Just what is the true value of a job?

The story is told of how US president John Kennedy once visited NASA. He came across a cleaner and asked him what his job was. The cleaner replied: “To help to put a man on the moon.”

I came across this story from a business blogger called Nick Milton who summarises the moral of the JFK-meets-a-cleaner story in employee terms as: Are you putting a man on the moon, or are you just trying out a new mop?

The story tied in very well with an experience I had recently when facilitating a workshop at the Kenya Institute of Administration (KIA) for a private group. When told of the location for the workshop, my first instinct was: why would anyone want to hold a workshop at a government location? I went with much trepidation, expecting dilapidated infrastructure, red velvet button backed chairs and sleepy, unmotivated staff.

Instead, I was very pleasantly surprised to find a spanking new building called the Habel Nyamu Centre (named so after the first Director of KIA) with granite tiled floors, a glass atrium that provided a wonderful natural light to the interior of the building,modern seminar rooms with contemporary amenities for presentations and Wi-Fi connectivity.

Manicured lawns straddled the building with well-tended gardens within a larger campus laid out to provide several simultaneous conferences and trainings for both civil servants and the general public at large.

To say that I was astonished would be a severe understatement. This was not what my Kenyan stereotypical driven mind was prepared to encounter. I rarely find leadership inspiration from anything that bears the national coat of arms anywhere within its visual identity, but there it was right in the middle of the cool climes of Lower Kabete.

My inspiration drew its source from a conversation with Moraa* who I bumped into as I was looking for someone to help set up the visual aids. Moraa, who was slight in build and sported the ubiquitous faux hair weave atop her chocolate skinned face, eloquently spoke English and carried herself with graceful poise.

I found her in her office, the ladies room, where she mopped the floor with much aplomb resulting in a surface one could virtually eat off of, if one was ever so inclined.

Over the course of many years, I have learnt to use lavatories as my SI unit measure of an institution’s ethos.

Clean lavatories usually are reflective of an institution that not only pays attention to detail, but one that prides itself of giving dignity to its staff and visitors as they perform nature’s most odious tasks. Conversely, dirty lavatories mean one thing: the institution has a crappy view [pun fully intended] of the human beings that reside or pass through it.

Anyway I digress, back to Moraa. I complimented her on maintaining such a clean environment and once she started talking, I had to find out more about her. Turns out that she had a diploma in business studies and had a passable knowledge of the accounting software, Quickbooks.

She ended up as a cleaner at KIA as it was the only job she could find while she continued to search for the white-collar job she had trained for. But she wasn’t feeling sorry for herself by any stretch of the imagination. You see, her efforts had been recognised by no one less than the Director and CEO of KIA, who rewarded good performers with end year bonuses and took no prisoners when it came to poor performers.

According to Moraa, the Director has a ‘3-strikes and you’re out’ rule for non-performers. However, for the good performers club, of which Moraa was evidently a member, individuals receive Uchumi shopping vouchers at the end of the year equivalent to close to what I imagine was one month’s salary.

In keeping with good leadership norms, the Director apparently walks the shop floor and makes snap checks on all the facilities within the KIA campus, bathrooms included. However, it wasn’t only Moraa who took pride in her work.

My curiosity got the better of me after my initial chat with her and during a break I toured the rest of the facilities including the large Amphitheater at the east end of the campus.