Archive: Author: mdoucem@gmail.com

10 Common mistakes to avoid in grant applications for beginners

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

Having mentored individuals and consulted with organisations on writing grant proposals, as well as from my personal writing experiences being part of over 20 successful grant applications, I’ve noticed some recurring mistakes that can derail even the best ideas. With grant acceptance rates often below 10%—and sometimes as low as 3%—avoiding these pitfalls can help your application fulfill the criteria and at least make it past the initial screening.

I summarise the common mistakes I have come across and how to avoid them:

1. Assuming people know your work

Grant reviewers are often committees or external evaluators who may have no prior knowledge of your organisation or its work. Don’t assume familiarity. Clearly explain: Who you are, What you do, and Why you’re capable of delivering on the proposal.

Include contextual details that highlight your credibility and track record. For example, share key achievements or impact metrics (e.g., “Over the past three years, we’ve supported 2000 spouses to participate in the labor market improving the well-being of families by 50%”).

2. Failing to provide proof of capability

Funders want evidence that you can do what you’re proposing. Demonstrate this with: Clear chain of influence, impact numbers, examples of similar projects you’ve successfully executed, and relevant annual reports, testimonials, or case studies. Funders need to trust that their money will deliver results.

3. Submitting non-customised proposals

Every funder has their own objectives and priorities. Submitting a generic application is a fast track to rejection.

  • Tailor your proposal to align with their mission and goals.
  • Use their language and terminology to show you understand their priorities.
  • Explicitly explain how your project helps them achieve their objectives.

Funders need to see that they can advance their mission through your work.

4. Ignoring submission guidelines

This is one of the easiest ways to not even be considered. Carefully follow all instructions, including:

  • Answering to the questions asked. For example if there is a question about the need of the project, don’t tell then about the past key achievements if it’s not relevant.
  • Providing all required attachments.
  • Meeting deadlines.
  • Using the correct format (e.g., word limits, structure).

5. Poorly developed budgets

The budget must match the application proposal. A vague or incomplete budget undermines your proposal. Funders need to see where their money is going.

  • Break down costs clearly and justify each item.
  • Avoid lump sums without explanation (e.g., instead of “10,000 for staff,” specify “5,000 for training and $5,000 for salaries”).
  • Ensure your budget aligns with the grant requirements (e.g., some funders don’t allow gift card purchases).

A well-thought-out budget builds trust and transparency.

6. Applying for the wrong grants

Not all grants are a match for your objectives or project. Be strategic:

  • Research funders thoroughly to ensure alignment.
  • Prioritise quality over quantity—focus your efforts on grants with a genuine chance of success.

Applying for mismatched grants wastes time and resources.

7. Writing too much or too little

One or two paragraphs does not constitute a work plan. Something I saw during one consultation. Your application should give enough information —reviewers need enough information to make an informed decision.

On the other hand, many applications have strict word or character limits. Avoid overly long explanations —Prioritise clarity over verbosity.

Bonus Tip: Be cautious with tools like ChatGPT. While they can help with structure and ideation, AI often lacks the context necessary to reflect your work authentically. Thus if you use, ensure you revise the texts to be more meaningful. Avoid generic or empty phrases.

8. Not knowing your audience and competition

Funders want to know that your project addresses a real need, serves the right audience, and fills a gap.

  • Be clear about who your target audience is and how you’ll reach them. Funders don’t know about the target group you have in mind – so tell about the target group, who are they, do they have any specific features, how many of them are there, etc.
  • Understand who else is working on similar issues and explain how your project is unique or complementary.
  • Avoid applying for activities already heavily funded by others—funders want innovation, not duplication.

9. Lack of specificity

Vague descriptions weaken your proposal. Funders want to be confident that if they gave you the money tomorrow, you would be up and running the next day.

For example, give concrete evidence of how you will reach your target audience, which channels, give names of your partners, timelines for activities. Paint a picture for them.

Specificity makes your application more compelling and believable.

10. Overlooking the bigger picture

Funders often look for projects that align with their long-term goals and create sustainable impact. Show that you’ve thought beyond the immediate project by addressing:

  • Scalability: How can this project grow?
  • Sustainability: What’s the long-term plan after funding ends? Many funders nowadays require including a plan already at the application stage.
  • Partnerships: Are you collaborating with other organisations to amplify impact?

Funders want to invest in initiatives that create lasting change.

Another bonus tip: Be prepared for rejection

Even the best applications can get turned down due to high competition. Don’t get discouraged—use feedback to refine your approach and try again.

Final thoughts

Fundraising is as much about strategy as it is about storytelling. By avoiding these common mistakes, you’ll increase your chances of writing a proposal that resonates with funders and stands out in a crowded field.

The cost of indecision – Loss of time, opportunities, and momentum

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

One of the biggest enemies of progress in any team is indecision.

Nothing wastes time more than a leader or team who cannot make decisions early enough. As someone who has worked with many teams and leaders over the years, whether corporate, academic or volunteer settings, I’ve seen a variety of decision making styles with their pros and cons. But one of the most costly traits I’ve observed is indecision – with myself being guilty of this on occasions.

Leadership isn’t just about making the right decisions—it’s about making decisions that keep the team moving forward. When leaders hesitate, the consequences ripple through the team, costing time, money, motivation, and, most importantly, opportunities. 

If you can’t make a decision, life will make one for you. And the outcome is rarely in your favor. Delays often become critical setbacks. For example, when in one team we couldn’t decide when to host an event –  by the time we make up our mind, the best venues are booked, and the sponsorship windows have closed.

Opportunities don’t wait for hesitation.

It is important for any team leader to know this, and can make or enable making decisions that will give the team the best chances of success. This doesn’t mean every decision you make will be perfect, but even imperfect decisions can drive momentum. Indecision, on the other hand, stalls progress, deters motivation your team loses when they’re not moving forward.

For every leader out there, leadership is about having the courage to decide. Make the call, learn from the outcome, and keep moving forward. Because in leadership, the worst decision is no decision at all.

A year into product management – At least AI is not yet taking over

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

It was early January 2024 when I shared an update on LinkedIn that I had transitioned from a Data Analytics role to a new position as a Product Manager (PM). My focus was on leading the development of parts of our customer-facing mobile application (though this year this has changed with a new product focus). It was an exciting step forward and I didn’t really know what to expect.

Now, a year later, I can share experiences from that journey. It took a while to understand what my role was but it has pushed me to grow a lot of skills quickly, from product strategy, best practices of stakeholder communication, cross-team collaboration, navigating complexities and limitations, and making good enough decisions.

But let’s start at the beginning 🙂

Me and my work colleagues 🙂

When I stepped into the role, I immediately felt the weight of broader responsibilities and realised that decisions I would make would have broader impact. Suddenly, I wasn’t just focused on data, building dashboards, or providing insights for others to make final decisions; I was the one responsible for making decisions.

I was working cross-functionally with teams like engineering, UX, and research—teams I had rarely interacted with before. Weekly meetings with them became essential, and I quickly realized that my ability to communicate clearly, gather and look for information and bring alignment was going to make or break my ability to fill the role well.

My main work basically revolves around bridging three core areas: business goals, user needs, and technical execution. This balancing act is what makes the role so dynamic—and yet challenging. In this post, I share what this mainly entails and what I have learned (not an exhaustive list):

Keep things moving

Most mornings, I start my day by asking myself one key question: “What do I need to communicate or facilitate today to ensure no one is blocked by me”, a trick I learned from our head of Product Business. Whether it’s clarifying priorities, resolving roadblocks, or aligning stakeholders, my job is to keep things moving.

Prioritisation is key

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is the importance of prioritization, learning how to use Jira even more for this. Not every idea or request can make it onto the roadmap and I have had to learn to make tough decisions (a challenge for a people-pleaser personality like mine). Once it’s on the roadmap it creates expectations and commitments and it’s a constant balancing act as time, money, and people are always limited.

Breaking bigger features/products into smaller phased releases

Some solutions feel too big to start. However breaking them down into minimum viable products helps us start, gather early feedback and make adjustments before scaling to the full solution. Data collection plays a critical role here, and my background in analytics has been a huge help. Knowing how to instrument products for data collection, analyse it and interpret the results to make informed decisions.

Defining success

Defining clear Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) is also another critical part. These metrics allow us to measure whether a feature is achieving its intended goals. For example, when we launched a new AI-powered feature, we tracked adoption rates, usage, user satisfaction, and churn. This data not only validates our efforts but also informs future iterations

Understanding user needs

In this role I have come to appreciate the work of user research and customer journey mapping in creating good products. Learned new tools like Lean Labs, Lyssna, and TheyDo. These tools have helped me and my team uncover pain points and opportunities. I’ve also worked with our customer support team to understand direct feedback. Hearing real stories from users—both the good and the bad—has been invaluable.

Finding differentiators in the market

Staying competitive is critical. The role also requires researching competitors’ offerings and brainstorming ways to differentiate our product. This often means thinking creatively—what features will truly delight users? How can we address needs that others have overlooked?

Listening and communication are at the core of everything I do

Listening to users helps me understand their needs, listening to leadership ensures I align with the company’s vision, and listening to the team allows me to spot issues early and keep things running smoothly. On the flip side, communication is how I bring all these pieces together and has to be done with clarity. To manage this, I had to develop structured communication strategies—weekly updates, monthly check-ins, and always ensuring a clear agenda.

In summary, as I reflect on my journey so far, I’ve learned that this role is a mix of art and science. It requires strategic thinking, creativity, and the ability to adapt to changing circumstances. It’s not easy, but it’s incredibly rewarding – it has expanded my network significantly, my tech toolset, and business strategy.

I did wonder if AI will take over roles like Product Management? While AI capabilities are continuously increasing and I use some form of AI on a daily basis, it still has a long way to go to carry out the various nuanced daily decision-making tasks required in product management, but definitely is a great assistant for specific tasks.

For anyone considering a transition into product management, my advice is simple: embrace the challenge (it can take a while to find your feet), be curious, and always focus on delivering value.

As for me, I’m excited to see where this journey takes me next.

Follow on LinkedIn, Medium or Substack for more stories on personal experiences, often revolving around data-informed decision making, AI usage, career, growth, leadership, and social impact.

Transferable skills from my PHD that I am still applying today

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

After reading the following News article on YLE that highlighted the struggles PhD graduates face in finding employment in Finland, I couldn’t help but reflect on my own experience. Of course, the times are different now, but it reminded me of how naive I was during my PhD which I started back in 2010. I assumed that after I had amassed the specialised skills and experience I’d easily find a job.

That is, until reality hit when my research funding ran out before I had graduated and couldn’t secure continued funding. I didn’t know which companies valued my specialization enough to hire me. I hadn’t built enough connections in the private sector (granted I was in Joensuu, a small town east of Finland, with not that many companies).

Looking back, I wish I had held more conversations early on with my supervisors about the skills I was gaining and how they could be applied outside of Academia: Who would value those skills; What is the best way to showcase my skills to them (especially as listing research papers is not necessarily that impressive for many companies). For every PhD student or supervisor reading this, I encourage you to have this discussion way before graduation. It matters.

What worked in my favor was my Networking within the university (a skill I owe to my mother). Networking and making connections allowed me to work on different projects that introduced me to new people that increased my knowledge of opportunities available.

The article also made me think about the transferable skills I gained and how I am still currently benefiting from them in the private sector, which is what I wanted to share. These skills include:

1. Independent work

Research is, at its core, independent work. Yes, you collaborate with supervisors, co-authors, and colleagues—but the bulk of it falls on you. You conduct the literature review, identify research gaps, experiment with methodologies, analyze data, interpret results, and think about future applications.

In my current job, there’s less independent work and more teamwork, but the confidence I built during my PhD—knowing I can handle tasks on my own—makes me not afraid to take on and lead certain tasks. 

2. Adding value

As a PhD student, your work is peer-reviewed by experts in your field. If your research doesn’t address a gap or offer something new, it’s not considered valuable. That mindset stays with me. In my current work, I try to always ask what value we are creating for our customers or partners, what is missing from the market that we can fill, basically try to offer something meaningful. 

3. Embracing failure

I’ll never forget the sinking feeling I had when my first conference paper was rejected. It stung. But over time, I learned to embrace failure. I learned that the rejection of my work is not a rejection of me. Instead, I try to learn what went wrong, revise, and try again—or look for other opportunities. A skill I use today when ideas are rejected or feature releases do not live up to their promise.

If you’ve done a PhD, what transferable skills are you still applying today?

Change your small wheels to bigger ones: Same effort, go further

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

When I first moved to Finland as a student, I found myself in a small, nice town called Joensuu. Transportation options were limited. The buses were expensive for a student budget and didn’t run frequently, so the most practical way to get around was by bicycle.

My first bike was one that someone kindly lent me. It was a cute little thing—black, with small wheels. I liked it a lot and used it often. But here’s the thing: I didn’t realize how much harder I was working until I upgraded to a bike with bigger wheels.

The difference was like night and day. With bigger wheels, I could go faster and farther with the same amount of effort. Suddenly, longer trips felt easier and even enjoyable. And the best part? The cost difference between the two bikes wasn’t that significant.

To get to the morale of the bike story, while we are still in the New Year resolution spirit. I want to share this as a metaphor. Take a moment to reflect on where in your life you might still be using “small wheels.” Are there areas where you’re putting in a lot of effort unnecessarily? Could a small upgrade allow you to go further, faster, and with less strain?

For example, if your goal is to open yourself up to new opportunities by expanding your Network, swapping your usual inner-circle social gatherings for diverse business events or conferences might yield better results. You’re still putting in the same effort to attend and socialize, but the outcomes could be far more impactful. Similarly, consider how technology can “upgrade” your daily routines.

The Greek philosopher, Archimedes, said, “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.”

Of course, upgrading requires an initial investment – whether it’s the cost of a new bike, the time to explore different events, or the effort to learn a new tool. But the long-term benefits often far outweigh the initial hurdle. Like me with my bike, you might not even realize how much more efficient you could be until you make the change.

So, here’s to swapping out those small wheels for bigger ones this year. Cheers! 🚴‍♀️✨

Can you ever have too much data? Three dangers of data overload

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

In today’s digital age, data is often hailed as the new oil. Companies are collecting vast amounts of information about their customers, products, operations, and market trends. While data can indeed be a valuable asset, collecting too much of it can pose surprising dangers.  Let’s explore three dangers of collecting too much data and what companies can do to mitigate these risks.

The liability of knowledge

Danger: Possessing certain types of data can make a company legally liable for actions they might not have been responsible for otherwise. Companies often assume they have complete control over their data once it’s collected. However, security breaches can expose vast troves of information, leading to severe consequences.

For example, in 2018, Uber faced a massive data breach affecting 57 million users. The company’s possession of this sensitive data made them liable for its protection, resulting in an $148 million settlement.

What to do: Adopt a “data minimization” approach. Only collect and retain data that’s absolutely necessary for your business operations. Regularly audit and purge unnecessary data. Implement strong data protection measures and be transparent about your data collection practices. As well as Companies should prioritise robust cybersecurity measures, conduct regular penetration testing.

Analysis paralysis

Danger: Contrary to popular belief, having access to more data doesn’t always lead to better decision-making. In fact, it can lead to analysis paralysis and cognitive overload. This occurs when companies become overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information and struggle to extract actionable insights. This can hinder decision-making and lead to missed opportunities.

For example: In a 2023 report by the Ponemon Institute, 27% of organisations admitted to missing critical security events due to the overload of alerts and the inability to prioritise them.

“The paradox – more data often leads to less actionable insights” Dan Haagman and Tony Gonzalez

What to do: Focus on collecting and analysing only the most relevant data for specific business objectives. Implement a data governance framework that prioritises quality over quantity. Train decision-makers in data literacy and critical thinking to avoid being overwhelmed by excessive information.

The illusion of understanding 

Danger: An abundance of data can create a false sense of certainty, leading companies to overlook crucial qualitative factors or human insights.

What to do: Balance quantitative data with qualitative insights. Encourage a culture that values human expertise and intuition alongside data analytics. Regularly challenge data-driven assumptions and seek diverse perspectives when making important decisions.

In conclusion, while data can be a powerful tool, it’s crucial for companies to approach data collection and analysis with caution. By being aware of these hidden dangers and implementing thoughtful data strategies, organisations can harness the power of data while avoiding its pitfalls.

Remember, in the world of data, it’s not just about collecting data, but collecting the right data and using it wisely.

Why your story still has a high opportunity to be heard on LinkedIn

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

I was surprised to recently find out that out of the almost 1.2 billion monthly users on LinkedIn only 3% publish content regularly and less than 1% publish weekly (Source).

That means the remaining 97% are simply consuming what others share.

This was surprising for me, as it sometimes feels like with so many professionals sharing updates, insights, and achievements, the platform is already saturated with content and it’s difficult to see whether your voice is needed.

However, this statistic shows that there’s still a huge opportunity for your story and experiences to be heard on LinkedIn. With the majority of users consuming rather than creating, your content has a much better chance of standing out than you might think. 

Since I started sharing more regularly on LinkedIn, I’ve noticed a few key benefits:

  • building visibility of my story, values, interests and abilities 
  • learning to express my ideas, opinions, and experiences better,
  • growing my network and thus my exposure to varying perspectives, and 
  • getting to build a personal brand, which in today’s world has become a valuable career asset

LinkedIn isn’t just a platform for job seekers or recruiters—it’s a space for you to share your unique perspective, lessons learned, and expertise with a global professional audience. It could be a lesson you’ve learned from a recent project, an insight about your industry, a challenge you’ve overcome in your career, or even a question you’ve been pondering and want to discuss with your network. The important thing is to start.

I know! Putting yourself out there can feel intimidating –  One piece of advice that has helped me was from Seth Godin (Author of This is Marketing, This is Strategy), who said that you should post for yourself, not focusing on likes or virality. The more you share, the more comfortable you’ll get, and the more you find others who resonate with your words—and who knows where that connection might lead.

No, I Cannot Time Block Like Elon Musk and Expect Success!

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

I read somewhere that Elon Musk uses a technique called time blocking to manage all his multiple businesses (source). It’s a technique I’ve been using to manage my tasks at work, and it works well. Psyched by the start of a New Year and eager to get some revenue-generating projects off the ground (read my New Year reflections), I decided to incorporate time blocking and habit stacking into my calendar.

For example, I planned that during my 30-minute morning coffee, I’d do some research. In the evenings, once the kids were asleep, I’d dive into more research and MVP development. It looked great on paper. But I overdid it. I packed five projects into my calendar and thought I could make progress on all of them.

It didn’t take long to realize the problem. Spending one hour on one project on Monday, then switching to another for an hour on Tuesday, then another the next day, got me nowhere. By the end of the week, I had nothing substantial to show. By the end of the month, none of the projects had moved far enough to give me any measurable progress—no traction, no validation of market demand, nothing.

Recently, I listened to an interview with Alex Hormozi, bestseller of $100 million offers and founder of acquisition.com, on the Impact Theory podcast, and it felt like he was speaking directly to me—it was the wake-up call I needed. Just have a listen!

Source: Impact Theory podcast

His advice was simple but powerful: “Pick one thing and focus on it instead of many.”

That line stuck with me. I realized my scattered focus was the reason none of my projects were moving forward. I was trying to do too much at once and spreading myself too thin to make headway.

And of course  Elon Musk can afford to time block across multiple projects now because his businesses don’t need him as much on the ground. But he probably didn’t start that way.

So, I’ve changed my approach. Now, I focus on one project at a time. I dedicate what I can to it until I either find traction or gather enough evidence that it won’t work. If it’s the latter, I can move on quickly without wasting more time.

What’s your approach on keeping focus? Let me know in the comments—I’d love to hear what works for you.

Focus on Outcomes, not Outputs: Advice for product founders and managers

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

It’s great when you get the chance to learn from someone more experienced. During a discussion with Kevin Kamau, a Senior Product Manager at Basware, on innovating within corporate product teams, he shared a valuable lesson that really stuck with me. It’s something I want to apply as I grow in my journey as a Product Manager (PM), and I believe it’s worth sharing.

As product managers, we often focus on features—the outputs. But do we stop to ask: What is the user trying to achieve? What problem are we solving for them? What is the outcome the customer is looking for?

To dive deeper into this idea, I had an insightful discussion with Kevin. Here’s how it went:

Q: What is an Outcome, and what is an Output in simple terms? What’s the difference between them?

Kevin: Let’s use an analogy. Imagine you’re baking a loaf of bread. The bread itself is the output—it’s the thing you deliver. But the outcome is what the bread achieves: it satisfies someone’s hunger.

Now, let’s put this in a product context. Say you’re responsible for creating a financial dashboard. The dashboard is the output—it’s the product you deliver. But the outcome is what happens because of that dashboard. Are we able to increase revenue thanks to insights from the dashboard? That’s the outcome.

To put it simply: Output is what we deliver. Outcome is the real-world impact of what we deliver.

Q: Why is it important for product managers to focus on outcomes rather than outputs? What are the pitfalls of focusing on outputs?

Kevin: Let’s go back to our bread analogy. If your focus is only on outputs, you might bake a thousand loaves of bread, which sounds impressive. But if the people you’re serving aren’t hungry, those loaves will go to waste.

Instead, if you focus on feeding a thousand hungry people, you’ll bake only the loaves you truly need to satisfy their hunger.

The same applies to product management. You might deliver amazing dashboards, features, or tools, but if they don’t solve a real customer problem, they’ll go to waste.

When you focus too much on outputs, you risk missing the bigger picture—the why. Sure, you’ll meet delivery targets and release features, but if those features don’t solve real problems or help users achieve their goals, it’s wasted effort.

Q: How do you identify what is an Outcome?

Kevin: It starts with simple but powerful questions:

  • What is the end goal for the people using this?
  • What will change in their lives because of it?

Outcomes are about impact, not just deliverables. Stay focused on what success looks like for the customer or user—not just for your team.

Q: Can you give an example of how focusing on outcomes leads to better products?

Kevin: It’s easy for PMs to get caught up in the operational side of things. Outputs are tangible—they’re a way to stay busy and show progress. But focusing on outcomes forces you to think about value.

For example, if your team measures success by the number of features delivered, you might end up shipping a lot of things that don’t matter. But if you measure success by the impact of those features—what they enable users to do or achieve—you’ll focus on what truly moves the needle for both the customer and the business.

Outcomes require you to ask: What does success look like? What does “good” look like for the customer? It’s not about being busy; it’s about creating real value.

Final Thoughts

Kevin’s advice made me think about how I could apply this to my work, what more I should be doing to understand the goals of our customers, the problems my team and I are trying to solve for them and not solely become occupied with new feature development.

His words reminded me of advice I recently heard from Christian Idiodi, Managing Partner at Silicon Valley Product Group, on Lenny’s Podcast. He said:

“Care enough about a problem, solve it on someone’s behalf, and do it well enough that they’re willing to give you something in return for it.”

That’s the essence of product management: solving problems that matter.

How do you ensure you’re focusing on outcomes in your work? Share your thoughts in the comments—I’d love to hear how others approach this challenge.

How to Pitch Sponsors for Your Social Impact: Lessons from Startups

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

During my five years (2018-2023) as Board Chair of Think Africa ry, my biggest job was keeping the organization financially healthy. I along with fellow Board members tried many ways to raise money – from applying for public and private foundations to sponsorships and donations. Many of these were relatively new to me and I learned a lot from all processes. 

In this post I particularly want to focus on Sponsorships as a viable source of funding and one that has much more flexibility than Foundations that often are much more competitive and have more strict processes involved. With my interest in Startups, I drew a lot of lessons from them, From listening to Founder podcasts to watching investor tv shows like Shark Tank and Dragons Den (UK; Australia, Rwanda, you name it). Especially as there was more good material available like this presentation from YCombinator’s accelerator lead, Michael Seibel where this summary draws from.

I draw parallels between attracting sponsors to startups attracting investors and give 6 tips to keep in mind when pitching to sponsors. 

The goal in both cases? Convince someone that your idea is worth backing, even in its early stages.

1. Be Clear and Concise: What Do You Do?

The first rule of pitching is simple: if your audience doesn’t understand what you do, they can’t support you. I can recall the many times where I would confidently recite Think Africa’s mission, vision, and activities, to a potential sponsor, only to be asked, ‘but what do you really do?’ This was an eye opener for me into realising what makes sense in your head might not be easily understandable by others, and how they see themselves on your journey.  

You should be able to summarize your project in two clear, jargon-free sentences—and include a specific example to make it relatable.

For example:

  • Startup Pitch: “Airbnb lets homeowners rent out their apartments online. They collect payments and take a percentage of each booking.”
  • Social Impact Pitch: “We provide free solar-powered study lights to children in rural areas without electricity. This helps them study at night and improves their chances of academic success.”

2. Make It Personal: Why You? Why This?

Sponsors want to know why you or your organisation are the right people to lead this project. Share your connection to the problem or your unique perspective. Another relatable tip. Many times I was asked, why ‘us’ when there are many other organisations doing what seems similar to them.

For example, if you’re running a mental health awareness campaign, you could say:

  • “I struggled with anxiety as a teenager and didn’t know where to turn for help. That’s why I started [your initiative], to provide accessible mental health resources for young people.”

Key tips:

  • Keep it short. Avoid long life stories.
  • Highlight your experience or any impressive accomplishments. For instance, “I’ve worked with three nonprofits over the past five years, organizing workshops for over 2,000 young people.”
  • Show how you’ve experienced the problem firsthand, as this builds credibility.

3. Show Traction: What Have You Achieved So Far?

Sponsors want to know that you’re making progress, even if your project is in its early stages. Traction doesn’t have to mean big numbers—it’s about showing momentum and results. Sponsors want to also see that their support will help you move closer to your targets. If it will not make a difference at all, then it’s not an attractive offer.

For example:

  • “In the last three months, we’ve distributed 500 reusable water bottles to schools in low-income areas, reducing plastic waste by 10%.”
  • “We’ve run pilot workshops in two communities, impacting 200 people, and are now ready to scale to five more locations.”

If you’re just starting and don’t have much traction yet, it’s okay. Focus on what you’ve done with the time and resources you’ve had. For instance, “In just one month, we’ve secured partnerships with two local schools to pilot our program.”

4. Highlight your unique insights

What makes your approach different? Sponsors want to know why your project stands out and how it addresses the problem in a way others don’t.

For example:

  • “Most recycling programs in our area focus on urban neighborhoods. We’ve realized that rural communities are underserved, even though they generate significant waste. That’s why we’re targeting rural schools to build awareness and recycling habits from the ground up.”

Make your insights specific and support them with facts or examples. Numbers or data can be powerful here (read more about my tips for incorporating data into your impact story (link)):

  • “Studies show that rural households recycle 50% less than urban ones, even though they produce similar amounts of waste.”

5. Size the opportunity: Why does this matter?

True to any solution whether profit making or non-profit, sponsors need to understand the scope of the problem and the potential impact of your project. This is where you explain the size of the opportunity.

For example:

  • “There are over 10,000 households in our target area, and 70% of them don’t have access to clean drinking water. Our goal is to provide affordable water filters to at least 5,000 families in the next two years.”

Break it down:

  • How many people are affected by the problem?
  • What’s the potential scale of your solution?
  • Are there similar initiatives you can compare it to?

Instead of quoting vague reports, show your thought process. For instance: “If we provide clean water to 5,000 families, we can reduce waterborne diseases by 40% in our target area within a year.”

6. Don’t forget to ask

Be direct about what you need from the sponsor and how you’ll use their support. For example:

  • “We’re seeking $10,000 in funding to expand our program to five new schools. This will allow us to reach 1,000 more students in the next six months.”
  • “With your sponsorship, we can print 5,000 educational booklets and organize workshops for 20 community centers.”

Sponsors also want to know what their contribution will achieve—so tie it to measurable outcomes (e.g., “Your support will help 500 families gain access to clean water”).

Final thoughts:  Keep it simple and engaging

Pitching sponsors for your social impact initiative doesn’t have to feel overwhelming. By being clear, concise, and focusing on your unique strengths, you can make a compelling case for why they should support your cause.

Your pitch should feel like a conversation, not a formal presentation. Pay attention to the sponsor’s reactions—whether in person or on a virtual call—and adjust accordingly.

If they seem particularly interested in a specific point, dive deeper into it. For example, if they ask about the impact of your workshops, share a success story or testimonials from participants.

And don’t over complicate your slides or materials. A clear, visually simple presentation helps keep the focus on you and your message—not flashy graphics.

Remember: it’s not about being perfect; it’s about being authentic, prepared, and passionate.

Good luck! 🚀

Insights from Analysing YCombinator African Startup Investments

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

Africa is a continent with a rapidly growing economy and a young population, which makes it an attractive market for startups and investors. What can the YCombinator (YC) investments tell us about the business innovations on the continent?

As at the end of 2024, there have been 122 companies serving the African market, according to YC Directory. These are companies either based on the continent or elsewhere, but focusing on the African market. The companies demonstrate a significant amount of business innovation, particularly in emerging markets. This innovation is being driven by a number of factors, including the need for greater financial inclusion, the growing demand for B2B solutions, the changing needs of consumers in emerging markets, and the increasing adoption of technology.

For those who might not know, YC is a renowned startup accelerator, based in California, USA. The overall goal of YC is to help startups really take off, by providing seed funding, guidance, and networking opportunities. YC only accepts between 1.5% to 2% of applications, and has backed approximately 5000 startups since its inception in 2005, including giants like Airbnb, Dropbox, and Stripe.

Trend of YC’s Investment into Africa

YC’s first investment into an African startup took place in 2012 into Wave, a mobile money app from Senegal. Following this, YC began ramping up its investment into Africa, with a record of 37 investments in 2022. However, we see a huge decline in investments, falling from 37 to 8 in 2023, and only 7 in 2024. 

Many of these companies are based in Nigeria, specifically in the city of Lagos. North America, particularly the United States, is the second most represented region on the list. Other regions represented in the list include Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia.

Distribution of the startups across the globe.

Business innovations

The list of 122 companies reveals several key areas of business innovation, mainly:

  • Fintech: The sources highlight a wave of Fintech innovation in Africa, driven by the need for greater financial inclusion and access to services. 55 companies out of the 122 are developing solutions for payments, credit and lending, banking and exchange, and asset management. This focus on Fintech is likely influenced by the large and young population in Africa, as well as the increasing adoption of mobile technology.
  • B2B Solutions: 34 companies are creating B2B solutions tailored to the needs of businesses in Africa. This includes companies focusing on supply chain and logistics, sales, productivity, and infrastructure. These innovations are addressing challenges related to transportation, distribution, access to markets, and business operations in the region.
  • Meeting Consumer Demands in Emerging Markets: The sources also illustrate how companies are adapting their products and services to meet the unique demands of consumers in emerging markets. For example, companies like Heyfood and Chow Central Inc. are bringing food delivery services to Africa, while companies like Tizeti are providing internet services. This focus of 15 companies on consumer-oriented solutions reflects the growing purchasing power and changing lifestyles of consumers in these regions.
  • Other industries represented in the list include Healthcare, Education, Real Estate and Construction, and Industrials.

Many of the companies on the list are focusing on specific niches within their respective industries. For example, Fingo Africa is targeting Africa’s youth with its neobank, while Grey is catering to remote workers and digital nomads with its banking services. This niche focus allows companies to tailor their products and services to specific customer segments and gain a competitive advantage.

The list also highlights the growing importance of technology in all industries. Across all industries, the sources emphasize the use of technology as a key driver of innovation. Companies are using mobile technology, artificial intelligence, and data analytics to develop solutions that are efficient, scalable, and tailored to the needs of their target markets.

Trend of startup investments according to Industry.

I naturally have no insights into YC’s investment strategy, but in looking at the list, I was a bit surprised that there are not more agriculture, energy, or climate-focused businesses, rapid scaling and global reach seems to be the focus. Maybe these might be perceived as riskier investments as they are prone to unpredictable weather patterns, regulatory uncertainties, and longer investment horizons. Also some sectors, like climate tech, might still be in their early stages of development in the African context. 

You can find the full list of the 122 companies here.

Reflecting on Turning 40: Realising Why Success Feels Elusive

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

A few months ago, I turned 40. It happened during one of the busiest times of the year for me—work deadlines, ongoing projects, family commitments—leaving no time to process the milestone. Yet, turning 40 is one of those ages that naturally invites reflection. It feels significant, as if you’ve reached a point in life where you’re supposed to take stock of where you’ve been and where you’re heading.

In Finland, where I live, the average life expectancy for women places 40 pretty close to the midpoint. Of course, genetics and luck will play their part, but it’s a reminder that I’m standing at the threshold of the second half of my life.

Luckily, during the festive season, I found a pocket of time to reflect. And as someone who’s naturally optimistic—glass half full type of person—I looked back and forward with a positive mindset.

Feeling Younger Than Expected

First, I realized something surprising: I feel much younger than I expected to at 40. My university years don’t feel that far away. I was 16 years old when my mom turned 40, and I remember thinking of her as “older”. Now that I’m here myself, I don’t feel that way at all. It’s hard to explain, but there’s something comforting about this sense of youthfulness.

Career-wise, it hasn’t been a smooth ride, but I’ve found myself on a rewarding path. I’ve grown, developed new skills, and had opportunities to work on projects that matter to me. Yet, despite all of this, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m not as successful as I thought I would be by now.

Redefining My Idea of Success

At first, I thought this feeling of “falling short” was about money. I don’t have as much of it as I imagined I would after all these years of hard work. But here’s the thing: I’ve never been someone who’s driven by money. Financial goals have always felt difficult for me to set because money isn’t what motivates me. For me, money has always been a by-product of doing meaningful work.

So, I dug deeper.

I started reflecting on the people I admire—the guests on podcasts I love, the authors I follow, the stories that inspire me. What defines their success? I noticed a pattern: they’re people who’ve taken bold steps to create something meaningful. They’ve harnessed creativity, solved important problems, and made an impact. Crucially, they’ve also built business models around their ideas—ways to sustain and grow their work.

And that’s where I’ve fallen short.

Many of my ideas and projects have been impactful, but most of them remain hobbies or volunteer efforts. They never cross the line into something bigger, something sustainable. I’ve realized that this is what’s been holding me back: the feeling of unfulfilled potential. I know I have big ideas in me, ideas that deserve to be actualized.

As I move into the second half of my life, I now know what I need to focus on to feel truly successful.

Two Practices to Guide Me Forward

Here are two changes I’m making to help me bridge the gap between where I am and where I want to be:

1. Focus on Habits, Not Just Goals

Every year, I’ve set goals. And every year, I’ve fallen short on many of them. It’s not that I lack motivation—I’m a hard worker—but after a few months, I often find myself slipping back into old habits.

James Clear’s Atomic Habits helped me understand why this happens:

“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”

In other words, goals are great for giving you direction, but it’s your daily habits—your systems—that determine whether you actually make progress.

This year, I’m trying something different. I still have goals, but they’re more like signposts showing me where I want to go. My main focus is on building the systems and habits that will make those goals happen naturally.

Here’s what I’m doing:

  • Habit Stacking: I’m pairing new habits with existing ones. For instance, I’ve started a daily writing habit that I tie to my morning coffee ritual.
  • Making Habits Simple and Rewarding: I’m designing my habits to be easy to follow and satisfying.
  • Using Visual Reminders: For the first time, I’ve created a vision board. It’s displayed where I see it every day, reminding me of where I’m heading and keeping me motivated.

Interestingly, I also used ChatGPT to help refine my habits and brainstorm ideas for my vision board. If you’re curious about the prompts I used or want tips on creating your own, feel free to DM me or leave a comment—I’d love to share!

2. Seek Inspiration That Resonates

Another big realization I had was that I’ve been looking for inspiration in the wrong places.

I listen to a lot of podcasts and audiobooks because they’re perfect for busy days when I don’t have time to sit and read. But when I looked back, I noticed that most of my entrepreneurial inspiration has come from white, male voices in the U.S. While I’ve learned a lot from these stories, they don’t always feel relevant to my context.

This year, I’m making a conscious effort to find inspiration that resonates more deeply with me. I’m seeking out the stories of black African women in the diaspora—women who are navigating entrepreneurship while balancing marriage, motherhood, and cultural nuances. These voices feel closer to my reality, and I’m finding them both refreshing and actionable.

I’ll be sharing the gold nuggets I discover along the way, so stay tuned!

Moving Forward

As I reflect on the next phase of my life, I’m inspired by a quote from Myles Munroe:

“The wealthiest place on the planet is just down the road. It is the cemetery. There lie buried companies that were never started, inventions that were never made, bestselling books that were never written, and masterpieces that were never painted. In the cemetery is buried the greatest treasure of untapped potential.”

This quote has stayed with me. I don’t want to let my untapped potential stay buried. I want to create, build, and bring my ideas to life.

By focusing on habits, building the right systems, and drawing inspiration from relatable voices, I’m determined to make the second half of my life feel successful.

I hope you’ll keep me accountable. And if you’re on a similar journey, let’s do this together. Here’s to a fruitful year ahead!

Turning Data into Compelling Narratives with Case Example: The Ocean Cleanup

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

Picture this: A vast expanse of ocean, choked with plastic waste. It’s a crisis that seems too enormous to comprehend. Yet, The Ocean Cleanup, a non-profit organisation, has managed to transform this overwhelming problem into a compelling narrative that’s mobilizing global action. Their success lies not just in the data they collect, but in how they tell their story. Numbers, by themselves, can be cold and impersonal. But when woven into a compelling story, data becomes a powerful tool for action. This is the magic of data storytelling.

When I learned about the The Ocean Cleanup organisation and observed how they do data storytelling, I was impressed. By analysing their work and other bigger organisations that do data storytelling well, like the Gates Foundation or World Health Organisation, I share five key strategies they use.

1. Make data accessible and engaging: The Ocean Cleanup does a good job of breaking down complex environmental data into digestible formats. I particularly like their story telling on Instagram where they combine easy to understand data with powerful visuals. In addition, through their comprehensive research publications, engaging podcasts, and clear milestone tracking, they ensure their message reaches everyone from scientists to casual supporters. Their approach demonstrates that transparency and accessibility aren’t just nice-to-haves – they’re essential for building trust and understanding.

Source: The Ocean Cleanup

2. Use visuals for emotional impact: The moment you land on their website, you’re greeted by powerful visuals that immediately communicate their mission. Their interactive dashboard and infographics don’t just present data – they tell a visual story of ocean pollution and cleanup efforts. These visuals transform abstract concepts like “tons of plastic” into tangible, meaningful information that anyone can grasp.

A sea turtle entangled in a ghost net Photo credits: Francis Perez

3. Encouraging interactive exploration: By allowing users to explore cleanup locations, track progress, and understand impact in real-time, they transform passive observers into active participants in their story (e.g., through their Dashboards: Dashboard | The Ocean Cleanup & https://theoceancleanup.com/sources/). This interactivity creates a personal connection to their mission that static reports simply can’t match.

Screenshot of dashboard showing most polluting rivers: https://theoceancleanup.com/sources/

4. Combine data with story: Numbers alone don’t inspire action – stories do. The Ocean Cleanup expertly combines hard data with compelling narratives in their reports and knowledge hub. Each statistic is carefully contextualized, helping audiences understand not just what the numbers are, but why they matter.

5. Keeping it fresh with real-time updates: In today’s fast-paced world, outdated information can quickly lose impact. The Ocean Cleanup keeps their audience engaged through regular updates on their website, social media channels (i.e., Instagram, Facebook among others), and dashboard. This constant flow of fresh data and progress updates maintains urgency and demonstrates ongoing impact.

The Ocean Cleanup’s approach shows how powerful data storytelling can transform serious environmental challenges into actionable initiatives. Their success demonstrates that when organizations combine robust data with engaging storytelling, they can create understanding, build support, and drive real change.

Practical implementation tips for you:

  • Start with your audience: Consider who needs to understand your data and tailor your presentation accordingly
  • Choose the right tools: Select visualization and interactive elements that enhance, rather than complicate, your story
  • Keep it current: Develop systems for regular updates to maintain engagement
  • Balance emotion and facts: Use both data and narrative to create a compelling case for action
  • Test and refine: Regularly assess which storytelling methods resonate most with your audience

Have you seen other effective strategies for data storytelling? What challenges have you faced in communicating your organization’s impact? Let’s continue the conversation in the comments below.

Ready to transform your data into a captivating story? Feel free to reach out!

What I learned from analysing 1st-2nd generation African diaspora Founders on Shark Tank

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

I believe by now I’ve watched every episode of Shark Tank, an American business reality television series where Founders get to pitch in front of investors called ‘Sharks’ on the show. Across its 15 seasons (with Season 16 having just started last month), I’ve been captivated since episode one — drawn in by the inspiring founders who enter the Tank and intrigued by the Sharks’ insights. Some years back, I even analysed Shark Tank deals and women founders.

Recently, I’ve noticed a growing number of African diaspora founders pitching on Shark Tank, with one business appearing in Season 6, and seven appearing in Season 13 and 14 combined (See graph below). With this, and knowing the high competitive rate of getting aired on the show (air rate = 0.22%) my data-driven mind kicked into gear. As a 1st generation immigrant in Finland, with a passion for entrepreneurship, I can relate to the experience of building something new in a foreign country — navigating limited networks, cultural nuances, and a strong connection to one’s homeland. This sparked my curiosity: could these African diaspora-founded businesses on Shark Tank offer valuable insights for others in the diaspora?

Part of this inspiration comes from Malcolm Gladwell’s analysis in Outliers, where he explores how some immigrant communities can leverage their outsider or minority status to succeed in entrepreneurial ventures. This motivated me to explore the journeys of 1st and 2nd-generation African founders on Shark Tank.

In this post, I’ll share findings from my analysis of these founders and their businesses. I looked at pitches where the founders identified as either 1st or 2nd generation (those born in an African country or with a parent born there). Here’s a breakdown of the dataset:

  • Businesses and Founders: 12 African diaspora-founded ventures across various seasons
  • Country of origin: African country representing the founder’s heritage
  • Industry types: Including sports, clothing, beauty, food, beverage, and home goods
  • Investment ask, Valuation, and Sales performance: Financials and pre-Shark Tank sales
  • Outcomes: Whether they secured a deal and which Shark invested
  • Business viability: Links to operational businesses today

Of these 12, 5 represent Nigeria, and 1 representative is from Senegal, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, Liberia, Zimbabwe, and Ethiopia. The graph below shows the number of businesses per country, highlighting the number that also got a deal in the Tank.

Key Takeaways

1. Leverage Your Unique Cultural Identity

One of the insights from the data is how cultural identity can serve as a unique branding advantage. Out of the 12 businesses, several founders incorporated aspects of their African heritage, which not only distinguished their brands but also resonated with investors and customers alike. For instance:

  • 54 Thrones, an African shea butter skincare line, celebrates African ingredients and beauty rituals.
  • Kahawa 1893, a coffee brand from Kenya, champions sustainable practices and supports Kenyan women farmers.
  • Ade + Ayo, a children’s clothing line, brings vibrant African prints to kids’ fashion.
  • Bee D’Vine, an Ethiopian honey wine, introduces a unique beverage tied to Ethiopian tradition.

These examples show how authenticity and cultural elements can offer a competitive edge in foreign markets.

2. Market validation through pre-sales

For many of these founders, pre-Shark Tank sales proved instrumental in building investor confidence. An example is Expedition Subsahara, an African-inspired home décor brand with $1.6 million in sales before pitching, underscoring the importance of demonstrating market fit early on. Building a customer base before seeking large investments can signal demand and reduce investor risk.

3. Targeting High-Interest Industries

Certain industries appear to attract more investor interest, potentially indicating where future African diaspora founders might focus. Among the businesses that received deals, there was strong representation in categories like beauty, food, and home goods — industries where there’s often consumer enthusiasm for unique, culture-rich products. Successful examples include Ade + Ayo showing a pattern of investor willingness in these spaces.

4. Women Leading the Charge

Interestingly, 7 out of the 12 founders were or included women — a notable statistic that speaks to the strong representation of female entrepreneurs in this sample. For women in the African diaspora considering entrepreneurship, this serves as an inspiring reminder of the impact and leadership possible in new ventures.

To conclude, these insights are just a starting point for diaspora entrepreneurs looking to make their mark. By embracing cultural authenticity, validating market demand, and considering investor trends, future founders can enhance their chances of success — even in unfamiliar markets.

Here is a list of the Businesses:

  1. Aqua Boxing Glove
  • Country: Nigeria
  • Business: Aqua Boxing Glove (FLUID BOXER™ V2)
  • Season of Shark Tank Appearance: 13
  • Founder Information: Tony Adeniran, Male, 2nd generation Nigerian
  • Industry Type: Sports
  • Investment Ask: $100,000 for 10% equity
  • Sales Performance: $40,000 in pre-sales
  • Shark Tank Outcome: No deal
  • Link to Business: Not available, business closed

2. Expedition Subsahara

  • Country: Senegal
  • Business: African-inspired baskets and home decor
  • Season of Shark Tank Appearance: 14
  • Founder Information: Sofi Seck, Female, 1st generation Senegalese
  • Industry Type: Home Decor
  • Investment Ask: $500,000 for 10% equity (valuation $5 million)
  • Sales Performance: $1.6 million
  • Shark Tank Outcome: No deal
  • Link to Business: Expedition Subsahara

3. Ade + Ayo

  • Country: Nigeria
  • Business: Affordable African print clothing for children
  • Season of Shark Tank Appearance: 13
  • Founder Information: Temidayo and Abisola Adedokun, Mixed-gender team, Nigerian
  • Industry Type: Clothing
  • Investment Ask: $175,000 for 10% equity
  • Shark Tank Outcome: Deal with Barbara Corcoran for $200,000 for 33.3% equity + $500,000 line of credit
  • Link to Business: Ade + Ayo

4. Zuvaa

  • Country: Nigeria
  • Business: African-inspired fashion and accessories
  • Season of Shark Tank Appearance: 9
  • Founder Information: Kelechi Anyadiegwu, Female, 2nd generation Nigerian
  • Industry Type: Clothing
  • Investment Ask: $460,000 for 10% equity
  • Sales Performance: $2 million
  • Shark Tank Outcome: No deal
  • Link to Business: Rebranded to Uju Media, business closed

5. 54 Thrones

  • Country: Nigeria
  • Business: African shea butter skincare line
  • Season of Shark Tank Appearance: 13
  • Founder Information: Christina Funke Tegbe, Female, 2nd generation Nigerian
  • Industry Type: Beauty / Skincare
  • Investment Ask: $250,000 for 10% equity
  • Sales Performance: $500,000
  • Shark Tank Outcome: Deal with Kevin O’Leary and Nirav Tolia for $250,000 for 17.5% equity
  • Link to Business: 54 Thrones

6. Kin Apparel

  • Country: Ghana
  • Business: Satin-lined hoodies for natural hair
  • Season of Shark Tank Appearance: 13
  • Founder Information: Philomina Kane, Female, 1st generation Ghanaian
  • Industry Type: Clothing
  • Investment Ask: $200,000 for 10% equity
  • Shark Tank Outcome: Deal with Emma Grede and Lori Greiner for $200,000 for 30% equity
  • Link to Business: Kin Apparel

7. Kahawa 1893 Coffee

  • Country: Kenya
  • Business: Kenyan coffee supporting women farmers
  • Season of Shark Tank Appearance: 14
  • Founder Information: Margaret Nyamumbo, Female, Kenyan
  • Industry Type: Beverage
  • Investment Ask: $350,000 for 5% equity
  • Shark Tank Outcome: Deal with Emma Grede for $350,000 for 8% equity
  • Link to Business: Kahawa 1893 Coffee

8. Moment

  • Country: South Africa
  • Business: Botanical beverage that replicates the feeling of meditation
  • Season of Shark Tank Appearance: 12
  • Founder Information: Aisha Chottani and Faheem Kajee, Mixed-gender team, South African
  • Industry Type: Beverage
  • Investment Ask: $200,000 for 10% equity
  • Shark Tank Outcome: No deal
  • Link to Business: Moment

9. Sweetkiwi

  • Country: Nigeria
  • Business: Low-calorie, high-protein frozen yoghourt
  • Season of Shark Tank Appearance: 14
  • Founder Information: Michael Akindele and Ehime Eigbem, Mixed-gender team, 1st generation Nigerian
  • Industry Type: Food / Frozen Desserts
  • Investment Ask: $250,000 for 5% equity
  • Sales Performance: $650,000
  • Shark Tank Outcome: Deal with Robert Herjavec for $250,000 for 16% equity (deal did not close)
  • Link to Business: Sweetkiwi

10. Uniform

  • Country: Liberia
  • Business: Africa’s first Fair Trade–certified apparel manufacturer
  • Season of Shark Tank Appearance: 10
  • Founder Information: Adam Butlein and Chid Liberty, Male, 1st generation Liberian
  • Industry Type: Clothing
  • Investment Ask: $300,000 for 10% equity
  • Sales Performance: $40 million per year
  • Shark Tank Outcome: No deal
  • Link to Business: Not available, business closed

11. The Floating Mug

  • Country: Zimbabwe
  • Business: Floating Mug Company
  • Season of Shark Tank Appearance: 6
  • Founder Information: Tigere “Tiggs” Chiriga, Male, 1st generation Zimbabwean
  • Industry Type: Home
  • Investment Ask: $75,000 for 15% equity
  • Sales Performance: $105,000
  • Shark Tank Outcome: No deal
  • Link to Business: Not available, business closed

12. Bee D’Vine

  • Country: Ethiopia
  • Business: Honey wine business
  • Season of Shark Tank Appearance: 12
  • Founder Information: Ayele Solomon, Male, 1st generation Ethiopian
  • Industry Type: Beverage
  • Investment Ask: $750,000 for 20% equity
  • Sales Performance: $115,000
  • Shark Tank Outcome: Deal with Mark Cuban, Lori Greiner, Daniel Lubetzky, and Robert Herjavec for $750,000 for 40% equity (Deal did not close after the Tank)
  • Link to Business: Bee D’Vine

If I missed including any business, please let me know 🙂 

Taming Tigers and Elephants: The Power of Pre-Mortems in Project Management

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

Are you a project lead, product manager, or event organiser who wants to avoid hearing “I knew this would happen” after a project fails? If so, this post is for you! Let’s explore a technique that can transform your project planning and execution: the pre-mortem.

We’re all familiar with post-mortems – those sometimes uncomfortable meetings where teams dissect what went wrong after a project’s completion. But what if we could address potential issues before they arise? Enter the pre-mortem, a powerful tool I recently learned from Shreyas Doshi, a veteran of tech giants like Stripe, Twitter, Google, and Yahoo. Pre-mortems provide psychological safety to tackle the elephants and tigers in the room before they become real problems. As Doshi wisely puts it, “If you do a pre-mortem right, you won’t need a tough post-mortem.”

What is a Pre-Mortem?

Unlike a post-mortem, which analyzes a project’s failures after the fact, a pre-mortem is a proactive exercise. It involves imagining the project has already failed and brainstorming the potential reasons why. By identifying potential pitfalls upfront, teams can take steps to mitigate risks and increase the chances of success.

Companies like Amazon and Google have long used pre-mortems to great effect. For instance, when Amazon was planning to launch Amazon Go stores, they conducted extensive pre-mortems to identify potential issues with the “just walk out” technology. This allowed them to address concerns about theft, technical glitches, and customer adoption before the first store ever opened.

So, how does a pre-mortem work? Here’s a step-by-step guide:

1. Set the Stage: Imagine project failure: Tell your team to fast-forward to a future where the project has failed spectacularly and brainstorm potential reasons why. This mindset shift is crucial for honest reflection.

2. Categorise Concerns: Doshi’s approach to pre-mortems adds a layer of nuance by categorising the identified issues into three types: Tigers, Paper Tigers, and Elephants. This categorization encourages open and honest dialogue, fostering a culture of psychological safety where team members feel comfortable voicing their concerns without fear of judgement. Ask team members to list their concerns in three categories:

   – 🐅 Tigers: Major threats that will hurt if not addressed. As an example, The marketing team is understaffed for the launch timeline

   – 🐯 Paper Tigers: Apparent threats that some might worry about, but might not be as significant as they seem. E.g., Concerns about the product’s price point, which market research has already validated

   – 🐘 Elephants: Unspoken issues that the team is avoiding. E.g., Doubts about the CEO’s public speaking skills for the launch event

3. Encourage openness: Create a safe space for team members to voice concerns without fear of judgement. Remember, the goal is to identify potential issues, not assign blame.

4. Document and analyse: Record all concerns raised and analyse them post-meeting to strengthen your project plan.

Tips for Effective Pre-Mortems

1. Timing is key: Conduct pre-mortems early enough to make meaningful changes, but late enough to have a solid project plan to discuss.

2. Involve all stakeholders: Include team members from various departments to get a comprehensive view of potential issues.

3. Follow through: The pre-mortem is only as good as the actions it inspires. Create a clear plan to address identified concerns.

4. Revisit and revise: As the project progresses, revisit your pre-mortem findings and adjust your strategies as needed.

To conclude, by incorporating pre-mortems into your project planning, you’re not just preventing failures – you’re setting your team up for success. You’re creating a culture of open communication, proactive problem-solving, and continuous improvement.

Remember, in the world of project management, foresight is 20/20. So, before your next big project, gather your team, imagine failure, and start taming those tigers and elephants 🙂

From MVProduct to MVProject: Building Better Projects, Faster

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

You’ve probably heard the term “Minimum Viable Product” (MVP) thrown around in tech circles. It is a concept that has revolutionised how businesses approach product development. But what about projects? Can we apply the same principles to them? This was the question that got me curious to explore how the MVProduct concepts can be applied to MVProjects. I have been involved in numerous projects, and often you realise too late, when you have invested too much time and resources, that either it was not worth it, or it was not designed effectively.

Before we dive into MVPs for projects, let’s clarify the difference between a product and a project.

  • Product: Something you can sell or licence. It has tangible value and generates revenue. think iPhone, or a new flavour of ice cream.
  • Project: A temporary endeavour undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result. It has a defined beginning and end. Building a new office, or launching a marketing campaign are examples.

While both involve creating something new, products are often ongoing, while projects are time-bound.

Just like a Minimum Viable Product, a Minimum Viable Project (MVP) is a version of a project with just enough features to gather valid feedback from users.  The key difference is that instead of customers, you’re gathering feedback from stakeholders, team members, and beneficiaries.

MVProject allows organisations to dip their toes into new initiatives without diving headfirst into the deep end. Think of it as a pilot episode of a TV show: you test the concept before committing to a full season. Though there is also a difference between an MVP and a Pilot. MVP: Focuses on testing the core concept and getting feedback on whether to move forward, pivot, or drop the idea, while Pilot: Often involves a larger-scale test under real-world conditions, closer to a full-scale launch.

The goal of an MVP is not to create a perfect final product, but to learn and iterate. Benefits of MVPs for Projects?

  • Faster time-to-value: By focusing on the core elements of the project, you can deliver results and make adjustments quicker.
  • Reduced risk: With a smaller scope, you minimise the risk of project failure and wasted resources.
  • Increased flexibility: You can pivot or make changes based on early feedback without significant setbacks.
  • Improved collaboration: The MVP approach fosters collaboration and shared ownership among team members.

How could you build Your Minimum Viable Project?

  1. Define the core objectives: What is the primary goal of your project? What problem are you really solving? This is what the MVProject would test 
  2. Identify key stakeholders: Who will be impacted by the project? Who needs to be involved?
  3. Create a minimal deliverable: Focus on the essential elements that will provide value and gather feedback. Instead of focusing on a big transformation, start with one critical objective. Embrace the “Good enough” mindset.  Perfect is the enemy of done. When Zappos wanted to test if people would buy shoes online, founder Nick Swinmurn didn’t build a complex e-commerce platform. He took photos of shoes at local stores and posted them online. When orders came in, he bought the shoes from the stores and shipped them out. Not elegant, but it proved the concept.
  4. Set a time box for the MVP: Break down the project into manageable phases with clear deliverables. Talking weeks, not months.
  5. Gather feedback, learn, adapt, repeat: The goal of an MVProject isn’t perfection; it’s learning. Regularly seek input from stakeholders to refine the project and ensure it meets their needs.

By applying the MVP mindset to your projects, you’ll be better equipped to deliver value, manage risks, and achieve your objectives more efficiently.  So, the next time someone in your organisation suggests a massive, complex project, be the voice of reason. Ask, “What’s our MVProject version of this?” You might just become the hero who saves your organisation time, money, and headaches – all while delivering real value.

Once you start thinking in MVProject terms, you’ll see opportunities everywhere:

  • Planning a conference? Start with a small, focused meetup.
  • Considering a new product line? Test it with a limited-edition release.
  • Want to write a book? Begin with a series of blog posts or a short e-book.

Remember, an MVProject isn’t about doing less; it’s about doing smart. It’s about finding the shortest path between your current state and new knowledge.

Do you have examples of Minimum Viable Projects that you can share? Kindly share them in the comments 🙂

Empowered volunteer teams: Ordinary people, Extraordinary social impact – Lessons from “Empowered” by Marty Cagan

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

As I recently embarked on my journey as a product manager, I discovered Marty Cagan, a renowned figure in product management. Cagan’s book “Empowered: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Products” outlines principles for building successful product teams. While primarily focused on the tech industry, based on many years of volunteering in a nonprofit organisation, I realised that these principles could also be applied to nonprofit organisations that rely on volunteers. In the book, Cagan particularly highlights that it is neither talent nor specialised skills or experiences that results in successful teams but well-defined principles, processes and culture.

In this blog post, I explore how the principles of empowered teams can be adapted to create a culture of empowerment within nonprofits, enabling volunteers to make a significant impact on the organisation’s mission. Empowered volunteers are more engaged, productive, and likely to stay involved in the long term which is a great benefit for organisations.

Principles for Empowered volunteer teams:

1. Mission clarity and alignment: Empowered teams are driven by a clear mission. For volunteers, who are motivated by the cause rather than monetary compensation, it becomes crucial for nonprofits to define and communicate a compelling mission statement. Regularly connecting volunteers’ work to the overall impact and celebrating successes reinforces the value of their contributions.

2. Small, autonomous, and cross-functional teams: Cagan suggests organising empowered teams into small, autonomous, and cross-functional units. In nonprofits, these could be working groups, committees, or project-based teams. Nonprofits can thus empower volunteers by assigning them ownership of specific projects or tasks within the teams.  This fosters accountability, engagement, and agility in problem-solving.

3. Focus on outcomes and be beneficiary-centric: Empowered teams prioritise meeting user needs, and for non-profits, this translates to prioritising the needs of beneficiaries. Clear project goals aligned with the mission, along with defining success metrics and tracking progress, help volunteers understand the impact of their work. Celebrating achievements and embracing a culture of continuous improvement are crucial aspects.

4. Continuous learning: Empowered teams are committed to continuous learning and growth. Nonprofits can support volunteers’ development by providing learning opportunities, offering coaching, and promoting collaboration across teams. Sharing knowledge and expertise further contributes to the growth of empowered volunteer teams.

Culture of Empowered Volunteer Teams:

1. Trust and respect: Empowered teams require trust and respect among team members. Nonprofits should create a safe and supportive environment where volunteers feel comfortable sharing ideas, asking questions, and learning from mistakes.

2. Transparency, communication, and collaboration: Non-profit organisations should be transparent about their goals and priorities and have a culture of feedback, fostering open communication and collaboration. This promotes a sense of shared purpose and enables knowledge sharing among volunteers.

3. Continuous learning: Nonprofits should prioritise continuous learning and improvement at both organisational and individual levels. Encouraging a growth mindset among volunteers and providing opportunities for skill development contributes to their empowerment.

4. Empathy: Nonprofits should exhibit empathy towards both beneficiaries and volunteers. Celebrating diversity, valuing unique contributions, and recognising achievements create a positive and motivating work environment for empowered volunteer teams.

In conclusion, by adopting the principles outlined in Marty Cagan’s “Empowered,” non-profit organisations can create a culture of empowerment for volunteers. Clear mission alignment, small autonomous teams, beneficiary-centric focus, continuous learning, and a supportive culture contribute to the extraordinary social impact that empowered volunteer teams can achieve.

Let the data do the talking in your CV and cover letter: Mastering the art of quantifying achievements

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

I recently came across a great CV and was reminded of the power data has to make someone stand out. It’s one thing for example to say you were responsible for social media marketing vs creating a social media campaign that resulted in X number of impressions, leads or engagement, or that you were a food delivery entrepreneur who had a 5 star rating in customer satisfaction. The latter evidence demonstrate the value you bring.

In today’s competitive job market, it’s important to be able to quantify one’s achievements and articulate them in our CV and cover letter. It lends credibility to your claims and helps you stand out from the competition. In addition, it helps showcase your value to potential employers. However, putting this into practice can be challenging, especially when you can feel you haven’t accomplished anything significant. In this blog post, we explore practical strategies to help effectively quantify achievements and present them confidently in your application.

1. Focus on measurable outcomes:

Instead of dwelling on grand achievements, shift your perspective to measurable outcomes. Think about the impact you have made, regardless of its scale. Consider the following approaches to quantify your achievements:

  • Demonstrate improvements: Highlight instances where you have made improvements in your work, even if they seem small. For example, if you streamlined a process, communicate how it resulted in time or cost savings.
  • Showcase growth: Emphasise personal or professional growth you have experienced. This can include acquiring new skills, completing relevant courses, or taking on additional responsibilities.
  • Highlight positive feedback: If you have received positive feedback from colleagues, clients, or superiors, incorporate their testimonials as evidence of your skills and contributions.

2. Utilise percentages, numbers, and timeframes:

Numbers have a powerful way of communicating impact and value as I shared in a previous post. Even seemingly insignificant figures can provide context, demonstrate your ability to quantify results, and set you apart from other applicants. Consider the following examples:

  • Increased sales by 10% within three months.
  • Managed a project that reduced customer complaints by 15%.
  • Completed a task ahead of schedule, saving two hours per week.

3. Emphasise transferable skills:

Quantifying achievements is not limited to tangible results. Highlight transferable skills that can be measured, such as:

  • Effective communication: Mention instances where your communication skills have led to successful collaborations or improved team dynamics. Don’t just say you are an effective communicator and leave it at that.
  • Problem-solving: Provide examples of how your problem-solving abilities have contributed to resolving issues or implementing innovative solutions.
  • Leadership: Describe situations where you successfully led a team or project, highlighting specific outcomes such as meeting deadlines or exceeding targets.

4. Use qualitative data:

While numerical data is valuable, qualitative information can also be impactful. Incorporate testimonials, accolades, or recognition you have received, even if they are in the form of written or verbal appreciation from colleagues or clients. These qualitative indicators can demonstrate the value you bring to the table.

To conclude, quantifying achievements in your CV and cover letter may seem daunting, however, by shifting your focus to measurable outcomes, utilising percentages and numbers, emphasising transferable skills, and including qualitative data, you can effectively showcase your value to potential employers. 

Remember, it’s not always about grand achievements, but rather about presenting your experiences and contributions in a quantifiable and confident manner. 

Unsure how to showcase what you have done? As a Data Analyst professional, I can help. Feel free to reach out.

GenAI prompts to help you identify your IKIGAI, what you want to do in Life

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

You might be at a crossroad in your life or are still searching for your dream job or perhaps wondering if what you are doing is what you are meant to be doing. In a previous article, I explored the concept of IKIGAI or identifying what you want to do in life. I presented the diagram below as a way to identify what you want to do by looking at the intersections of what  you love, enjoy, care about, what you are good at, what the world needs (…that you can give) and what you can be paid for.

Ikigai diagram, adapted from Source

In the article, I shared a manual process I had undertaken that includes writing down lists under each theme and then finding intersections between the four lists and analysing them to come to a conclusion. While this was very fruitful, it was still a manual process that could become challenging with longer lists.

With their ability to access vast information about the world and find intersections, in this blog post I explore the use of textual Generative AI (GenAI) tools to support the process of finding what to do in life. Textual GenAI tools allow you to interact with them in a natural language manner and have been trained on a vast amount of information that they are able to analyse, process and provide new insights. I share a process and set of prompts I used to reach, not so surprisingly, similar conclusion to what I had come to manually but I reached there faster and found a few things along the way, like ideas for side hustles. I also include Screenshots from one of the tools I used, Google’s Gemini. You can also test the prompts out in Open AI’s ChatGPT.

Prompt: As an expert IKIGAI coach, you are going to help me find my Ikigai, the intersection of what I love to do, what I am good at, what the world needs, and what I can get paid for.  

Here is the list of what I love, enjoy and care about.

  • Travelling
  • Empowering people
  • Watching good tv shows and movies
  • Listening to music
  • Dancing 
  • Critical thinking 
  • Data analysis 
  • Baking
  • Spending time with my family 
  • Bringing out the best in people 
  • Writing blog posts that share new insights
  • Conducting research and problem solving on problems that I care about
  • Having a good laugh
  • Making functional arts and crafts items
  • Reading books especially crime related or courtroom dramas
  • Being creative and coming up with solutions
  • Organising meaningful events

Here is then the list of what I am good at:

  • Baking
  • Event management and planning
  • Big picture thinking
  • Being disciplined and seeing things through
  • Adapting and being flexible 
  • Staying cool under pressure
  • Good eye for visuals
  • Connecting people
  • Being proactive
  • Being creative and generating ideas
  • Teaching
  • Critical thinking
  • Research, gathering data, evidence
  • Creating visually appealing visualisations
  • Braiding hair
  • Supporting and inspiring people
  • Learning new skills
  • Data analysis

What are the intersections between what I love and what I am good at?”

Screenshot 1 in the Gallery below shows the output with a list of intersections that it found. The first and last two options were more aligned with I want to do. I entered the following prompt after that.

Prompt: Looking at the Creative problem-solving and Data storytelling, what are the problems in the world that need solving where those two things would be applicable.

Screenshot 2 gives a list of problems that are aligned with my skills and what I enjoy.

Prompt: List the ways in which I can make good money from solving those problems and how. Include suggestions of who also could pay for it.

As I have been thinking of going more on the entrepreneurial route, I also asked:

Prompt: What about entrepreneurial options. What businesses can i build to solve those problems.

Many of the ideas that were given in the output align very much with what I have been thinking about and actually had started doing, e.g., see HERE. From these I can delve further and narrow down on what to try.

From these prompts, you can begin to form a picture. Naturally GenAI tools are limited to your context or understanding of your environment. However, they can provide general thinking points to  continue and generate ideas on how to start and create a road map for yourself.

Enjoy the journey of exploration and discovery!

  • Screenshot 1
  • Screenshot 2
  • Screenshot 3
  • Screenshot 4

3 simple reasons why being data-driven matters for your value proposition

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

Harnessing the potential of data-driven approaches can revolutionise how organisations, projects, and individuals achieve their goals. However, despite the abundance of data available, many struggle to fully utilise it to drive success. In this blog post, we will delve into three simple yet crucial reasons why implementing data-driven approaches can bring significant benefits whether at an organisational, project or person level.

Let’s first establish a common understanding of data. Simply put, data is a representation of information that can manifest in various forms, including numbers, text, images, or sensor readings. Now, let’s explore how data matters, using concrete examples at three perspectives.

  1. Data provides proof of value proposition. Data holds the power to provide tangible proof of the value and impact of your endeavours . By analysing data, you can uncover insights that showcase the effectiveness of your offerings. Let’s illustrate this with examples:
    1. Organisation level: An ecommerce business can analyse customer purchase patterns, feedback, and engagement metrics, to demonstrate the value of their products or services brought to customers. By understanding customer preferences and tailoring their offerings accordingly, they can increase customer satisfaction and retention rates.
    2. Project level: A non-profit project that provides clean water taps to rural areas collects data on usage patterns, customer testimonials, and health improvements. By analysing this data, they can showcase the positive impact of their project, attracting funding and support for expansion.
    3. Personal level: An individual who offers freelance graphic design services analyses client feedback, project success rates, and portfolio performance. By leveraging data to demonstrate their track record and client satisfaction, they can attract more clients.
  1. Unlocks new opportunities for transformation. Data and insights from the data can reveal new opportunities and help you transform your offerings. Building upon the previous examples:
    1. The ecommerce business: By analysing the purchasing patterns, market trends, and customer preferences, they can identify upsell or cross sell opportunities to increase revenue generation. 
    2. The non-profit: By analysing the usage patterns could make a stronger case for expansion.
    3. Similarly, at a personal level, the freelancer can use project rates, competitor insights, and client feedback to inform a more effective pricing strategy.
  1. Empowers decision-making and confidence – When you have data, it acts as armour, empowering you to make well-informed decisions. As demonstrated with the examples above, it instils confidence to take calculated risks at all levels.

Remember, data itself is just raw information until you give it meaning. By using data to provide proof of your value proposition, uncover new opportunities, empower decision-making, and give meaning to data through effective storytelling, you set yourself up for success. 

Want support in collecting, analysing and communicating your impact with Data? Read more on what I can offer and reach out.

A step-by-step data-driven approach to job search and preparation

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

Transitioning careers or entering the job market can be a daunting task, but with a data-driven approach, you can streamline your preparation and increase your chances of success. In this article, I provide practical steps to help one identify the skills in demand, prioritise your learning, and make yourself visible to potential employers. Included is also a prompt that can easily be used with for example OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini to easily conduct the analysis. Naturally other analysis methods can be applied. While the examples are largely tailored to a career in Data Analysis, the underlying steps are applicable to other fields as well.

Step 1: Identify the skills needed for your target career

To begin, it’s crucial to identify the skills that are most sought after by employers. As a Data Analyst, I have often received questions as to whether to study python or R, while I can give my opinion based on my workplace, it is beneficial to leverage data to guide the decision. Start by analysing job boards such as Jobylon or LinkedIn Jobs, and search for positions related to your desired career. This will help you discover the most in-demand skills in your desired location. Filter by location if that is a factor.

Step 2: Prioritise skills based on market trends, benefits, and location

Now that you have a list of skills, it’s time to prioritise them based on various factors. Start by analysing the correlation between specific skills and advertised benefits or salaries. This will help you identify skills associated with higher earning potential, aligning your learning with your career goals. Additionally, analyse the growth trends of these skills over time to stay ahead of the curve and focus on those with increasing demand.

Step 3: Acquire skills and make them visible

Once you have prioritised the skills, it’s time to acquire them and make your expertise visible. Search for online courses, tutorials, and bootcamps that cater to these specific skills on platforms like Udemy, Coursera, edX, or university websites. Filter the learning resources based on your current skill level, ensuring you find materials suitable for beginners, intermediate learners, or advanced professionals.

To showcase the real-world applicability of your skills, consider engaging in projects with non-profit organisations or participating in competitions. These experiences not only help you grow your skills but also demonstrate a social impact. Additionally, leverage hobby projects, summer jobs, or internships to gain practical experience.

Step 4: Tailor your CV, resume, and LinkedIn profile

Now that you have acquired the desired skills and gained some practical experience, it’s time to tailor your CV, resume, and LinkedIn profile to highlight your expertise. Incorporate the keywords you discovered during the analysis of job postings into your skills, experience, summary, and header sections. This will make your profile more relevant and attractive to potential employers.

Step 5: Build your network based on your findings

They say your network is your net worth. Leverage the findings from your analysis to build a relevant professional network. Perform a LinkedIn search based on the identified keywords and connect or follow individuals who are active in those areas. Follow companies related to your desired field and participate in skill-related events organised by those companies. Building a strong network, regardless of the country you are in, can open doors to opportunities and valuable connections. 

Find below an example of a process that you can adapt for your own use.

In summary, while a data-driven approach is a valuable tool in building your career path, it’s important to consider your personal interests, career goals, and learning preferences as well. Combine the insights gained from data analysis with your passions to make informed decisions about your learning journey. With the right skills, a tailored profile, and a strong network, you’ll be well-prepared to pursue your dream job and achieve professional success.

Process:

1.Create an Excel with job descriptions in one column. Collect as many relevant positions as possible.

2.Enter the below prompt in ChatGPT or Gemini or another tool. I would recommend trying this on multiple platforms as for instance ChatGPT provides insights based on available data up until 2021. For Tech jobs at least, the job market changes fast. Therefore, it’s essential to supplement this analysis with up-to-date information and stay informed about the latest trends.

Prompt:  “Please analyse the keywords from the  job posts that are shared below and provide insights on their frequency, benefit correlation, and market trends for a career in [Data Analytics]

First, Identify the most frequently occurring keywords in these job posts related to [Data Analytics] and provide a ranked list of these keywords based on their frequency of occurrence.

Secondly, analyse the correlation between the specific skill keywords and the benefits of the job posts. Identify keywords that show a strong positive correlation with higher salaries in the [Data Analytics] market. Provide also insights into the skills or keywords that are associated with higher earning potential in [Data Analytics].

Thirdly, analyse the growth trends of specific skills or keywords over time in [Europe]. Identify skills or keywords that have seen a significant increase in demand over the past [3 years]. Provide insights into emerging skills or keywords that are in high demand and can give professionals a competitive edge in [Data Analytics].

Lastly, Please present the results in an organised manner, including the frequency-ranked list of keywords, a summary of benefit correlations, and an analysis of market trends. Additionally, if there are any notable findings or recommendations based on the analysis, please include those as well.

[Attached are the job descriptions in csv file/Below are the job descriptions]”

Below are screenshots of sample results from Google’s Gemini with the above prompt.

Screenshot of sample results from ChatGPT

4 Superpowers to stay relevant in the AI Age

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

I often wish for the ability to think of something like sending an email or WhatsApp message and it actually sends, especially as my time in front of devices has diminished considerably. However with advancements like Elon Musk’s first Neuralink Telepathy product, that future does not seem that far away now. Thus it becomes essential to equip ourselves with the right qualities or skills to stay relevant.

Inspired by a keynote presentation on “AI and the Future of Humans” by futurist Niclas Hermansson at a recent event by Avaus called AI beyond the Hype, this blog post explores the four superpowers that can help us remain relevant in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) age: Critical Thinking, Collaboration, Creativity, and Communication. These also made me think as a parent, how I encourage these in my kids for the AI world they are growing up in. Not only as a parent, but how I also stay relevant in my career when automation is going to handle a lot of what I do, from data cleaning, advanced analysis, visualisation, and storytelling, which in itself is beneficial. But it does force me to be more creative and expand my big picture thinking, looking at what else and, how to create additional value.

Critical thinking – In an era of abundant information and increasing disinformation, critical thinking becomes a vital skill. According to Hermansson, AI will compel individuals to become smarter and exercise source criticism. As the sea of information deepens, it becomes crucial to step back, comprehend the bigger picture, and discern reliable sources from misleading ones. Developing critical thinking skills empowers us to make informed decisions and navigate the complex landscape of AI-driven information both at a personal and professional level.

Collaboration – The ability to work effectively  with others becomes a superstrength in an AI-driven world, especially as the gig economy grows. Hermansson highlights that high emotional intelligence and the capacity to cooperate are increasingly valuable in the workplace. While technology has reduced the demand for high IQs, the power of human connection and collaboration remains unparalleled. Embracing collaboration allows us to harness collective intelligence, combine diverse perspectives, and tackle complex challenges in the AI age.

Creativity – Despite the advancements in AI technologies like Sora, Midjourney, Gemini, and ChatGPT, among many others, creativity remains a superpower. In fact, Hermansson predicts that by 2050, 40 percent of today’s professions will be automated, while others will require creative problem-solving skills. Standing out and finding innovative solutions to complex problems become essential for professional success. Cultivating creativity enables us to adapt, think outside the box, and leverage our unique human capabilities alongside AI-driven tools.

Communication – In an era of information overload, effective communication becomes a superpower to cut through the noise as well as consume the right information. Hermansson highlights that our brains process a staggering 100,000 words daily, but we only remember a mere two percent. Therefore, becoming a skilled communicator allows us to convey our ideas, insights, and value in a compelling manner. Mastering communication ensures that we can effectively share our knowledge, connect with others, and make an impact in the AI age.

The AI age is undeniably here and it is becoming more and more accessible to the wider public as well as becoming more user-friendly. By honing these skills, we can remain relevant, adapt to the changing landscape, and leverage the potential of AI to enhance our personal and professional lives.

How are you preparing?

Product innovation as a means for self-financing in nonprofits

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

Product innovation is something that you rarely hear  non-profits discuss as a way to generate funds. Yet nothing stops nonprofits from productising their services/offering as a means of self-financing. 

I recently listened to a presentation on Business skills that make millions by Myron Golden.  He shared three skills that businesses need to generate a lot of money. The presentation  emphasised  product innovation, and also provided a framework for thinking about how to create products that have value – that are desirable in the marketplace. It made me reflect on its applicability in the nonprofit world where funding is always a challenge.  

The framework outlines three main skills, product innovation, revenue generation (which includes promotion, marketing, selling) and asset allocation (which includes pricing, payment collection, payment gateways). In this blog, I focus on the first skill, product innovation, in the context of nonprofits. As defined by the Harvard Business School, product innovation is the “process of creating a new product—or improving an existing one—to meet customers’ needs in a novel way”.

Myron emphasises product innovation rather than service innovation as a way to generate wealth because a service needs time to fulfill. Because time is limited, he recommends disconnecting the revenue generation from time as much as possible. This is especially relevant for nonprofits, as from observation, we tend to invest more in services than products. Yet time is even more scarce especially in volunteer-run nonprofits like Think Africa.

In Mylon’s framework, product innovation has three characteristics:

  1. Desirability: A product is desirable if it offers a solution to the marketplace, if it has value. Myron shares three situations that cause people to value things and that could make your offering/product desirable.
  • Past perceived voids create present pursued value: If someone grows up without something but  desires it, when they have a chance to get it, they will. To create something valuable, you can then find a large group of people with a void and design a product  that fills that void.
  • Present perceived virtues create present pursued values: When someone perceives something as good now, they are going to pursue it. 
  • Future perceived visions create present pursued values: When someone perceives something with the vision that it will pay off in the future they are going to get it e.g., paying tuition fees for a degree.
  1. Measurable: The promise of your product needs to be measurable, life before your product and after the product. The greater the transformation of your product, the more you can charge for it.
  2. State-able in a soundbite:  You need to figure out how to say what you do for people in an easy-to-understand sentence.

Now, it’s easy to say or know that you should pursue product innovation, but even that takes time which nonprofits do not have. However, in some cases creating a desirable product could take the same amount of time it takes to write and submit a public grant, or organise an event or project. The advantage of investing in product innovation is that once you have created a desirable product then you don’t have to keep reinventing the wheel. Even the process can become a template for new innovations. Whereas with a grant, you might end up having to submit to several different funders to get a positive answer, if at all.

A few examples of low hanging fruit that nonprofits could explore include innovation around membership fees and services that are already being offered. Many nonprofits charge membership fees in return for benefits. This is already a product where more value could be created to attract members who are happy to renew each year. One could for instance innovate to also have a specific offering for those that can afford €200 and offer that to 5,000 people/companies and that is €1 million annual revenue. 

Most nonprofits are also run by people with a certain expertise that makes them the best people to fulfill the organisation’s mission. Those same experts could spend time writing a book, newsletter, online guidelines that provide value (something that is desirable for many) and sell those assets. Your creators could potentially sell more digital products within  an hour  than you could deliver a service in that same period.

I hope this ignited some thoughts around product innovation in nonprofits. Do you have examples of nonprofits that have succeeded in  product innovation and t could inspire others? Please share.

Unlocking Finland’s African Non-Profit Ecosystem

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

Collaboration, representation, and the celebration of the diversity of cultures are among the key values of Think Africa. To enable that, an overview of the ecosystem, the players, history, and their location is essential.

Finland is home to a thriving African diaspora community that constitutes around 1% of the population (57 496, Statistics Finland 2020). Non-profit organisations like Think Africa and many others provide essential services important for the Diaspora and the Finnish Society, from supporting integration, well being, information sharing, cultural understanding, and bridging of Finland and African countries. 

The mapping of the ecosystem of nonprofits in Finland reveals that there are at least 340 registered organisations in the Finnish Trade registry system. Majority of them, 69,7% (237) are focused on a specific African country. The mapping reveals a rich variety of missions, activities, presence across Finland and impact areas. Gain insights into the ecosystem players, oldest, and new. Whether you are a new-comer in Finland or seasoned, the mapping expands your networks, reach and collaboration opportunities. 

The mapping has been captured in an interactive Dashboard that allows one to explore and discover all the organisations that have ever been registered, when, where, their mission and web pages where available, if they are still active, as well as whether they are transnational, regional, national, or ethnic focused.

See Dashboard here Ecosystem mapping of Africa-related non-profits in Finland | Tableau Public

Insights overview

According to the ecosystem mapping, we’ve identified 340 African diaspora and Africa-focused non-profit organisations across Finland. With the majority of the organisations being registered in Helsinki. The highest concentration of organisations can be found in Helsinki, which also has the highest concentration of the African diaspora in Finland (38,5% = 22,138). The number of transnational organisations that represent the whole continent, similarly to Think Africa are 52, the number that are still active, i.e., have a web presence are 32 (61,5%)

A majority of these, 237 (69.7%) constitute organisations that represent a specific African country or ethnicity in a specific country (40 organisations). These represent 34 African countries, out 54 that are present in Finland as per Statistics Finland 2020. The oldest of these is a Moroccan organisation called Suomalais-Marokkolainen Yhdistys ry that was registered in 1964. However it does not seem to still be active from the lack of any web presence. Moroccans constitute the fourth biggest diaspora population according to Statistics Finland 2020 and we identified 17 organisations representing Morocco. Considering that the first person of African descent was a Namibian, Rosa Lemberg, who came to Finland in 1888, it is surprising to see that the earliest Namibia-focused organisation was registered in 1975.

African countries represented by the organisations – See full visualisation of the data here ->Ecosystem mapping of Africa-related non-profits in Finland | Tableau Public

Expectedly, as Somalia and Nigeria constitute the biggest diaspora population, with 22,534 and 4,150 people respectively, the data shows a higher number of organisations with 68 and 25 respectively. Surprisingly Sudan which has a relatively smaller diaspora population, 2,013, has almost as high a number of organisations as Nigeria.

The data perspective also reveals the absence of representation of certain African nations, such as Burundi, Ivory Coast, Lesotho, Mali, Chad, among others.

Activeness and collaboration among organisations

I have heard people say that Finland is a land of nonprofits as it is easy to start one. Just in 2023, 11 organisations were registered. Unfortunately it is not easy to also maintain operations especially as many of the non-profits are run on a volunteer basis.  Out of the 340 identified registered non-profits, 117 (34,4%) have a web presence and are considered for the purpose of this analysis active. However, it does not mean that having a web presence means one is still operational and vice-versa. Looking also at the list of active organisations, many are active through Facebook pages rather than their own websites.

Organisations have been registered across 38 cities around Finland, with the majority of organisations existing in the bigger cities of Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa, Turku and Tampere.

Through experience, one of the questions that often gets asked among the diaspora organisations is the need for an umbrella organisation as that would also facilitate collaboration and unity. Looking at the missions of the organisations, there are umbrella organisations, some who are country focused. However, among those with a continental focus, there has only been two that describe themselves as such; The African Civil Society (ACSF) and Finnish African Diaspora Platform for Development (FADP) ry, with the latter seeming not to be active anymore and the former not having any fresh content on their website, i.e., content within the past year. The oldest of the transnational organisations is the Finnish African Society ry that is still active as within the last year.

DATA COLLECTION

The data was collected through an initial listing of organisations within Think Africa’s network that focus on the African diaspora or Africa. The list was expanded through a search in the Finnish Trade registry system with keywords that include Africa*, Diaspora, Afrofinn*, names of African countries represented in Finland (See Tableau Dashboard). Hence it’s possible that some organisations focusing on some ethnicities that did not get returned through the search could have been missed.

Moreover, only those non-profit organisations registered were included. Other civil societies like Good Hair Day, Ubuntu Film club, or UEF Joensuu African Students Organization (ASA), among others, that focus on people of African descent in Finland but are not in the registry were not included.

CREDITS

Ecosystem mapping was produced by Myriam Munezero, Data Analyst by profession. Data collection was supported by members and volunteers of Think Africa Aderemi Fayoyiwa, Olivia Alfred, and Salma Gheita. Think Africa recently captured the actions of organisations in this video -> Celebrating the Impactful Actions of the African Diaspora in Finland.

For any corrections, contact Myriam at mdoucem[at]gmail.com

The equation for behaviour occurrence. A Framework for assessing the likelihood of desired behaviour

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

At the heart of any behaviour change or habit formation is discipline. Whether you want to improve your health, master a skill, manage your time better, or start and run a business, it all comes down to your discipline.

I recently listened to an interview with entrepreneur Steven Bartlett (link) by Chris Williamson,  where he talked about the equation for discipline and behaviour change. Steven Barlett through his Diary of a CEO podcast has interviewed and gathered a lot of information on discipline, behaviour, psychology, and many other related topics. As a data analyst, I couldn’t help but be curious about the applicability of the equation, scenarios in which it works, and how it could be leveraged. I like formulas because they give you guidelines for data collection and prediction.

The equation

According to Steven, the equation for discipline is as follows: Discipline = Subjective importance of goal (why the it matters to you, how much it matters) + Psychological enjoyment that you get in the pursuit of the goal – Psychological cost, how much pain, effort, friction do you experience. Simplified as Discipline = Importance + Enjoyment – Cost, this equation offers insights into factors influencing behaviour. If the equation is positive it will occur, otherwise not.

Expanding the equation

To make the equation really represent discipline, I believe there has to be a time component as discipline involves something happening over time. Thus I see this equation more as a behaviour occurrence equation. In addition, I would propose adding another component, Priority of the goal now, which is influenced by time. This is because due time constraints, not all behaviours can happen. The equation thus becomes: Behaviour = (Importance * Priority) + Enjoyment – Cost

In the interview, Steven and Chris discussed a few scenarios to assess the effectiveness of the equation. I tried it as well and what I like is that it gives you an idea where to focus your efforts if you really want a behaviour to occur. For instance, I have been wanting  to start a business for a few years now but it has not happened yet. And running this behaviour through the equation, by assessing each variable on a scale of  1 to 10 and priority on a scale if 1 to 3 (*note the scales are still a work in progress), the Importance is really high = 8, the Cost is also very high = 9, and Enjoyment is low = 3. The priority of the goal at this moment of my life is also not so high 1. This results in a +2 overall. 

Even though the answer is positive,currently the friction/cost is too high and priority too low and hence the desired behaviour does not happen. To make the behaviour happen, I would need to reduce the friction/cost or increase the perceived enjoyment from pursuing the goal. This is also where James Clear’s four steps on habit formation and creation processes to achieving goals come in handy (see the summary). 

Exploring a use case of the equation: Data collection and event attendance

Another intriguing application use case that came to mind when I was assessing this equation was how, with data collection, to assess and predict event attendance before an event. Drawing inspiration from my volunteerism work at Think Africa, and our recent event, Think Africa Week. I contemplated how we could gather data on the equation variables to predict and influence attendee behaviour. As it often happens in many free events, there are many people who register and do not show up and as an organiser you are often left wondering why, is it the time of year, is it the content, what could you have done differently, what could you do better next time.

If we look at a person coming to an event as the desired behaviour that we want to occur. Could we collect data along the equation variables that could help us assess whether this behaviour will happen or not? And could we use the data to affect the behaviour? 

I still need to test this but I imagined incorporating the variables into a registration form, almost like levers that a potential attendee moves in a simple way not to prevent registration, to indicate at what level they assess:

  • The importance of the event or similar ones to them
  • The perceived enjoyment they will get from the event or they get from similar ones
  • The level of friction that might prevent them from coming 
  • Level of priority they give to attending the event, other things considered

With the answers, we could obtain a likelihood score of someone coming to the event. Such insights would be valuable for planning purposes, enabling us to make informed decisions and improve future events. 

My next steps are to try this with a few real events and share the results.

What do you think of this framework and what other use cases come to mind?

3 ways ChatGPT can save your nonprofit time and resources and boost productivity – From fundraising, finding partners, marketing, etc.

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

Having served as the Chairperson of a nonprofit for five years, I know too well the operational challenges that come with limited time and resources. Especially when the nonprofit is largely volunteer based, as the one I was heading, Think Africa. Being from an IT background, I am always open to trying out technologies that can support by automating tasks and thus lessen the burden. In this post I share 3 ways where I see ChatGPT being beneficial for nonprofits, especially in those areas that I have found to be time consuming but necessary to keep the nonprofit going.

Many of us have probably by now heard of ChatGPT since its launch late last year. ChatGPT, which is short for Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer, is an “advanced natural language processing tool trained to provide information and assemble content together based on prompts entered by a user. With the ability to continuously learn and adapt to new information, ChatGPT can remember past conversations and constantly iterate based on user prompts.” (Source). It is developed by Open AI, and is just one of the many existing tools utilising advances in large language models (LLMs) – “advanced Artifical systems that are designed to understand and generate human-like text based on the patterns and information they’ve learned from vast training data. These models can be used for various tasks, including natural language understanding, text completion, language translation, question-answering, text summarization, and much more.” (Source)

ChatGPT is currently free for anyone to use over the Internet. I do see the irony in writing this post as anyone could type ‘Write a blog post on how AI-powered technology like ChatGPT can benefit nonprofits.’ and you would get the list but I do supplement the points with context, which hopefully will lead you to formulate your own prompts. It is definitely an exercise in asking clear and succinct questions. 

An advantage I find to using this over searching over Google is that you get the text ready rather than piecing search results together yourself.

This post touches on the following benefits: 

  • Grant writing and Fundraising
  • Marketing
  • Event planning

Grant writing and Fundraising

At the nonprofit that I was heading, we for instance wrote and submitted close to 10 grants in the past year. This is a time consuming task and it’s a gamble, in the sense that you put in the effort with no guarantee that you will get it, but yet if you do not do it, you wouldn’t get enough funding for all the projects. ChatGPT is not going to do your job fully but it can help you write an outline for a work plan, find statistics and data to put into the application which is especially important for problem formulation. It can also help in suggesting an action plan to solve a particular problem. In addition, it can suggest upcoming grant opportunities for a particular project. 

If starting a project from scratch you could use ChatGPT to first find a problem to solve, e.g. “What are the top three challenges that the African diaspora are facing in Finland?” 

(Screenshot of result, find the full results and chat here)

Once you have found the problem you would like to work on, you could narrow it down again with ChatGPT to get facts and statistics on the problem e.g.,”How many people are unemployed and underemployed among the African diaspora living in Finland?” (Note this prompt did not produce results as ChatGPT is still limited in the data that it has access to) but you could ask for instance “List five problems that are caused by unemployment in Finland among minority groups”. Then delve further to ask “List 5 actions that can be taken to address unemployment among the African diaspora living in Finland”. 

(Screenshot of result, find the full results and chat here)

You can continue to ask about the budget of one or more of those actions, refine the language so that it is clear and concise, and eventually you can piece all the above together to create a work plan that can be submitted. 

What I also found handy is that you can ask ChatGPT to “List grant providers in Finland focused on economic integration of immigrants”. Note, it might help to put this prompt in Finnish as many of the grant pages are in Finnish.

Other than grant writing, there are other ways ChatGPT can help with Fundraising, from giving you ideas on Fundraising to creating Fundraising campaigns. For example, continuing from our previous prompts, one of them  by using the following prompt “We need to raise 5000€ for a one day thought leadership event on the economic integration of immigrants in Finland. Can you give me five ideas on how to do this?’’. And Voila, you get ideas for activities. But often in a nonprofit it’s not ideas that are lacking but the ability and resources to execute those ideas effectively. For that you could also use ChatGPT more specifically, for example by prompting “Create an action plan for … (describe the activity)”.

(Screenshot of result, find the full results and chat here)

Fundraising can also be done through partners and sponsors. However it’s not always easy to identify those companies that would be best to partner with. Here ChatGPT can help you identify relevant potential partners. For example, in some of Think Africa’s projects we have been interested to know the Finnish companies that are operating in Africa and thus could be potential partners for some activities. Using ChatGPT, you can enter a prompt like “Give me a list of 10 companies or organisations that are based in Finland but also have operations in Africa”

(Screenshot of result, find the full results and chat here)

Marketing

There is a lot that ChatGPT can help you with here. Marketing is essential for any civil society, yet it is a demanding task. Although there are more, here are three areas where it could save you effort.

Creating a marketing plan. Continuing from our previous prompts from the grant writing, you can create a marketing campaign for the project by providing the topic, the platform, and any additional details you can offer. For instance a prompt like “Create a marketing plan for a one day thought leadership event on the economic integration of economic integration of immigrants in Finland. The campaign will last two weeks, promoted on LinkedIn and has the goal of creating awareness and driving registration”

Getting hashtag ideas. Prompt: “Give five compelling hashtags for the above event”

Optimising subject headers. One of the most disappointing things is when you spend a lot of time designing e.g., a newsletter only to see very opens. Of course there are other things that affect, but the subject impacts a lot. Same goes for emails. Chat GPT can help you brainstorm on creative headers, “Give 5 examples of compelling subject headers for (describe event)”

Blog writing – Blogs are a great way to keep content on your website fresh. Old content often gives the feeling that the organisation is inactive. But it is not always easy to find time to write new content. ChatGPT can help you in that area and whatever it produces can be read for tone of voice and accuracy before it is posted. Prompts could for example “Write a 300 word blog post on the Finnish government’s efforts on the economic integration of minorities”.  Read it through for tone and accuracy before publishing.

Event planning

At Think Africa we organise over 50 events every year. Events are great for connecting and sharing information and general brand awareness, but you also need new ideas to keep them fresh and attract an audience. Not only ideas as those ideas also need execution, ChatGPT can help you in planning the event and in thinking of the logistics. With a prompt like the below, you can obtain a plan for an event: “Generate an interesting program for a one day thought leadership event on the economic integration of immigrants in Finland. Create also the event plan”. You could also ask for ideas to get volunteers for the event.

(Screenshot of result, find the full results and chat here)

There are many other uses of ChatGPT that can save time in a nonprofit, from writing operational policies, speeches, thank you messages, fundraising request emails, volunteer or job positions, analysing meeting minutes, translations, the list goes on. If you have not had a try with it yourself, you can access it here – chat.openai.com. There is also a paid version available.

If you have used it before, what are the best tips for getting the most out of it? Feel free to get in touch on this.

In my next post, I will share other AI technologies that I find would also support nonprofits.

Persistence: The invisible superpower

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

I was glad to recently be part of the Harambee podcast, one of the products of Think Africa’s members initiative that is still going strong. In the podcast, I talk about leadership and the legacy I leave after serving as the Chairperson of the organization for five years.

One of the questions I have often received during my Chairmanship is how I manage to do everything I do (even though I always feel like I could be doing more). This is because I have been a very pro-active and involved Chairperson, from fundraising, building partnerships, doing marketing and sales, event organization, community building, you name it. And by no means by myself, but I was always actively involved, thinking and looking for ways to drive all those efforts in order for the organization to carve out its niche and make an impact.

I think underneath that question of how I do everything that I do is how I do it on a volunteer basis. With salaried work, there is a clear reward model. However, with volunteer work, the reward is not regular nor guaranteed, and the threshold for quitting when things get challenging is very low.

In the chat with Cucu, I reflected that more than passion and belief in Think Africa’s mission, it is persistence, the ability to continue the course of action in spite of difficulty or opposition, that has actually kept me going as well as become good at things I didn’t know.

Being persistent. That is my superpower. And it is a quality that I even wish to instill in my children – especially as I see my daughter giving up easily on things when they get challenging.

To give a concrete example: in my first year of being the Chair, one of Think Africa’s long-term members gave compelling reasons why the organization needs to collaborate closely with the Africa department at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland (MFA).

I wrote several emails to the office, including the director of the department as well as made phone calls, but all went unanswered. One day I was at work and happened to see that the director was speaking at an event that afternoon that was organized by the Finnish-African Association.

Luckily it was a day when I had no meetings, so I jumped on the tram and went to the event. After the director’s speech, I noticed she was leaving and not staying for the networking session. I followed her and while she was putting on her jacket, I introduced myself, Think Africa, and why I believed it was important that she meet with us.

I think I was six or seven months pregnant at this time. After this initial meeting, I immediately followed up with an email and asked for a meeting, and Think Africa got invited to meet with her and the other Africa regional departments at MFA. And to this day, we still have a good partnership with the Africa department at MFA and have been honored to have many office members participate in our events, including the Minister for Foreign Affairs. 

And it’s this kind of work, the necessary work, that is also the invisible work. The giving up of your time to attend something, the preparation of the one-minute, two or three-minute sales pitch, the follow-ups, the preparation should you get that meeting, the not giving up if your emails or calls do not get answered, etc.

I have so many persistence stories like these. From coordinating a big event like Think Africa Week each year with close to zero budget at the beginning but with the vision that it must get better each year, to spending nights writing grant applications for them to be rejected, but not quitting until you find a way to learn, pivot and make it happen (read more on my advice when it comes to grant applications here). 

In all this, what I have come to learn is that being persistent is worth it in the end.

In the podcast, I share a few achievements, but there are many, many more which add fuel to the persistence 🙂. 

image source

What is next for me after leaving the Chairmanship? The empowerment of African people is my calling I believe and the next venture will definitely revolve around that. I will, of course, continue to be involved as a dedicated active member of Think Africa and supporter of the good work, and I hope that many come on board to support. 

Let me also know what your superpower is. What keeps you going?

How does Finland compare with other EU member countries in terms of non-EU foreigner employment and social inclusion?

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

It is expected that in any country, immigrants will fair off worse on several indicators than the natives. In this post, using the European Union Migration integration Statistics (available here), I created an interactive Tableau Dashboard to look at how EU countries perform in comparison to each other in terms of the employment and social inclusion indicators, with a particular interest on Finland and it’s performance when it comes to those foreigners with a non-EU background. Indicators that interest me a lot but also ones we (Think Africa) often focus on when we look at integration.

“Successful integration of migrants into society in the host country is a key element for maximising the opportunities of legal migration and making the most of the contributions that immigration can make to development.”

Source: eurostat: Migrant integration statistics – labour market indicators

The EU Agenda has in the recent years placed great importance on the integration of non-EU migrants, since successful integration and the fight against poverty and social exclusion is necessary for maximising the economic and social benefits of immigration for individuals as well as societies (Migrant integration statistics: labour market indicators and at risk of poverty and social exclusion).

Data used is that collected from EU member states in 2020, with partial information or limited reliability in some member states. The employment and at risk of poverty and social exclusion data is available according to Country of background and Gender. Country of background is divided into three categories; Natives, EU foreigners, and non-EU foreigners. Unfortunately the data does not go further to give the specific country background which would have allowed me to look at e.g., differences among the non-EU foreigners from different continents.

Interactive Dashboard is available >> here

Employment rates:

Similar to the experiences found in Finland, in many of the EU member states migrants make up a significant part of the workforce. Many arrive with skills that are highly needed in the labour markets but they often face difficulties in having them valued and finding jobs that reflect their skills level (Action plan on Integration and Inclusion 2021-2027 ).

According to the Eurostat data, in 2020 the EU unemployment rate for working age people (defined in the statistics as people aged 20 to 64 years) was 13.9 % for those born outside the EU, 8.1 % for those born in another EU Member State and 6.1 % for the native-born population. More than double the rate of the non-EU foreign unemployed rate in comparison to natives.

Observations from the Dashboard:

In Finland, the employment rate is 78,1% for Natives, 77,3% for EU foreigners and 62,7% for non-EU foreigners. For the two former values, they are above the EU averages, while for the non-EU foreigners, the figure is below that of the EU average = 66,82%. This trend of a lower employment rate among non-EU foreigners is observed in nearly all EU member states for which data are available (no data for Romania).

As expected, the gap between the employment rates for the Native-born population and persons born elsewhere in the EU was often smaller than that observed between the native-born population and those born outside the EU. However, an analysis of Finland confirms that the gap is among the wider ones when compared to the other EU countries. Looking at the gap between the Natives and EU foreigners, Finland is 9th from the bottom with a gap of 14,6 percentage points. While the gap between EU-foreigners and non-EU foreigners is 5th from the bottom with 15,4 percentage point difference (see Figure 1). Noticeably, many of the Nordic countries are in the bottom five. Czechia is the only country where the employment of non-EU foreigners is higher than that of Natives. Will be interesting to understand why.

Figure 1: Screenshot of the Euorostat Employment rates data, with Finland highlighted. Dashboard

At risk of poverty and social exclusion:

Inclusion for all is about ensuring that all policies are accessible to and work for everyone, including migrants and EU citizens with migrant background.

Source: Action plan on Integration and Inclusion 2021-2027

Many EU countries have inclusion strategies to ensure that every citizen may fully participate in society (Migrant integration statistics). Unfortunately many citizens of foreign background, are not yet participating in society in their fullest potential.

The at risk data also pertains to those of working age (20 to 64 years), analysed according to Country of birth and Gender.

Observations from the Dashboard:

In terms of at risk of poverty and social exclusion rates, Finland performs better than it does on employment when it comes to foreigners. Looking at the gap between the Natives and EU foreigners, Finland is 14th from the bottom with a gap of 16,7 percentage points. While the gap between EU foreigners and non-EU foreigners is 10th from the bottom with 13,9 percentage point difference. In comparison to the employment data, when analysing the gaps between EU and non-EU foreigners, only two Nordic countries are in the bottom five (Norway and Sweden) versus the four that we saw (Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland (see Figure 2).

Among people in Finland, 15,4% of Natives, 18,2% of EU foreigners, and 32,1% non-EU foreigners faced the risk of poverty or social exclusion in 2020. That is the risk of monetary power was approximately twice as high for non-EU foreigners. Generally, a higher share of foreign citizens were at risk of poverty or social exclusion in 2020 when compared to natives with Czechia and Hungary seeming to be exceptions. (incomplete information for Romania). In comparison to the EU average, Finland performs better than the average for Natives (18,39%), EU foreigners (23,09%), but approximately the same as the average for non-EU foreigners (32,41%).

Figure 2: Screenshot of the Euorostat at risk of poverty and social exclusion rates data, with Finland highlighted. Source

From the observations above, we can see that among the Native and EU foreigners, Finland performs well in terms of labour market integration and social inclusion, but there is still a lot of improvement to be done among those with a non-EU background.

Chart portraits of my daughter in Tableau

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

Here is a look at my latest Tableau project, building images of my daughter using charts with a little bit of interactivity >> See it HERE

Always cool learning the capabilities of Tableau and visualisation of data.

I borrowed from the work done by Alexander Varlamov (on coolbluedata.com) and tailored it to images of my daughter through time.

Steps: 

1. Prepare the images and put all in the same dimensions

2. Convert the photos to data with a python script and save to a .csv file

3. Connect the csv file to Tableau and prep the data

4. Build the visuals and dashboard and publish 🙂

Screenshot from Dashboard

Visualizing the independence of African countries over time with Tableau

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

Africa Day celebrated annually on the 25th May, commemorates the foundation of the Organisation of African Unity on May 25, 1963. As we at Think Africa, the organisation I am chairing, are organising a few exciting events to celebrate this day, I wondered about the independence of African countries and if it would be possible to have a visualisation showcasing how that happened over time and from whom, especially as I had not seen something like that.

I always like those time-based motion videos that show the development of something over time, but I had never created something like that. Thus this musing of mine, also gave me an opportunity to learn something new 🙂

Creating the Dashboard in Tableau was not difficult, but creating the video was more involved than I had anticipated. But thanks to Google, I found some good guiding materials that I share here.

Here is the finished video.

A clarification on the data: French Cameroon got its independence on 1st January 1960, while British Cameroon or British Cameroons became part of Cameroon on 1st October 1961.

Unfortunately, Tableau does not have a great way for creating animations that automatically play when the page loads, and as I got to learn, when you save an animation to Tableau Public, you loose the functionality of the animation and the user has to click to make transitions. Here is the Dashboard on Public Tableau.

I thus used this helpful tutorial on recording videos with VLC player to record my screen and capture the transitions. I then used this free tool called, online video cutter, to speed up the video, and that was it!

If you spot any errors, please let me know 🙂

Not time management but Self management

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

Lately I have been finding myself feeling very busy. My mind is always occupied with tasks to complete, issues to address, emails and WhatsApp messages to reply to, meetings to attend and most importantly relationships to nurse so I don’t die a lonely chatless death :). And of course this is while raising a young family. The To Do list is never ending. Many can relate to this I am sure. I have also been noticing this heavy feeling of not having made progress towards my mission, despite all the busyness, I am left with this feeling at the end of the day that I didn’t move one step closer to my goal nor do I have the feeling of being in the moment, that I have experienced my day. I am basically finding myself being run by the day rather than me running the day. 

And true to what I wrote in my previous article, I started asking myself, what do I need to sow to feel that I am in charge of my day, so that at the end of the day I feel satisfied with what I did and what I chose to do with it. A few of the things I have done to address these are;  Reading and listening to time management guidelines, I am a firm believer in arming yourself with knowledge and these readings gave me tools to work with. One of the works I really liked is from Rory Vaden, self-discipline strategist and New York Times Bestselling author, he pointed out that it’s not really about Time Management but about Self-Management (video). His view is investing a bit of time on assessing yourself, your day and where your time is going, because everyone has the same amount of hours in a day, and time will pass whether you manage it or not. It’s more about managing yourself, and what you decide to put into the hours. 

In this post I share the three things that I have learned. Three simple steps that from experience are not easy to implement because they require discipline and persistence. But nothing good comes easy, right?

Blocking off time – This is a technique that promotes focused deep work and encourages you to be intentional with your time whether it’s towards your work, personal projects, learning, family time, friends etc. With the technique you divide the day into blocks of time with each block dedicated to accomplishing a specific task or activity and focus on that during that blocked time. This post gives more detailed information on the technique and how to use it. I was attracted to the technique because it promised what I needed, i.e., to improve focus and concentration on tasks / activities at hand and minimize my procrastination. It was not easy for me to get in the habit of doing it. But I persisted, always remembering the words of Aristotle “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” I had to learn to close off all email and messaging apps during those blocked times and refrain from checking, as knowing myself, I would respond or start thinking of responses or acting up on the requests. I had to also learn to do the blocks realistically and flexibly so that I don’t get disappointed and give up if I did not complete something in the allocated block. For instance, I know that I am most creative in terms of generating ideas in the morning and more in the mental space for design work on quiet afternoons or late evenings. Thus it does not serve me to put these tasks at the wrong time of the day. The trick is also to keep re-assessing at the end of the day, and plan better the next day and not give up if it does not go according to plan as it does when e.g., my daughter is ill at home. Start with planning a day, then a week, then a month, and a year (admittedly harder). 

Learning to multiply your time – As you plan your day, learn to invest in spending time on things that will create more time for you in the future. Ask yourself, what can I do today that can make tomorrow better or give me more time tomorrow? For example, could I automate something or delegate it or say no to it, should I for instance, spend a few hours searching for a good cleaning company that will save me hours every week, time that I could put towards something else that could maybe earn me more than what I am spending on the cleaning? Rory Vaden gives nice guidance on how to multiply your time.

Being present for the experiences – I have had so many instances where I was cooking, taking a shower, on holidays, or playing with my daughter and I couldn’t describe to you what those experiences were like, because in my head I was somewhere else, planning a reply to an email or message, or writing a blog post, thinking about something I could have done better. While to me it felt like I was being efficient (doing many things at once), I have however started to notice that there are things that are suffering. Thus one of the biggest learning in self management was learning to be present for the things I choose to spend my time on, when I am at work, work, when I am playing play; when I am on holidays, really be on holidays. Life is about experiences. When you are more present, you are also more appreciative of having the experiences, and happier.

While there are many more other tips out there, these were the most meaningful for me in leading me to feel like I have control of my day. 

Before I close off, I also have to say that it was not lost on me that the majority of the time management advice came from books authored by males. From just Googling ‘Time management books’, 44 out of the top 51 book results were by males (that is 13,7% of the books were by females). Even just from this 15 best time management books list, only 1 book is written by a female. And not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it made me reflect on that there is a lot of time in the day for a woman with kids that is not her own to manage, from taking care of the kids, house, family, etc, that even finding that 15 – 20min to plan the day is elusive in some instances – but it is also why it’s more important that as women we persist and allocate that time in the day to work on what we find important to ensure we reach our goals.

Are you sowing what you want to reap in life?

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

Many of us have probably heard the Bible verse that says “For whatever a man sows, this he will also reap’ or more commonly as a proverb, ‘You reap what you sow”. I have heard this many times but it’s only recently when I heard a talk by Jim Rohn on becoming the best version of yourself that it kind of hit home. He presented this same fundamental idea from a different perspective that rang true to me and made me just stop and think. He said ‘Whatever you reap, is what you have sown’… and it made me ask myself, Am I sowing what I want to reap in my life? This year, I turn 38 and as the big 40 lurks around the corner, I keep getting this growing heavy feeling of needing to account for my time, my place in this world. Which is probably what led me to Jim Rohn, who is a great motivational speaker. 

This view of life I could grapple with, certainly more than the mysteriously abstract question of purpose. It made me think about my actions, what I am spending time on, my relationships, and asking myself if I am really putting in what I need to to get the results that I want. You see at this stage of my life, I at least have the clarity of knowing what I want to do with my life as I previously wrote. Trust me this was not always the case but, now that I have this knowledge, what have I been doing to make it a reality?

It made me think that now that I know what I want to do with my life, am I sowing what I need to make it a reality? What can I start preparing now?

In as much as I want up-wards mobility at my work at the moment, am I sowing what I need to get that promotion? Am I improving my skills? Am I adding more value? I might need the promotion, but I will not get it just because I want it. What is my game plan? :).

I have also been feeling like my health needs improving from sitting all day in front of the computer, what am I sowing to reap good health? I must do something, may that be walking or running during the day or standing at my desk.

This question, Am I sowing what I want to reap in my life?, gave me a new perspective. It made things actionable for me because I am the person that can most affect what is sowed. Yes there are things I may not be able to control that might affect the harvest, but really what this taught me was to start making a plan, looking at what I need to sow, and assess when and where the conditions are most favorable. And even when I harvest and the results are not as expected or desired, it’s good to realize that there would be no harvest at all if I didn’t sow anything. 

And when you realize that you have a big influence on what you reap, then you can get to work 🙂

Happy sowing everybody!

Developing a Storytelling Tableau Dashboard for Mobile. Case: Women in parliament correlation with the Happiness and Human development indices

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

I had heard that it was possible to tailor Tableau Dashboards for mobile but I had never tried it. I often created larger, landscape sized Dashboards that colleagues access on Desktop or laptop. However, I believe that many who read my blogposts published either through my website or Medium access it on mobile devices. This made me think about how I could start providing a better mobile experience for my Dashboards.

Inspired by the International Women’s day and wishing to explore and tell a story on this day, I embarked on a journey to create a mobile-friendly Tableau Dashboard. Motivated by the fact that I was born in a country that now ranks number one in the world for the most women in Parliament (Rwanda)and that I live in a country that is ranked the happiest in the world (Finland), I explore if there is any relation between Women in Parliament and the Happiness Index. Not only on the happiness Index but the Human Development Index as well.

The magic was actually just at the Dashboard creation stage, i.e., the worksheets are created normally (of course keeping in mind that any visualization you create is being accessed on a much smaller screen). Then when you reach the stage of creating the Dashboard, you define the layout for different platforms. This was a good tutorial I followed.

Check it out HERE. Note: This version is best viewed on Mobile.

Why we should raise our children to be data literate

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

Data is all around us, is only increasing, and the ability to understand, use it, and communicate has become a valuable asset to have. One can say that it has actually become just as important as reading and writing. I recently came across a video showing how one mother was helping her kids collect, analyze and communicate using data and I found it so interesting, to see how we as parents could support our kids to think about data and with data at an early age. At work and in my field of data analysis, I and colleagues often talk about the benefits of data-driven decision making, creating data cultures and strategies, and empowering employees with data. It has been researched and found that employees who are for instance able to use data, are more successful in their work. With all this, I thus wondered why we don’t hear much about data literacy and data-driven decision making in our personal lives, and how data literacy could empower us to make more informed decisions. In particular, I wondered how I could already support my three year old child to be on a path where she becomes data literate and gets to reap the benefits that come with it such as; increased curiosity (ability to ask questions and seek answers), increased experimentation and exploration; empowered to make decisions, and increase in logical reasoning. Another benefit I also see is that parents will trust their kids to make more informed decisions.

Just like any skill, being data literate can be developed through practice. Children like adults are collecting, observing, and measuring information in their own way, and we can support them in being aware of it, how to use it and communicate with it. In this post, I wanted to share something small I started doing with my daughter to start the process and hopefully I will continue sharing more examples and results.

My little girl, probably like many three year old girls out there, likes dresses, particularly those that make her feel like a ballerina. The first exercise we did as with any data project was data collection. I took her dresses and laid them out so that she could take pictures of them. She likes to take pictures nowadays and is actually not bad at it either. I uploaded the pictures to a blank PowerPoint slide and we started exploring the dresses. I asked her questions and she responded based on what she could see.

Her taking pictures of the dresses as part of the data collection.

The questions I asked her included asking her to point out the order in which she liked the dresses. This was not an easy one when she had many dresses on one slide, but when I reduced them to just three, she was able to say her favorite, second favorite, and least. This is a simple sorting methodology she is learning through this exercise.

Another exercise we did involved learning to group similar objects together. As she is now learning her left from right, another question was asking her to put the dresses that had pink in them to one side and those that didn’t to another and counting the number in each side, or ones that had long sleeves together, medium sleeves in another group, and no sleeves in another and counting how big each group was. Through this she learns techniques of grouping and classification.

Her selecting the dresses with pink

We didn’t manage to go through all that I had planned as she found something more interesting to do but we will definitely continue. My plan is to expand this and include clothes of different seasons and connect the clothes to the temperature outside. In this way, I hope that when we check the weather in the morning and we see that it feels like it’s -10, she will be able to realize which clothes to put on by herself, connecting different data points to make an informed decision. 

The above is a simple exercise one that could even have been done with just the dresses themselves, i.e. no need to take pictures. But it was interesting to see that just from the interaction, the questions, she was realizing the similarities and differences she had in her dresses which she might have known but at least had not communicated. Now when she asks for a dress, she is able to say whether she is looking for a short or long sleeved dress, aspects of the dress she was not using before.

And I believe as we continue these exercises, her reasoning of things, her communication of things will improve, just as we see of employees in companies where data literacy is encouraged.

If you get to try this with your children, do let me know 🙂

How much Trade does Finland conduct with Africa and other regions?

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

In my last post I presented tips on designing dashboards, one of them was stealing like an artist, which I have done in this one :). I came across one Tableau Zen Master’s work and loved how their dashboards popped, although I can’t for the life of me remember their name. The dashboards were simple and elegant, and I wondered how he got to create such beautiful dashboards. I downloaded some of his dashboards, did a bit of reverse engineering to understand how he had done it. After a bit of time and tinkering, voila! this is my result. A simple but elegant dashboard that showcases the amount of trade Finland does with different regions around the world.

I remembered the tips from the last post, I used the grid, avoided clutter, used big ass numbers, etc.

In my learning, I always try to use data sets where I am also genuinely curious about the data. One of the things that Think Africa does is look at enhancing the collaboration between Finland and African countries and currently how we can be more involved in the Finland-Africa Strategy. For us to do this well, we need to understand the amount of the current collaboration, which also includes the Trade.

I used the trade statistics data from tuuli.fi. From the dashboard, we can see that out of the total exports of Finland, 1,15% is to Africa at a rank of 4 when comparing the continents (1 = Europe, 2 = Asia , 3 = North America, 4 = Africa, 5 = South America, and = Oceania). Majority of the Exports are also with North Africa when compared to the rest of Africa. Looking at the Imports, Africa ranks 5th, at 0,59%.

Thus from these numbers, there is still a lot to do in increasing Trade between Finland and African countries.

In Future this Dashboard will be improved to include a filter for time to see whether there are any improvements over time.

How to improve Dashboards for Readability and Impact

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

As a Data Analyst, it is my job to take data, manipulate it and articulate it so that it delivers answers to the questions the audience has, in such a way that they have a pleasurable experience while getting the answers. This is a tough ask, one that requires combining technical ability with User Design experience.

Recently I got reminded that I still have a long way to go in creating Dashboards that are pleasant to look at and impactful. In a recent work project, I got to work with the UX team on designing a Tableau Dashboard. I thought I was ok with designing beautiful and functional dashboards, but after their presentation I realized I still have some improving to do.

Inspired by this realization, I started watching a few webinars from experts to pick up best practices. One of the memorable webinars I watched was the seven part series titled Building dashboards that persuade, inform, and inspire hosted by Andy Cotgreave, one of the authors of The big book of Dashboards. I liked these series as they gave very practical advice with examples. There were a few key tips that I picked up and wanted to share here. They are easy to follow and have a big impact. I give an example at the end how I applied these tips to improving one of my publicly accessible Dashboards.

Fortunately, the tips can be applied to improving any Dashboards, whether its Tableau, Google studio, Salesforce, etc.

Design to a grid

Grids help organise content on a dashboard. Many of design tools have the option to show grid lines, similar to the image below. Not every box has to have content and the grid does not have to be just vertical or horizontal, it can also be diagonal.

Research also shows that it is best to have the key information in the top left corner or at the top row of the dashboard.

Source: The Big Book of Dashboards

Avoid Clutter

On any dashboard, show only the needed information. A dashboard can only really answer a few key questions and when you try to put everything, it can easily become cluttered. Make white space your friend as it can help a dashboard look more cleaner, give it room to breath. Below is an example of a cluttered Dashboard (left) versus one that has been stripped down for easier readability (right).

Source: The Big Book of Dashboards

Use of color

Use of color is also another important thing to keep in mind. Use color to communicate information as well as create pleasurable experiences. Use colors minimally as more colors add mental overload. There are 5 key guidelines to using color depending on the type of data you have:

If you have quantitative data you can use sequential (e.g., to show sales or population in regions) or diverging (e.g., profit or loss) color palettes as shown below. While if you have qualitative data, you can use categorical palettes. And under this, you can use a color to highlight and draw attention to a piece information, or you want to alert about something in the data.

When working with combination of colors, be mindful of color blindness. Use colors where even those that are color blind, still show well. Luckily tools like Tableau offer palettes that are friendly for persons that are color blind.

Source: The Big Book of Dashboards

Font contrast and BANS

To reduce the cognitive load in Dashboards, the Webinar advises to have three levels of fonts; the top, middle, and low. Simplify the typographic structure. This guideline also helps one be more disciplined if you just keep to few things.

Source: The Big Book of Dashboards

They also advise to use BANs, which refers to Big Ass Numbers. These are quite common nowadays in Dashboards, especially executive ones. Most people are looking for key numbers – KPIs. But more than just numbers is if one can indicate if these BANs are good bad. And a good place to put them is in the top row grid.

Source: The Big Book of Dashboards

Collaboration


Just as I started this story, collaboration, especially with knowledgeable people who have different perspectives can help you iterate and evaluate your dashboard until it is more functional and clear. For Tableau users, there are a lot of opportunities to find collaborators, from Tableau user groups, Tableau public, to Blog contributors. Thus do not be afraid to collaborate.

Steal like an artist


This is one of my favorite methods for learning something. When I was younger and learning how to draw, I would trace or use number block drawing approaches and I actually felt bad like I was cheating. But as long you are not taking someone’s work and passing it on as your own (plagiarism) then this is a good way to learn, to have a starting point, to find inspiration, to reverse engineer a process. By that process of copying, you learn the process, and you can slowly start to infuse your own creativity, and become an expert.

Source: The Big Book of Dashboards

With these tips, I went back to one of my recent public dashboards on Integration Statistics in Finland to see how I could improve it. The first thing I improved was the use of the grid. Before, my visualizations were misaligned but now they are aligned to the grid. I reduced the number of details and colors to just the essentials color. Have a look and let me know how it now looks 🙂 -> Integration Dashboard

How are persons of African Descent fairing compared to Asians or other Europeans living permanently in Finland: Integration statistics data visualized

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

Originally published here.

In this day and age of data, making decisions based on data is important. As a data analyst, I understand the vast benefits data and the use of it for decision making has for organisations.

However in order to make decisions based on data, you need the data first and sometimes this is not so easy to acquire or it’s not available, especially when it comes to data pertaining to persons living in Finland that are of African descent i.e., African diaspora. This has often posed a challenge for us at Think Africa as we need such data whenever we are designing programs or activities. Data to for instance help us understand the scale of employment or unemployment or where the majority of the diaspora reside in Uusimaa and around Finland.

I was thus glad when I saw that Statistics Finland has made available economic and integration data at the level of the country of birth (source). The Statistics are available until 2019. Using my data analytic abilities, I downloaded the data in addition to the Population data, cleaned it up and created this visualization as a Tableau Story for anyone to access the data in a visual format -> Here 

The visualization includes data of persons whose background is Africa, Asia, Finland and the rest of Europe. The Tableau Story consists of two pages. The first shows the economic data that is available. This is available for persons who have permanent residence in Finland up to the year 2019 or 2018. The second page shows data pertaining to those who reside in Finland regardless of whether they have permanent residence or not, up to the year 2020.

Based on the data and from the Think Africa perspective, I summarize here a few initial observations, with more in depth analysis to be conducted over time. Many of them are sort of already known, but it’s also good to have the numbers.

– In 2019, 71.2% (38 765 out of 54 450) of those with an African background had permanent residents.

– The largest diaspora group is of Somali background, the second is from Nigeria.

– Majority of the African diaspora live in Helsinki, then  in particular. Knowing this also helps us identify the cities we can expand to.

– In which occupation groups and levels are Africans employed in? At the top level 1, we see that most African diaspora are employed in Elementary occupations and service and sales work and very few are at managerial levels when you compare the percentages among those with Asian or European background. When looking at the level 2, we see in particular that the diaspora is employed  . When you look at which group particularly under there, the majority are in cleaners and helpers, personal care workers, drivers and mobile plant operators groups.

– The largest unemployment levels are seen among the African diaspora group, in particular, among the females.

– Similarly to all residents regardless of background, of those that are employed, majority receive a salary or wage as opposed to self employment. Noticeably, females of African background do not seem to pursue entrepreneurship when compared to females of Asian, European or Finnish background.

That’s it for now. Is there something more you wish me to add to this visualization? Any insights you gain from it? Or recommendations of further analysis to conduct? Drop me an email at mdoucem@gmail.com

Identifying what you want to do in life that: you enjoy, are good at, has an impact on the world and you can get paid for

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

There are people who at an early age know what they want to do with their life and go on to do it. For me, and perhaps for many, it has always been a challenge. A constant exploration of what it is that I really want to do, what I am good at, what I enjoy, and what I want to contribute to the world. This especially became more challenging when I moved to Finland and my ‘world’, the landscape, the society and community changed.

In my search, I have explored a lot of approaches and models but none have spoken to me or have given me the answers I sought as did the Japanese concept of Ikigai. Ikigai is made up of two words: iki which means life and gai, which means value or worth. Putting these words together, we have — “value of life” or as described, “a reason for being” [source]. Ikigai brings you joy in life (not just your work). This version of the  “Ikigai” diagram captures the basic idea, although it does not fully represent the Japanese concept of Ikigai, which is more about valuing life everyday, a topic I will not delve into here.

However, when I saw this diagram presented at an event, I immediately connected with it. I saw  it as something that could help me identify my purpose as the diagram intersects four aspects that I find important. It consists of four circles and at the intersection of all four is where you are meant to find the sweet spot between what you love to do, what you are good at, what the world needs from you and what you can be paid for. The diagram also offers what one might feel at the other intersections where not all four are met.

Ikigai diagram, adapted from Source

“Taking the time to invest in yourself, understanding yourself and what is important to you, is the most important time you’ll ever take in your life.”

In this post, I share how I used the diagram to identify what I want to pursue. There are many posts out there that talk about the Ikigai diagram but many just present the model generally with no concrete examples. I want to share how I actually used it, my approach and thinking, and perhaps this will bring insights into how you can use it. You can also use it if you currently have a job or career but wish to become more specialized, change or just need reaffirmation.

“A job is not your permanent address”

Let’s start with each circle and list down the answers to each.

What you love, enjoy, care about

Under this, list down all the things you love to do, that you enjoy doing, find interesting, exciting and motivating, that you lose yourself doing for hours. This shouldn’t be a hard list to come up with – if you love it, you must be doing it in some way, or you miss doing it. When writing this list, leave money out of the equation, just think about what you enjoy. It can  end up being like 10 pages and that is alright, it will get narrowed down.

What you are good at

This relates to talents, skills and competencies. This is not an easy one to answer, as we are often not very good at assessing our own competencies. We either overestimate or underestimate our abilities. But leaving ego, modesty and self-doubt aside, and again not considering whether you are getting paid for this or not, think about what you are good at, what you do effortlessly, what people come to you for, what you can be good at with just a little bit of training, what qualities are your strengths? Write it all down.

What does the world need (…that you can give)

The world needs a lot, but this list is more about what the world needs that you can give. It can be your skills, passion, perspective, culture, etc. Think about which problems in your society would benefit from your passion / skills for solving them. What problems do people come to you to solve for them? Give you their money? The world here can be a community, society, nation, etc. Try to also think long term, what will the world need from you a decade from now, 20 – 30 years from now?

What you can be paid for

Under this circle we can now think about money. We have to think about how to get paid for what we do, to put food on the table and more. Preparing this list requires some research. Look among the things that you are good at and the things that you love to do, list down the ones that you can get paid for, as well as those that you could be paid for if you improved your skills in them. If you are already doing some work and getting paid for it, can you continue getting paid for it? If yes, list it down. Are other people with similar skills and competencies getting paid for them? If yes, list it down. If your list is empty, then it is time to invest in upping your skills or value.  People will always pay for value.

My list (not an exhaustive list)

Here is a snippet of my list and what falls under each of the four circles. I am presenting a relevant snippet of it for readability purposes.

Finding the ‘sweet spot’

Once you have listed down the answers to the four questions, the next step is to look at the intersections. My approach was to take first what I love and what I am good at and find the common things there. Then I intersected that with what the world needs, then finally identified from that list, what I can get paid for. From this exercise, those highlighted in different colors (table above) are what made it to the intersecting section in the diagram.

It might not be easy to find the intersections, but keep digging, revising and rethinking what could be common.

Then look at the items that make it to the list and try to come up with ONE sentence that encapsulates the items. Drilling it into one sentence gives your focus and makes it easier to sell and brand yourself with that one sentence.

If you have many sentences, prioritise and select one, and dedicate your energy to make that one succeed. Of course you can still have your hobbies and side hustles.

For me, my one sentence was “use data analysis, research, and activities, to creatively support people realize and fulfill their potential”. What I also find helps is to come up with a hashtag that represents this sentence. Mine is #actualizedlife. This hashtag can then be used as part of your personal branding for those that need you to find and know you.

To make the one sentence actionable, I advise you to go one step further and find out who can pay you for what you want to do. This can be an entity in the private or public sector, it can be a foundation that gives grants for what you want to do, it can be individuals (customers) that buy your services or products. Think of who can pay you and then start making plans for how to get closer to them, how they can know what you are offering and the value you bring, and then how to actually offer your service to them.

That’s it. If you get to use the above, I would like to hear how you used it and the results in the comments.

“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why” – Mark Twain

Correlation between Olympic Results and Annual GDP of Countries

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

The Tokyo2020 Olympics ended on the 8th August and it’s always interesting to see the final results table with the winners. Looking at the list, it’s easy to notice that countries with money are at the top, which is not really a surprise as these countries are able to invest more into sports. 

In my curiosity, I wondered what the data actually showed, i.e., the correlation between the medals won by a country and its annual GDP. This also gave me a chance to learn some new data exploration techniques. 

I created a Tableau Dashboard looking at the trend between the medals won and the annual GDPs of countries, for the 2020, 2016 and 2012 Summer Olympics. The Dashboard can be found HERE.

Looking at the 2020, 2016 and 2012 Summer Olympics: 

– We can see a clear trend, correlation between the number of medals won and the annual GDP. This same trend is visible even when looking at the GDP per Capita, though I did include this in the Dashboard.

– The visualization also shows the distribution of the medals won across the countries and the continents. From here we see that the USA and China lead in the numbers.

Data collection and cleaning

GDP data and the Olympic results were collected into an Excel Workbook, with different sheets containing the GDP data as it was in the respective Olympic year, and the Olympic results were recorded in three separate Sheets. Python’s Pandas was utilized to clean the data, and combine them into a format that I could easily import and use with Tableau.

Cleaning the data involved resolving some country information, for example in the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, Russia was not officially participating, but they had a team there under the name Russian Olympic Committee (ROC). GDP data is usually not recorded for Great Britain, but the United Kingdom.

Data sources:

Annual GDP data: 2021, 2016, and 2012

Olympic data: 2021, 2016, and 2012

About me:  http://myriammunezero.com/

#continouslearning  #dataanalysis #data #visualization #python #Tableau #excel #actualizedlife

Three important tips to help you succeed in your non-profit grant applications

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

Being able to write winning grant applications is one of those skills that is invaluable. The benefits of it are manifold, whether you are running a non-profit, a profit-making business, or wishing to carry out research or a project. 

I worked as a postgraduate researcher for over 10 years, first as a PhD researcher then as a Postdoc. In that time I wrote several funding applications, but was never as successful in my pursuits as currently with Think Africa. As the Chairperson of the non-profit organisation, I have been entrusted with the responsibility to ensure financial stability. This is not an easy feat and for the past three years of my chairman-ship, the team and I have had our share of rejections and wins. However, over the last nine months; we have made strides of wins, totalling six (6) successes out of seven (7) grant applications. 

Writing grant applications in a team of knowledgeable people and receiving constructive feedback from funders have been a meaningful learning experience and an enlightening process.

As the application period for many grants begins again in the Fall (in Finland), I wanted to share the following tips that I have gained along the way.

Place yourself in the funder’s shoes (mindset)

If you had money and were deciding who to give it to; how would you decide or who would you choose as the recipient? 

Most applications request similar data input, i.e., the purpose of the application, the problem being addressed, nature of the problem, solution focus, other players and why you are unique, your target audience and action plan, indicators of success, risk assessment, and budget. This is common information that is very similar to what you would find in most business plans.

Many funders also have their “business plans”, they have a problem or need to address, they have objectives that they aspire to fulfill by providing funding to non-profit entities, and indicators of successful implementation, etc. 

Thus, in your application, there is a need to align and strongly indicate anticipated results and how they contribute to the fulfillment of their objectives. 

Budget is also an important aspect of the application process. Funders are audited and most likely have limits to what they can spend, how and where. These restrictive limitations serve as guidance to what is permissible and/or not as far as the funding is concerned. It’s your task to make a funder’s decision as easy as possible, by formulating your budget clearly, precisely, transparently, and as realistic as possible. 

Reduce funder’s risk

Probably the biggest risk the funder takes is that they give you the money and you do nothing with it, or you spend it but do not achieve any results. Thus one thing to look at is, how can you reduce this risk for them?

Being transparent and having a clear and realistic plan is a must. Transparency ensures trust and increases credibility. By outlining a solid implementation plan shows that (when given the money), you have thoroughly thought through the initiative; and are ready to implement it.

However, nothing speaks volumes like past behavior. They indicate that you managed to deliver substantial results, and thus, guarantee the possibility to receive future grants. In this regard, funders have evidence of what you can achieve with reduced risk.

This is also why it’s important for organisations to continue having activity. I remember when I joined Think Africa in 2018, the previous year had been a very quiet one with hardly any activities. When we applied for grants, many asked for the previous year’s annual plan, financial statements, and audited reports. When those are empty, there is hardly any way you will win a big grant. This is also understandable, if there is no past behavior, how can they trust that you can get the job done. 

This was one of the main reasons we invested in showing traction, we organised a lot of activities (just have a look at our 2018, 2019 annual reports) on a volunteer basis. We applied for small grants that have lower thresholds, which we used to amplify our volunteer efforts. This allowed us to have traction and evidence of what we could achieve given the opportunities. Starting small also allows you to learn what needs to be in place in order to actually manage big grants, from accounting and audit processes, monitoring and evaluation, human resource, and a whole lot of things.

Forming good partnerships is also one way to help reduce the risk of funders and add value to your implementation and achievement of sustainable results. 

Do your research

In order to successfully accomplish any of the above, you need to research, research and research. It is also necessary to understand the objectives of funders exactly in terms of requirements. 

Conduct research on previous projects that they have awarded grants to and study their past criteria and relatively associating them with their current, past and future requirements is an advantage.

Always contact the responsible person in charge of the grant by giving them a call about your application proposal. It is also necessary to seek clarification and inquire, if your organization qualifies and meets the requirements. This might give you significant insights into improving your application and make you aware of the reality of your status and situation and save you time. 

Inquire about the success rate of the applications, this will help you understand the competitive environment. 

The grant application landscape is getting tougher and having a good application does not naturally guarantee success.

Have a good understanding of the problem you are solving, the scale and the target audience. Don’t assume funders know anything about the problem you wish to solve, or anything about you and your ability to solve the problem. Frankly, assume they know nothing and write from that perspective. It’s your job to provide sufficient and convincing information.

This aspect is often a challenge for our applications, because of the lack of adequate publication and research to confirm and support the existence and scale of the problem; especially to those who are not aware of the phenomenon. 

One way we have tackled this is through sampling and small scale surveys. Conducting a small research on a sample of the target audience to highlight the magnitude of the problem and its potential to escalate exponentially.

There you go! 🙂 My three tips. 

My other small tips include: 

Soliciting an external party to proofread your application proposal . An outsider often notices things that you may have missed. 

Use easy to understand language, be precise and concise. Verbosity in grant applications does not work in your favor. 

Choose your scope carefully and be realistic in what you can achieve – under promise and over deliver – not the other way round.

But trust me, the more you do it, the easier it gets :).

Feel free to reach out to me through email mdoucem@gmail.com or myriam@thinkafrica.fi if you need feedback or consultation with your grant applications. 

Happy grant writing!

The power of numbers: A guide to communicating achievements and tips on how to add them in your CV or Cover Letter

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

In this blog, I will attempt to highlight some tips on how to communicate your achievements and reflect them into your Curriculum Vitae (CV) and/or Cover letter effectively. 

Why is it important to precisely communicate your achievements numerically? 

Numbers are objective; and easily understood across cultures. Many people, myself included have often fallen prey to applying for jobs and focusing on listing tasks and responsibilities. The truth is that a list of previous tasks and responsibilities do not convincingly communicate what you are able to achieve. 

Instead, employers want to know about what you have achieved, what value you have contributed, and why they should prefer you over tens or hundreds of applicants who have performed similar tasks. 

I was recently on the other side of the table as a recruiter, as part of my role in the non-profit organisation Think Africa, conducting the interviews for a hiring position. The importance of being able to articulate results and achievements clearly became apparent to me and I believe that this is a skill that all applicants should have. 

The purpose of a CV and cover letter are to communicate and exhibit to a potential employer what you have done and achieved. This gives your future employer an idea of the impact you can possibly make should you be hired. 

So how do you position your achievements into measurable numbers that can easily be understood?

Use numbers to quantify your achievements.

I will use an example in marketing to show what I mean by putting a number. If you say that you designed and implemented a marketing campaign that saved your employer x€ or increased the revenue by x%, this gives a visual of the scale or magnitude of your achievements. Whereas if you had said that ‘I was responsible for designing and implementing a marketing campaign’ all you have communicated is what you did, but with no indication of how well you did it or what was the impact. Anybody can design a campaign, but how do you show that you can be impactful in what you do? 

This is not always easy and in some disciplines or professions , it can be challenging or easier than in others. 

I share here my thinking process for translating achievements and work done into numbers. I use three real cases from three varied jobs that I have done. With each job I ask myself what I did well and why it’s considered good. I compare it to the average, and try to assess how much better my achievement was. The number of people I supported. What my colleagues said was good and how many said it.

Example job 1: Strawberry picking – This was a summer job I had for three years in my first years of being in Finland. I want to use this to show that even part-time field work can be communicated with numbers to showcase your qualities. In this role, my task was to pick strawberries for roughly one month. I got paid by how much I picked. 

If I had to include this in my CV, I would think about communicating my achievements as follows:

  • In terms of volume and money: I brought in 50% more than the average picker per day. I would then translate that into a money value by multiplying it with the market value of the strawberries to show how much more revenue I generated for the farmer. 
  • In terms of showcasing how hard working I am: I would highlight how I was one of the top 5 berry pickers for 3 seasons. 

Example job 2: Researcher – I worked as a researcher for over 10 years in different projects and universities. Putting my achievements into numbers for this role was a bit difficult, as most of my achievements were done as part of a team thus making it harder to single out what was so impressive with what I did. But leaving modesty behind and digging deeper, this is how I would communicate some of the impact: 

  • In terms of publications: If I said that I published over 10 publications. This is really not a good use of numbers as there is no indication of whether this is good or not to a potential employer. But I can say that I was awarded the best paper award twice in top tier forums.
  • In terms of the number of people I supported: I supervised 8 students to successfully complete their school projects or thesis, 50% of these graduated with the best grades
  • In terms of funding that I brought in: If I had succeeded in winning funding applications, I would include the amount here. 

Example job 3: Data analyst – As I am currently still in this role, I will not say too much or put exact figures but one of the achievements so far that I would give would be:

  •  In terms of time saved: I created a Tableau report that automatically reads in data from our Data lake and summarizes the effectiveness of campaigns on customer behavior. This work was normally done manually by a colleague for each of our partner customers. Thus, by doing this report, I saved the colleague at least 180 work hours per year, thus, reducing financial cost .

Employers focus on different things depending on their strategy and goals. Some examples include revenue generation, market awareness, customer attraction, customer happiness, company growth, employee happiness, cost reduction, and process efficiency1. Naturally with each number, you have to tie it to what the potential employer is looking for. The important step is to start thinking of how you can show your impact, and numbers are great for demonstrating your achievements and impact.

Leave a comment to share how you use numbers in communicating your input impact or share alternative tactics that you use.

How smarter machine learning reduces churn

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

Written by me and originally posted by F-Secure -> https://blog.f-secure.com/how-smarter-machine-learning-reduces-churn/

Machine learning can make a lot of things better. But as everyone who deals with artificial intelligence knows, a model is only as good as the data used to train it.

At F-Secure, we’re not only applying machine learning to the cyber security domain, we’re using it to help improve the relationships that we and our service provider partners have with the customers we serve.

What we’ve learned about churn

Keeping customers is cheaper than acquiring new customers. According to the White House Office of Consumer Affairs, “it is 6–7 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than to retain an old one.” This is why many companies invest in building prediction machine learning models that can help identify the customers that are about to leave, reasons as to why they are leaving, and help build suitable retention strategies to keep customers, as well as improve services and customer satisfaction.  The models support companies to pre-act rather than re-act.

For the past few years, I have been working on building churn prediction models using machine learning. In each project, the data set has been different, capturing different perspectives of the customer. This also leads to models that perform quite differently. As many people in this field know, that data used to train machine learning algorithms is the crucial part, and unfortunately, sometimes the data that companies have is not sufficient for the purpose of predicting customers who will churn.

“When a model fails to predict something, it’s because the information used to train it lacks predictive power,” Max Pagel explained. “Having a fancy or complex algorithm wouldn’t help either if you do not have the right data.”

In this post, I look at data points that should be collected for those thinking about building accurate churn prediction models.

How to train your churn model

The first step of course is to define what churn means. Is it that an end user uninstalls a product, stops making payments, cancels a subscription or does not renew, or something else? When that part is clear, the second step is to collect data that captures who this user is and how they interact with the product and company, among many others.  The data should reflect the end users / customers reality – cause that’s what models are, they are abstractions of the reality.

From my experience, the best way to identify the data needed is to look at the reality and capture that as much as possible while respecting consumer privacy. Consumers need to be made aware of the data being collected as well as give consent to their data being collected.

With the above in mind, the reality could be captured by asking the following six questions:

Who are our customers, really?

Answering this question gives you information such as the age, gender, residence, occupation, income, ethnicity, education, etc. of your customers. Many companies might already have this information which is mostly used for segmentation. Besides predicting churn, this type of information allows you to do personalization of services and engagement which also helps retain customers.

Which product(s) do the customers have?

For each customer, you need to know which of your products they have, whether they got it for free, with a promotion, or at full price; as a standalone product or in a bundle with other products; the number of licenses they bought, on which platform, from which channel, are they making annual or monthly payments, at what price etc.

How do customers use our product?

Getting the answer to this question is very important. Customers stay with companies or products where they see value. The answer provides an overview of the behavior of the customers, e.g., how often they log in, time spent with the product per session, what features they access, amount and type and frequency of errors they encounter, etc. For digital products, the data collection for this type of data is easier as it can be implemented into the product.

How are customers engaged?

While this question might be similar to the above, it captures something different. It captures the engagement between the company and the customer online or offline. Highly engaged customers often demonstrate also more loyalty. This can include information such as emails or newsletters sent, events hosted, etc.

How do customers feel about our products and us?

This question gives you data capturing how your customers feel about your products, their user experience. For instance from ratings, feedback, social media posts, or customer care interactions. Negative sentiments, emotions or opinions from customers are big indicators of churn. However, this information is not available for all customers.

What other external factors influence our customers?

Sometimes customers just leave for reasons beyond your control. For example, many customers have been adversely affected by Covid-19 and have unsubscribed or cancelled several services. There are also other external factors such as new competitors in the market, network coverage, etc., that might drive your customers away. Capturing this information is difficult but if possible, it is valuable to a prediction model.

Respect the data and users’ privacy

The above six questions can give you a vast amount of information to help you identify the customers that stay or leave and most importantly understand why.

With the available data it is the task of the data scientist to then use all or some of this information to perform feature engineering to capture trends and patterns over time that might be informative to churn modeling, like whether a customer increased the number of features they interact with or decreased login activity, and so on. With this information, customers tend to stick around for the best possible reason—their needs are being met by the service.

Capturing and recording this information, requires companies to have a data strategy and invest in data architectures that will enable long-term and short-term storage to enable historic and current analysis to be performed. Naturally, privacy concerns will hinder data collection or the ability to connect all of these data points. However, wherever possible, aim to collect as much as data as customers knowingly and willingly share that would give you a model that closely reflects reality.

What is the formula for success? Success = 2*Preparation + Opportunity

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

The turn of the year always forces me to sit down and take stock of where I am and what I want to accomplish in the new year. And as I get older ‘living a fulfilled life’ is something that is usually at the forefront of my thoughts, especially in terms of my career. Living a fulfilled life to me means being satisfied and happy because I am developing my abilities and character to the best that they could be. 

Being able to do this requires me to sit, think and plan about what I want in life, what I am good at (my abilities), what I enjoy, and how to make a living out of those. Achieving this to me is success.

There is no exact formula to success but I want to share my formula – a formula I derived from two quotes that I embrace.

The first one is from Frank Underwood, the character played by Kevin Spacey in House of Cards. House of Cards, especially Season 1 has to be one of my favorite TV Shows and I have been re-watching it in the last few weeks. In episode 12 Frank says “Success is a mixture of preparation and luck.” And it is precisely because of his preparation, his calculated planning in reaching where he wanted to reach, that I enjoyed the show.

When Frank said the above, it reminded of the second quote: “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity”, often attributed to Seneca the Younger (L. Annaeus Seneca, 4 BC – AD 65). Many people have often quoted this from the likes of Oprah to Denzel Washington.

I suppose because of my analytic and mathematical background, these quotes became equations in my mind and I was able to connect them together as follows:

Equation 1: Luck = preparation + opportunity

Equation 2: Success = preparation + luck

And these two lead to the below formula of success: 

Success = preparation + (preparation + opportunity) = 2x preparation + opportunity

Success thus requires two times more preparation than luck, which at least seems to make sense when I reflect back on times I felt success vs luck. For instance if I look at my transition from academia to industry, this was something I put a lot of preparation into to getting myself ready and positioning myself, for when the opportunity came along.

I have to also add that the more preparation one does, the more opportunities avail themselves.

Articulating this formula has thus defined my 2021 and future years resolution. For me to achieve success in my career and life goals, for me to live a fulfilled life, I have to double my efforts on preparing myself, while continuing to open myself up to opportunities.

#lifegoals #fulfilledlife #selfdevelopment

How to get the most out of a mentorship program as a mentor or mentee

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

Originally posted on F-Secure’s blog: https://blog.f-secure.com/how-to-get-the-most-out-of-a-mentorship-program-as-a-mentor-or-mentee/

I have been privileged to be part of mentorship programs from varying perspectives, from being a mentee, mentor, to an organizer. The first time I took part in a mentorship program was in 2017 as a mentee. It was at a time when I was looking to transition from Academia to Industry and I wanted to network and get guidance in my transition process. 

I got matched to a lady who was the head of an IT department at a transportation company. Although the relationship didn’t last long, she gave me valuable insights that I still carry with me today. She helped me improve my cover letter as well as my CV by pointing out that I needed to always communicate value and results rather than listing the responsibilities that I had. And to try as best as I could to put that value in numbers, which was not an easy thing to do with academic positions.

That additional perspective plus experience is what mentorship programs offer. Mentorship programs, when done well, allow you to reflect on how you work and find ways to improve yourself.

Fast forward to 2020, I am now part of another mentorship program, an internal program at my workplace that is meant for all the Fellows (F-Secure employees) across all the different units and offices where we operate. In this program, I got to participate as an organizer, a mentor, and a mentee. I learned something new and valuable in each of those roles and I wanted to share some of these learnings.

Naturally, both the mentee and mentor have to be ready to commit to the process. It usually helps to have a written agreement signed by both to show this commitment. Once you do decide to commit, here are some tips or guidelines.

As a Mentee:

  • Understand that you are the driver of the relationship. It’s your responsibility to set up the expectations, arrange the mentoring meetings, the meeting frequency, etc. 
  • Understand that the mentor is not there to do the work for you. You are responsible for your development. This means you should also say when it’s not going well.
  • Set a realistic goal and communicate it well to the mentor. I find it useful and more valuable to set a goal that challenges you and will have an impact on you once you go through the program. For example, as I shared earlier, I had the goal of transitioning from academia to industry. This was a challenging goal which has had a huge impact on my career .
  • Depending on the length of the program, break that goal into few manageable and measurable objectives and try to tackle one at a time over one or two meetings. In my last mentoring program, which lasted over 5 months, I had 3 objectives and the mentor also had 3 objectives. And we tried to tackle one objective in each meeting.
  • Prepare for the meetings, that way you and the mentor get the most out of the meetings. Even though the meetings can have the atmosphere of a casual chat rather than a serious meeting, preparing a focus for each meeting helps in achieving the objectives. I usually agreed on the agenda of the next session at the end of each meeting. Preparing or giving a purpose to each meetup also reduces the common feeling of meetings of “I am wasting the mentor’s time”.
  • Lastly, try to include personal topics for discussion and fun activities, this way you will get to build a more open and trustful relationship.

As a  Mentor:

  • As a mentor, you are usually there to guide and not be a problem solver. It’s easy especially for technically orientated persons to be problem solvers, but the idea is to help your mentee figure out the solution. This is also where good listening skills come in handy.
  • Put in the effort and take time to also prepare. You shouldn’t be too comfortable that you are the one with the knowledge and that you are just going to pass it on. It’s best to learn how your mentee learns and adapt your guiding process to them. You have to learn how to transition from being an expert to a leader.
  • Get rid of the imposter syndrome – I remember when someone asked me to be a mentor, my first thought was “was I qualified enough to be someone’s mentor?” and I have heard many mentors ask themselves this. Key is to be confident that you are in the position you are in for a reason and that you have something to contribute to a person who wishes to grow. Have healthy confidence in your abilities.
  • Have and show empathy – Be able to put yourself in your mentee’s shoes and see whether the advice you give relates to that person. For instance, if your mentee is in some way disadvantaged  it doesn’t help to tell them,” work hard”, without taking into account or discussing the existence of possible structural barriers that prevent that person from advancing as they would like, no matter how hard they work. 
  • Lastly, set your own objectives in the program. I feel that that helps build a more mutually beneficial relationship. 

I just also recently started participating in another mentorship program. This one is a cross company program where people from different companies are paired together. Under this program, I will be focusing on developing myself as a more valuable and insight-focused data scientist (more on that to come) and I will surely be applying many of the above tips. 

Write and let us know what other tips you have.

Beauty in Data: Experiences from a data visualization competition

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

I have written before about the importance of visualizations in communicating insights (here). Having the skill to create beautiful and insightful visualizations is a great arsenal to have in one’s pocket and I always wish I had more time to hone that skill. Although creating visualizations is part of my everyday data analysis work, from using them to explore the data, look for trends and correlations, to reporting insights and findings, I don’t really get a good chance to be creative. And when I say creative, I mean this or this or this. Thus, when our Data Strategy team at F-Secure created a visualization competition titled “Beauty in Data”, I got excited about the opportunity to try something new.

The competition was part of a bigger strategy to move the whole company towards being more data driven. It ran in June and one had two weeks to make a submission. It unfortunately was not great timing for me.  I was so busy during those two weeks that I almost changed my mind about participating. But I wanted to take part, having never competed before in a data analysis related challenge, I wanted to challenge myself to be creative and also observe what other submissions would come up with given the same dataset. Thus I entered the competition knowing very well that I wouldn’t win. 

We were given four data sets containing information on customers, customer activity data, sales, and product usage. The data was based on real data models and processes and utilized real terminology. However, the data was 100% fabricated and did not relate to reality in any way. The task then was to find insights from these four data sets, things that could be interesting and then create a set of visualizations to communicate these insights. Although the insights were important, it was the style of the visualizations that was key. The audience/judges in this scenario were business leaders about to make an “investment” decision based on our findings, but with little knowledge. One got extra points if they used F-Secure’s brand colors in their visualization. 

We were allowed to use any tool of our choice. I chose to use Tableau as it’s a popular business Intelligence tool, with a strong community and has interesting features that I don’t get to try in my everyday work. I use Tableau as part of my work usually to create reports. But I find that many of the reports I create tend to be similar and basic, and just communicate what needs to be communicated. But one can do so much more interesting visualizations with Tableau, just look at some of the examples here.

For the competition, I decided to try the Story feature of Tableau, which is a sequence of visualizations that work together to convey a narrative. It’s not a complicated feature to work with, but it forces one to think of an interesting narrative you want the visualizations to tell and then create that. 

I didn’t win, as expected (good visualizations do need time) but I was pleasantly surprised by the feedback that I received from the judges. I was told that it was a favorite among some of them as it “provided clear insights to a clear problem.” Adding that my submission was “a textbook example on how one should do visualizations”.   

This screenshot was shared with me where the judges pointed out that “with 1 click, the visualization directly provides insights in regards to a specific product and how its sales have performed.” 

A close up of a map Description automatically generated
Screenshot from my submission

Although I was happy with the feedback, I realized I still had to put more effort into getting out of my comfort zone and thinking out of the box with visualizations, especially after I saw some of the other entries (see below): 

Screenshot of a submission entry
Screenshot of a submission entry

So although my submission did not display so much beauty, I learned a lot. The challenge helped me learn a new Tableau feature, and from seeing the other submissions as shown above, I learned what was possible with using other tools such as Splunk, which I have never used before.  

This is how I usually learn new tools or features, by using a fun problem that inspires and challenges me to solve it. And if you are anything like me and you want to learn something new, I would advise to look for fun problems that interest you and motivate you to solve them with features and tools that you want to learn.  

Let’s see what next year’s competition will inspire me to learn 😊 

 

Experimenting with Python’s Pipeline Class for Churn Prediction

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

In this post I share the latest in my quest for continuous learning. This time, I experimented with the Pipeline class by scikit learn to see on its advantages. I applied it to a machine learning task that I previously worked on, churn prediction.

From my reading, using Pipeline is supposed to be simple, yet a powerful way of designing sophisticated machine learning systems [source]. I had not come across many analysts that use it (though now after searching for it, I have come across more examples where its used). The class is set up with the fit/transform/predict functionality, similarly to other estimator classes like LinearRegression. One of the advantages is that you can fit a whole pipeline to the training data and transform to the test data [source]. This means that, you do not need to carry out test dataset transformation if you already did it with your train features – this is taken care of automatically [source]. Hyperparameter tuning is also made easy, new parameters can be set on any estimator in the pipeline and refit – all in one line. Its also easy to use GridSearchCV on the pipeline to find the best parameters [source].

Below I run through the exercise I did where I used Pipeline, Logistic Regression, Standar Scaler, Principal Component Analysis, and GridSearchCV for churn prediction. Code is also available on github. I make use of the telco-churn dataset available here.

First I loaded the necessary libraries, dataset, nothing special there. I then did a bit of data exploration, looking at missing values, distribution of the target class, removing irrelevant data, and changing data types. Normally I would do more data cleaning and exploration, but that was not the point of this exercise.

As seen in the next steps, the pipeline object is created by providing a list of steps. The steps are a list of tuples consisting of a name and an instance of the transformer or estimator that are chained, in the order in which they are chained. The names can be anything, but the final item in the tuple list should be an estimator. In this exercise, I provided Standard Scalar, Principal Component Analysis, and Logistic Regression as the steps.

Doing grid search over this is also quiet easy.

And then do the predictions.

From this small exercise, I find that using the Pipeline class provides convenience in that you do not have to apply fit and transform methods twice, i.e., to the train and test sets. Its also easy to read. In addition, as mentioned also by [source], it “enforces a desired order of application steps which in turn helps in reproducibility and creating a convenient work-flow.” Will probably start using it more often in my work.

6 values to raise your kids with, in this complex world – Advice from Risto Siilasmaa, Chair of the Board of Directors of Nokia and F-Secure.

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

Having recently become a mother, I spend quite a bit of time thinking of how I should raise my child – the values to instill, the advice to give, and the habits to encourage – such that she is enabled to survive and succeed in the challenges life throws at her as well as enjoy life. I recently listened to Risto Siilasmaa’s talk at the HundrED Innovation Summit (video) which touched on many of the values and ideals I had been thinking about. In his speech, Risto presents six values or practices that we as parents should encourage our kids to have, which I share in this post. As Risto Siilasmaa also points out, these values also apply to running companies or leading people – areas that also interest me greatly.

So what are these six values?

1. Instill a sense of ownership: When you have a sense of ownership, you care, you act, and you do things that are beyond what is expected. Risto uses rental vs own car to illustrate this – when you rent a car you hardly ever take it for a wash, you feel that that is somebody else’s problem, but when it is your own, you care for it. The same principle applies to many things. Risto advises that we should encourage our kids to have a sense of ownership about the world, society, environment, people close to them, and the work that they choose to undertake – in that way, they will care and be encouraged to act.

2. Take a long-term view, not just look at the short-term: We should teach our kids to understand that the short gains maybe long-term losses. We should encourage kids to stop just looking at the tips of their shoes but lift up their heads and look to the horizon. Encourage them to ask themselves, “Am I being too short-sighted, should I be looking longer into the future?” To me, this ability to look ahead also allows them to create alternatives for their lives (see value no.5). Not only that, but also be able to take calculated risks.

3. Have respectful suspicion: Risto advises that we must nurture a strong and healthy suspicion in our kids, help them think that things could be done better than the way they have been done in the past, that perhaps the way things have been done before is not optimal. Encourage them to challenge themselves and others to come up with better ways of doing things. And if we can instill that in our kids, they will challenge us as well and help us improve.  Here I would add that, not only parents but teachers as well should encourage kids to have respectful suspicion and not see it as disrespect, i.e., that teachers or elders should not be questioned.

4. Be a paranoid optimist: Being an optimist means that one approaches life thinking that there is always a way out, things will work out, you will survive no matter the challenge faced. While being a paranoid, one thinks forward, plans for what can go wrong, prepares, mitigates, and has alternatives. Although it might seem contradictory as Risto admits, its a balance we should teach our kids to have. As a paranoid you are worried about what might go wrong and plan for that – and because of that, things will go wrong less often because you plan and do small things everyday to reduce things going the wrong way. This increases the likelihood of things going well and this experience of things going well, gives you fuel for the optimism. “Being a paranoid optimist as a life philosophy, creates good balance.”

5. Demand alternatives: “There should always be alternatives”, Risto says. “If you are making a decision without any alternatives then you are not making a decision”. We should encourage our kids to imagine other futures and choose which one you want to take, rather than seeing or thinking that there is only one way available. Having alternatives and choosing which way to go can create value.

6. Experiment: The world is changing fundamentally. With the speed of change and advances in technology the world is becoming a complex place, what Risto explains is a combination of complications and unpredictability. How then do we then teach our kids to survive in this complexity – by experimenting. We have to help them build an inclination to experiment. They should demand alternatives which means they need create alternatives which means they experiment. In this way they learn – evolve.

Identifying vs finding your passion

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

“Doing what you love or are passionate about does not feel like work” – In the past, I had always envied people who could say that. Of course I know it does not mean that everyday is a bed of roses, but I envied them because they knew what they were meant to do, and  at the time, I did not have the same feeling .

Finding one’s passion or purpose are popular statements with enough books and articles written that give advice and guidelines on how to reach this. They often come with  a set of questions to ask oneself and then an evaluation process follows with a eureka moment in sight. I have followed a few of these discovery routes but for one or other reason, I always ended up where I started, frustrated and unsure of what to do. I even tried ‘doing something new for 30 days’ to see if I like it and if it’s really what I want, but that did not work either.

So, the task of finding my passion has not  always been clear, but I continued to feel it was important for me to continue digging because I want to focus my life hours on doing what is meaningful to me and others. It was not until some years back, I read an article (and unfortunately now I cannot seem to locate that same article 🙁 ) that made me realize that a passion wasn’t something to be found – because if I was passionate about something then at this age, I would already be doing it somehow.

My perspective shifted from looking at it as ‘trying new things or finding something that I did not already have’ to ‘I am already doing what I am passionate about’ – I just had to realize it.

Thus finding my passion, involved me looking backwards at what I spent and liked spending my time on, what I prioritized, what I liked talking and reading about, what I could do for hours out of my own will without any expectations. Something I was already doing without even putting much thought on. I cataloged everything. With each item, I dug deeper into what actually made me enjoy those things and wrote it down. I repeated this process a few times, each time asking myself what is it really that I enjoy in this activity, why do I drop everything to do this, why can I spend hours on this and not something else, and so on.

And through this self reflection, I realized that the common thread was that I enjoyed helping people to be in a better position and helping them solve problems, in particular those that enabled them to advance in life. There was a deep desire within to make a positive impact in people’s lives. All I need is a call for help and I will do it gladly, and it does not really feel like work.

After I came to this realization, I wanted to focus on it more and make it the central part of what I was doing with my day. When I realized it, my self-confidence and drive to to hone those skills increased and it also gave me clarity and focus to set goals and carry out activities that are in line with what I enjoy. Thus, when I looked for employment, I looked for work that included this aspect and utilized the skills that I already have. It’s also the reason I commit my time to Think Africa’s work.

When you realize what you want to spend your day on, eventually the money question arises (and I firmly believe it should come last.), ‘how can I make money from this?’ And the answer is that, just like any venture, you have to make yourself valuable enough that someone is willing to pay you to do what you do. And if money cannot be made, learn to be content to have it as a hobby or pro bono :).

“Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it.”

Buddha

Only 34% of organisations highly trust their data and analytics for decision making

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

As a data analyst, one of the satisfaction I get from my work is to see the analytics results get utilized and that decisions are made based on my work. From talking with other data scientists, this however is not always the case. As also pointed by a  recent study with data scientists at a software company, one of the biggest challenges of the job is to actually ensure that the results get utilized (Riungu-Kalliosaari, 2017). Reasons such as business stakeholders being not fully convinced or confident about the results, are among the contributors for this.

In a survey conducted by Forrester Consulting for KPM for their Building Trust in Analytics report, it was identified that about 34% of organisations have a high level of trust in their own organisation’s use of different types of analytics. This is a disappointingly low number, considering that many companies want or are on the path of being data- or analytics-driven and the need for data scientists in companies continues to grow.

Trust in analytics and the results are important for its effective use. There are several reasons as to why there might a trust problem. Ramaloo in his post on Hidden Insights, acknowledged that in most businesses, there is a disconnect between the data scientist teams and business units. “Business units often don’t understand the predictive models and how they can really add value to the organization. This can be hugely frustrating, especially for the data scientists, who have often invested a lot of time and effort into developing these models”.

There was one webinar I attend which tried to provide reasons why there is an analytics ‘trust gap’. The facilitators pointed out the following top reasons why this happens:

  • Incomplete data,
  • Data is not clean,
  • No single version of truth,
  • Understanding output of analytics: This goes to how the output of analytics is presented. If there is failure to talk of the results in terms of business, there is a low chance of adoption.
  • The mindset of decision makers – experience vs data: Since sometimes analytics and data do not give the complete picture – some high management might feel that their experience is better.

There are several strategies proposed for instance in the KPM report and in the webinar about how to bridge this trust gap but I will not detail them here. From my experience so far I believe a lot of the trust problems can be addressed by having data scientists be not too far removed from the decision making process and end beneficiaries of the results. Data scientists should work early on with the business units making the decisions as a way for the business stakeholders to gain understanding and confidence in the data, the process, and the people doing the analysis and hence the results – as well as for data scientists to better develop more effective, consumable, actionable and domain-guided analytics.

What is your take? How is the trust between analytics and decision making in your organisation and how have you managed to this trust gap be bridged?

Transitioning from Academia to Industry: My personal experiences

Posted on by mdoucem@gmail.com

There are those decisions you make and its almost like something changes in the universe, in your whole outlook and attitude to ensure that that decision becomes a reality. It was the beginning of 2017 when I made a hard decision to transition from Academia to Industry. Having been in Academia for several years (since 2010 to be exact), I knew I wanted a change. As much I liked the research work and the projects I worked in, I started feeling like something was missing – the ability to see more the real impact of my work.

With this feeling, I sat down and thought of the kind of work I wanted to do, the experience I wanted to gain, the skills I wanted to use and build on, and more importantly the impact I wanted to make. Looking at those things I knew I wanted a data scientist position, not just crunching numbers, but use data to solve problems that I care about.

At that time, some of the skills I needed in order to perform that job well were not up to par, so I also knew what I needed to do next. I made the decision to use my spare time to learn as much as possible. I made more effort to improve my programming skills, took up data science courses, and started networking more in the circles I wanted to work in. I also narrowed down the types of problems that interested me. I took the opportunity to also gain some business, project management and leadership skills. By beginning of 2018, I was ready, at least ready enough to confidently communicate and demonstrate my abilities.

In a period of 4 months, I went on a total of 13 data science related interviews from 8 companies. Reached 2nd stage with 7 of them, was selected by 3 (not at the same time), and finally landed with one. With this experience, I wanted to share my experiences, just in case they might be beneficial to someone.

Lessons Learned (in no particular order):

– Data science is a hot field, but it is also big and combines various fields. And like me, you will probably feel like there are people out there who can do the job better than you. One can never know everything, but you should show that you are willing to learn and are continuously learning. I took several courses and did small projects that I could point to as evidence. But you should be good at something in this big field. You should have an answer to the “Why you?” question.

– A degree can play in your favor or against. Having a PhD and with only academic experience, I knew going into the interviews that there would be advantages and disadvantages with that. An advantage I observed is that there is a respect that comes with completing the PhD and the fact that you are exposed to new techniques and methods. The disadvantage is that some interviewers might think you are not ready for the fast-paced industry world. Luckily most of the research projects I had worked on were with industry partners, practical in nature, i.e., not just theoretical, and I had done some consulting work that I could point to and show that I can handle the business world.

– It is your practical abilities and attitude that seem to make a big difference. As data science is a practical field, more than the education, its what you can do. Thus many of the interviews included homework tasks that I had to perform and submit. Here I was glad I took the time to improve my programming skills. It also goes without saying that, in this field, as in many IT fields, having a github account or portfolio with examples of projects is essential.

– Find a sweet spot. As mentioned, Data science is big, with companies looking for a variety of skills, some more programming skills than others, some more statistical and mathematical knowledge than others, others more business skills. I found my sweet spot at the center of business and analytic skills, the ability to translate business problems or questions into data science problems, use data science to solve business problems, and the ability to communicate the above effectively.

A few tips to get the interviews:
– Attend events and network – This is a practice emphasized everywhere. But this is something that came handy in my process. Majority of the companies I got to interview with, were the ones where I had sent in an application through a contact I got during data science events. With each company, I sent in an application through the contact and if they had an open position open on their website, I sent in application through there as well. The advantage with the person to person contact is that you also get better feedback on your application than the automatized rejection email versions.

– Following from the above point, don’t just apply for jobs posted on company websites. Read about companies you are interested in or ones that might benefit from the skill you are offering. Identify people from those companies that are mostly likely to take your application seriously, find their emails and send them your application with an attention grabbing email subject header and cover letter. I got one interview through this approach.

A few tips during the interviews:
– Be confident, you also have the deciding power.

– Learn and adapt from each rejection. This is part of the journey. After a rejection, I found it helpful to speak with the interviewer and find out the reasons why they did not select me. This helped me identify my weaknesses and things I needed to improve. But it also informed the jobs I applied to next.

– Take the interviews as learning opportunities. You get to learn a lot about yourself, what kind of work, people and company you want to work for.

That’s all! Would also love to hear your experiences, thus feel free to share.