Posts Tagged ‘Business’
“My name is Tolulope Ilesanmi, I am a Cleaner. That is not a confession. It is a celebration. It is also a protest. I was a banker. That is a confession.” These were my opening words when I spoke at the Desautels African Business Initiative conference in […]
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“Oh and of course as part of the job you will also have to clean homes and offices too”, Tolu said, his twinkling eyes examining me. Mhm. Interesting. We were sitting in his office after my job interview to do the communications and marketing at Zenith Cleaners, which had turned into a 2-hour long conversation.
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One of the gifts of being based in South Africa has been the opportunity to get to know Allan Kaplan and Sue Davidoff and their work at The Proteus Initiative. We’re excited to share a sneak preview of their soon-to-be-launched short book A Delicate Activism: A Radical Approach to Change.
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The first thing that struck me from the talk and that had me celebrate inwardly was that these insights are now surfacing at various points through various people who have all been keenly and committedly observing their environments and coming to similar conclusions: That organisations are […]
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It took courage to start a cleaning company when Ronke and I did. I was an MBA student at McGill, having worked as a star banker at GT Bank, an elite Nigerian bank, and in Nigeria’s oil and gas industry. Being slightly rebellious, I proceeded partly because being a cleaner was contrary to everything my society expected of me. The clients, friends and associates who have engaged with us have had a sense that there was something different […]
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We aim to make more people see that Nigeria is not “them” but “I” and “us”, bringing closer to home the urgency and the responsibility of change. We aim to show that change begins when many more Nigerians stop being frustrated at the government, the polity and the society and channel the same energy into becoming the bigger change they seek, in day-to-day interactions with family members, friends, colleagues, clients and other Nigerians and non Nigerians.
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In workshops and classrooms I frequently hear some form of the question: “But how do we deal with those people who just don’t get it?” The ‘it’ is usually undefined, but everyone in the room understands it to be some combination of justice, sustainability, compassion…Heads nod. How can we hope to move forward when so many people don’t see the world from this perspective, when so many people don’t seem to care about the things we care about?
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I was reading through the Zenith Cleaners blog recently and came across a reflection written by our friend Tolu Ilesanmi titled Invitation to the dance. In it he describes the kind of reciprocal relationship he works hard to create with his staff, clients and suppliers.
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My friends Tolu and Ronke run a cleaning company that is unlike any cleaning company I have ever come across. They see Zenith Cleaners as a vehicle through which they can create the kind of world they want to live in, a world that is not just healthy and aesthetically beautiful, but deeply rooted in […]
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