The VIP Framework · OCH VIP Academy
Find your big career why.
You don’t find purpose by looking for it. You build value by solving problems for people, you make an impact by serving them with it, and your purpose finds you along the way. The VIP Framework walks you through all three.
Six steps, about ten minutes. You leave with your VIP Card.
A framework by Martin M. Kamethu, lead mentor and founder of Ongoza Cyber Hub.
Value
The values that drive you, the problem you can solve, and the gifts only you bring.
Impact
The people who have that problem, and the signals they're already sending you.
Purpose
What it all adds up to: the mission you're on, and the vision it serves.
A note from your lead mentor
Build value. Serve a mission. Purpose will find you.
Every new year, and every new job, most of us reach for the same plan: a list of technical and soft skills to learn, and the certificates to prove them. I’ve done it too. It has its merits, but on its own it falls short. Acquiring skills isn’t enough; you have to know where and how to apply them.
And you’re told to go and find your purpose. I’d tell you the opposite. Don’t trouble yourself yet with the meaning of life or why you’re here. Solve a problem for somebody. Do it well, keep getting better at it, point it at something bigger than yourself, and your purpose will come looking for you.
1 · Build competence, then value
Value is a problem you can solve, for people who have it.
In your first three years, focus on competence: the knowledge and skills of the work. That’s exactly where you should be. Then put them to use. You build value when your knowledge and skills solve a real problem for a group of people, your impact audience. The more you grow, the bigger the problems you can solve, the bigger that audience becomes, and the further your influence reaches.
- 1At first, your influence covers only you.
- 2Then someone beside you.
- 3Then the whole team leans on you.
- 4Then teams you've never sat with.
- 5Until a whole organisation feels your absence.
2 · Find the grand mission
Your skills are not ends in themselves.
Every organisation has a grand mission: growing its market share, delighting its customers, reaching people nobody else reaches. When you join it, you sign up to that mission, whether you know it or not. Very few of us choose our paths with it in mind. We answer job adverts, sit interviews and fit into roles without ever asking how the role moves the mission.
So whether you’re new or have been there for years, your first task is to find that grand mission and understand it. Beyond your first three years, shift gears: value is created by aligning with it. The people whose value grows inside an organisation are the ones who line up with its mission most clearly.
Your skills
Cloud security, identity, secure systems: what you've spent years building.
What they make possible
Every new branch and every new customer can be brought online safely, from day one.
The grand mission
Your bank grows its market share into new regions this year.
Keep earning certifications and building your name; both matter. But make sure you’re positioning true value: know how this year’s mission will be achieved, and where your capabilities feed it. That’s how you create more value, gain influence, and in the end, earn more.
3 · Your gifts
Skills get you in the room. Your gifts set you apart in it.
Knowledge and skills help you solve problems. But it’s your unique abilities, call them gifts, call them talents, that carve out a path only you can take. Put ten people with the same knowledge and skills in one room, and your gifts are why the path you walk out on is still yours alone.
4 · Read the signals
Purpose speaks quietly. Mostly through other people.
Build value, serve people and a mission with it, and pay attention. Purpose leaves patterns and signals, and they mostly live in the feedback and the casual comments people make about you.
“How did you calm that customer down so easily? Nobody else on the team could have done that.”
10
July 2022
The day mine found me
That day came for me on 10 July 2022, after eight years as a cybersecurity consultant at Serianu. I discovered my purpose, and I’ve lived with it ever since, with a clarity about what my life should be about that I never had before. It’s why I started Ongoza Cyber Hub, and why I mentor: to help upcoming cybersecurity professionals build value, align it with a mission worth serving, and hear their own signals sooner than I did.
I pray you find yours too, and live free, to the fullest of your abilities.
Martin M. Kamethu, lead mentor and founder, Ongoza Cyber Hub