Strategic Rediscovery: 5 Renewal Strategies for Aspiring Successful Organization in Today’s Economy is my burden.
When you work in any store, pharmacy, supermarket, superstore, or even open market, you groan over the uncontrollable rising cost of living. Even the currency is losing value against international currencies, and I can assure you that it is even losing value to local currencies of other developing nations. Every stock, everything, every service, even energy sources: electricity tariffs, oil and gas cooking gas, AGO, PMS, LPG, etc. are all getting to an unaffordability rate. Sometimes, as a consultant, I wonder how Organization managers are surviving it. Of course, you can guess, their quickest way of surviving is the continuous increase in the prices of their products and services. The reasons dovetail to cost of securing dollars, the government increased charges for custom clearing, government policies, and taxes, cost of diesel, motor fuels, and gas. Seldom, do they have a problem with the rising cost of labour? Why? Nigerians hardly contend for salary increases because of the fear of being sacked…since the powers that be have continued not to create an environment for wealth creation.
As a consultant, I begin to think of what the leadership team of medium and large companies is supposed to be thinking of, to help their businesses, stakeholders, and ultimately their world. I do not believe there’s a point a leader should give up in saying, “I wish I knew what to do” or “I don’t know what to do”, but in my lifetime I have seen presidents (CEOs) saying, “I don’t know what to do”, “I wish I could help”, “I wish I know what to do”, “I’m not aware of what is happening”, and “it’s not my duty, it’s someone’s else”. Ours is a funny enclave. It’s unease here. An uneasy environment is where leadership is supposed to be most felt, just like food is most appropriated by one who is most famished, and water to the most thirsty.
This drove me into Thinking Laboratory to get a solution for a nearly successful society that started nosediving into cataclysm…a society with a portfolio of organizational and product brands in the ’70s, ’80s, and even ’90s.
Every corporate, Institutional, and political leader here is supposed to be proud of what we have achieved corporately, institutionally, and nationally, but are getting tired of always playing catch-up in the world marketplace. In a tournament of 500 medals, when the US, UK, China, Russia, Germany, Japan, Korea, Canada, etc. win 100 out of 500, they see it as a bad market, a bad outing, but when get 1 out of 500 in 20 years, it is like heaven has fallen to us on the positive. But China, the US, etc. can’t go to such a tournament without sweeping medals.
Something is wrong with us, our system, our structure, and most importantly, our psyche and our leadership.
But, let me talk to corporate executives (CEOs, CEs, Directors, Chairman/Members of BOD, and Managers) here or wherever they will come across this piece.
Some Organization movers are not moving to talk less of moving their companies (Note, no Organization grows more than their managers). They’re not thinking. They are not making decisions. They’re not taking action. They only increase the price any day they go to the Service Station (Nigeria: Filling Station) and see a price increase/change. Few other surviving companies spend a few days wrestling with how to renew their company for success. Good, but not great. They could send their managers to workshops on good topics like risk aversion, middle manager motivation, investment prioritization, sustaining change, etc. Again, good but not great. Our challenge in the country has reached the point of looking for a desperate solution to deal with the desperate economic environment we found ourselves.
Can I help you? I mean you, your organization? your genre?
I can if you want!
Can I ask you a question?
if yes,
My question for you is: what’s your ambition? What’s the picture of your future? What do you want to be known for? Is there a big, brighter, bolder future that you are asking your teams to create or are you just seeking a better version of today? What of your energy? Do you have energy or can you afford a kind of?
Hint!!!
Successful organizations know how to obey Newton’s laws of motion: all bodies are in uniform motion or will be in a straight line and will stay in motion unless acted on by a force. I’m talking to you as a novice in Physics. Let me cast it as we did in PHY101.
Newton’s 1st Law of Motion states that everybody (object) is in and will be in a state of uniform motion (i.e. acceleration=0) i.e. straight line unless compelled by an external force to act otherwise. Period.
This law is technically called the Law of Inertia in Physics and Pure Science.
Sir, let me tell you: you, your organization suffer also from INERTIA syndrome and law. Let me focus on Organization, and leave you alone.
Organizational inertia is great for replicating results but poor at executing change (this is where your organization and other people’s organizations have issues). So, if your ambition is to stay mostly the same, same uniform motion which is acceleration=0 (acceleration means rate of change), there is a good chance that’s what will happen.
This can be okay if the opportunity that change represents is relatively modest and can also depend on the industry you’re operating. You should also know that a host of newer, smaller firms are setting the pace, and this means that your managers are leaving money on the table, thinking that erratic price increases are a panacea for being afloat, hence disappointing some of their customers and the shareholders, employees and the rest stakeholders apart.
Managers of the Organizations that will survive this mayhem are going to be serious about moving faster and being outstanding, not just merely good. What should they do?
Ask Dr Mike Ihezuo.
Get him to sit down with your Managers & Directors, and REVOLUTIONALIZE their THINKING fibers on handling the pervasive ubiquitous VUCHA [Voilatile, Uncertain, CHaos, and Ambiguous] that characterized our economy in recent years. Let him exegete the Unease of Doing Business In Nigeria and arm you with the right KEYS to navigate out of the bad waters. Dr Mike Ihezuo, FICRPC, MCArb, MNIM, MNCS, MCPN, OCP, is a Chartered Professional Manager, Chartered Arbitrator, Crisis Management Expert, Mediation Exponent, Conciliation Maestro, Entrepreneurial Sage, and Leadership Authority. He can help you if you can humbly open up. These are crises. Give the Crisis Expert to bring the Leadership Authority to bear in your organization. Give him a CALL. See FOR CONSULTING.
