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These are indeed trying times. Our nation is again at the crossroads, a junction we arrive at every four years when we turn an election cycle and start another. This weekend, barring any untoward circumstances, Nigerians are expected to go to the polls to elect a successor to President Muhammadu Buhari who will soon be completing an eight-year tenure as President of the Republic of Nigeria. Several parties and candidates are in the race even though only four of them – Ahmed Bola Tinubu, Atiku Abubakar, Peter Obi and Rabiu Kwankwaso – appear to be prominent. While the candidates have been crisscrossing the Nigerian landscape on campaigns to convince the Nigerian electorate on why they should be voted for, some events in the last one week seem to be disrupting the peace of the nation and which, if not properly and effectively addressed, could pose a significant threat to our fledgling democracy. Specifically, I am talking about the currency change policy. While in principle, the idea behind the policy is commendable and within the purview of the constitutional mandate of the CBN, the implementation has been very shoddy. The aftermath of that and the attendant pain on the populace have been the spate of riots that have been experienced in various parts of the nation since last week. If, as many legal pundits have asserted, the President is disobeying the orders of the Supreme Court, it is because there is an Attorney-General that makes him believe that it is okay to do so! I have listened to so many interpretations of the Supreme Court judgment on the issue and came to the conclusion that law can indeed be very confusing! One can only hope that the attendant national atmospheric tension arising from the hardship the implementation has imposed on the common man will be sufficiently doused to enable people have the confidence to go out and vote on Saturday!
If you lead a people or an organization, especially at policy formulation or execution level, keep faith with this page over the next few weeks. Why? The world is currently going through a lot of changes, politically, economically, and socially. When the parameters of operations shift, every leader must be dynamic enough, not only to anticipate attendant changes but to also be equipped to deal with them as they occur.
Very often when we see challenges in the environment, we assume that they are peculiar to us. Maybe sometimes. Before you begin to moan and shout yourself hoarse on how terrible things are in your organization and in Nigeria, let me make it clear that none of these things is peculiar to Nigeria. Climate change, energy crisis, insecurity, food shortages, war, inflation are global issues that are common denominators to various nations. An average of one hundred and ten people die daily in America from gunshot wounds. South Africa recently declared an emergency in its power sector. Turkey and Syria only last week experienced an earthquake that, at the last count, has seen almost forty-five thousand people confirmed dead. In August last year, the government of Pakistan declared a national emergency because of deadly storms in Pakistan that claimed so many lives and almost grounded the nation. It was reported to have been the worst in the history of the country. The Russian-Ukraine war continues to send its ripples round the entire world. The United Kingdom is just crawling out of a recession. The wave of its onset last year cost Prime Minister Liz Truss her position after only seven weeks in office!
On the economic front, America, the world’s biggest economy is also the world’s largest debtor. It has reached its debt ceiling. The world of Big Tech is taking a hit. Google announced in January that it was relieving twelve thousand of its staff of their jobs. Amazon, the world’s largest online retail store, is sacking eighteen thousand staff! After he bought Twitter, one of Elon Musk’s first actions was to sack about two-thirds of its workforce! Paypal, Spotify, Microsoft and many other tech companies are shedding jobs like a snake sheds its skin! Their main reason for doing this is, as they say, slow economic growth and attendant dwindling resources. Elon Musk lost a whopping $200 billion of his fortune between November 2021 and January 2023. It was entered in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s largest loss by one person. So, if you think the sun only sets in your background, think again.
The consequences of all these things are everywhere around us and reflect in the way we transact business with others or our economic prospects. Because we operate in the context of a global community, we cannot claim to be immune to the effects of these challenges. If you run a factory that runs on the grains that are supplied from Ukraine, the war with that country and Russia will affect your local, internal operations. A change of technology in your industry will affect your processes and your outcomes.
However, none of these challenges is really the problem. The real challenge is how a leader can identify, confront and navigate the organization through these challenges. Crisis is the yeast that enables a leader to rise. Without challenges, there are limited opportunities for growth. To grow is to evolve. To know the skill of a pilot, you need to see how he takes the aircraft through a turbulence or lands in a storm. In normal, stable weather, almost all the plane’s functions are automated, and the pilot just follows the rote. In a turbulence, the real pilot takes over and steers the aircraft out of danger. Leadership muscles are not developed in the cozy environ of the corner executive office that affords the view of a tranquil lakefront, but in the crucible of challenges that test the attitude, the aptitude, the knowledge, the skills and the abilities of the leader. The challenges of global recession, insecurity, local operating environment, government policies, market dynamics and the attendant tough environment created by these require leaders who can do more with less by reducing redundancy and eliminating inertia. At the same time, they should be able to respond faster to emerging trends in technology, their industry, and the economy.
However, it is not all gloom and doom. It is interesting to know on the flip side that, with the help of appropriate borderless technology, the world is mushrooming legitimate millionaires in an unprecedented way. Many of the principles taught about how to build wealth have become obsolete. Nothing seems to be cast in stone. It is interesting to know that many teenagers, through their android phones, are making more money in a month than their parents make in a year! I saw a young Nigerian on social media recently who became a millionaire at the age of sixteen while preparing for his West African School Certificate examinations.
Subsequently, we will be identifying more of the specific issues that confront a leader in a world that is evolving faster than you can adapt. Thereafter, we will proffer appropriate responses to the challenges. It promises to be exciting…. Continued
Remember, the sky is not your limit, God is!
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