The Institute of Directors (IoD) Nigeria has urged newly inducted fellows of the institute and other business leaders to develop the needed capacity and strategies to help build organisational resilience on the back of the turbulent economic environment.
This charge was given by Ije Jidenma, president and chairman of the governing council of the IoD, during the 2022 Fellows investiture held on Thursday, 13 October, at the oriental hotel, Victoria Island, Lagos. The Institute inducted 25 fellows and two honorary fellows during its October investiture in Lagos.
“It is important, therefore, to build the capacities of business leaders to provide dynamic strategies that will help build organisational resilience and help businesses to identify and leverage opportunities and drive innovation in order to remain competitive in the face of uncertainties.
“In disruptive times, leaders can help businesses survive by developing and supervising the emplacement of a more agile and innovative workplace that will create the best positive outcome for the growth and sustainability of the organisation,” she stated.
According to her, the theme of the 2022 Fellow’s Investiture, ‘Leadership in Disruptive Times: Surviving the Uncertainties’, cannot come at a better time considering the fact that today’s world is filled with uncertainties and the challenges being faced by businesses are better imagined.
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“The role of business leaders in helping organisations wade through these turbulent times cannot be overemphasized. It is only through the intervention of very efficient, knowledgeable and effective leaders that organisations can survive these perilous times,” Jidenma stated.
Ayo Omotayo, the guest speaker and Director General, National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, Kuru, stated that most people in governance, politics, business, even paid jobs, would like to avoid uncertainty. According to him, people base their plans on what they have been told, trusting that they would have removed the uncertainty they would otherwise face.
“In reality, in every area of life, the future is not predetermined. It is daily experiences from certainty to uncertainty which occur and make the uncertainty more obvious,” Omotayo stated in his speech titled, ‘Disruptive Leadership: Its Strengths, Weaknesses, and Options during the period of business uncertainty’.
He stated that as individuals and businesses evolved, reducing uncertainty was more important for survival than seeing reality accurately. According to him, people should seek to confront uncertainty by working out ways to inculcate a different philosophy and approach, instead of trying to avoid it.
“Rather than trying to narrow things down to certainties by prior logical prediction and analysis, a disruptive leader needs to be able to, by different thinking, open things up to the possibilities inherent in uncertainty by being more ‘right-brained’.
“A disruptive leader, rather than choose research, forecasts and plans, might more often embrace exploration, effectuation and antifragility. This is bearing in mind that the situation determines the approach; to be antifragile so that, if the unexpected happens, as it will, we are ready to profit from it,” Omotayo stated.
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