Guides to building and sustaining 21st Century business

Entrepreneurs make the world go round.

Without them, the job creation efforts of governments will not be able to cater for the army of citizens seeking paid jobs. However, many of these important stakeholders struggle with staying afloat and not a few have fallen, thus swelling the population of unemployed in society.

Though the largest economy in Africa and the 26th globally, Nigeria faces the challenges of reducing poverty and inequality due to rapid population growth. Over 40 percent of Nigerians, which translates to 83 million people, live below the poverty line of $1.90 per day. For a country with this kind of challenge, entrepreneurs could have helped, just like they are doing in other countries, but it is like a graveyard for entrepreneurs.

But are there ways to ensure businesses keep running, even well after their founders are no more? Nigerian banker and entrepreneur, Ifie Sekibo, in his new book, ‘Leadership Turnaround’, argues that there are principles to get the best out of corporate entities and to keep them running at profit for generations. Sekibo, a graduate of Harvard Business School and chief executive officer/managing director of Heritage Bank, in 175 pages, explains principles and strategies that can help entrepreneurs.

These principles and strategies include glocalisation, generation of generational organisations, leadership as hope dealing, partnerships, emotional intelligence, the lessons inherent in failures and autographs versus legacy. He also shows that leadership is all about having the ability to inspire hope, make people dream more, learn more, do more and become more.

Sekibo argues that a lot of businesses make the mistake of wanting to go global all in the name of globalisation. He explains that business leaders should emphasise what he calls glocalisation instead of globalisation. He adds that glocalisation means the local environment in fashioning the business plans.

The book offers interesting details about why glocalisation is capable of making a company respected globally and why globalisation can lead to a business failing. He cites the example of Starbuck, a major American brand, whose attempt to use the same strategy it uses in the United States in China led to a colossal failure. He also gives the example of another American brand, which introduced rice meals for it to have headway in China. This, he says, is considering the local environment.

The book demonstrates that many business leaders continue to face massive challenges because of a lack of emotional intelligence, seeing failure as a problem and chasing legacy instead of autographs, which are more endearing and will be remembered years after the leaders are dead.

On the importance of failures, the author recalls how he had to sit with a former bank owner and learnt from why his bank failed— he learnt many lessons which came in handy in running Heritage Bank and making it a force to reckon with despite its background as a bank that was moribund for no less than a decade.

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The Heritage story, which the author refers to intermittently, gives a practical face to the issues addressed by the author. For instance, the author reveals how an issue the bank glossed over in its acquisition of Enterprise Bank also dealt it a fatal blow. After acquiring Enterprise Bank, it discovers it had so many litigations against it in courts.

This set back the bank by N30 billion, which it had to pay in one day to wade off trouble. The lesson in this, the author stresses, is to know everything possible about parties in mergers and acquisitions.

The author also stresses the importance of unity of purpose in an organisation. He gives the example of the Biblical tower of Babel, which would have succeeded if God had not introduced confusion by making the people speak different languages and thus unable to understand one another and see through the project.

He particularly draws attention to the need to ensure employees from an acquired company are made to feel a sense of belonging so that they would not become a liability to the parent organisation. He adds that most times the values of employees from acquired organisations are not properly assessed and annexed.

The book flags another major challenge: lack of empathy or sympathy for the team. He says business leaders must learn how to show empathy or sympathy when needed. He drives home the point with a personal anecdote of how he got a leadership expert, Pastor Sam Adeyemi, to talk to his team after a failed business deal.

Mental health is another issue the author hammers on. Generally, in Africa, mental health issues are trivialised. The author argues that this contributes to businesses failing and makes a case for leaders to be interested in the mental health of their employees.

By and large, the book demonstrates that the vision of an organisation is nothing without the right attitude by the leadership and the team. He argues that leaders must identify the strengths and weaknesses of their employees and use the knowledge to the advantage of their organisations. He concludes that vision must be driven by leadership and that anything short of this is a clear path to failure.

Sekibo focuses on the need to grow businesses that will outlive their owners. More specifically, Sekibo zooms in on Guinness, a business that started in Ireland at a time water was contaminated and beer was the solution.

He goes the extra mile to show why the Guinness brand has survived generations and will continue to exist. He blames lack of foresight and others for the inability of businesses in Nigeria to survive generations of the founding family.

In as much as his emphasis is on business leaders, Sekibo zooms in on political leadership from time to time. In one instance, he addresses the fact that African leadership still goes cap in hand begging for aid. He argues that Africa does not need aid, but an equal partnership of long-term investment. He makes a case for Nigerian leaders to allow foreigners to invest in our viable mineral products instead of focussing on oil alone. He dismisses the fear that the foreigners will take over the resources if they are allowed to come in.

Sekibo frowns at the political structure which keeps recycling leaders and disenfranchising the young ones. He faults the belief that anyone less than 40 is not fit to lead Nigeria and cites the example of Olusegun Obasanjo, who became a military leader at 39. He argues that failed African states are led by people who have been in power for decades.

The author points at Rwanda where a young crop of leaders are in strategic positions and are doing things differently and with positive results.

Overall, the book makes a compelling argument for the tenacity to overcome challenges, the capacity for optimal thinking, addiction to positive results, human capital development, and having the right mindset, among several others.

It is a very illuminating and enjoyable book. Students, scholars, policymakers, politicians, development practitioners and anyone interested in leadership will find the book of tremendous help. Each ‘Take Action’ section at the end of each chapter is bound to stir the reader. Though it contains more Nigerian examples, it remains an important contribution to global leadership literature.