What you should be pushing is a change in these nuances. MDs who run their companies as fiefdoms aren’t the leadership we need for sustainable development. The world is quickly adapting flatter org structures, flexible work models, and collaborative decision making. Under 25’s are making these decisions, empowered to manage budgets, and fail forward as companies foster innovation and inclusion as keys to their survival.
The Nigerian leader regresses, by centralizing rather than devolving institutional power. Resorting to running kingdom/subject models rather than corporations is what results in the analogy you just made. Does not serve anyone in the long run. From subjective employment decisions to cut off a crucial part of employee gratification – the power to act in decision-making roles, in their areas of technical capability. What is the strategy behind that? Those companies will be handed over to people who have no decision-making acumen. it serves no one. That should be your message.
Corporate partnerships should not be the MD’s way of hobnobbing. Nor should it be decided on the basis of relationships and social class. Figurehead roles exist when roles aren’t mapped to industry and sectoral needs. Why maintain a role if you consider it obsolete or irrelevant to your sector in the first place? If the banking industry does not consider Corporate Comms roles to be strategic, then those roles should be mapped accordingly. There are ways to build mutual-disciplinary capabilities that contribute to business bottom lines holistically. Finance should take a leaf from the tech industry, where roles require multidisciplinary capabilities.
Corporate culture in Nigeria is soo culturally nuanced, and most visible within MD/Founder orgs. I doubt we will see real progress with those. The will to change just isn’t there.
IZIN AKIOYA MCIM
Chartered Post Graduate Diploma Marketing (CIM UK)
Bsc. Economics (University of Lagos)
Other Courses @
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Lee Kwan Yew School of Public Policy
Award-winning Multidisciplinary Marketing/Commercial Leader and Trainer
Faculty: Simon Page College of Marketing
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Ex. British American Tobacco Nigeria
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