Jim Ovia’s success principles

The universe runs on principles and laws. Airplanes fly in the sky because they obey the Law of Aerodynamics. Ships, in spite of their weight and size, stay afloat on water because of their observance of Archimedes Principle. If planes disregard the Law of Aerodynamics or ships discountenance Archimedes Principle, neither will achieve its objective.

In the same vein, career success is founded on principles and rules. Those who want to make a success of their career must observe such principles. The observance of these rules and principles helped Mr Jim Ovia, pioneer Managing Director of Zenith Bank, to get to the acme of his career as a banker. Here are some of the principles that helped Ovia make a success of his career journey.

Competence

Jim Ovia is a stickler for competence. He ensures that he updates his knowledge and skills to the extent that there is nothing going on in his industry that is strange to him. This accelerated his career growth as a young banker as his bosses saw in him a dependable subordinate to whom they could entrust greater responsibilities. Competence gives competitive advantage. Competence makes it difficult for your boss to overlook you and makes it almost impossible for your customer to look elsewhere for a service you can render. Those who want to go far in their career spare no expense to update their skills because they know it is an investment that never fails to yield dividend.

Even as a bank chief executive, Ovia played up competence. While setting out, he went for the best hands in the industry which ensured excellent service delivery. It is therefore not a surprise that Zenith Bank is ranked as one of the best in the country in every ramification.

Innovation

Another factor that has helped Mr Ovia is innovation. Although this did not come to the fore until he started Zenith, it had always been part of him. Innovation is finding new ways to solve existing problems. Innovation thrives on being interested enough to identify a problem and being committed enough to think creatively about solving it. At the advent of Zenith and other second generation banks, banking halls were always jam-packed with customers who spent hours to carry out even simple transactions. But leveraging on technology, Ovia and others solved this problem by coming up with creative products that made banking a delight rather than a burden that it had hitherto been known as. This resulted in a boom for Zenith Bank as those who wanted a pleasant banking experience shifted to the bank. Since the bank started that upward movement shortly after it commenced business, the tide has not changed.

Best practices

One of the major strengths of Zenith Bank is its strict adherence to best practices. The bank is not known for underhand dealings. Regulatory authorities have carried out investigative activities on banking institutions in the country several times but not once has Zenith Bank been indicted for any unprofessional conduct. The bank prides itself as one of those that adhere to the basic principles of banking. This is one of the reasons the bank is thriving; investors want to put their money in organizations that are strong on integrity, employees want to work in organizations that have integrity and customers want to do business with organizations whose integrity is not in question. Nobody loses by embracing integrity.

Excellent packaging

For Jim Ovia, the form is as important as the content. His belief is that if the package is good enough, it will attract people to find out its content. If, on the other hand, the exterior is repulsive but the content is excellent, both the package and its content risk being spurned. Based on this, he is one of those who were instrumental to the transformation of bank buildings to give them a better and stronger appeal. A Zenith Bank building is unmistakable anywhere; it stands out from the pack. Proper packaging will also make you stand out.

Legacy consciousness

Ovia deliberately builds today for the good of tomorrow. This has been evidenced in all his endeavours. Not only has this enabled him to build Zenith Bank into a global brand, it has also rubbed off on his other ventures such as ICT Foundation for Youth Empowerment (IFYE), which is focused on improving the socio-economic welfare of Nigerian youths by encouraging them to embrace ICT and Mankind United to Support Total Education (MUSTE), a philanthropic organization focused on providing scholarship for the less privileged.

This is a very critical success factor because everyone who wishes to go far must invest in succeeding generation. Ovia raised a team of competent men and women in Zenith Bank to the extent that when he left as a result of a CBN directive that CEOs who have spent 10 years in their role must retire, he was able to hand over the bank to a competent hand, Mr Godwin Emefiele, who was later appointed CBN governor. Even with the exit of Emefiele, the bank’s fortune has continued to look up.

Speaking on his investment in the youth through IFYE and MUSTE, Ovia said, “Through these channels, I intend to leave a kind of legacy where I would have touched a lot of people’s lives and made them better than they were. It would give me happiness that I have been able to change the lives of people especially the youth. In my lifetime I want to play a role that would touch the lives of Nigerians and humanity generally. That would be the legacy that I would want to leave behind.”