Leadership and patriotism

Let me start by putting into perspective, who the leader is or who the leader should be.

Let us take a quick look at the inventory of basic characteristics of the leader. He is the anchorman of collective vision and epitomizes collaborative commitment. He is entrepreneurial and at the same time, intrapreneurial. He combines mastery of effective communication with excellent knowledge of the value chains. He hones marketing expertise and turns collective vision to reality. As we can see, these are essential abilities that can run very well with cognitive aptitudes. Peter Drucker described this leader as a masterful conductor whose decisions must determine whether the organisation thrives or not.

But do these attributes reassuringly illuminate the core and sure drivers of success of organisations?

Running a business requires a day to day case study of coordinated learnings and experience. There must be an interface of modules to regularly rethink the business. We gather inputs, then go into planning-retreats. With effective and free flowing team-discussions, we arrive at new concepts. Experts call this “disruption and innovation”.

Let us use Nigeria’s marketplace as our case study. The business environment is turbulent, ambiguous and uncertain.

Justin Menkes, author of the book “Executive Intelligence,” pointed out that in order to cope with this shifty and uncertain business environment, the leader needs exceptional executive talent to lead and cultivate associates. He broke this down into differentiated business talent and cognitive skills that are specific to the business environment. According to him, “This is the right stuff”.

Latest Harvard Business Review encapsulated these thoughts and actions in the following words: “Balancing Execution and Adaptation for Success”.

The publication named two varieties of performance “Tactical Performance and Adaptive Performance”.

Tactical performance describes how the leader and his organisation sticks tenaciously but effectively to the core strategy. The leader, in this context, drives focus and consistency. He directs organisation’s limited resources to fewer, identified and managed targets.

However, the reality of today’s ambiguous and uncertain business environment, will make it extremely difficult for the organisation to thrive with only the tactical model.

To succeed in a sustainable manner, the organization with innovation and grit, must stand smartly on the two legs of Tactical and Adaptive strategies. There must be divergence, creativity, skillful problem-solving and innovative maneuvers.

A very important item in the Adaptive strategy that stands out, is “Citizenship”. The leader as a legally recognized member of a country, must become a “huge support system” for the well-being of fellow citizens. This virtue which definitely is very rich in profitable values, is known as Patriotism and it is the allure of responsible leadership. Patriotism powerfully attracts irresistible influence and passion to the leader and his organisation.

In Nigeria today, some individuals and organisations are deliberately constraining supply of essential goods and services in order to ramp-up prices to prohibitive levels. Competitive pricing definitely, is a functional strategy that serves creditably to achieve desirable value for goods and services. Ethical and responsible business organisations transparently use this strategy to achieve patronage and penetration.

It is however, not right to outrageously raise prices for short term benefits. An exploitative advantage can never be sustainable.

An exemplary display of the adaptive strategy of “citizenship” was the recent price-crash in international air tickets. This was as a result of the patriotic decision of Nigerian-owned Air Peace that took the initiative by reducing its fares by over seventy percent.

Chief Executive of Air Peace, Allen Onyema said in an interview that he could not believe “that because of what Air Peace did, foreign airlines could substantially reduce the fare for the business class category from N15 million to N17 million down to N4 million and the economy class to about N1 million.

I strongly believe that we should be responsible as business leaders to support the livelihood of fellow citizens with our strategic positions. The adaptive strategy of citizenship must therefore, be imbibed by smart business leaders. It attracts highly profitable and tremendous goodwill that is indispensable for business growth and prosperity.

Mutual Benefits creatively tinkered with the equilibrium of demand and supply to dramatically solve medical and transportation problems in the Niger Republic and Liberia respectively.

In Nigeria, our dear country, Mutual Benefits created the “All Risk Insurance Cover” to enable PZ companies (a multinational) continue with its policy of discounts and rebate to customers when this policy was becoming too expensive. We also made a patriotic intervention in ensuring that rickety vehicles that were being used in all the airports were changed to new ones.

Let me conclude with my usual forward looking description of business strategy. It is an integrated and coordinated set of commitments and actions of organisations that begins and ends with the customer (the leader’s compatriot).

It is the customer that is served. It is the customer that will be satisfied and it is the customer that will determine wether his needs are adequately satisfied.

Whatever model an organisation adopts, the nitty-gritty of business are: How to meet the needs of customers, choose the appropriate goods or services, generate profit, grow operating profit once it is being obtained regularly, improve organisation’s position against competitors and leverage market behavior and technology; all these revolve around the customer.

Branding, the all-in-all of organisation’s sales and marketing activities is the relationship “between, the brand and its customers”. It is determined by how effective and value-adding the connection is between the organisation and its audience, the citizens (compatriots).