LAGOS State governor, Mr Akinwunmi Ambode, has expressed strong commitment to transform the state from megacity to a smart city, but said that the public servants who are the engine room to achieving the lofty dream needed to be trained and retrained to give them effective tools in order to be at par with their counterparts all over the world.
Governor Ambode, represented by the state’s Commissioner for Establishment, Training and Pension Dr Akintola Benson Oke, said this at the weekend in Ikeja at a 2-day training programme organised for top civil servants in the state, tagged, “Coaching as a Vehicle for Realising the Potentials of the Lagos State Public Service.”
According to Ambode, moving from a megacity to a smart city speaks volumes, saying it showed that what was obtainable all over the developed world, including the United Kingdom (UK), Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, United States (US) would be replicated back in Lagos State with minor adjustments.
“In all of these things, the public servants who are the engine room to do all these things need to be trained and retrained to give them effective tools to be at par with all their counterparts all over the world,” the governor said.
He explained that the ultimate goal of all of the administration’s investments in training workshops was for the Lagos State Public Service to attain that optimal state of performance and effectiveness where its units and teams and departments were headed by persons who understand what leadership means and who have developed their leadership potentials and have enhanced their performance skills.
He said it was only at such a point in time that the Public Service could experience exponential growth.
Governor Ambode said his administration fully appreciated that there was a need to chart a path to attain the desired end as opposed to merely talking about its importance, contending that doing otherwise would render such efforts meaningless and also amount to undertaking a journey without a map.
“The creation and adoption of such a path is the purpose of this 2-day training workshop. As I have indicated at several other fora, once the Lagos State Public Service is able to attain that optimal state of effectiveness and productivity through the aid of coaching, no problem will be too complicated, no task too herculean, no challenge too huge, and no task too complicated for it to confront head-on.
“Stated differently, the ultimate goal of the Lagos State government is to equip every officer of the Lagos State Public Service with leadership tools while the vehicle for achieving this is consistent coaching for every officer,” Governor Ambode said.
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He, however, assured that the state government would invest in every public officer by designing and delivering coaching instructions that would increase the knowledge and skills of every officer such that the multiplier effect on the public service would be dynamism, responsiveness, effectiveness, machine-like precision, and exponential productivity.
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