Prof Griffith: Leaders Must Think More Strategically for Success During Volatile Times

Interview

In this interview with Paul Griffith, the world’s first professor of management to lead a team to launch a rocket, insights are shared on how world leaders can better manage change in the present uncertain times at the forthcoming capacity development programme of TEXEM UK. The programme’s title is ‘Strategic Leadership For Enduring Impact During Volatile Periods’. It will be delivered by Ambassador Charles Crawford (winner of the equivalent of two Oscars), Oxford-trained Professor Roger Delves and Prof Rodria Laline, the founding director of the Harvard University Maximise Your Board Programme and Griffith, a London Business School alumnus.

How do you foresee the TEXEM April 2023 programme, ‘Strategic Leadership For Enduring Impact During Volatile Periods’, impacting the African leaders?

The programme offers a broad range of topics to support African leaders in developing the skills and capabilities required to fulfil their leadership potential in the 21st century. The TEXEM programme will also equip leaders with actionable skill sets that will help them inspire their team and organisation to solve societal challenges better and, in the process, enhance their core competence to harness the limited opportunities available in turbulent times.

Tell us briefly about your unique experiences and how they will assist the global and African leaders in handling the present leadership challenges they are facing.

In my executive career working in the oil & gas, telecoms and space industries, my roles always involved creating new business models, leveraging new technologies and driving profitable growth, so I have actually led organisations in these circumstances. In addition, working as an educator and consultant, I have engaged with global organisations to support their executives in developing themselves and implementing best practice thinking for the benefit of themselves, their teams and their organisations. I will also leverage TEXEM’s proven and tested methodology that has consistently made learning fun, engaging, stimulating, impactful and memorable for over 4000 executives in the past 13 years.

How would you advise organisations to position themselves to gain from participating in this programme?

Encouraging executives to be lifelong learners is the starting point for any organisation with the ambition to succeed. This TEXEM programme will encourage peer-to-peer learning through the group task that will be assessed and will help participants to enhance their social capital and help their organisations to forge critical alliances with key stakeholders, which could be a resource that is difficult to imitate and is necessary for unlocking scarce value.

What possible experience should executives look forward to during TEXEM’s forthcoming programme titled ‘Strategic Leadership for Enduring Impact During Volatile Periods’, which holds between April 15 to May 6, 2023, for the African leader?

Executives can expect to be introduced to new ideas and frameworks that will give them a toolkit to apply in their organisation to drive their strategic leadership capabilities forward. Executives will learn from leading thinkers and educators, sharing best practice approaches to strategic leadership engagingly and practically. The TEXEM’s ‘UK Strategic Leadership for Enduring Impact During Volatile Periods’, combines self-paced study and live sessions. Participants will study for an average of one hour every day between 15 April to 6 May, and there will be live sessions every Saturday for four weeks. The experience has been gamified such that participants will get points ranked on a league table for every article read, video watched, and comment made.

How could executives develop strategic leadership for an enduring impact in this volatile period?

In this programme, executives will be introduced to tools and concepts – they will benefit most from this programme by experimenting and applying these ideas during their time in the programme so that they feel confident to take them back into their organisation. Furthermore, the TEXEM methodology will enable leaders to quickly spot and equip their team to harness opportunities and manage associated risks despite the operating context characterised by the fast pace and stiff competition. Thus this TEXEM programme will inspire executives with actionable insights that will enable their organisations to navigate uncertainty successfully and win.

What are contemporary strategic leadership issues affecting firms that leaders must address, and how can they address them?

Examples of strategic leadership issues are understanding strategic concepts and the competitive landscape, developing an innovative culture and engaging with new technologies. To address these issues, leaders need to think more strategically and ask better strategic questions to build an environment of improved psychological safety and agile responsiveness and to develop new business models that embrace digital technologies. Thus, this TEXEM programme on strategic leadership will equip executives with the requisite skillsets that will enable them to optimise their capability to anticipate, challenge, translate, influence, collaborate, relearn and unlearn for the effective and efficient attainment of goals.

Twenty Cheers to the EFCC

By Williams Oseghale

It was the late Afrobeat music icon, Fela Anikpulapo Kuti who in one of his evergreen songs, Authority Stealing highlighted the magnitude of corruption and stealing of public funds by government officials and public servants. In his song, Fela stated that stealing by government officials with the use of pen was more than armed robbery.  Permit me to reproduce part of the lyrics here .“Authority Stealing pass armed robbery. We Africans must do something about this nonsense, We say we must do something about this nonsense, I repeat, we Africans we must do something about this nonsense. Because now authority stealing passes armed robbery.

Though the song was released in the 1980s, a period when Nigeria’s two most notorious and deadly armed robbers, Lawrence Anini and Shina Rambo held the nation hostage, terrorized the citizens before they met their waterloo,  Fela’s song signposted the level of decadence and malfeasance in the country. Matters were made worse with the advent of advance fee fraud aka 419 which became so rampant that, at the international level, Nigeria almost became a pariah nation due to their activities. For many Nigerians who had to travel outside our shores, holding the green passport was akin to being infected with leprosy as they were despised and subjected to all kinds of inhumane treatment at embassies and airports. Foreign investment dried up as Nigeria was considered an unsafe place for investment.  Nigeria was hemorrhaging due to corruption.

Determined to tame this monstrous cancer, President Olusegun Obasanjo established the EFCC on April 13, 2003 to combat the menace of corruption, economic and financial crimes. Saddled with the onerous task was the no nonsense Nuhu Ribadu, a courageous, intelligent and daring police officer. Ribadu gave the assignment his all and sanitized the space not minding whose ox was gored as those who were hitherto regarded as untouchables were arrested and prosecuted for fraud. This set the tone as EFCC became a household name with enormous goodwill. The Commission was unyielding as Nigerians saw former governors, ministers and other politically exposed persons, PEPs, arrested and prosecuted. The fear of EFCC became the beginning of wisdom.

Truly, the Commission in 20 years has performed creditably in the discharge of its core mandates of prosecution, enforcement and asset recovery. Today, it stands tall in the midst of other anti-corruption bodies globally and can proudly showcase its achievements which include securing thousands of convictions and recovery of monetary and other assets running into billions of naira.

Significantly, these convictions cut across all strata, as PEPs, law enforcement personnel, internet fraudsters, bankers and others have been convicted. The Commission expanded the scope of criminal jurisprudence by testing the law in its efforts to get justice and deal with those who infringed on the law.  And on the strength of their diligence and knowledge of the law, hordes of Commission’s lawyers have been appointed judges at state high court and federal high court while a few have been conferred with the  revered rank of Senior Advocates of Nigeria.

On prevention, the Commission collaborates with relevant agencies and regulatory institutions to nip corruption in the bud. It has also initiated programmes targeted at ensuring that Nigerians buy-in and take ownership of the fight against corruption. It has strategically engaged impressionable young minds through enlightenment and re-orientation to uphold the right values and shun acts of criminality. This success in its core mandate is why Professor LMO Lumumba, former Director of Kenya Anti-Corruption Agency and a renowned public speaker posits that with EFCC, there is hope not only for Nigeria but the entire continent of Africa.  “The EFCC stands out as one of the best on the continent. They are the best in the continent, not only because the building that houses them is the biggest in the world, but also because they have demonstrated by word and deed that corruption can be tackled, and tackled without sacred cows.”

As the Commission celebrates its achievements, the reality is that corruption, like a cat with nine lives, still permeates every sector of our society. So why does corruption thrive despite concerted efforts to tame the monster? Perhaps, as suggested by a 15-year-old boy whom I met in one of the secondary schools during an enlightenment campaign on the ills of corruption in our society, corruption is in our DNA and may have been inherited from our forebears. I did not agree with his submission as there are many Nigerians who have displayed utmost integrity. We have seen cleaners at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, on several occasions, return money found at the Airport to the owners.

We have also seen taxi drivers return valuable properties left in their cars to their passengers.  Of course, Nigeria’s only premier minister, Abubakar Tafewa Balewa who was assassinated in a military coup in 1966, had little or nothing in his bank account when he was killed. He did not amass wealth nor did he bury his money in the sand as many politicians are doing today.

While there is no medical proof that corruption is in our DNA, what is obvious is that there are enablers of corruption around us. It is pathetic and despicable, when society celebrates and eulogizes those who stole our commonwealth rather than loathe them. We have seen situations where hundreds of supporters of a PEP undergoing trial wear aseobi to court to drum up support for the alleged suspect because ‘he is our person’. We have also seen hirelings go on electronic and social media space to castigate the Commission for daring to investigate or prosecute ‘our person’. Recently, some young people bearing posters and banners, demonstrated on the streets because EFCC dared to arrest some internet fraudsters.

 Though the Commission is undeterred by all this, critics deliberately misconstrued the work of EFCC and termed it asmedia trial. Truly it is difficult to decipher or understand what they mean by media trial. As a law enforcement agency, the Commission is duty bound to be open and transparent in its operations. So when the Commission arrests a suspect for alleged offences or arraigns a high profile suspect in an open court and informs the public about it through journalists whose professional duties it is to report events as they unfold, the EFCC is castigated for engaging in a media trial.  If a high profile suspect is invited for interrogation and he chooses to organize a press conference on top of his invitation, or goes to court, seeking to bar the EFCC from performing its statutory duties, the Commission is castigated for engaging in media trial. 

Fighting corruption has been a herculean task fraught with landmines, challenges and difficulties. But in spite of all, the Commission like the eagle continue to soar higher and break new grounds.  Ray Ekpu, one of Nigeria’s foremost journalists, in his opinion piece on the presidential election alluded that the ‘advantage of disadvantage’ was fundamental to the emergency of the winner. For the EFCC, it has been the advantage of many challenges.

•Oseghale, is Head, Public Affairs, Benin Zonal Command.