By John Okonkwo
No one ever went to heaven after performing badly on earth; no one would rise higher in organisations by performing badly in his/her assignment.
I can now tell how difficult it is to be a columnist.
I thought it was just another easy job until I disappointed my readers by being unable to keep up with my promise to be back with leadership lessons from the management guru.
Imagine the likeness! Only one piece?
I am still on the leadership lessons learned from Prof. Pita Ejiofor, Vice-Chancellor of Nnamdi Azikiwe University in my university days.
I will touch on three main nuggets this month.
The first is the importance of carrying everybody along in leadership. He once mentioned to me that people enjoy participating in running their organisations and that people feel estranged if they perceive that a few people monopolize the running of their organisation. He explained to me that that was why no one person held any position appointable by the Vice-Chancellor for more than three consecutive years. Indeed, he told me that the surest way of developing chief executives was job rotation, such that as they move round and face new challenges, they would learn more of the operation of the university system (workplace), correct their past mistakes, make new friends, develop into all-rounders and be better equipped to assume any further responsibility which providence might assign to them.
It was from the management guru that I first heard about the importance of effectiveness and efficiency in whatever I do. In his speech to newly appointed university committee chairmen, programme directors and coordinators of units, he implored them to make the pursuit of effectiveness their obsession as there were no excuses for non-performance. He further asked them not to think that taking over an inefficient department was an acceptable excuse for non-performance because they had his full support to make their department ‘an island of efficiency in a sea of inefficiency’. I covered this encounter for the Campus Magazine but as I sat back to analyse the day’s event, I started to connect the dots. This man talked about carrying everybody along as people enjoy participating in running their organisations. He then shook up the whole setting with new appointments and great admonitions. He succeeded in moving many of the folks from being critics who felt marooned to key actors, star players, pointsmen who called the shots as well as the cynosure of interest and attention. It then made sense to me why he was full of smiles as he charged the new administrators to perform and transform, innovate and initiate, consult and coordinate so as to win his heart, because, like other chief executives, he too falls for effective subordinates and loyal lieutenants who would help him succeed. Those two phrases – effective subordinate and loyal lieutenant – have stuck to my mind since that day.
I will end the lessons for this month with the professor’s exhortation to newly appointed faculty deans and departmental heads. That day, he told them that just as no one ever went to heaven after performing badly on earth, no one would rise higher in organisations by performing badly in his/her assignment. That day, it became clear to me that good performance at a lower level was the springboard for higher positions (under normal circumstances of course).
I urge you to stay with me for more lessons next month. But that is if you love leadership lessons flowing directly from the brain of the management guru.
I am off.
