Former Guinness boss, Seni Adetu dropped a few gems about 4 years ago when the country was still in swimming in the gutters of recession.
With Nigeria’s economy contracting 2.06% between April and June in 2016, it was inevitable that with the second negative contraction, nothing was going to stop the country from nosediving into recession.
While other majority of the business experts sat idly, Seni Adetu proffered a way forward for business which is just as relevant now as it was 4 years ago.
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Advising on how organisations can move faster, Seni Adetu said organisational leaders must “keep an eye on things that tend to slow down the organisation such as unproductive meetings, lengthy business planning and commercialisation process for innovation”.
According to him, if a decision needs to be made quickly, it would be unproductive to involve unnecessary persons who would inevitably slow down the process.
“My pre-disposition has always been that on any agenda matter, once you have about eight quality people around the table, to the extent that they are the best eight for the agenda items, the value you derive from adding any more people is very marginal whereas involving more people has the propensity to cause a slowdown in decision making and implementation”, he wrote.
Meanwhile, he also said winning and keeping trust is very important for the organisation’s growth.
He said, “The smartest employees are those in my view, who are adept at managing upwardly to the point that they win the trust of their managers to use their best judgment in tight-decision making situations.
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” At times, it is better and easier to seek forgiveness after an action than for permission for the action. You will get some right and get others wrong – so what? But the employee would grow in the process and that in itself, is good succession planning in play. We need more pace and agility in our businesses”
