Why Nigeria’s next economic breakthrough must turn human energy into organisational productivity
The conversations that started my thinking
Recently, I had the opportunity to facilitate two training programmes in Nigeria that caused me to think more deeply about productivity. The first was Maximising Personal Productivity and Positive Thinking, delivered with NNPC Academy. The second was Customer Relationship Management, delivered for the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria at its Kaduna Training Centre.
The programmes were different in subject and purpose, but the conversations with participants kept bringing me back to the same question: Why do highly capable and hard-working people sometimes struggle to achieve their full potential within our organisations? I encountered some intelligent professionals, experienced managers and people genuinely committed to doing their jobs well. Yet our discussions also revealed something familiar about organisational life in Nigeria. People often expend considerable energy navigating processes, overcoming institutional barriers and finding ways around systems before they can get the work done.
I left those engagements thinking beyond training. Nigeria does not lack capable people. We have ambitious leaders, intelligent professionals, innovative entrepreneurs and a remarkable capacity to improvise. The deeper question is whether the organisations and systems within which our people work enable them to convert all that energy into its full productive value.
