STRATEGY WITH FEMI TAIWO ON MONDAY: From me to you
STRATEGY WITH FEMI TAIWO ON MONDAY
Michael is a first class chemical engineering graduate of Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria, and a PhD holder in same discipline from the University of Arkansas, United States. He is an engineer with a multinational energy giant in the United States.
Exactly a year ago, I started to write for this blog because I want to support my friend, Jarus, in his vision of empowering the Nigerian youth to have successful careers.
My inaugural post was inspired by Thomas Paine’s famous quote – these are the times that try men’s souls. As a country, Nigeria is in a more precarious position than it was this time last year. We totter towards the edge and many rightfully fear the nation may fall off the precipice.
But I am too hopeful to be fearful. For history encourages us that dark times beget bright minds who, in turn, dispel the darkness. This is Frankenstein in reverse. Great men lift nations from the bleakness of an abyss to the clearness of mountain tops. Nation building is not the exclusive preserve of men. Amazons like Deborah, Joan of Arc and Boudica, to mention only three, are examples of women who released their people from the shackles of oppression. In the absence of great institutions, the best hope of recovery and advance is to have strong people rise as Phoenix from the ashes. My mission in this second year is to raise powerful men and women who can help rebuild the nation.
This is a business and political strategy column. My intended audience is ambitious citizens who already occupy positions of influence and hanker for change. Business owners, business managers, sport coaches, political campaigners, politicians and the armed forces are my primary audience. The list is not exhaustive; I furnished them to paint the general picture of those I am targeting. Because these individuals are constantly involved in either defending or extending their territory or both. They do so in a resistant medium where friction, fog and fatigue are always at play. And they have to win: losing can be fatal.
Luckily, 3500 years of recorded human history is filled with wars and it is into these countless battles that I look to distill winning principles that can be applied in business or political or any field of human endeavor where there is a contest of wills and the enemy has to be compelled. Greatness is inborn – you are either born a Napoleon or not. No amount of study and reflection will make you an Alexander the Great if you are not that way at birth. But the methods of these natural geniuses can be learned, and in so doing, we vastly improve what I call our Greatness Quotient, GQ. Everyone’s life aim should be to attain their GQ.
If you take my strategic nuggets in this blog and apply the help you receive, you will become more powerful. I implore you to use that power to help the country, for only then would I have been well rewarded.
Good article