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For the past two weeks, this column has tried to bring some management insights into Nigeria’s leadership crisis; why things that work in other democracies don’t seem to work in our country. It troubles the mind that real leadership lessons that have moved other countries forward have not been learned by our political leaders. And you begin to ask, is it in our stars? Are we the cause or cursed in the leadership scale? As I was searching through my bookshelf last week, I stumbled on one of the books I bought some years ago, but had procrastinated reading it. The title is: “The Failure-Tolerant Leader”, from which I borrowed the headline of this column today. It’s a compelling on leadership.
The authors are Richard Farson Ralph Keyes. Farson is a psychologist and former Harvard Business School professor. He is also the author of “Management of the Absurd: Paradoxes in Leadership”. The authors quoted a famous by former CEO of IBM, Thomas Watson, who said, “the fastest way to succeed is to double your failure rate”. I guess you may have been wondering, how can you succeed faster by doubling your “failure rate”? You see, life is like a game of tennis. If in doubt, ask any of these tennis greats – Raphael Nadal, Roger Federer or Novak Djokovic. Those who serve well seldom lose.
Comparing leadership to life, the same holds true, that is, those who serve others well are very effective leaders. In successful democracies, leaders who embrace this point of view have come to understand that failure is not a bad idea afterall, provided that the leader has accepted that failure could be used to change the way he runs the affairs of his country. This includes policy formulation and implementation, rather than by impulse. This is why failure -tolerant leaders has become a new concept of innovation. In broader sense, it means leaders who, through their words and actions, help people overcome their fear of failure and, in the process, create a culture of intelligent risk taking that ultimately leads to success.
First and foremost, failure-tolerant leaders push the people in a positive way to see beyond simplistic, traditional definition of failure. Such leaders try every day to break down the social and bureaucratic barrier that separate them from the followers. They also engage at a personal level with the citizens they lead. They avoid giving either praise or criticism. They prefer to take a nonjudgmental, analytical posture as they interact with the people. Perhaps most importantly, failure-tolerant leaders openly admit their own mistakes rather than covering them up or shifting the blame. Besides, they try to root out the destructive competitiveness built into most political structures that hamper free choice of the people.
Can you now spot the difference between Nigerian leaders and other leaders practicing the same democracy? But this point must be made clear: Encouraging failure doesn’t mean abandoning proper supervision, respect for transparency and accountability and other sound practices that sustain democracy. Just the opposite. According to studies, managing failure requires political leaders to be more engaged, not less. Though mistakes are inevitable, leaders should not abdicate responsibility or allow excusable errors to occur. Rather, they must at all times, identify excusable mistakes and approach them as outcomes to be examined, understood, and built upon.
In the course of governance and before policy implementation, such questions must be asked: Is this policy or reform designed conscientiously, or was it carelessly formulated? For example, could the removal of fuel subsidy have been prevented with more thorough research or wider consultation? Did useful input sought and got from interested parties before implementation?
Are policies of government true to their goals, or were they just driven solely by personal interests? Was the timing of some reforms honest or deceptive? Why have mistakes been made repeatedly without lessons learned to avoid future mistakes?
These are some of the questions a failure-tolerant leader should be asking and finding honest answers to. It’s unfortunate that in 25 years of the present democratic dispensation, Nigeria has not had true failure-tolerant leaders. What we have had is failure-intolerant leaders. For instance, Obasanjo as President overused power. He managed affluence but achieved failure. He didn’t know how to use power and when to put it in reserve. His handpicked successor, Umaru Yar’Adua showed genuine interest in the common good of the people; he expressed support and asked pertinent questions, especially about the process that brought him to office, but terminal illness proved to be his undoing.
Yar’Adua’s successor, Goodluck Jonathan wasn’t “clueless”, nor a wimp as his detractors alleged. But he was afraid on how to use power to achieve greater purposes.
This must be said: As one writer alleged recently, Muhammadu Buhari and President Bola Tinubu could count as the leaders it has been the misfortune of Nigeria and Nigerians to have had. For them, the presidency is just a prize to be won, not a duty to perform or accomplish any real goal. They suffer from what Steve Jobs, the denizen of the digital world called “the bozo explosion”, in which the leader is so polite, so languid, that sometimes he looked away that mediocre people feel comfortable sticking around them.
The chemistry of non-performance is like a glue that holds them together. What keeps global leaders up at night is alien to both men. They sacrificed national interests on the altar of regional interests. For 8 years, Buhari took his eyes off the ball, blamed everything that went wrong with Nigeria on Jonathan. Today, because of the mess Buhari and Tinubu have done, Nigeria is teetering on the edge of collapse, with hardship writ large. For Tinubu, the last 18 months have been like a wilderness leadership on the job. If there’s one battle any leader, any President cannot win, it’s the fight against time, and that time is running short.
The patience of Nigerians is growing thin. Prices of basic food items have gone beyond the reach of millions of Nigerians. The country is now in a pressure cooker. Pain, anguish and extreme hardship are everywhere. Even those who harvest in times of crises are complaining. Across the country, take a look at the faces of people. It’s as if they are carved out from stones. It’s a grim picture of how Nigerians are struggling to survive these days. It will likely get worse as we get into the festive season. Hunger is spreading like wildfire, forcing some people to resort to begging. Hunger and insecurity have combined to squeeze Nigerians to a corner. Some are wishing that death should come because the suffering is becoming increasingly difficult to bear.
The Global Hunger Index for last year speaks volumes of the deep hole our country is in. The report which ranks countries by severity, also gave Nigeria a low score of 27.3 percent out of 100 percent. This is a red flag that any responsible government should take very seriously.
In all, it must be said that Nigerians are not lacking in any of the qualities of citizenship, patriotism or humanity. They have given every administration, whether freely elected or not, the fair chance to deliver on their electoral promises. But the people’s disillusionment has always been that once in power, the interests of the people no longer matter. No compassion, and no apologies for nonperformance. No agenda but to intimidate and dominate others. It’s time to change the sad narrative and turn the page.
