Ola Barnabas

You've heard the saying before: "If you do what successful people do, you'll get the results successful people get". That's not absolutely true. There are two sides to almost everything. In this case, one is the expected (the Calling) and the other the actual (the Practical). The first supernatural and the second natural. That popular saying does not acknowledge the place of divinity. Do you care to know if that thing you are trying to copy is a calling for those people whose result you want to get? If it's not your calling, you will get results o, but rest assured you'll wish you didn't do it at all. Don't do it because they said it, do it because it's your calling.

Dear Entrepreneur who still have staff in the face of the current pandemic cum business crisis, the options before you are very few with regards to what to do with your staff and no one should really have to blame you, whatever you choose, especially those who are not in your shoes; who don't know how you think of no other thing except salaries once it's 15th of another month. Your easiest option is: lay off your workers, a huge percentage of them, as some have already done. If you have not chosen this option yet and are still considering others, I salute you; you are one of the heroes of this pandemic. Here is something I suggest you try: Engage your staff; communicate openly and as honestly as you can with them and hear them out. Let them suggest what to do. You'll be pleasantly shocked at the level of wisdom that reside in some of them. If they choose to opt out, you will at least have shown them how much they are important to your organizational process; should things...

If there's one characteristic, among others, that I've found to be very common among entrepreneurs, it is the ability to internalize pain. Forgive me if that's not exactly how to say it, but you will hardly find a true entrepreneur who does not keep his deepest business pains to himself, and tries to deal with them alone. Indeed the momentary silence of entrepreneurs is not unconnected with a pain they are dealing with. And there are many moments of silence in the life of a business person. The pains could be self-imposed as a result of silly business risks or calculations that didn't quite work out, outright business failure or externally imposed like a sudden change in government policy (like those banning Okada and Keke overnight), environmental challenge or staff "wahala"(or should I say "nothing-concern-me" posture to work), etc. The shoulder of the business person (especially in our clime), is almost always heavy. People hear the succ...

"Once you become fearless, life becomes limitless" in the words of Dan Pena. By the way, Dan Pena is someone i'll ask you to listen to regularly. Can you for a moment, as you plan towards the new year, take a brief look again at the outgoing year, at the mountains that stood in your face, the challenges you couldn't surmount that made life a little less interesting for you? Could you have taken little steps inspite of them? Could you have been more daring in the face of those challenges? Could you possibly have pretended that they did not exist and moved a little forward by taking little steps? There are no easy ways to make hard decisions. You cannot drive forward with your brakes on; you must be ready to go through life and break through it like you really want to test yourself. The challenges hope you don't move, are you going to confirm their hopes? If you do not dare, you do not breakthrough. Be ready to fail; it's ok to fail! If there's anythin...

Do you run a restaurant, bakery or any related venture? You need to run that venture with a signature. Many local restaurateur, chef or baker want to always try out different recipe on their meals. And in cases where the owner is not the chef and he/she hires a chef, that chef comes with his/her own recipe. Wrong. Do not continue to serve different taste of the same meal to your customers every other day. Of course this can be permitted in the very early few days of your starting (it is indeed terrible enough that you do not have a planned out recipe before you commence operation), or if you are trying to change your recipe because of customers' feedback. But on the whole, you MUST have a signature recipe/meal production plan that every chef you hire must respect. Even if they are going to tinker with it, the variation should be so mild it can be ignored. Most people who have chosen your bread, cakes, and other confectionery and indeed your restaurant have done so because of ...

CREATING DUAL CAREER PROGRESS PATHS The most common reward method for high-performing staff in organizations include, among other things, increase in pay, and northward promotion along the managerial path. Both timeless and very prominent reward systems in most organizations - large, medium, small, government, not-for-profit, etc. Are these effective in stimulating higher performance from benefiting staff? You bet. But are they effective in transforming the staff into the exact image that the organization hoped when it rewarded them? Debatable. More monetary incentive, of course, will win any day. Everyone wants more, especially if they've worked for it. My emphasis however, is on the second reward mechanism - of promoting staff into managerial positions because they've been very productive down the ladder. To start with, not everyone will make a good manager. Some people are better, and will be better left as professionals in their fields. Managerial tasks are quite un...

Almost all business persons, I can guarantee, have heard that, the only way to succeed in business is to give consumers what they want. I have often trained entrepreneurs that way too. But there is a flip side. In the course of your business practice, if you are one who pays very close attention to consumers' purchasing pattern, you will observe that many consumers don't know what they want. Indeed many consumers don't know they need somethings until they hear of it; someone recommends it; they see someone use it; etc. So, instead of looking out for what consumers want only, you can lead the market by introducing to consumers what they will want. With the right public communication and education and other relevant sales strategies, you will find yourself enjoying the benefits of novelty/pioneering (before drifters jump on your initiative), and other privileges that come with it. Most products we have today had no proven demands for them when they were produced...