LATEST UPDATES
Card-image-cap

Business | Business Regulations, Law & Practice

Chief Chris Okunowo-The Silent Boardroom Baron

Jun 13, 2019   •   by   •   Source: Proshare   •   eye-icon 4724 views

Thursday, June 13, 2019    / 9:30AM / Teslim Shitta-Bey, ManagingEditor /Header Image Credit: Chris Okunowo Solicitors & Maqsad

 

Chris Okunowo strikes the pose of a gentleman, agrandee of the corporate playfield, intelligent, urbane and a diligent tillerof the business vineyard. Okunowo’s delicate mien, soft-spoken QueensEnglish-moistured tone and his sartorial precision belie a hardnosed master ofthe commercial universe. Okunowo is as tough as they come.

 

Unlike some of his equally accomplishedcontemporaries, he seldom, if ever, announces his presence with fanfare. Headopts what he confesses is a “less is more” approach to business and life.According to Okunowo, “as you get older and more experienced about life andbusiness and those things that turn an ‘almost hit into a sure hit’ youdiscover that simplicity is not a burden but a method of choice in the pursuitof excellence.” He believes that “excessive complexity almost always results inthe pain of defeat rather than the pleasure of victory.”According to Okunowobreaking business complexity down into a series of simple, repeatable actionsor ‘templates’ allows for proper optimization of corporate performance.

 


Thereverse incentive of Punishment

“My perspective has always been thesimplification and optimization of businesses,” he says, “the best way toensure that systems work properly is to make each unit self-accountable andprofitable. What this means is that each unit, department or division is givena set of targets and goals and is measured and rewarded or punished based onmeeting collectively agreed objectives at the beginning of a business cyclewhich could be a year”. Okunowo notes that Nigerians tend to refrain fromquick, firm but fair punishment of failure. “ The penchant for seeingpunishment for failure as ‘wickedness’ rather than as a reverse incentive tobetter performance leads to mediocrity.” The chairman of numerous corporateboards says that “you cannot fiddle like Nero when your business rival isburning the midnight oil, the consequence of indolence is simple enough: youget beaten in the market place of ideas and products. The temporary pleasure ofa fiddle leads to a lifetime of despair, and perhaps hunger”.

                                                                                                                           

Okunowo says that every office in a businessneeds to have a sense of accountability and profitability, even traditional ‘costcentres.’ “If you are the chairman of a company, for example, your office needsto be optimized, what this means is that you need to ask yourself whether youare you running costs in a manner that ensures that your office is lean, meanand efficient. The chairman’s office also needs to interrogate itself in thearea of enhancing business revenue, is the chairman’s office driving newbusinesses or new ideas or additional revenue?” According to the Ijebulandfirst class chief, “chairmanship is not just a status symbol; it is a call toduty and responsibility. The office ofthe chairman should drive direction and give signalling effects to the Board ofDirectors and management. Not being an executive chairman does not implyindolence; it suggests social, political and economic leverage to improvecorporate outcomes.”, he argues.

 


Okunowo’sIron Triangle

 

Okunowo speaks of his ‘Iron Triangle’ ofachieving the required corporate results. The triangle has three principal‘corners.’ The primary corner is ‘creative thought,’ this is whereorganizations incubate leading ideas that disrupt existing practices andframeworks and push businesses to new cycles of profitability. According toOkunowo, “thought is the highest manifestation of the enterprise. To succeed, youmust out-think, outwork and outsmart competition”. 

 

The next corner of the triangle is criticalaction. Action is the part of the triangle when thought is given legs to run.There is no point in thinking if the action does not follow. The legal luminaryinsists that “thinking is beneficialwhen it is the precursor of tactical or strategic action. Thinking is littlemore than a mental talk shop if it does not lead to action, because as good astalk shops are, they do not result in productivity, money and growth if left towander at random and they certainly do not lead to better lives if left unfocusedat a task.”  Action is crucial toturning a business from a great idea into a great enterprise.

 

The last corner of Okunowo’s triangle is arecursive or constructive review of actions taken to achieve specified goals. Theconsequences of actions “provide great lessons, good or bad. Once you takeaction, you need to follow through and document the consequences of eachcritical move or manoeuvre to establish whether it follows some unwritten ruleor is a fluke. You need to establish the set of actions that will give youspecific results, perhaps with some predictable margin of error; as AmericanArmy General GB Sullivan rightly pointed out, hope is not a method” observesOkunowo. The three corners of the Okunowo triangle make up the process by whichthe successful businessman and lawyer navigated Nigeria’s slippery businessecosystem with the minimum casualties.  

 


Proshare Nigeria Pvt. Ltd.



UnderstandingThe Boardroom

 

The first thing a Boardroom should not be is asquared rope for the battle between contesting egos. According to Okunowo,“from my experience, the best boardrooms are those that work like orchestras.Each Board member comes with talents and special knowledge; nevertheless, bythemselves, such abilities are sparingly useful if not combined with the skillsof others who turn individual noise into a symphony of music”. The Board musthave purpose passion and skill. “The job of the typical chairman,” says Okunowo“is to act as the conductor of an orchestra and bring separate talents togetherto achieve the collective goal of ensuring a good return on investors money.”

 

“Companies fail,” says Okunowo, “when chairmenand Board members work at opposing purpose and fail to agree on goals andtimelines, the organization hangs on the thread of hit or miss decisionscreating uncertainty, lack of discipline and weakened drive.” The absence ofBoard unity has been seen to be the undoing of several organizations,especially banks. But where unity exists, if this is the product of wrongpurpose (a pact amongst scoundrels), this could also see a company topplingover.

 

 

The corporate boardroom needs to be a place ofhigh thinking, high morals and a heightened awareness of the company’s long-termpurpose. Organizations need to fit into the circle of customer needs and continueto reinvent their corporate reality as the wants of customers evolve, and theirtastes change; in other words, they must be ‘living’ companies. A 21stCentury company with a Board stuck in 19th Century thinking is onthe grill for roasting; such company is likely to have a short shelf-life. Asfar as Barrister Okunowo figures, “Boardrooms are not for the fickle, the naïveor the fastidious. If you want to build a company to last, the end game needsto be clear from the beginning, the tactics flexible, and the management readyto adapt. A world of several simultaneously moving parts is not going to waitfor the slow, the feeble and the unimaginative. Success will increasingly be afunction of thought, action and counteraction. The Iron Triangle.”

 

ChiefChris Olufunmilola Okunowo, was born in December 1947; Okunowo is a seasonedbusinessman with major business interests in aviation equipment supply, aircraftsale, banking, property development and he is the Principal Partner of Chris O.Okunowo & Co, a full service law firm. He graduated with a Law degree fromthe University of Lagos in 1972 and was called to bar in 1973.


Proshare Nigeria Pvt. Ltd.


RelatedNews

1.      Nigeria’sCode Of Governance: Keynote Address By Yemi Osinbajo

2.     Nigeria’sCode Of Governance: Welcome Address By Adedotun Sulaiman

3.      Nigeria’sCode Of Governance: 2019 Opening Remarks By Okey Enalamah

4.      Stakeholders X-RayNigerian 2018 Corporate Governance Code at IOD and FRCN Forum

5.     Corporate Governance AsA Strategy For Investment Drive – August 2018


Proshare Nigeria Pvt. Ltd.


Proshare Nigeria Pvt. Ltd.

Get the App

apple-store  play-store

Connect with us


Proshare is a professional practice focused on delivering research and information services to bridge the gap between investors and markets; by delivery on credible, reliable, and timely engagements through the following areas — Impact Research, Market Intelligence, Strategic Advisory, Stakeholder Relations & Digital Media.