Ms Maidie Arkutu talks about leadership competences
Talk to any young person about his or her career goals and the likely is that the conversation will not end without the mention of a lofty job with a respected institution in or outside the country.
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Should the conversation progress to qualifications needed to earn that person the said job, chances are that high intelligence quotient (IQ) or outstanding academic performance, as it is widely known in Ghana, will feature prominently in the list of skills and competences required. This nips not surprising.
In a society where academic performance is perceived to be the gateway to success, scoring As in school is a prestigious achievement every student strive for.
The same applies to parents and guardians, whose investments keep their children and wards.
school. And that is good, given the good feeling it brings.
But while high IQ may be a huge requirement to academic progress, it is only one of several other requirements to a successful progress on the corporate ladder.
In actual sense, the two: academic and career/professional success are sometimes divergent in the lives of many great corporate executives and entrepreneurs worldwide.
The likes of Steve Jobs of Apple fame, Richard Branson of the Virgin Group, which include Virgin Atlantic Airlines, Larry Ellison, formerly of Oracle, and Rachael Ray, a coking television star and businesswoman, who was worth US$60 million last year, are great examples of how people can fail in education but become successful people in their various fields of endeavours.
Similar stories abound in Ghana, where many employers are now beginning to shift from the usual IQ-bias way of assessing job seekers to a benchmark that now places emphases on delivery, skills and competences.
Unilever Ghana's CEO, Ms Maidie Arkutu, who presides over the company's tried and tested assessment criteria, says high IQ is only a baseline.
“Many people assume that if you have a high IQ, you are good to go but that is not the case; it is just the baseline. You need to be able to put things in context," she said to participants at this year's Festival of Ideas in Accra.
"Even in the first world, they rarely have 100 per cent of the data and information they require to make a decision and so you need to be able to weigh the hard facts and figures, put things in context and make a decision," she said, while explaining why good judgment was critical to success in the corporate world.
In a voice that was played back on the August 28 edition of the Springboard, Your Virtual University, Ms Arkutu said judgment was even more relevant in Africa where data is hardly available.
"Decision making in leadership is critical and not everybody is able to make the tough calls when it is absolutely required and if you are not able to make those tough calls when they are required, then may be, you do not want the top job because this is one of the key things required," she added.
The Unilever experience
Her presentation, which bordered on mastering key competences, aimed to inspire prospective chief-executive officers to strive for excellence in their respective endeavours.
One such key competences, she said was good judgment in the face of challenges.
Using her experiences as an example, the Unilever CEO recalled that in 2014 when cedi and inflation peaked, the fortunes of the company was impacted negatively, resulting a steep fall in its revenues.
To be able to come out of those challenges, Ms Arkutu said the management and the board had to take some tough decisions which culminated in the company's profiting rebounding to impressive levels.
"Once we got over the deer in the headlight period, we were actually able to get into a success period, going into 2015. That is what judgement is about: firstly, we must be able to spot judgment in the face, understand what is going on in the environment and the potential impact on the organisation. You need to be rigorous. You need to be happy analysing data but if you are not comfortable doing that then you are won't prepared for the next level," she said.
The what and how
While achieving set goals is desirable for forward match of every person, Mrs Arkutu said how those goals are met is always of paramount important to corporate executives.
"At Unilever, during end of year assessment, we always talk about the 'what' and the 'how.' The 'what' is did you do 100 per cent or 80 per cent. The 'how' is how did you achieve those results and that is why competences come in," she said.
The company, she said also used competences to assess potential, which forms as a basis for promotion.
She also advised young professionals to understand and know the key attributes that encourage career growth in their respective organisations.
This, she said will ensure that they align their activities and goals to those set principles.