Be innovative in tackling challenges - Dr Donkor advises business owners
Business leaders must be able to anticipate challenges and incorporate measures in their organisational structures to address them when they occur, the President and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development (EBID), Dr George Agyekum Donkor, has advised.
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He said they must draw lessons from recent global happenings and develop a two-pronged approach to ensure timely actions to protect their businesses, adding, “it takes a transformational leader to drive an organisation into a state of being future-ready”.
“Change is constant and being prepared for change is a mark of endurance. Future readiness is not an event, but rather a state of being constantly prepared for change.
“Future-ready organisations are those that accept that change is constant and develop a positive attitude towards change,” Dr Donkor added.
He also urged them to comply with environmental social governance (ESG) requirements, which he said were essential for the financial market, while proactively using technology to improve their operations.
Dr Donkor was speaking at a Future-Ready Leadership Summit on the theme: “Future-ready leadership: Reimagining leadership in a world of unrelenting change,” in Accra last Wednesday.
The event was organised by Nobel International Business School (NIBS) in collaboration with EBID.
External shocks
Dr Donkor said that the back-to-back external shocks which started with the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza, as well as domestic shocks had shaken the very foundations of most businesses across the globe.
He, however, said future-ready organisations were engineered by transformational leaders who deliberately reviewed and repurposed every aspect of the organisational structure and processes to be ready for challenges in the future.
“Such organisations anticipate systemic changes or disruptions to their environment and prepare extensively for emerging challenges brought about by change by building resilience and agility that allows them to cope with them when they do occur,” Mr Donkor said.
Future-ready leadership
The Founder and President of NIBS, Prof. Kwaku Atuahene-Gima, observed that many business leaders in the country were not aware of the idea of future-ready leadership.
He said as a result of that, most companies that were supposed to be successful were going through challenges because they focussed on “succeeding today and failed to prepare for tomorrow”.
“They fail to renew their capabilities periodically to meet new trends and that is why it is important that we promote the idea of future-ready leadership,” Prof. Atuahene-Gima, added.
