Nigeria Has Many Managers. But Where Are the Management Outcomes? by Dr. Abiola Salami, Principal, CHAMP Global Leadership Consultancy
“Institutions do not become stronger because managers carry impressive titles. They become stronger when managers take responsibility for results and build systems that deliver them.” – Dr. Abiola Salami, FNIM
Introduction
Last week, I was inducted as a Fellow of the Nigerian Institute of Management (Chartered).
I am deeply grateful for the recognition. But I have found myself thinking less about the letters that now sit after my name and more about the responsibility they represent.
Fellowship should not merely recognise what a professional has achieved. It should deepen the obligation to the profession, to institutions and to society. And for those of us in management, that obligation is especially urgent.
Nigeria does not suffer from a shortage of managers. We suffer from a shortage of management outcomes. That distinction should force us to rethink what we celebrate as management success.
We have Chief Executives, Directors, Permanent Secretaries, Ministers, Commissioners, Administrators, Consultants and Managers across thousands of organisations. Yet too many of our institutions still struggle to convert resources into results, strategy into execution, policy into outcomes and leadership intention into measurable performance.
That should concern every serious student and practitioner of management.
Because if management means anything, it must ultimately mean the disciplined conversion of resources into results.
THE BURDEN OF MANAGEMENT
Management is not activity. It is not the number of meetings held, memos written, committees formed, budgets approved, projects launched or speeches delivered. Those things may be necessary, but they are not the final evidence. The final evidence is sustained performance.
Did the organisation become stronger? Did productivity improve? Did customers receive better value? Did citizens experience better services? Did people become more capable? Did resources produce outcomes that justified their use?
These are management questions; they apply as much to government as they do to business.
Nigeria has no shortage of plans.
We have budgets, manifestos, development strategies, reform programmes, ministerial priorities and presidential commitments.
Every administration arrives with a vocabulary of aspiration. But one question remains surprisingly difficult to answer: What exactly has government committed to deliver, by when, who owns each outcome, and how will Nigerians know whether performance is improving?
That is the accountability gap.
FROM PROMISES TO PERFORMANCE CONTRACTS
A political promise says, “We will create jobs.” But a performance contract asks How many? What kind? By what date? From what baseline? Who owns the outcome? How will the result be verified?
A political promise says, “We will improve electricity.” But a performance contract asks what measurable improvement households and businesses should experience in reliability, availability, productivity and cost.
A political promise says, “We will reduce poverty.” But a performance contract establishes the baseline, the target, the timeline, the responsible institutions and the evidence by which progress will be judged.
That is the difference between aspiration and accountability.
Nigeria needs a National Performance Contract built around a small number of measurable national outcomes; not one hundred priorities or another catalogue of ambitions. We need a disciplined set of outcomes that matter to citizens and to the productive capacity of the economy e.g. economic growth, productive employment, poverty reduction, inflation and purchasing power, food security, electricity reliability, security, learning outcomes, healthcare outcomes and private investment and exports.
For each one, Nigerians should be able to answer the following six questions (a) Where are we? (b) Where are we going? (c) By when? (d) Who owns the outcome? (e) How are we performing? (f) Where is the evidence?
That is what performance transparency should look like.
MEASURING WHAT CHANGED
One of the greatest weaknesses in public management is the tendency to confuse activity with achievement. A ministry can be extremely busy and still underperform. A project can be completed and still fail the outcome test. A training programme may reach one hundred thousand people, yet produce little improvement in employment, productivity or income. A road may be commissioned, yet logistics costs remain stubbornly high. A hospital may receive new equipment, yet health outcomes remain unchanged. A government can therefore produce outputs while failing to improve outcomes.
Performance asks a harder question i.e. What changed because leadership acted?
That question should sit at the centre of public management.
Every major government intervention should begin with an outcome, a baseline, a target, an owner, a deadline and an evidence standard. Without a baseline, almost any number can be presented as progress. Without a target, activity can masquerade as achievement. Without ownership, failure becomes everyone’s responsibility and therefore nobody’s responsibility. Without evidence, performance becomes whatever the leader says it is.
THE PERFORMANCE CONTRACT MUST SIT ABOVE SILOS
National outcomes rarely belong to one ministry. Employment depends on education, power, industrial policy, taxation, infrastructure, security, finance, trade and technology. Food security depends on agriculture, logistics, roads, power, finance, security and markets. Investment depends on regulation, infrastructure, macroeconomic stability, security and institutional credibility.
If every ministry performs only within its administrative silo, the nation can still underperform.
That is why a National Performance Contract must sit above individual ministries. Ministries should have deliverables, but government must own outcomes. For each major national outcome, there must be clear coordination across the institutions whose combined performance determines the result. Otherwise, when performance fails, every institution can explain why another institution was responsible.
That is how accountability disappears inside bureaucracy.
PERFORMANCE MUST BECOME PUBLIC
There is a difference between government having a dashboard and citizens being able to understand government performance. The first is an administrative instrument. The second is democratic accountability.
Nigeria needs a public-facing performance scorecard that citizens, journalists, investors, legislators, business leaders and civil society can interrogate. A serious scorecard should show the target, actual performance, variance, trend, responsible institution and corrective action. Where the country is winning, say so. Where performance is at risk, show it. Where delivery has failed, acknowledge it.
This is not anti-government. It is pro-performance. Measurement does not weaken leadership. Measurement disciplines leadership. And when performance repeatedly falls short, something must change. It may be strategy, resources, capability, coordination, leadership or ownership.
A performance system without consequence eventually becomes ceremony.
CONCLUSION – THE RESPONSIBILITY OF FELLOWSHIP
This is why my Fellowship has made me reflective. Professional recognition should increase responsibility, not merely status. If management is the disciplined conversion of resources into results, then every Fellow of a management institution carries an obligation beyond professional recognition.
We must help build organisations that work. We must challenge the normalisation of underperformance. We must insist that strategy ends in execution. We must help institutions measure what matters. We must distinguish visible activity from real progress.
And in public life, we must demand the same discipline from government that we would expect from any serious organisation entrusted with scarce resources.
Nigeria does not need managers who are merely busy. It needs managers who can produce outcomes. It does not need leaders who simply announce intentions. It needs leaders who can convert promises into evidence.
Perhaps that is the real burden of management. To take people, capital, authority, time and opportunity and convert them into results that can be seen, measured and sustained.
Fellowship, then, should not merely confer honour. It should intensify obligation. Our institutions will not become stronger because we admire management titles, but because managers accept responsibility for results and build systems that deliver them.
Nigeria must stop asking citizens to believe harder. Government must make performance easier to verify. And those of us who carry the responsibility of management must help make that standard impossible to ignore.
ABOUT DR. ABIOLA SALAMI
Dr. Abiola Salami is the Convener of Dr Abiola Salami International Leadership Bootcamp ; The Peak PerformerTM Festival Made4More Accelerator Program I MOVE with GRIT and The New Year Kickoff Summit. He is the Principal Performance Strategist at CHAMP – a full scale professional services firm trusted by high performing business leaders for providing Executive Coaching, Workforce Development & Advisory Services to improve performance. You can reach his team on hello@abiolachamp.com and connect with him @abiolachamp on all social media platforms.
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