Ini-Abasi Laura Onuk is the chief executive officer of ThistlePraxis Consulting Limited. Before founding her organisation, she served as the executive secretary of Women in Management and Business (WIMBIZ), and at present functions as a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Africa. In this interview with RITA OHAI, she talks leadership, CSR strategies and more.
Ini’s story reads like a fairy-tale.
Having had a tough childhood, she often tells of her struggle to survive and the difficulty her father, a watch-repairer, and mother had with providing accommodation, food and paying the tuition fees for her and her siblings.
An opportunity to attend the university only came after she met and married her husband who eventually rose through the ranks to become a Nigerian diplomat.
After spending years away from the workforce, she decided to take a chance at the labour market and clinched her first job.
Starting with a position at West African Civil Society Institute, Ghana, Ini moved on to serve with local and international non-governmental organisations until she finally built her company from scratch.
At the moment, Ini sits at the helm of affairs of one of the most popular CSR-focused companies in the country.
An advocate of corporate social responsibility, she spends the bulk of her official hours closing business deals and fighting for a larger participation of corporations in social development operations – with marginal results.
As elections draw near, concerns about the fate of a nation whose foreign reserves have been depleted and a local currency struggling against the dollar at a value of N210 to $1 at the black market, puts the future of her sector in a precarious position.
While fiscal projections for the year appear bleak, analysts affirm that market uncertainties will almost completely erase quota’s CSR activities.
When asked what her forecast for 2015’s third-party stakeholder welfare engagement is, she said, “That’s a poignant question. [The economic crisis] is already affecting funding for stakeholder welfare packages but perhaps it provides the right season to advocate social responsibility as a business strategy and organisational function rather than an ad-hoc or external, periodic exercise.
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“If CSR is the latter for organisations, then it is a no-brainer that these budgets will be cut first. This is not to say that stakeholder-related budgetary allocations will not suffer a decline in investments; they sure will in circumstances where organisations are cutting back on everything but my position stems from where CSR is cut off completely and others remain untouched.”
Offering palliative solutions for enterprises that are committed to delivering on their CSR obligations but seek cost-effective means to achieve this; Ini believes that adopting a long-term planning and systematic approach is the most efficient method.
In her words, “I would advise planning CSR as a business strategy over a minimum period of 5 years. Here, an organisation can test-run, track results, scale up and work towards set objectives over a 5-year period. These are not just cost-effective but more impactful.”
While leading economies with global prospective strive to engender the active participation of the corporate sector in contributing to the development of its host communities, Nigeria appears to lag behind in enacting CSR policies.
India, being the first country to pass a CSR implementation bill into law is already reaping great dividends from insisting that companies spend at least 2 percent of their net profits on social development.
According to figures posted by Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs, it is estimated that the sum of £1.8 billion will be accrued from CSR initiatives this year alone.
Consequently, in Ini’s opinion, instituting proper CSR policies are necessary for the growth of an emerging market.
“There was an attempt at a bill sometime ago, which although not properly researched and articulated, died a natural death,” she says, “To learn from our western counterparts means to first institute a CSR framework and national agenda. When this is done, we can work from bottom up to develop sector guidelines and relevant policies.”
With revenue generated from the private sector contributing more than 72 percent of the nation’s GDP, analysts are of the view that with trade profits expected to diminish substantially owing to the monetary crunch facing the local industry, a large number of companies who barely made it through 2014 will close shop this year.
As the head of an organization in an emerging market where the lifespan of most businesses is statistically pegged at 5 years, Ini and her team are determined to emerge outliers against all odds.
With this being her fifth year of engagement as a CEO, she reveals strategies she has applied in driving her team to attain greater results and hopes that this will be enough to scale her through the times ahead.
She said, “We have always advocated that small businesses and start-ups look to sustainability and social responsibility, to be absolved from this unfortunate trend. Our industry is peculiar and services unique, hence we have constantly reinvented ourselves as an organisation.”
Recapping half a decade of operations as ThistlePraxis, she shares some of the key challenges and achievements they have recorded as a business unit:
“Our challenges are peculiar to small and medium-sized businesses all over the country. The poor quality of power and infrastructure drastically increase operational costs. Also, the dearth in skills makes consulting workforce requirements more difficult to replenish.
“In addition, I have often said that a large percentage of CEOs and Nigerian generally, are still very mentally colonized. This is clear in the way we prefer to hire foreign consultants without any knowledge of the local market and working environment. The absence of protectionist policies to ensure the survival of local businesses in the knowledge economy such as ours does not help,” she says.
While floating a business in this part of the world may be a challenge for some, many have attributed the successes of the corporations around the world to the strength of character of people who call the shots within those institutions.
Highlighting an essential trait most of these leaders possess, Onuk who convenes the annual African CEO Roundtable on Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility posits, “Every leader must have objectivity, “she says, “Objectivity means the ability to evaluate everything without personal sentiments – and this ranges from telling yourself the truth about who you are as a leader, to accepting criticisms graciously and staying true to your vision and life purpose.”
With sights set on conquering the future, time will reveal how far she will go in achieving her goals for a business striving to live beyond infancy.
