CORPORATE CULTURE
Creating corporate culture that nurtures authenticity
By Dr . Wale Akinyemi
QWhen times change and our thinking and attitudes do not change , we will become victims and prisoners of the old . Many people get to the end of their busy working lives only to discover that they never really knew who they were . They knew everything about the company but never got to know themselves .
I see this every day as I conduct one on one sessions aptly called Re- Imagine Yourself for leaders who feel stuck and who do not know the next turn to take . If you find yourself in a place where you know more about your organization than you know about yourself , then we really need to talk !
When we hosted a UK based therapist , Yomi Segun , on our weekly Street University Webinar , she stirred up a number of questions which I want to share on this column . The topic was ‘ living your authentic life ’ and she said that in her practice she has come across people who are up to 80 years old who do not know who they are . Now when you are having an identity crisis at eighty the question then is , whose life did you live ? Now this is a very deep question that elicits deep thought .
In a world where so many people struggle for acceptance and where people measure their value by the amount of likes and followership they get on social media , there has never been a time when the gospel of authenticity needs to be preached with more aggression . People in the name of likes and follows have totally lost their identities .
The power to be authentic comes from a deep seated confidence in oneself . It was a big global news item that Richard Branson was going to space and it was such a great moment for him and also for the future of commercial space travel . Jeff Bezos did the same thing and CNN and other global media platforms did live coverage of the entire event .
As we celebrate and follow news of such people a very obvious fact becomes even more obvious . This is the fact that the people that are
“ For something to stand out , it must be outstanding . A leader that cannot define their uniqueness and the uniqueness of the brand that they represent , will at best be among the crowd . To become market leaders , uniqueness which stems from daring to be authentic cannot be compromised .“
celebrated on the earth have one common thread and that is that they are authentic .
Think of different sectors of life and think of the people at the very top of the ladder and you will see that they are people who have embraced their uniqueness and so they have crafted their own way of doing the things we all do . Be it a dancer , an athlete , a business leader , a political leader and even a religious leader , you will discover that everyone with a following has their own unique way and discipline that led them to the unique mastery of their craft .
If you are not confident enough to be different you cannot be authentic . Your greatest strength is not in how similar you are to others but in how different . Only those who embrace difference can become authentic . For something to stand out , it must be outstanding . A leader that cannot define their uniqueness and the uniqueness of the brand that they represent , will at best be among the crowd . To become market leaders , uniqueness which stems from daring to be authentic cannot be compromised .
With this in mind , let us now turn the beam to our continent . When I was young each family had a tailor that made our clothes , special occasions were marked with palm wine and our homes were filled with locally made furniture . We read and celebrated local authors and even though in the early teen years , we were carried away by the adventures of the Famous Five , Secret Seven , The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew . Then we moved on to James Hadley Chase and Nick Carter .
However , the one series that did it for us as young people in Nigeria in the seventies and eighties was the Pacesetters Series . This series was a collection of 130 works of popular fiction written by notable African authors , published by Macmillan . They gripped the African youth and they compared with anything we were reading from abroad . Moreover , these were people like us , telling stories we could relate to . They were having drinks we could relate to and
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