The Spark Introductory episode with the visioner, the CEO, BROOT Consulting

Welcome to the introductory episode of the Spark, a podcast by BROOT Consulting, a management consulting firm enhancing business growth through strategy, research and innovation. My name is Ife and I’m your host for today. And I’ll be explaining what we can expect from this podcast. But before we jump into that, I’ll start by explaining why our company BROOT consulting decided to start this podcast.

In our Passion to engage and expand the growth of businesses and institutions in Africa, We have seen the challenging influence of the pandemic and its implication on the people and the political media. We seek to contribute significant transformation on our business growth through strategic and well researched provocative ideas that can be implemented for tangible result.

So what should we expect from each of this park episode? Expect conversations with leading experts and thought leaders on topics ranging from leadership and business to industry growth, innovation trends and deep dives into regional and national issues. It will be the most engaging and rewarding 30 minutes of your time and you won’t regret sharing that with us. If you have any ideas for possible episodes, topics that we should cover on the show or you know someone that would be a perfect guest, make sure to connect with us via email at [email protected]. The more input we get from listeners, the better this podcast is going to be and just before I let you go, I thought it would be great to have a short chat with the Managing Director CEO of Consulting Dr. Olukunle Iyanda.

Ife Adeagbo: Hello, it’s such a pleasure to have you on this part.

Olukunle A. Iyanda: Hello, the pleasure is mine.

Ife Adeagbo: would you please tell us what you mean by the Spark?

Olukunle A. Iyanda:  Well, when we talk about spark, you know that literally means to ignite. You know, to ignite something so. Well, so, when we talk about igniting from our own perspective, we’re talking about Ignite an idea. Transformative ideas, ideas that could impact our world, idea that can make our society to be better. To give people insights that are uncommon, and that is what led us to coming out with a podcast that is called Spark, which is a platform for sharing uncommon ideas in governance, in business or in leadership.

Ife Adeagbo: Wow! that’s amazing. Thank you very much Doc. Now when we talk about sharing on common insights and business leadership and governance. What should the audience expect? I mean, what kind of conversations should we expect to hear from this platform?

Olukunle A. Iyanda:  The kind of conversation that we should expect? It’s going to be honest conversation. It may not be comfortable sometimes, because what we want to do is to be able to just get to the raw core of an issues. Well, what I mean by that, it could be issues that probably because of you know, stereotyping, we don’t want to discuss, it could be issues that probably we think society is not ready to discuss them, but they are things that probably impacting all of us, but we have not been able to come up with the confidence of saying, let us discuss this issue. The kind of people that we’re going to invite are people willing to share in a nonpartisan way, to share an idea. that’s you know, can stir honest conversation, either for business; when you talk about business, we know that business is confronted with a lot of challenges currently in Nigeria.  The GDP’s crawling, most startups are crawling and all of that. Do we have insight in terms of policies, in terms of strategy, in terms of you know our creativity or even in terms innovation that would strengthen the economy, strengthen entrepreneurship, you know startups or that can strengthen those who are working. That’s the kind of thing that we want to be talking about when we talk about policies as well, you know it could be public policies; can we critically analyze some of the policies in a way that could benefit the society? These are some of the stuff that we should look towards when we talk about Spark.

Ife Adeagbo: Oh, I love that we will be having conversations that take courage because you know, as you say, when the change needs to be radical and growth transformation, we can’t be in our comfort zone. So I’m sure that our audience will appreciate this and we look forward to these kinds of conversations. OK, so when we zoom in on businesses, institutions and the nation at large, and we’re talking about transformational growth; what specific things are we watching out for? you know, I mean, what specific transformation deliverables would someone who downloads this podcast find and what specific problems are we going to be helping them solve?

Olukunle A. Iyanda:  When we talk about transformation and growth, I think the best way to start is for us to say, can we critically challenge status quo? you know, can we, like you mentioned, can we get out of our comfort zone? Can we, you know, stop the practice of mediocrity, either in leadership, either in business or in governance. Can we? Just so you know what, for us to move from point A to point Z, these are what we need to do. If you look at China in the last 40 years, even though China, you know culturally, ethnographically, they’ve been there for many, many years. But the transformation that happen in China that make China to be the fastest growing economy, that make China to be the factory of the world and make China to be the country that is producing more billionaires than any country or any continent in the world are the kind of transformation that is able to lift about 600 million people out of poverty in the last 20 years. The kind of transformation that make China to be the second largest economy in the world cannot be sustaining transformation. It wasn’t transformation that is simple. It may be common, and you know but they are able to take the bull by the horn.  For us to get to the desired state, future state, these are the stuff that we needed to do. Are we willing to pay the price for it? OK, so we believe that in all sectors, we need to ask ourselves what price we need to pay to get to that? And you know that when you look at the macroeconomic policy of the government, which, you know, generally affect businesses and all of that, when you talk about the ease of doing business, you know in Nigeria, which is a bit challenging; when you talk about the cost of doing business in India which is also very high when you look at our state of infrastructure and all of that; we need honest conversations. We need we need to take radical steps and the radical step that I’m talking about, are steps that initially make us to be uncomfortable. When you look at India, you know, India is also the fastest growing economy as well. You’ll discover that though we still have huge poverty in India, but India has done well, you know for themselves. In terms of producing what you need, look at healthcare in India. A lot of people now go to India for healthcare, Look IT for instance, Software development; India has been the capital of software development. You know in the world. So the question we want to ask ourselves, what does Nigeria want to be known for, Beyond you know the issue of you know story of corruptions? Beyond the usual story of corruption, you know of poor infrastructure, beyond the usual story of giant of Africa you know and all of that.

‘What is it that Nigeria wants to be known for? Just like India or some of these other people, or the Asian tiger team; those are the kind of conversations that will happen on this platform, which we believe eventually will lead to, you know, some level of you know radical transformations in our society’.

Ife Adeagbo: Thank you very much, Sir. Just before we drop that thought, people say something that talk is cheap. But I know you and what you represent that it’s a way that is more than just the talk, you always do talking, but also lots and lots of doing. But then can you tell us how these conversations will not just stop at the talk, but lead us into strategic action.

Olukunle A. Iyanda:  Thank you so much. What you’ve said is very true. Talk is cheap, but how do we walk the talk?

Ife Adeagbo: Exactly!

Olukunle A. Iyanda: For us to be giving insights. Each of the conversation we’re going to dissect them. I’m going to dissect them, we are going to make them available to those who need to know, we got to share it with business leaders were gonna share with those who are in government. OK and we’re going to also monitor to see what we are doing because sometimes, you know, we have to know that the reason why people are possibly not doing what it’s supposed to be doing because they don’t have the right insights and this this this platform is a platform where we said what would share uncommon insights. Want to share ideas, we never can tell out of 10 or 100,000 ideas that we’re going to be sharing on this platform, who knows, we have one that somebody will latch onto and we make a lot of difference in that person’s life or in that person’s business or it could even be in this society. You never can tell, so it’s like we are sowing seed; you cannot throw your seed here and there. You don’t know the one that will germinate even where you can get that this one is going to germinate; you don’t even also know how fruitful it’s going to be, so we will look at ourselves as sowing seed you know, to the society and we’ll see how it goes in terms of, you know how fruitful is going to be at the end of the day.

Ife Adeagbo: Oh, this is fantastic people. Can you hear what I’m hearing? It’s apparent, that information is different from insight, So what will be happening on this park is that we’ll be distilling actionable insights. Information so that businesses and government leaders can use this for improvement. Before I let you go, I need you to tell us about BROOT consulting who is the major sponsor for the Spark

Olukunle A. Iyanda:  We BROOT Consulting, we are his strategy, innovation, and research firm. We help organisations you know with their strategy, other growth strategy you know a lot of you know. All sort of that, uh.  We talk about innovation because innovation is  what rule the  world. Without it, we would not be where we are and for you to solve complex problems such as we have in our society, we believe that there is need for us to innovate. So as a firm, one of the things that we focus on is to focus on innovation, focus on how we can do things better than we are doing it. Help organization to improve on their processes, help organization to improve on their alignment; even sometimes we help organizations to craft their visions. You know, that’s what we do in the area of innovation and look at innovation management; how can we help organization to scale up their capability in the area of innovation. Talk about culture transformation, when we look at our society; we discovered there is in need for culture change, a radical culture change, in most of the things that we do; in how we perceive issues. So for us, as a firm, is one of the areas that we, you know, we look into very intently. And of course, we talk about research; user centered, is what we like to do best. Because I believe that when people have the right insight, when they have the right data then they can make meaningful decisions. So, that is what BROOT is all about.

 Ife Adeagbo: Thank you so much Doc for this insightful conversation. Now, we know that it takes insights to achieve transformational growth. Once again, thank you for joining in.

Olukunle A. Iyanda:  Thank you so much.

Ife Adeagbo: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Spark. Make sure to subscribe to the show on iTunes or your favorite podcast player. That’s all for now. See you next time.

About the author(s)

• Olukunle A. Iyanda, PhD is the Chief Executive Officer of BROOT consulting.
• Adeola Ojoawo, PhD is BROOT Consulting Director of Strategy& Growth.