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AREWA COLLABORATIVE
LEADERSHIP
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Building trusting relationships among key players that
spur the movement of ideas into action in an agile
manner for the Arewa region. In collaborative
leadership, it’s not the number of people you know that makes
connectors significant, rather; it’s the ability to
link people, ideas, and resources that would not normally
bump into one another. In business, connectors are
critical facilitators of collaboration. In today's era
of tightening government budgets and paucity of funds, regional development
organizations (RDOs) need to leverage local and external
resources by thinking creatively about developing and
funding initiatives that improve communities’ quality of
life within the region.
Collaborate
at the Top First
It’s not enough for leaders to spot collaborative
opportunities and attract the best talent to them.
They must also set the tone by being good
collaborators themselves. All too often, efforts to
collaborate in the middle are sabotaged by political
games and turf battles higher up in the
organization. Consider that Microsoft, according to
a former company executive writing in the New York
Times last year, developed a viable tablet computer
more than a decade ago but failed to preempt Apple’s
smash hit because competing Microsoft divisions
conspired to kill the project.
Show a
Strong Hand - Once leaders start getting
employees to collaborate, they face a different
problem: overdoing it. Too often people will try to
collaborate on everything and wind up in endless
meetings, debating ideas and struggling to find
consensus. They can’t reach decisions and execute
quickly. Collaboration becomes not the oil greasing
the wheel but the sand grinding it to a halt.
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ERA OF COLLABORATION &
PARTNERSHIP
- AREWA Center for Regional Development (ACRD)
believes that this is the era of multilateralism, an era of
collaboration
and partnership between public and private sectors, the civil society and
other non-government organization to promote economic growth and
opportunity; to invest in the well-being of people from all walks of life;
and to make democracy serve every citizen more effectively and justly, a
partnership based on risk-sharing and value creation to advance mutual
regional goals.
Engage Talent at the Periphery
Research has consistently shown that diverse
teams produce better results, provided they
are well led. The ability to bring together
people from different backgrounds,
disciplines, cultures, religion and generations and
leverage all they have to offer, therefore,
is a must-have for leaders. Yet many public
and private companies spend inordinate
amounts of time, money, and energy
attracting talented employees only to
subject them to homogenizing processes that
kill creativity. In a lot of multinational
companies, for example, non-native English
speakers in the US are at a disadvantage. To
senior management, they don’t sound as
“leader-like” as the Anglophones, and they
end up getting passed over for promotions.
At a time when innovations are increasingly
originating in emerging markets, companies
that allow this to happen lose out.
"Left to their own devices, people will
choose to collaborate with others they know
well, which can be deadly for innovation”.
Collaborative leaders ensure that teams stay
fresh via periodic infusions of new players,
diverse and resourcefulness, youths-focus
and energetic; this is what we
need in the north. |
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The
Essence of partnership
These
partnerships include to collaborate to
address the regional and nation’s
cyber-security, banditry and
terrorism challenges as well
as:
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Co-create solutions to shared
problems that advance the core
goals of each of the partners;
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Shared risk, investment (direct
or indirect), and potential
reward for all partners; and
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Leveraging unique partner skills
and assets, producing outcomes
with greater impact than could
be achieved independently and
sustainably, that take
cognizance to:
1 . Implement
Programs that Build on Regional Opportunities
Introducing innovative programs
that complement and add value to all States within the Arewa
region’s industry and occupational clusters.
2. Strengthen Arewa Regional Collaboration and Innovation Networks
The mainstay of the ACRD Center of Excellence’s
collaboration work centers on its Strategic Doing initiative.
This program will focus on the use of States within the regional
networks to accelerate innovation, partnership and
collaboration. Strategic Doing quickly develops sophisticated
collaborations that help advance open innovation across
organizational and political boundaries within the entire
region. Strategic Doing ignites the spark of regional
innovation, partnership and collaboration enabling people in
loosely-joined, open networks to think and act strategically. In
partnership with Small Business Development Center’s across the
World, this program showcases the pivotal role of second-stage
firms to employment growth and prosperity and development growth
strategies, with the goal of making Arewa region an investment
destination.
3. Building Capacity of Local
and State Governments to effectively Address Economic and
Environmental issues
The mainstay of the ACRD
environmental considerations in the overall policy-making,
planning, and development process at local and regional level
are:
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Building
capacity of local and States governments within the region
to effectively address specific environmental issues,
concerns, and strategic measures in areas like agriculture,
transport, waste management, managed natural resources, and freshwater availability
that have significant relevance and implications in the
context of sustainable regional development;
Responding to emerging issues of
concern, such as climate change and human health impacts;
and
Fostering community-based natural resource/environment
management to achieve the United Nations (UN) Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs).
Partner with other non-government
organizations (NGOs) to compliment
the efforts of the government in
bringing support to the public
health, flood, deforestation, bush
burning, environmental sanitation
and waste management including toxic
waste disposal.
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