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By Godwin Chukwumaechi
Pipeline Infrastructure Nigeria Limited and its group, comprising Pipeline Infrastructure Nigeria Limited, Ocean Marine Solutions and Delta Pacific Marine Services, have come together to develop an aligned direction for their businesses with the aim of sustaining its leadership in its core business area, increase market share and boost revenue.
The group also declared its intention to immediately recapitalise so as to support its plans to boost investment in new areas of business in order to increase revenue generation and profit for its companies and shareholders.
These plans were made public last week by the directors of the company during a 3-day corporate retreat for directors and top management cadre of the companies at the Four Points by Sheraton Hotel, Ikot Ekpene, Akwa-Ibom State.
The retreat, which had as its theme; ‘Developing An Aligned Direction,’ was facilitated by the PricewaterhouseCoopers PwC to enable the directors and management of the three companies to review their operations and create an aligned direction for the group.
It involved extensive sessions of brainstorming, assessment of performance, challenges, opportunities and strategies for meeting targets and setting new ones. Social programmes were also carefully included in the 3-day event which helped to keep it deeply engaging and lively.
Three of the directors of the companies namely; Osahon Hosa Okunbo, Anita Aikhomu and Nicholas Rhodes, spoke to the press on the essence of the retreat, which is the first since over 16 years of operations of the companies.
Osahon explained that the “mind of the board in planning this retreat was a platform for the management to express themselves and to build a strong bridge between the board and management.”
Anita agreed with him saying; “we are all trying to align ourselves for sustainable growth in the business. So we’re trying to brainstorm and see where all our heads are at and see what we can do to make the business grow”.
Rhodes added that the retreat “gives the team the opportunity to interact with the directors and vice versa to understand what works and what doesn’t work and allow us guide the business in the best possible path and it’s been very useful in that respect”.
He said the engagement has helped the directors to see “an alignment on the opportunities, more priority on that in the market and I think we have some key action points that will help us reinvigorate areas of the business, drive it forward and engage the staff with the stakeholders of the entire businesses as well as the directors and shareholders.
“So I think we have been able to get much more clarity on what direction we want to take, how we want to ensure the longevity of the business and how we can engage the stakeholders, the staff to build a better business going forward”.
According to Osahon; “One major outcome we are hoping to achieve, which I think we are on the good part of achieving is a strategy of implementation. So it’s been very engaging, directors have heard from management and management from directors, put out the problems and hoping to develop implementable solutions. The major hope for us is that at the end of the day, the executive management is able to push down that strategy to the lower subordinates to be able to implement the strategy on the ground level. So that’s for me will be the major thing we plan out to achieve”.
He used the opportunity to assure that the board would certainly inject more funds into the business by way of recapitalisation, urging for the prudent management of such resources to achieve set target even as he warned that wastage would not be condoned but would rather be tracked and reprimanded.
“We are going to inject some more capital in the right places. I think that is the next engagement we are going to have at the board and shareholders level. Definitely there’s going to be a recapitalisation across the companies.
“With that is going to come a lot of tracking. We are going to implement heavy, heavy tracking. Everybody has to be responsible. We are going to trust you to spend the money but if you waste it, there will be repercussions”.
He reminded participants of the core values of the foundation chairman of the companies urging them to continue to hold tightly to those values of innovation, hardwork and commitment.
Osahon said; “Hard work, commitment and innovation are somethings I want us to hold very much. Let us work together, it’s a joint responsibility from all of us. Every single person here is a leader in his department. Most of the people here have been with the company for 10 plus years. Most of the people here have seen the transformation both financially, you’ve seen the highs, you’ve seen the lows. You have a responsibility to yourself, to your profession, you have a responsibility to the company and actually to Nigeria because there is a responsibility that comes with being a market leader”.
He described the retreat as a wonderful time and expressed appreciation to the facilitators, PwC for the professionalism and expertise exhibited in facilitating the programme.
