 Welcome back from that Entrepreneurship Development and Program that was put together by the Lagos State Government. Well, my guess, WALU is an industrial and result-focused NABOSH certified and ISO-qualified management systems for quality management systems, environmental management systems, and occupational health and safety management systems. Well-versed QHSE, a professional with over eight plus years of demonstrable or track record of a line in health and safety operations, will establish project and business management paradigms within their FMCG, manufacturing, chemical and construction industries. He has utilized his skills to serve in various positions and various organizations to alleviate poor practices, promote positive workplace culture, promote workers' mental health via training and given advisory, enlightenment and supporting overall workplace productivity. He is a management trainer, delivered world standard trainings on psychological safety and mental well-being in the workplace, among many others. He is the author of the workplace and managing director of KUDAR Safety Consort. Many thanks for joining me, WALU, a big rookie. Thanks for having me, sir. Yes, it is a pleasure to have you on Business Insight. We're talking about him setting the pace and the role professionals play in making businesses sustainable and, of course, some growth. So, break it down for me. Now, we're talking about setting the pace. An organization, the greatest resource that an organization can ever have is a human resource. When it comes to the human resource, we're talking about human beings. And when you look at the workplace, we're talking about professionals who carry out various responsibilities. Now, if we all agree that the human resource is the greatest resource an organization can ever have, definitely they form the basis or the backbone to have an organization that has a sustainable business over the years. So, how do we integrate these factors of what makes these human resources competent enough to carry out their responsibilities? And we have observed that as professionals, there are so many aspects to our career life. It's not only limited to most of us. For example, someone who is an HR person only limits his thinking, his scope of thoughts within the aspect of HR. Meanwhile, there is a whole lot to do to being a professional. Being a professional means that you shouldn't only limit your thoughts, your understanding, your framework to the four walls of that discipline that you found yourself. You need to be able to expand your thought to other aspects of life. And that is why we have an event like setting the pace, which was done a few days ago. Okay, I'm going to get to that. I'm talking about you giving them an instance of an HR professional who should not just limit him or herself to just manpower related issues. So, what you're saying is that even though you're called out to be an accountant, it shouldn't just be about accountants. It should be all embracing even around other specific regions that affects your workflow. Yeah, definitely. Now, let's look at the human body, for example. Now, if you look at our system, let me go to the workplace. We have business management department, we have HR department, accounting department, legal department. We have demand department. Same thing, let's look at our whole body. We have the endocrine system, we have the respiratory system, we have the digestive system, we have the circulatory system, we have a lot of systems. Now, this system doesn't work alone. They work, they integrate together, right? They work together as a single entity to form the whole human body. Same thing happens with the organization. So, the mission has different departments. So, you have to integrate. So, for you to be able to integrate, you should have idea of other areas. What they do. What they do. Not that you'll be a master of all. Or screen isolation. Yeah, even as an individual, you don't only limit yourself to that framework of where you are. So, because the world is moving at a very fast pace. And it's either you join that pace or you are left behind. And for you to be able to move at that pace, there are issues of... In this 21st century, you are talking about sustainability. You can't be talking about sustainability, ESG, SDG. Why you just stay within the framework of the profession that you are doing. Okay, let me take it one step further. In a small trust, you have to be a professional first, then know how to work or interface with other customers. But say internal customers as it were. Those that you have to work with. But getting the right professional to manage different aspects of the workflow is an issue. So, what would you advise us by getting the right peg or the square peg in the square hole? So, you don't have any issues. No, thank you for that question. Now, when we look at the first thing is who is a professional. I call it someone who is competent to carry out a particular job. We have a view of knowledge, being knowledgeable, skillful, ability to do the job, being trained, experienced, and being able to sustain that professional growth. The way a particular profession has been practiced 10 years ago, it's not the same way it's been practiced now. So, it's been able to move along. So now, that's the first thing, understanding who a professional is. Then the second part is, we are not talking about each individual professional in relation to organizational growth, that is business growth. We see cases where organizations utilize people, or professionals who do not understand the metrics of that particular role. I have more of my strength in health and safety, like let's say I have more of my strength in health and safety, and we have observed so many things. For example, you see an organization using a different professional to handle safety issues. And that is why you see organizations keep involving in accidents. And that will not lead to growth of the business, because they have utilized the wrong role to occupy health and safety. Another aspect is, I'll give an example of the system, endocrine system, digestive system, and the like the other time. The respiratory system does not report to the digestive system. The digestive system does not report to the endocrine system. The same thing should happen to let's say, health and safety for example. A safety officer should not be reporting to someone who doesn't understand his role. So, organization needs to first address that aspect. If they want to address that, okay, this role is for this person. This is the role of HR, this role of a marketer. You see there is a complex confusion between a marketer and a salesperson. This is a salesperson, this is a marketer, this is a communicator, and this is an HR person and this is a doctor, this is an engineer. When the individual is an organization, they are able to analyze these different aspects. They can all look at, okay, who are we going to put in this particular position? Because they are the one that will determine the framework, the job description for every role that they want based on their risk in the organization. Because different organizations have different risks. And depending on the risks that they have, we determine their job description and what they want that person to do. But if they themselves are able to understand who should occupy a particular role, definitely it's anybody that you see that they put in those roles. And that will not help to improve on the business. So, I could all just sum it up to the fact that if you put on the right people in the right place, they will drive that particular line of management and of course the sustainability growth would be seen over time. Okay, fine. Let me take it back now. You mentioned in passing about a PACE Center conference that you had some time over the weekend. I really want to understand why it was important to be done at that particular time and what was the focus and what was the essence of it all? Thank you. At the beginning of each year, we set our goal. This is what I want to achieve for this year. And to be honest with you, not only Nigerians, because the world is moving at a very fast pace. People are getting stressed. People are getting tired. People are committing suicide. A lot of things are happening simultaneously. And because some people are not able to cope with what is happening, some result to just giving up, doing whatever they can, or just leaving this hurt. Now, certain the pace is to re-energize our interest. At the beginning of the year, there is a new beginning. At the beginning of the year, there is hope. At the beginning of the year, we can still achieve, especially as young professionals, because it's always very tough for us. We are the ones suffering with all these things. That's just the truth, because we didn't plan to meet what we are seeing now. So the certain the pace is to make professionals understand that, see, you are in this profession, but there are some areas, it's like a web that affects you being a professional in this year field. So why not all come together? Let us have experts who are experienced, who are far ahead of us. Let them come to discuss, to enlighten us, to engage us, for us to know what are those other areas that we need to focus on as young professionals to be able to move and meet up with the pace that the world is going into. Conferences, seminars are a very important factor for every individual, because apart from what you will learn, you also need to create good connections to meet with people. There is a common saying that your network is your network. So if you are able to attend seminars, not just at the pace, because it happens at the beginning of the year, and it is why we do that is to ensure that we give the energy. From the one we did last year, we got many feedbacks, that attending the certain the pace, I think that was in January 21, that it gave them the ability, the strength, the mindset to be able to push ahead and make them achieve their goals. So that is where we have it at the beginning of the year in order to create that integration for us to understand, number one, that there is more to life than that for wars. There are other things that we need to look into, and we invite experts, professionals, our leaders in various fields. We have Ms. Lara Yoku, who is an HR, and you know, Adami Badmoss, Mr. Dapamalade. But then again, then again, sometimes it is a big time hard not to just lose focus or lose sight of what you want. You talked about the essence and the importance of attending the seminars. But then if you are to attend a seminar, you attend with a mindset that this is what I want to achieve. These are the typical issues that will be discussed. This is what I am taking home out of all of this. And I actually watched the news concerning that. One of the things that actually struck me was that of local content. Because most of the times, I believe Nigerians are actually very skillful people and they have talent and they can actually put... If they really harness what we can do locally, we can actually sell them all these contents to the world. But what is actually stopping us, or deterring Nigerians from actually making the best out of the contents that we produce locally here? Now, what is content? Content content is a business aspect. You know, we have product and services, which is one side. Then we have... Look, we have product, one side, and we have services. Now, Nigeria is a... Or let me say Africa. There is a whole lot that we have that we sell out there, that we take out there, that we don't use here. If you look at the dark mass syndrome, our nurses, our doctors, for example, they are going there to do wonderfully well. And they have been trained here. The curriculum, the syllables that have been used to train them here is being made by us here. They are content, and they meet up with the competency requirement to work effectively there. Nigerians are doing well in the global space. Now, when it comes to trainings, you know, we have what we call professional trainings. There are some professional bodies that they've been able to strengthen their own local content and to make use of it. Now, when it comes to some other industries, let's say, earth and safety, where I belong to, the truth is that we have the capacity, it takes, but we have this syndrome, or inferiority complex, let me call it that way, that anything that comes from Nigeria isn't good. That's how you see our brothers. They will make a product here in Nigeria, they will put a foreign name on it, so that they know that our perception is, once it's from the other side, then it is good. So, we have the knowledge. For example, let's look at some trainings that we do here. Let's say ISO trainings, most of the time, we train ourselves for this ISO. The trainers are Nigerians, they are Africans. Let's look at Neboj, for example, Neboj is an education training in the UK, but it's all over the world. Now, here in Nigeria, I've not seen it was done in the past, but recently, it is we Nigerians that train ourselves, that train ourselves, the tutors are Nigerians, but we have to pay them dollars for them to use your certificate. And most of the time, or some of the time, most people don't pass, they need to do it again. So, it has gone to a stage where we have that dependency, psychological dependency, that we need to get their own validation, which is we are not promoting our own content because we have what it takes to be able to achieve and to do what is needed of us. There really is a whole lot to discuss when it comes to developing contents locally and promoting them. And of course, that ensures sustainability through professionalism, but time is never really our friend when we are talking about this matter. So, we might have to bring you back again to come and talk on some other key issues, but it must be a very big thank you to you for one of the useful insights that you have provided based on your work tools and what you've been able to do over time with people. We appreciate everything here. Thank you so much. Thank you. My guest has been Walu Adegro Keihei Asa, the MD of Al-Qadol Safety, and he's been talking about professionals, professionalism, and of course how that can be harnessed into getting business sustainability and of course growth. He just had a conference on setting the pace, and indeed Nigerians need to know what they are worth so they can actually value themselves very high. I'll leave you with that. That's the size of the show for today. My name is Justin Akadonia. Many thanks for being a part of the show. Bye for now.