Management Retreat: The Resolve to work in Collective Consciousness
In pursuant to its determined effort at repositioning the Council to make it a world class export promotion organization like her contemporaries, a Management Retreat was organized from February 11 – 13, at Bristol Palace Hotel, Kano.
The Retreat came on the heel of the one which took place in Lagos, February 2016. While the Lagos retreat had a key outcome of revalidation of KPMG’s Institutional and Functional Review package for the Council, this year’s version centered on the need for all staff to jointly work towards achieving the organizational goals of the Council.
Indications that the retreat was a huge success could be gleaned from the active participation of all, and the outpour of ideas on how to move the Council forward. With such atmosphere in the air, an elated Executive Director/CEO of NEPC, Mr. Olusegun Awolowo charged participants to imbibe a culture of ‘Collective Consciousness’ as an approach to all official assignments, as such would lead to the repositioning of Council for enhanced service delivery.
At the end retreat, the CEO believes that “As the group of leaders in NEPC, far-reaching decisions were collectively made on how to improve or achieve our goals and aspirations”. He hoped that Management staff will continue in the same spirited engagements as they return to their individual posts.
Speaking at the retreat, Chairman of NEPC Governing Board, Senator Ibrahim Musa commended Management for organizing the Retreat. He assured staff that the Board will do everything within its mandate to get a Condition of Service approved for the Council.
Apart from the promise to look into staff working condition, issues bothering on career progression, enhancement of strategic communications, review of International Trade Centre (ITC) Benchmarking of Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC) activities, inclusion of Heads of Smart Offices in subsequent Retreats and the establishment of effective internal communication channel (using Intranet), received positive mention.
Presentations were made on the NEPC 2019 Export Promotion Action Plan (EPAP) by the Director, Policy and Strategy, Mr. Abdullahi Sidi-Aliyu. The aim of EPAP is to streamline the activities and programmes of the Council with a view to ensuring that targets are met, on time, using the Key Performance Indictors (KPIs) Model.
Participants were also exposed to the MOPSE 2018 -2019 project, which aims at improving the performance of Trade Promotion Offices (TPOs) within the sub-Saharan Africa.
The 2-Day Retreat came to a close with the ED/CEO outlining the five (5) Pillars for improving the activities and programmes of the Council, in line with the ITC Benchmarking of the Council viz:
• Strategize
• Communicate
• Modernize
• Measure
• Reposition
