6Ps of Excellent Performance

Proper Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance.

PROPER means appropriate, right, correct, suitable or good. It is a prerequisite for anybody aspiring greatness to do that which is proper, appropriate, right, suitable and good for the actualisation of the goal. This is the price that must be paid for the prize.

PRIOR depicts the time frame. It emphasises when action should be taken. Before, now or after. Going by the addage "look before you leap" it is better to plan before. For expediency sake, it prior action is better and preferred. This is because relevant adjustments can be made before the due time.

PLANNING is an act of formulating a program for a definite course of action. It is both the organizational process of creating and maintaining a plan; and the psychological process of thinking about the activities required to create a desired goal on some scale. It is a common adage: he who fails to plans to fail.

PREVENT is a precautionary word which means impede, foreclose, preclude, forbid, forestall, avert, obviate. It explains an effort to keep from happening, esp by taking precautionary action or advance planning.

POOR is an adjective related to a state of poverty, low quality or pity. In other words, poor describes a performance that is below expectation. It is an unsatisfactory state of attainment.

PERFORMANCE can be defined as accomplishment of a given task measured against preset standards of accuracy, completeness, cost, and speed. It is synonymous with accomplishment. When we say 'the end justifies the means', we are actually talking about planning and performance respectively. When there is good planning (means), there will be good performance (end). Therefore, the crux of this write-up is planning which is essential for any result-oriented venture.

What can't be cured must be endured

The above idiomatic statement as quoted by Burton Robert is an elucidation between patience and impatience; smartness and stupidity; ambitiousness and complacency. Literary speaking, it means that if you can not do anything about a problem, you will have to live with it. You should have patience and complacency on a permanent scale.

Looking at Nigeria democracy and politics in general, one may want to correlate the above to the appalling situation in the political arena. Fela Anikulapo Kuti of blessed memory termed democracy to be "demonstration of craze" among the elites which in effect, inflict so much pains on the innocent citizenry. But in the real sense of it, must we continually endure evil, corruption, pains, embezzlement, wickedness just to mention few. Ain't you tired as a bonafide citizen of this great nation?! What can we do, you asked? I have also asked this rhetorical question severally. But something must be done.

I wonder why we must always choose the best of the worst. People in the Accounting or other business oriented discipline would recollect the minmax regret theorem in Decision Theory in uncertainty. The theorem teaches us to minimise the worst-case regret. Inorder words, you should settle for the better of the worst options. This should not be our case all the time.

We would have had a good fight if most of our problems are not self-afflicted. Hardship and suffering synonymous with name Nigeria. With great natural and human resources, Nigeria is still in the array of the poorest countries of the world. And same country has individuals who can buy off the entire substance apart from human beings in the nation. No sector of the economy is working seamlessly! The nation's problem is leadership. We seldom need soothsayer to confirm this. This is because it is evident that our vast natural and human resources are being mismanaged.

Cost of doing business is too high because of lack of basic infrastructural facilities like power, passable roads,water and so on. These basic infrastructural facilities are simply what other countries do not take for granted. All these are responsible for the decay, decimation and degradation of lives and livelihood in Nigeria. On account of these national ordeals, manufacturing sector can not thrive. Wealthy economies excelon the platform of thriving manufacturing sector. In the whole world, Nigerians suffer the most cost of services becuase the service providers operate like a small sovereign community that has to provide all infrastructure. For example, cost of doing business in South Africa was 2% of sales compared to 16% in Nigeria. However, most of this on-costs are infrastructure related.

The foregoing are suffice to make one think and rethink on the manner of leadership we have in Nigeria. We deserve better if not best. They kept Nigerians in the illusion that we have democracy where the nation is rottenly pervaded by kleptocracy, gerontocracy and oligarchy.

For how long are we going to endure this...only time will tell.