What makes a smart organization

Of recent, I have been thinking deeply about what makes an organization to be smart. Or deeper still, what defines a smart organization. I am thinking about real life attributes not some fancy buzz words from smart pants consultants.

If someone should ask me, I would say a smart organization is one that reacts quickly to market changes, whose components (resources, employees) are used in the most cost effective manner delivering above average return on investment. So a lot must be expected from each organizational unit. Assets must be deployed in the most cost effective manner and results must be squeezed out. These are just rambling thoughts but one day, I will come around to codify it.

Why should we have smart organizations? My own answer is so simply stupid: It makes employees happy! From my little life experiences, the workers are the first to get stressed up when things don’t go smoothly. Like some people I know will say, they willl “Fi eje se!” (use blood to run it!). If things can run faster, better, more efficiently with less input and more time to either party away (Friday night is sacrosanct) and do better things, I should be less stressed up.

Author: Adedeji Olowe

Adédèjì is the founder of Lendsqr, the loan infrastructure fintech powering lenders at scale. Before this, he led Trium Limited, the corporate VC of the Coronation Group, which invested in Woven Finance, Sparkle Bank, Clane, and L1ght, amongst others. He has almost two decades of banking experience, including stints as the Divisional Head of Electronic Banking at Fidelity Bank Plc. He drove the turnaround of the bank’s digital business. He was previously responsible for United Bank for Africa Group’s payment card business across 19 countries. Alongside other industry veterans, he founded Open Banking Nigeria, the nonprofit driving the development and adoption of a common API standard for the Nigerian financial industry. Beyond open APIs, Adédèjì works deeply within the fintech ecosystem; he’s the board chairman at Paystack. Adédèjì is a renowned fintech pundit and has been blogging on technology and payments at dejiolowe.com since 2001.

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