Governor Akinwunmi Ambode of Lagos State and political economist, Prof. Pat Utomi have outlined strategies for promoting, enhancing team work and synergy within the Lagos state civil service.
The duo spoke at a two-day workshop for directors in the State Public Service held in Ikeja, Lagos, Southwest Nigeria.
According to Ambode, civil servants must come up with strategy of embracing a lean culture approach to projects and other establishments, which he said, were crucial in attempting to chart the path to higher responsibilities in the state civil service.
Ambode, who was represented by the Commissioner for Establishments, Training and Pensions, Dr. Benson Oke, said he was confident that these two strategies – along with other proven strategies which would be taught at the workshop – would make the civil service more productive, efficient, and goal-oriented.
He stated that it would make the State Civil Service more suited to support the government of Lagos to realise its core objectives of promoting and enhancing the social infrastructural objectives of residents of the state.
“Indeed, team work and synergy hold the key to maximum and ultimate performance. Stephen Covey, the bestselling author and management consultant said, ‘team work and strategy is what happens when one plus one equals ten or hundred or even a thousand.! It is the profound result when two or more respectful human beings determine to go beyond their preconceived ideas to meet a great challenge,” he said.
The governor charged directors to focus more on strategic management by appreciating the value of synergy in the work place, adding that those who underestimated the value and importance of synergy and team work in today’s work space, ended up achieving less on any assigned task.
Speaking, Utomi opined that the impact of today’s rapidly changing economic and technological landscape had made government’s task of delivering public service more complex.
He said, more than ever before, government’s all over the world had increasingly come under serious public scrutiny and fiscal pressure to deliver better outcomes to citizens, and do so more efficiently.
Utomi emphasised that, as was evident, Nigeria had not been spared from this in recent times, saying that on the one hand, the dynamism presented by the interaction of economic, technological and other superintending elements in these scenarios had no doubt made government’s public service delivery onerous.
He said on the other hand, it had opened up opportunities for the exploration of out-of-the-box strategies that governments coul adopt if found to better the lot of their citizens.
“Based on the aforementioned, it becomes imperative for states and government’s generally, to engage in these types of training and retraining, so as to meet up with the challenges of the 21st Century expectations,” Utomi said.