People Ops from the Top: Michael Okwusogu, Managing Partner at ValueX Partners

In this ‘People Ops from the Top’ we talk about; living (not preaching) the gospel, annual trips, and work ethic. 

I am a strategy and operational excellence professional with over 15 years’ of experience in Global Banks Capital & Financial Markets divisions as a Senior Operational leader in key business-driver roles. With broad responsibilities gained across the UK, Europe, North America, the Caribbean, Asia, and the Middle East. I have a successful and proven track record in leading initiatives to increase ROI across business units spanning the entire value chain Front to Back in relation to operational excellence, digitalisation, change & transformation and growth strategies. With my experience at the business execution and Corporate strategy levels, I bridge the gap between knowledge and theory to what good looks like for clients in the Financial Services, startups, and other industry sectors.

We are a specialist financial services, Telecom, Investor Relations, PR, communications, and digital marketing innovation advisory firm with offices in London, Dubai and Toronto. We help our clients stabilise and operationalise critical daily activities by adopting our in-house methodology and practice methods which are practical, clear, simple, realistic, and effective. Our collective experiences led us to devise methods to deal with the inefficiencies and challenges we found in systems, processes, organisational structure, governance, talent and general business management. This is the foundation of the VXP approach.

You hear and read all the time about how everyone is customer or people-centric etc etc. but the reality is different. In our experience when you get down to basics and core principles, there are only 2 strategies that in the history of commerce actually matter - 1. People and 2. customers/clients. Once you understand that, in that order, then you have the basis for building something successful.

Additionally, given we advise and support clients on building and embedding operational excellence and high-performance teams, this is exactly what we do internally. There is no use preaching the gospel if you don’t live by its edicts. So, it’s exciting for us to actually put in place ideas/strategies we've wanted to apply/implement in our corporate lives but for one thing or another, not being able to do so around what we think is required to build and sustain a high-performance culture.

We're all split globally geographically, so team bonding is extremely important. We have weekly midweek huddles and actually speak throughout the week. We dedicate 1 day in the week to not talk shop and just see how everyone is doing and speaking about life, families, and news topics of the week. Once a year, we meet somewhere in the world where we combine 1 week of business with 1 week of R&R. As you can imagine this one event occupies most of our "nonwork" related meetings during the week. I think we spend more time discussing the merits/demerits of each location than anything else! But we always plan to agree on a destination by Q1 each year so that focuses minds!

From day zero, we've been remote. Setting up the firm was our opportunity to create a life/work balance we've always sought and importantly, do what we want, when we want, and how we want. So that freedom cannot be understated. Going forward when we open in other locations, we will need to ensure we are structured to maintain consistent exemplary high delivery standards for clients without negatively impacting our colleagues who must also maintain a healthy work/life balance.

As to what makes such a policy work? I think it boils down to the culture and business/industry of the individual organisation. I'm not so sure that there is a template or ideal model that works as we'd be comparing apples with pears in my opinion. I refer back to my comment about the people and client strategy. You have to organise and structure yourself to fit your industry, client and market segment with the full acknowledgment and understanding that your clients’ needs should not be negatively impacted by any organisational structure you adopt. If you keep a laser focus on that, I think colleagues will appreciate the actions you take to ensure they have a working environment that enables them to maximise their capabilities and abilities which is the goal of strategy #1 – people.

Character and work ethic. Nothing wrong with academic prowess or experience, but it is as true as night and day that knowledge can be gained, and experience can be achieved, but character, innate capabilities, abilities and work ethic are inherent. Character is what makes a person and work ethic is a result of your mind frame, so do not scrimp on this with colleagues and clients alike.

Well in my experience, building and or maintaining company culture is a direct result of who you are as a person and one thing I was told many years ago about how to conduct myself in life and in social interactions was to treat everyone with whom I come in contact with as the most important person in the world. It has stood me in good stead.

When your job is your passion it is enjoyment. I take great satisfaction from seeing good people maximize their unique gifts to be truly great individuals and companies who are open to what we bring to the table, and profit from tangible and intangible results our support delivers. We have an original value proposition and clients see the results of this when we engage with them.

For more from Michael, follow him on LinkedIn