How to Place Nigerian FM Companies’ CEOs Voice in the Industry Recognition and Sustainable Value Positioning

Credit: Harvard Business Review

When an industry is bereft of sufficient information could enhance stakeholders’ understanding of the forces that shape it, experts believe that the shakeout of processes being used by the players becomes eminent. Like other developing countries, the Facilities Management industry in Nigeria is evolving and growing every year due to different factors. Despite this, significant information to the facilities users and buyers of the solutions being offered by the providers is becoming elusive every day.

This piece is one of the attempts of Infoprations of emphasising the place of communicating the uniqueness and values of the industry to the stakeholders in the private and public sectors, including the individuals across the country. In the current piece, an attempt has been made to establish why the voice of the Chief Executive Officers of over 30 FM companies is imperative in improving the industry recognition and sustainable value positioning.

What is Industry Recognition and Sustainable Value Positioning?

It is quite instructive to know industry recognition and collective value positioning. In our previous analyses, we have noted that the industry needs collective action towards inculcating maintenance culture in the country, one of the bases through which the public will know the strategic place of the industry in building resilient cities and contributing to healthy living.

Among the experts, industry recognition is the combination of awareness of individual brands, product or firm being created by practitioners or employees in an industry. Such awareness is expected to address salient issues and needs of the targets in the industry. Failure to do that will lead to having more quacks and many strategic wars to fight.

Like other emerging industries, Facilities Management industry needs three categories of recognition. People, businesses and governments need to be aware of activities in the industry every day, a day-to-day awareness creation strategy. This could be the onerous task of the employees and other advocates in the built environment, who want to help in building a virile industry. This strategy requires getting feedback from the public, analysts and other promoters of the industry on conventional and modern communication channels.

To earn informal recognition, another category, practitioners and players need to acknowledge and appreciate each other milestones, particularly when they were the successes recorded in other countries. The industry needs to earn formal recognition. The key to unlock this is evidence-driven advocacy by the Association of Facilities Management Practitioners and the International Facilities Management Association, Nigeria Chapter.

While pursing the recognition, sustainable value positioning should not be jettisoned by the players and professionals. It is must be communicated and delivered before people and businesses can recognise it. Stakeholders should not forget that FM industry is one of the industries that has multiple stakeholders participating in the process of value creation and delivery. Therefore, the expected economic, social and environmental value must be created and shared in ways that ensure mutual balance.

The Needed Approach and a Daunting Task

How can Communications and Marketing staff of the players ensure the institutionalisation of the Chief Executive Officers’ voice in earning the expected recognition and position the value in the industry? Answers to this question lies with the staff’s understanding of the right processes, people and media needed to communicate the change. In our analysis, we have discovered that the staff need to employ Engaged Scholarship Approach. This is imperative because the industry is knowledge-intensive.

In other words, staff must be scholarly in their approach to engaging the CEOs, who have significant tacit knowledge because their years of experience in the industry. By being scholarly, we expect staff to have scientific means of exploring the views of the CEOs and convert them into valuable contents that portray the industry in the eyes of the public as the industry of choice for sustainable business and life.

The big issue sets in after exploring the CEOs’ views. In our experience, we have learnt that Communications and Marketing personnel are quicker in localising the voice of their CEO in individual’s contents more than contents’ that benefits the whole industry. We have also gained the experience that personnel do not know where the CEOs should join the conversation and share their (CEOs) thoughts about the issues that collectively affect the industry. Nevertheless, we have seen quite a number of contents where the voice of the CEOs has been properly included.  

To overcome this problem, our analysts note that it is essential to understand issues and needs the CEOs are most likely to discuss. What news articles do they read or make them react to issues and needs in other industries? Knowing these remain strategic ways of getting the attention of the CEOs and their readiness to willingly support content marketing programme that aims at improving the industry recognition and sustainable value positioning.

When their voices have been captured, our analysts suggest the use of Integrated Marketing Communication tools for dissemination, and vertical content distribution strategy.  The contents need to be distributed using blogs, companies’ official websites, electronic and print media. In some cases, it is better that the captured voices are used to position the CEOs as thought leaders in op-eds or on companies’ blogs. A typical example is Richard Branson, the Virgin Group founder, who has been expressing views on general issues and travels in the last few years. This has earned and still earning him a number of followers on social media, especially LinkedIn.

In Nigeria, we equally have a number of CEOs that could be emulated. Engineer Femi Akintunde, the Chief Executive Officer of Alpha Mead Group and Dr Henrietta Onwuegbuzie of the Lagos Business School, Lagos are among the professionals who lend their voice to the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement recently on a professional medium. Sijibomi Ogundele, the Chief Executive Officer of Sujimoto Construction Limited, a trusted one-stop solution provider in Real Estate and Hospitality, is another CEO, using his social media presence to position the Nigerian real estate industry in the last few years.

With the recent Advocacy Day launched by the International Facilities Management Association in collaboration with other stakeholders, the ground has further been prepared by the Association for Communications and Marketing personnel to form a synergy towards making the CEOs as engagement, entertainment and educational officers of the industry.