JELANI ALIYU'S NIGERIAN JOB: GM'S VOLT DESIGNER IN RETIREMENT?

‘’If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room’’

----Marissa Mayer

Jelani Aliyu is the Nigerian with design skills wonderful enough to have crafted the 2007-unveiled Chevrolet Volt for American auto powerhouse, General Motors—a company he joined after creative design studies in Detroit. This feat by the Kaduna State born Nigerian covered the globe, and recently the government of Aliyu’s fatherland, headed by President Muhammadu Buhari has announced a heightened (he was named member of the order of the federal republic, MFR, in 2012) recognition of the creative skills of their kinsman by naming him a director-general to oversee the responsibilities of the Nigerian Automotive Design and Development Council (NADDC)---a governmental body to craft needed policies aimed at developing its local auto industry.

To every well-meaning African, this is a more-than well-deserved appointment and so it’s been kudos to Aliyu since the time of the announcement. However, consistent with the very high standards of performance we promote here, one cannot help but take yet another look at this offer to Aliyu. Our worry is not on the genuineness of the intent behind the appointment, but that of Aliyu’s acceptance. Ordinarily, and for majority of human beings on earth, the world is one huge civic studies classroom where patriotism and the love for fatherland should trump and guide one’s ultimate life choices and decisions. Aliyu, after attaining such an enviable height, outside the shores of his birth country, should therefore come home to ‘’help grow’’ his fatherland.

If the South African born entrepreneur, Elon Musk, was a good beneficiary of this civic studies lesson he probably should have moved Tesla and Spacex to Pretoria, Cape Town, or Bloemfontein (South Africa’s capital cities). Accordingly, the late C. K Prahalad (1941—2010) of the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, Nitin Nohria, and Rakesh Khurana of the Harvard Business School; Satya Nadella(Microsoft’s CEO) and Sundar Pichai (Googles Inc CEO); all of Indian origin certainly did fail their civic studies examinations otherwise what are all of them still doing in the United States (working for American organisations)?

It is not that ‘’serving’’ or ‘’helping’’ to grow one’s fatherland is a wrong thing to do; it is simply that only those who continually strive to grow are better situated to competitively grow their fatherland. My one question, then, is, ‘’is Aliyu coming to Nigeria on retirement’’? Will leaving General Motors for his Nigerian job grow or take away from his already acquired design skills? If it is merely to help craft auto development and design policies for Nigeria (which for the most part will amount to compiling a catalogue) will it not be better for him to remain with General Motors and do this on advisory basis or better still outrightly reject the appointment?

For super talented people like Aliyu, they move from one organisation to another because they are getting bored with their former organisation due to new directions/policies that demotivate them or that their former roles no longer satisfy their hunger for better challenging tasks and responsibilities. In either case they primarily seek for a ‘’culture-fit’’ before the movement; and this they understand as the degree to which they seamlessly mesh with the (new) organisation’s direction (mission/vision), and the team of other associates.

One thing these super talented people all know is that the character of super performance embedded in their beings can only bring about best results when this character gets challenged alongside their types. For instance, when Franz von Holzhausen, Tesla’s design chief joined Tesla(the world’s most innovative electric carmaker) in 2008 he was fascinated by its mission ,’’To accelerate the world’s transition to electric vehicles’’---one that was not caused to be as real for all his years at Volkswagen, General Motors, and Mazda (before coming over to Tesla). In an interview with Green Car Design, he spoke of his boss thus, ‘’the thing about Elon is he is a physicist and engineer, and his best thinking centres around innovation. What he is---is approachable. At the end of the day he realizes that a good design is essential to connecting with consumers and he wants to succeed in that….he empowers us and he has a firm side too’’.

If Aliyu’s coming to Nigeria was to join an ambitious local carmaker to help make globally competitive cars through design that would have been a plus both to the growth of his skills and the country, to the extent his presence could attract other needed A+ talents in the industry. I do not see his new job as capable of doing this not because I am a pessimist but because Nigeria’s auto-industry lacks the kind of entrepreneurship that will bring out the best in Aliyu, unless he decides to become that needed entrepreneur.

Aliyu knows better than many outsiders of the industry that Ford Motors and General Motors (the one he designed for) were better placed in terms of financial power and size of business than Tesla to influencing auto industry policies in the United States. He also knows that such policies never created Tesla, and they never created the Mercedes brand. Again, what is Jelani Aliyu coming to do in Nigeria as the DG of NADDC? Only Aliyu, and time will tell.