Salute to Dayo Olomu, the guru of self-reinvention

Let’s take a moment to appreciate an esteemed colleague, and a great professional to engage with, Dr Dayo Olomu.

Dayo Olomu is no doubt endowed with the gift of self-rediscovery and aptly re-inventing himself as he goes along. His familiar story of humble beginnings (for an instance, selling iced water at a bus garage in Lagos when he was 10 years old), peppered with series of hurdles, in astonishing mixes of perplexing and daunting dosages, are all too familiar to those who follow his odyssey. He never fails to highlight them.

To those closer in professional and social interactions with the suave man of manners, the ‘storytelling’ bouts are not about flaunting his ability to surmount oddities. Far from it. They are often recounted in the spirit of admonition: that those who find themselves in comparable situations, may take heed and hit the perseverance button, pick the gauntlet of fighting, not just to survive but to excel, coming out on top of the particular adversity.

From his stint as a PR cum A&R Manager to his journalism days, our paths have always and often inevitably crossed. One amazing thing about DDO, as he’s fondly referred these days, is the temerity and sincerity of purpose that he brings to any task, assigned solely or shared, and the conviviality that he creates in the process just so that others feeling less able would be carried along without an iota of despondency.

It is with sheer delight that the team at Infomediaworks Limited therefore accepted to help midwife his book on leadership when he intimated his intention to us a few years back.

As the lead, my initial concern for Dayo was that he shouldn’t embark on an ‘unmerited lane-crossing’, as some folks are too often eager to do. A flight of fancy whereby someone is steadily making progress on a charted course and then, without careful planning or a functional roadmap, deciding to veer off and embark upon what often turns out to be a whimsical journey. I wanted to appeal to his sense of resourcefulness by staying in the ‘lane’ that he’s familiar with. Being a life coach and motivational speaker, providing mentorship and motivating people to achieve their best. Why not write a book about that?

But DDO has remodelled his leadership vision in no quaint manner. He is after a continuum of people-building on a scale and magnitude ensconced in semi-academia. Propound and teach leadership to a broad range of people across diverse strata of commerce, politics, administration and all that. He’s also looking to pit his thoughts on leadership against a world known for throwing up unexpected and baffling scenarios. These are the times for which we need real leaders with actionable objectives and the temerity to see these through with exceptional and all-encompassing beneficial results.

Going through the initial sketches with Dayo, I envisioned the usual brisk but convincing gusto for which he’s renowned at getting things done. I once again see a man ready to fill the vacuum that he brilliantly expounded to exist in that genre. We gladly accepted to work with him and the rest, as they say, is now history.

‘The Premium Leader: Leadership Attributes and Strategies for Today’s Volatile World’ is a project brought to fruition and with a mission to provide the identified needs of steady and reliable leadership to steer the wheel in what is becoming increasingly challenging and unexpected bouts of turbulence that often overwhelm humanity.

It is a well-researched book, most admirable for not compartmentalising issues. The volatility of contemporary challenges is such that does not isolate commerce, or IT, or governance and administrative spheres. It is all-engulfing and nowhere is this amply illustrated as the current COVID-19 pandemic with its widespread crippling effects.

‘The Premium Leader’ owes its existence to a deep-rooted passion for excellence in human development. It is therefore a given that those involved in the mechanisms of getting copies to the intended hands share the same vision. The publication is being distributed globally using the well tested and tried BookGLOBAL platform to reach veritable vendors.

The retail channel partnerships engaged include Alibris, Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), Aphrohead, Barnes & Noble, Bertrams Books Ltd, Bibliographic Data Services Ltd and Blackwell UK Ltd. Other retailers on the list are Books Etc., Bowker UK Ltd, Gardners Book Services, Nielsen Book Data, PBShop.co.uk, The Book Depository Ltd, and the Great British Bookshop.

‘The Premium Leader: Leadership Attributes and Strategies for Today’s Volatile World’ is fast rising in sales, acceptance and with even more endearing potentials in the offing. It’s eight months since its publication and the rankings on Amazon, as well as the returns from our distribution partners, continue to justify the raison d’être of this project.

Congratulations to Dayo Olomu and the rejuvenated Dayo Olomu Publishing (DOP). We at Infomediaworks Ltd proudly associate with you and look forward to your continued success. Testament to your consistent positive strides is yet another feather to your cap: being featured in the special publication, ‘+600 Diaspora Icons @60’. Compiled and published by the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NiDCOM) to commemorate Nigeria’s 60^th independence anniversary, the compendium is dedicated to the celebration of certain individuals (out of the estimated over 17 million Nigerians in the Diasporas) who are excelling in various fields of human endeavours.