Bayo Akinloye
At a time when artificial intelligence is reshaping work, geopolitics is altering markets and public confidence in institutions is under pressure, the quality of leadership matters more, not less. For TEXEM, the case for executive learning is therefore simple: better-informed leaders make better decisions, stronger decisions improve institutions, and stronger institutions create the conditions for progress.
A recognition with wider meaning
Dr Alim Abubakre has been awarded Academic Fellowship of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development following assessment against the CIPD’s Academic membership criteria. He can now use the designatory letters Academic FCIPD after his name. The recognition is timely. Organisations now operate across intricate networks of employees, investors, regulators, governments, communities and international partners. Technology is accelerating decision cycles. Geopolitical tensions are reshaping investment, trade and supply chains. Stakeholders expect greater transparency, competence and accountability.
In this environment, leadership is tested not only by what people know, but by how well they judge, listen, learn and act. That is the territory in which TEXEM has built its work: helping leaders convert insight into action and responsibility into results.
Why leadership development matters to society
TEXEM has inspired more than 4,000 leaders globally through its executive development programmes. The significance of that figure lies in what leadership can multiply. One improved decision at board or executive level can affect employees, customers, investors, communities and public institutions. One stronger institution can improve confidence, opportunity and performance far beyond its walls.
This is why executive learning should be seen as part of good governance and, ultimately, nation-building. Rules and structures matter, but institutions do not govern themselves. People interpret policy, allocate resources, challenge weak decisions, set standards and determine whether accountability is real. The quality of those people, and the quality of their judgement, shape the quality of the institution.
The strongest leaders therefore do not treat learning as something completed earlier in their careers. They keep testing assumptions, exposing themselves to new evidence, and building the capacity to make difficult choices under pressure.
Leadership in an age of polycrisis
The demands on leaders are becoming more interconnected. Economic pressure can collide with political uncertainty. Technological disruption can create opportunity while exposing new governance risks. Artificial intelligence can increase speed and productivity while raising questions about accountability, trust and human judgement. A supply-chain decision can quickly become a reputational, regulatory or national resilience issue.
No single discipline is enough for this environment. Strategy without people can fail in execution. Technology without governance can create new risk. Capital without trust can struggle to create durable value. Public policy without institutional capability can remain an aspiration rather than an outcome.
TEXEM’s approach is grounded in this reality. Executive development should not remove leaders from the pressures of the real world; it should help them return to those pressures with sharper judgement, wider perspective and a clearer sense of responsibility.
Turning scholarship into practical leadership
Rt Hon Graham Stuart, MP for Beverley and Holderness, who co-delivered a series of leadership sessions with Abubakre, said, “Converting the insights of the latest academic research into inspiring, practical and effective courses for political and corporate leaders sets Dr Abubakre apart. It’s great to see him recognised as a Fellow of the CIPD.”
The comment goes to the heart of a long-standing challenge in leadership development: knowledge creates value only when people can use it. Research can reveal patterns that experience alone may miss. Practice can expose assumptions that theory needs to question. The most useful executive education brings both together and helps leaders turn evidence into judgement.
Abubakre’s research has examined stakeholder collaboration during the pandemic across Sub-Saharan Africa and the interconnected barriers facing small and medium-sized enterprises in public procurement. Although the contexts differ, the underlying question is consistent: how can leaders make complex systems work better for the people and organisations that depend on them?
Good governance begins with better judgement
Sustainable performance cannot be reduced to finance, technology, strategy or people in isolation. Organisations operate through systems of incentives, relationships, institutions and expectations. Weakness in one part of that system can damage the rest.
This makes judgement a central leadership asset. A strategy may be international, but people must execute it. A merger may make financial sense, but cultures must work together. Technology may create capability, but leaders must determine how it is governed and used. A partnership may look impressive on paper, but trust often decides whether it survives difficulty.
Good governance is therefore not simply compliance. It is the disciplined exercise of responsibility: asking better questions, making sound choices, using power carefully and ensuring that institutions serve the purpose for which they exist.
Recognition should increase responsibility
Victoria Winkler, Chartered FCIPD, Standards and Professional Development Director at the CIPD, said, “Academic Fellowship of the CIPD is a badge of expertise, credibility, and authority. It recognises the vital role that academics play in advancing the people profession through teaching, research, thought leadership and the development of future leaders.”
For Abubakre, the fellowship is not simply a credential. It carries an obligation to make knowledge more useful.
“Recognition should increase responsibility, not simply status. For me, this fellowship is a commitment to make knowledge travel further: from research into teaching, from teaching into organisations, and from organisations into decisions that improve performance and widen opportunity,” stated Abubakre. “International business ultimately succeeds through people, trust and relationships. My next step is to deepen the connection between scholarship and practice, helping leaders understand complex systems better, build stronger institutions and turn insight into action that people can actually experience.”
His work beyond academia, including his role as a board director of the Business Council for Africa, provides another bridge between ideas and the realities confronting leaders, investors and institutions across markets.
Why lifelong learning matters more now
One of the paradoxes of the AI era is that information is easier to access at precisely the moment when judgement is becoming harder to exercise. Leaders can obtain answers faster, but they still have to decide which questions matter, which interests to balance, which risks to accept and what responsible action looks like.
That is why lifelong learning is not remedial. It is a discipline of serious leadership. Experience is valuable, but it can harden into assumption. Success can build confidence, but confidence without curiosity can become complacency. Seniority should increase the obligation to learn because the consequences of poor judgement become greater as responsibility grows.
For TEXEM, the real measure of executive development is what changes after the programme: whether leaders make better decisions, boards govern more effectively, organisations become stronger, institutions widen opportunity and society experiences the difference.
From learning to nation-building
The case for developing leaders is therefore larger than individual career progression. In business, government and civil society, capable leadership strengthens the institutions on which economic and social progress depend.
More than 4,000 leaders globally have been inspired through TEXEM’s work. Each represents the possibility that better judgement can travel through organisations, influence institutions and improve outcomes for many more people.
In an age of AI, information is abundant. In an age of geopolitical uncertainty, certainty is scarce. In an age of polycrisis, yesterday’s answers can quickly become inadequate. What organisations and nations need are leaders who keep learning, govern responsibly, make sound decisions and build institutions capable of outlasting them.
That is where learning becomes leadership, leadership strengthens governance, and good governance contributes to nation-building.
