By David Alade

It was early 2018, while studying the thought process of Prof. Ndubuisi Ekekwe to understand what made him so outstanding, I came across the e-book The One Oasis Strategy. To be candid, I couldn’t drop it midway. I keep reading till I flipped over the last page. After that day, I clustered the strategy in my mind as a strategy best fit for a business.

Indeed, oasis is very critical and every company has oasis. Your best product is the oasis in your business. Every other product feeds on that best product. If you build your investment around that main product, you will find success, because those investments will have a clear “customer”, and that reduces market risks. In other words, if your new business investments are geared to support the best product, and the best product is doing well, it means the risks on the new investments will be easily managed. Provided the best product continues to do well, demand on the new investment is assured. That is the One Oasis Strategy.

Fast forward to late 2018, after a careful study of the process that is shaping who I am, I coined the phrase ‘Success Leverage’ which means moving from where I am, to where I want to be, by leveraging what I have, to my advantage today.

Recently, I had some sort of spark and an eureka moment when I noticed a strong correlation between what Prof. Ekekwe calls the One Oasis Strategy and what I called Success Leverage.

What inspired the spark?

I like you to pay attention to what I call ‘The Story of How I/You Got Here’. It was at this moment that I saw a lot of doors opening up for me because I was successful in one thing already. I realized that a shut door was simply an indication that I had to develop my capabilities in that area. Once I did, that door and other doors also opened. Ultimately, doing this helped me break the cluster I had earlier created and helped me realize that One Oasis is unbounded and unconstrained in its applications as long as one can connect the dots.

Not one to horde knowledge, I really hope that this article will show you the dots on One Oasis and how to connect them to other focus points in your life.

Just for recollection, we will redefine oasis.

In geography, an oasis is an isolated area in a desert, typically surrounding a spring or similar water source, such as a pond or small lake. Oases also provide habitat for animals and even humans if the area is big enough. The location of oases has been of critical importance for trade and transportation routes in desert areas; caravans must travel via oases so that their water and food supply can be replenished. Thus, political or military control of an oasis has in many cases meant control of trade on a particular route. (Wikipedia)

In our life, forces must come together to form a shape before we attain a goal, just as forces of demand and supply must interplay in business. This forces on a personal level are always anchored on one or more few things that can be seen as a strength in personal analysis. The anchor’s behaviour is such that when properly understood and harnessed, it will be the driver of other breakthroughs in our personal life.

Ndubuisi noted, “The best product in a firm anchors its survival, just as oasis does in a desert. And every business must discover its oasis, if it hopes to thrive.” In similar way, an individual who hopes to thrive must know “product” of her/his anchor per time.

One Oasis Strategy, as Ndubuisi explained, “Is the proposition that if the best product drives key investments in a firm, it has the capacity to help other products in the business. Other products would feed from the best product, and on overall, the company would flourish.”

Refining that definition to fit our subject matter will be:

One Oasis Strategy is the proposition that if your greatest success per time drives the opportunity you aim for, the likelihood of attaining or utilizing such opportunities will be great. Those opportunities will form another source of your value proposition which when accumulated can drive another level of success.

A quick example, I started with the narrative of how a spark caused the breaking of the cluster I created. Here’s the detail of the spark, recently I messaged a distant connection to give me the opportunity to speak at one of his events. Without much questioning, he granted me the opportunity. Why? he checked my profile and saw where I work (current oasis) and for him, that was credible enough. Without that oasis, I don’t think that I would have scored that speaking engagement.

Why do I need the speaking engagement? For exposure! This, I believe, will cumulatively form another oasis that can be leveraged upon. Simply put, an oasis and its accompanying value can open up more oasis.

Another example is from a distant fellow, he planned on returning to an organization where he had previously worked. Though he had accumulated skills in other areas, he leveraged on his experience of working with the organization. There were many feet he could have put forward, but he chose this one because it was simply the right one. The result? He got the job.

How can you apply the One Oasis Strategy in your life?

Per time and per opportunity,

1. Sit down to consider what is really required to get this job done, to get this opportunity, or to get this platform.
2. Look within and ask, do my current abilities measure up to at least 50% of what is required to get what I want?
3. Leverage your abilities when speaking or writing to apply or make requests.
4. The likelihood of you getting what you want is on the high side if you follow through on the three steps above.

N.B. Another approach I use is to start from the inside out. It is all about considering what my oases are in line with whether or not to pursue an opportunity. This has helped me to experience less failures and more successes as I keep trailing more opportunities.

What you also need to note is that if this strategy must work for you, you will need to master the art of building relationships and your capabilities. Capabilities like communication skills will top my list and relationships cultivated when not needed is always effective.

Good people, we started Medcera with one mission: to build a health operating system in Africa. In our platform, we bring a fusion of doctors, labs, imaging, pharmacy and insurance anchored around patients. One company we admire greatly in helping our mission is Healthpoint which is pushing the nexus of on-demand health insurance plans.

Simply, we believe that not having a formal job should not prevent anyone from having health insurance within HMO. I invite you to check them out.

Yes, the fact is this: innovation on health insurance could be as catalytic as health technology itself. That is why I want you to preach that Nigeria needs to upgrade our health insurance systems. We need innovators in this space – I am learning fast that after the techs, we need the plans.

Learn more here.

LinkedIn Comment on Feed

Most of the things we imported or copied from elsewhere haven’t worked, and yet we are not learning fast.

We argue that the problem with insurance in Nigeria borders on trust and awareness, while perhaps financial inclusion or under-banking was blamed on illiteracy. Yet, the “illiterate” citizens do esusu and its constituents, comfortably handing their fellows huge sums of money, which some run away with sometimes, and yet the contributors haven’t abandoned the practice. Yet we do not seem to innovate around what already works…

In an economy that is largely informal, and yet both the health insurance and pension scheme were skewed towards the small proportion of the population, those in the formal economy. No wonder everything keeps failing, despite investing billions, because we keep formulating policies for aliens.

We seem to have a local model for every challenge we have in the land, but the policymakers keep looking across the Atlantic for answers.

HealthPoint’s Innovation to Scale Health Insurance in Nigeria