For many high-performing executives, the qualities that propel them into senior management can eventually become the very habits that prevent them from leading at a higher strategic level.
That tension is at the centre of The Operator’s Trap: Why Africa’s Best Executives Never Truly Lead, and How the Ones Who Escape It Build Something That Lasts, a new book by Dr Ini Abimbola, published by Narrative Landscape Press.
The book, being launched in Lagos today, examines a leadership challenge the author says she has observed over more than two decades of advisory work with organisations across Africa: executives who become indispensable because they are exceptionally good at getting things done can find themselves unable to relinquish the operational responsibilities that originally earned them their positions.
According to Abimbola, the problem goes beyond individual leadership style. She argues that African organisations often operate within structural conditions that make the transition from operator to strategic leader particularly difficult.
Thin talent pipelines can make delegation feel risky, while institutional knowledge is frequently concentrated in individuals rather than embedded in documented processes and systems. At the same time, many conventional strategy and management models are based on assumptions of market stability that do not necessarily reflect the realities of African economies.
The result, the book argues, can be an executive who remains deeply involved in execution at precisely the point when an organisation needs that person to focus on direction, institutional capacity and long-term growth.
“What I want from a reader is one uncomfortable hour with the diagnostic in the first chapter,” said Abimbola. “Most executives who take it honestly find that a large part of their week is spent on work somebody else in the building should own, and the escape starts the moment they can see that on paper rather than feel it as exhaustion.”
The author presents the issue not simply as a personal productivity problem but as a question of organisational design and leadership succession. The book explores how executives can recognise the operational patterns that keep them embedded in day-to-day work and begin creating systems that allow their organisations to function beyond their individual capacity.
The Lagos launch will bring together captains of industry and other business leaders for a conversation about the transition from operator to strategic leader and what that shift means for Nigerian and African institutions. The programme will also feature a reading from the book and a signing session. Attendance is by invitation.
A foreword by Bola Adesola, Chairman of Ecobank Nigeria, provides an additional perspective on the transition from operational leadership to broader strategic responsibility.
Structured in 12 chapters across four parts, The Operator’s Trap moves from the mindset changes associated with executive leadership to practical approaches for strategy in volatile markets, leadership across sectors and the challenge of sustaining institutional impact.
The book also contains 22 frameworks and diagnostic tools in a consolidated appendix. Its central argument is illustrated through the experiences of a composite chief executive, Emmanuel Okafor, whose career is followed over five years as he navigates the pressures of leading a business operating in difficult conditions.
The book is aimed at executives, business owners, board members, management professionals and others concerned with the development of stronger institutions across African markets.
The paperback, hardcover and e-book editions are available through Amazon, while direct orders can also be placed through Narrative Landscape Press. Organisations seeking 100 copies or more can arrange direct supply with the publisher.
She founded ThistlePraxis Consulting in 2010 and served as its Chief Executive for nine years before stepping down in 2020. She also served until 2023 as the United Nations Technical Expert on Women's Political Leadership, supporting the Office of the Speaker of Nigeria's Federal House of Representatives.
She currently teaches international corporate social responsibility management on the MBA programme at the University of Applied Sciences in Austria. She is Vice President and a founding trustee of the Sustainability Professionals Institute of Nigeria, holds a Doctorate in Business Administration from Rome Business School, and serves on the Governing Council of Wigwe University.
Working from Lagos, Abimbola has built her career around questions of institutional effectiveness, leadership, governance and sustainable organisational development. In The Operator’s Trap, she turns those experiences into a framework for examining what happens when executives must move beyond being the people who make an organisation work to becoming the leaders who determine where it should go.