Bella Disu’s TEDx Ikoyi talk, “Say Yes Now: Why Readiness is a Myth,” delivers a clear message for leaders and organisations: hesitation is expensive, and perfect conditions don’t exist.
She draws a sharp contrast between companies that stalled and companies that stepped forward.
Kodak saw digital imaging coming — and froze.
Blockbuster saw Netflix — and laughed.
Apple saw the same disruption — and accelerated.
“The difference?” she asks. “Two companies protected their past, while one created its future.”
Disu stressed that this pattern is not foreign. It plays out in Nigeria every day.
She points to how a once-dominant quick-service restaurant faded from relevance, while newer brands like Chicken Republic and Kilimanjaro surged by adapting to a changing customer base.
She also highlights the rise of fintechs, whose agility forced traditional banks to rethink long-held ways of doing business and opened entirely new market segments.
For Disu, leadership is not about waiting for confidence — it is about recognising possibility early and moving towards it.
“Leadership is seeing what could be and moving towards it. Urgency, when grounded in clarity, is not chaos — it is direction.”
Her central thesis:
Companies don’t fail because they lack capacity.
They fail because they hesitate, defend the familiar, and wait too long to act.
“Doing creates readiness,” she notes — a reminder that momentum is built through action, not certainty.
Watch the TEDx Ikoyi talk here:
