Published by The Star newspaper, Nairobi Kenya, Dec 2011

The Narok County Council’s recent layoff of 100 of its employees after they protested the introduction of an electronic revenue collection system at the Maasai Mara Reserve is the wrong approach.  The evidence shows that if electronic payments are to work there have to be incentives for all stakeholders, including those at the lowest levels, to embrace them.

The council leaders’ punitive actions come amid accusations of years of theft which they say e-ticketing will put a stop to.  These leaders’ indignation at their employees “rampant corruption” stems from the assumption that if they had been in their employees’ shoes, they would have behaved better.  They would have taken action, not stolen and influenced their fellow workers to do likewise.

There is ample evidence, however, that stolen cash was shared at all levels; the clerks were merely collectors for bosses who condoned the activity, which they felt pressure to continue.  The council employees’ concern, which seems shared by some in the community, it that this new electronic system is equally corrupt and designed to allow higher-ups to bypass them and pocket more for themselves.  They point to the County Council’s 10-year contract with Equity Bank to provide the service for a 1.7% fee (of an estimated Kshs 1.5 Billion) and are suspicious.

I lived in Kenya from 1982-1984, first as a teacher in Ukambani and later attached to a USAID-funded project that worked with local governments. I had a desk in Kisumu at the provincial office of the Ministry of Local Government.  I commuted to several small towns in Western and Nyanza provinces and saw first-hand the good and the bad.  One council executive had not taken a vacation in 13 years.  When finally forced on leave, a substitute from the Ministry took over and uncovered duplicate sets of books and a long history of embezzlement.

I now work with an e-payments company in west Africa and understand the suspicions associated with new payment technologies.   The benefits of electronic money, which far outweigh the risks, need to be understood and felt by all stakeholders.  Simply caning those who raise questions and telling them to follow orders or be fired does no good to long-term prospects.

In addition to introducing efficiencies impossible with cash handling, two of the best attributes of these systems are tracking (i.e. the money can be followed) and transparency (anyone with access to the information can follow these tracks).

Equity Bank is already touting the success of its Narok pilot, claiming a two-fold increase in revenues even before the system is fully deployed.  As the saying goes “a new broom sweeps cleaner” and certainly a new system, closely monitored in pilot, should perform well.  Delivering high performance levels over the long term is more challenging and requires an ongoing commitment, not only from Equity Bank but even more so from the County Council as the story does not end with healthy bank balances.  The community must benefit from this newly-collected wealth.

Here are a few ideas.

(1)   Community acceptance should begin with public meetings and the appointment of community ombudsmen who will be provided with access to observe the tracked funds

(2)   The County Council’s accounting system should be upgraded and processes put in place to, at a minimum, allow one to reconcile these funds with real-time bank balances.  Two sets of books must be a thing of the past and, again, community ombudsmen should be given access.

(3)   Revenue figures should be made very broadly available, perhaps via free SMS subscription to anyone interested.

(4)   Many of the furloughed employees should be welcomed back and given the opportunity to participate fully in a newly-restructured organization.  The efficiencies associated with the new collection system should eliminate some clerk positions and allow the creation of new positions, hopefully with greater responsibilities, higher official pay and the possibility of more interesting work.

(5)   Equity Bank should get specific on the recent claims of Chairman James Mwangi that their contract will bring the Council added benefit from a number of systems the bank has in place “including our branchless networks and many others.”  These specifics should emphasize decentralized benefits to employees and community members, including opportunities for entrepreneurship, and be introduced quickly.

(6)   In this case there should be more than promises, there should be immediate and visible funded projects that benefit the broader community.  One must prime the pump of community support.  One idea: given the 10 year duration of the Equity Bank contract, it may be possible to explore monetization of some portion of the future revenue stream to fund immediate community projects.  Private note sales have been used by investors to lease infrastructure in the USA, including public parking and highways.  In addition to immediate windfalls, these arrangements transfer the risk of any future drops in revenue to the concessionaire.   This is only one option, and these USA examples have been criticized, but there seems at least the possibility of a leapfrog approach, unique to Kenya, that might be both modest and transparent and capture some of the net present value of this revenue stream to jumpstart development and make converts of the doubtful.

It is too easy to place blame for corruption on the clerks and toll takers, effectively wrap them in electronic straightjackets and say “job done”.  Most people know that the big money is stolen out of public view.  So as payments migrate from small sums of cash to billion-shilling contracts, suspicions must be seen as normal and expected, and directly addressed.

As electronic payments become more prevalent, not only in Kenya but throughout Africa, those at the lowest levels can benefit greatly.   But initially these benefits seem vague while costs seem clear, so they protest.  They see the higher-ups, who control the accounts into which these e-monies flow, retaining opportunities to enrich themselves.  Transparent processes combined with immediate benefits and reconfigured higher-value work will go a long way toward ensuring technological adoption and to placing Kenya (and the Narok County Council) at the forefront.  Without a benefit to all stakeholders, these high-tech solutions will likely suffer ongoing suspicion and be subject to low-tech sabotage.

Initiatives such as these  might go far towards developing the kind of committed sponsorship needed from senior men, which I discussed in my original 2009 post on this topic.

We would welcome your comments.  Or if you need training or coaching support, please contact us!

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Why? Because the most junior, inexperienced managers generally manage the youngest, newest employees. It makes sense – a new people manager certainly isn’t going to be assigned to lead seasoned, senior executives. So a talented individual contributor is promoted to manager, usually with very little training for the new role, and is let loose with limited supervision. They may have been great at their prior role, but managing people requires a completely different skill-set, which they may not realize until they have made a number of very common mistakes: micro-managing; failure to delegate; authoritarian rather than engaging. And more.

Even Google, famous for its exciting, high energy culture, made a common mistake – until they did a detailed study, Google believed that technical expertise was one of the most important traits of a good manager. (See the NY Times article, Google’s Quest to Build a Better Boss.) But – as Google learned in their study – technical skills barely make the list. Coaching and interpersonal skills are the top required skills for managers, yet our ability to evaluate these skills before a newly promoted leader takes on a management role is quite limited. And training in management skills for leaders generally comes much later – after a few years of on-the-job learning.

What is the effect of this common pattern? High turnover in the front line. Angry, frustrated employees. Dissatisfied customers who are handled by poorly trained, unmotivated employees. Lower quality and productivity. Reduced innovation. The list goes on and on.

What can a company do about it? This is the real challenge. Providing management training to front-line leaders can be costly; and without consistent, on-the-job reinforcement, it may not drive sufficient change. But investment in leadership skills has been proven to pay off in measurable change and bottom line impact. A number of studies have been published demonstrating the value of training and coaching. Leadership is a Contact Sport by Marshall Goldsmith and Howard Morgan, shows that leaders who are coached and then follow up can make significant, positive changes in perceptions of their behavior; the Nations Hotel Case Study, showed measurable, bottom line impact and positive return on investment, as did a McKinsey case study, and a Manchester Review study.

Plus, a discussion of some efforts by BP to build its front line leaders, published in Harvard Business Review in 2005, demonstrated that concerted focus and efforts can improve the performance of front line leaders even in dispersed organizations.

Are organizations ready to make a commitment to their young leaders and front-line employees? It would be terrific to see more companies taking the plunge – providing leadership training to all leaders, and measuring their successes.

We would welcome your comments.  Or if you need training or coaching support, please contact us!

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A lot of them can’t afford the services of a regular coach, so I give them quick advice designed to help them jump-start their efforts on their own. In a nutshell, this is my message:

• Clarify your goals. What do you really want to do? What classes did you love in college, what parts of your summer jobs or internships were most satisfying? That is the direction to focus your search. If you pursue something you love, you will be more articulate and compelling, which is critical if you are to begin to stand out from the crowd.

• Fine-tune your resume. Now that you’ve determined your objective (e.g., a job in finance, or marketing, etc.), make sure that comes across clearly in your resume. Not only in your objective statement – but do all your jobs demonstrate that you have used them to learn about that area, or to build a skill that is relevant to your search? As much as possible, use your resume to illustrate that you have the basic skills that will be needed for the job you desire. (You can easily google sites that will give you detailed formatting and content advice.)

• Develop a target list of companies. In order to leverage your network (including LinkedIn), you need to give your contacts something to grab hold of. What are some companies that would be most interesting to you? Why? Be ready to talk about that to your network – while asking for suggestions for additional companies to consider.

• Develop your 30-second elevator pitch. You want to be sure that you can communicate crisply and clearly who you are, what you’ve done, and where you want to go. The people you are speaking with need to be able to quickly understand your goals and how they can help you. If they need to ask you a lot of questions to clarify what you want, you are wasting their time in the conversation – using them as a career coach, in fact – rather than using them to help you find the right company and role for you.

• Network, network, network. The sources are vague, but the message is consistent: the majority of jobs are found through networking. (See JobFully blog for an interesting dissection of the statistics, if you are interested!) That means that just completing an on-line posting and sending it off into the void is highly unlikely to get you an interview, much less a job. But if you find a friend who will introduce you to a connection at the company, you have just significantly increased your odds of breaking through the clutter to get an interview. (If you had to screen 500 job applicants from a job post, and hoped to interview only 10, do you think a note from a friend recommending one of the candidates would make a difference to you?) And of course, you can use your network to get more information about target companies, additional information about jobs in your field, and referrals to jobs they may be aware of (not to hire you themselves). Some additional good suggestions on networking can be found on the Indiana University career site.

• Prepare, prepare, prepare. Once you land an interview, learn as much about the company and the role as you can. Rehearse possible questions with a friend.  And be sure to come with questions. Most interviewers will give you time at the end of the interview to ask question, and those can be very revealing. If you have no questions, you will come across as uncurious. If your questions are only about salary, you will seem to be uninterested in the specific job. If your questions are only challenging (“why would I want to work here”), then the employer may decide that they don’t want to work that hard to convince you. But if your questions are focused, relevant, big-picture, and enthusiastic, that will positively impress the interviewer.

• Be positive and enthusiastic. Make the interviewer love you. If you get an offer, you can always say no; but if you are not engaged and interested in the job and the company, then you are not likely to get the offer. And stay positive – the job search is hard and there will be bumps in the road. An interview does not mean you will get the job; but not getting the job does not mean you are not good – it means that someone else may have had better skills for the job, a better interviewing style, or strong recommendations that made the hiring manager take notice.

How can a counselor help in this process?  A good counselor will help you clarify your goals and help you stick with the process.  Can give you resume advice and honest feedback on how you are presenting yourself.  And can help you understand how to use your network and get comfortable reaching out to people in your chosen field.  You can sometimes get this support from your college career office or from an alumni organization.  Or from a good friend.  But sometimes an experienced counselor can provide the external support that you need to get your career moving.

We would welcome your comments.  Or if you need training or coaching support, please contact us!

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What came out on top? Not a surprise to many of us in the coaching world. The most important characteristic of top managers is to be a good coach. I.e., provide specific, constructive feedback, balancing the negative with the positive. Have regular one-on-ones with your direct reports, developing solutions tailored to their specific strengths. Next most important? Empower your team and don’t micro-manage. Third on this list of eight? Express interest in team members’ success and personal well being.

Of course, if a survey were conducted of young, newly-minted people managers – or even more experienced leaders – I would expect that giving honest and constructive feedback is one of the most difficult tasks they face.

What do you think?

We would welcome your comments.  Or if you need training or coaching support, please contact us!

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Planet Money report “The $4 Billion Hedge Fund Manager” cataloged the vast gap between what top CEOs make and what top hedge fund managers make.  The CEOs make tens of millions. The hedge fund managers make 100 times as much.”   Top 2009 salaries were $4 billion, $3.3 billion, $2.5 billion, $2.3 billion, $1.3 billion.

The campaign’s one goal would be to get all the top hedge fund firms to sign a “No More 2 and 20″ pledge.  “2 and 20″ refers to a management fee of 2% of the fund’s net asset value each year and a performance fee of 20% of the fund’s profit and directly leads to billion dollar annual compensation for fund managers.

The “No More 2 and 20” idea was proposed by Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, speaking in New York on January 25th, 2011.

In business, the kind of chemistry I’m referring to is sometimes described blandly as “synergy.”  It’s seen as a combination of complementary skills, mutual trust and respect, and aligned values.  But in the best cases, there’s usually a touch of the indefinable – chemistry.  Over time, the most successful of these business relationships can result in a form of dependency on the part of the boss.  Hence the pattern we often see, where a new CEO joins a company and soon fills the senior ranks with people who have worked for him or her in the past at other companies.

Why does paying attention to this matter?  It matters if you want to be successful over the long term.  Think about some obvious cases – Dmitry Medvedov of Russia is a perfect example.  Would he be president of Russia today were it not for the extreme trust that Vladimir Putin placed in him?  Medvedov worked for Putin in one role or another beginning in 1991.

Some other examples – Kenneth Chenault, current CEO and Chairman of American Express worked closely with Harvey Golub, former CEO and Chairman, for a number of years before becoming Golub’s anointed successor.  Marge Magner, once one of the most senior women in Financial Services, ran the huge Global Consumer Group at Citigroup for many years.  She also reported to the same man – Bob Willumstad – for over 15 years.

One question this notion raises for me is can you ensure success by finding a boss with whom you have chemistry? I imagine not – although it is a step in the right direction.  Unfortunately, the executive you are aligned with may not in turn be aligned with their own manager or board of directors.

Another question is how can working for a boss without good chemistry be bad for you? For me, that tends to increase my daily stress levels – which can’t be good!

I’d love to get some personal examples of chemistry (or lack of it) in the boss relationship.  Please leave comments with your own stories.

Or if you need training or coaching support, please contact us!

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Most discussion about access-to-capital centers on increasing the availability of debt.  ”More loans to more businesses” is the mantra. We believe this a partial answer at best, access to debt is necessary but insufficient for business growth.

Our experience in sub-Saharan Africa is that businesses are under-capitalized.  Most are “businesses of one” with a solo entrepreneur at their heart.   The local business environments they operate in, though improving, remain somewhat chaotic and idiosyncratic and many businesses succeed by being opportunistic within narrow customer bases.

In these scenarios, balance sheets whipsaw, with less-capitalized businesses the most unstable.   Interest rates are in the 30% neighborhood for most business loans, making stability a prerequisite to lenders.  Conclusion?  Businesses need to add investment capital.

Milken writes “there is no optimum capital structure — X percent equity and Y percent debt — that can be applied to different organizations, or to the same corporation at different points of time. Just as you can’t make real money by putting a dollar bill on a copying machine, you can’t successfully copy the financing technique that once worked for a particular company and transfer it to another time or another company. That’s why I have always said that finance is a continuum with infinite variations and hybrids. It takes deep understanding of a company, its environment, and the financing tools available to build sustainable growth that will reward shareholders and create jobs.”

An entrepreneur’s own resources only go so far and friends and family can only be turned to so many times. Growth requires fuel from outside money, but where from? If this money comes from outside a country’s borders (denominated in foreign currency) this introduces new risks — exchange rate risks — that can pose real dangers to balance sheets. Better is local money. It is there – wealthy people live in every African country but few invest in businesses. They invest in land, in real estate, and they offshore much of their wealth in foreign banks.

We are thinking about how to encourage angel investors in sub-Saharan countries to put their money to work locally, taking equity positions for a percentage of a business.

We’ve had an angel investment in a manufacturing business in Ghana since 2006, Ceramica Tamakloe.  In this time we’ve helped them approach various money sources and they have been advised by a number of consultants.

To me the shortcoming with consultants is not the timing but the temporal nature of their involvement – here today, gone tomorrow. Under-resourced firms don’t have the bandwidth to follow their advice, much of which is generic and already known to management. What I think is needed is outsourcing of administration, branding and marketing.

The cost of professional services – esp accounting and legal – is quite high in Africa — relatively higher than in the USA. And I’ve yet to meet an African entrepreneur who was a natural marketer. Offering to take over these functions would take a load off, introduce best practices and help prepare the business to the point where it could make the most of new capital.