You are not born with a fear of failure; it’s not an instinct, it’s something that grows and develops in us as we get older.

Heather Hanbury

A few weeks ago, my daughter brought me a report card from school that had a score in primary science that I did not recall seeing her get before. I was quite befuddled by the mark, but I quickly noticed she was more distraught about it than I. Since it was morning and we were heading out to school, I told her we would discuss it when we got back in the evening. On my way home, I stopped at a KFC outlet, bought a bucket of fried chicken then got home and announced to her that we were eating to celebrate her failure. It’s one of those times I wished I had been ready with my camera – the look of shock on her face was one worth immortalizing in time!

From a very young age we are drilled to dread failure. We watch the winners applauded, celebrated and immortalized; the “losers” mocked, ostracized, bullied, made the pun of jokes. We quickly learn to do all we can to avoid being judged to have failed. That phrasing is intentional. It’s not that we do not fail, we do – quite a lot in-fact. However, failure is so highly stigmatized for many of us, we do not deeply engage with it to learn. Merriam Webster’s dictionary has 13 definitions of the context in which we use the word “fail”; 9 of those are contexts we are predisposed to avoid with great energy – losing strength, fading away, to fall short, become absent or inadequate, be unsuccessful (in achieving a passing grade), become bankrupt or insolvent, disappoint the expectations or trust of, to be deficient, leave undone. We correlate these contexts relative to our self-worth as being unfit, making us the ones to be weeded out for the survival of the fittest. Small wonder then that when we commit a fail our first instincts are often to look for someone or something to blame: a broken procedure, an inadequate law or regulation, a negligent or untrained individual, poor leadership, our DNA, something! We conceal or excuse our fails more often than we examine them for insights on how to improve. As Mathew Syed observed, writing in Black Box Thinking, “It is partly because we are so willing to blame others for their mistakes that we are so keen to conceal our own”.

Our fear of failure is paradoxical considering how essential failure is to the natural learning process. Its how evolution progressed, with adjustments appearing in contemporary generations to adapt for imperfections identified from ancestor versions; Babies learn to walk and talk by making many stumbles learning from each one to improve towards an acceptable finished result; most vocations are perfected through a learning process that records and analyses failures and works to improve based on that. It’s how carpenters, masons, sports professionals, engineers, landscaping experts, artists, musicians etc. learn to get good at what they do. It’s how those we have come to call inventors achieved, perfected and continue to improve their inventions, iterating their designs with lessons from each failure till they achieved their envisioned outcomes. In his book Mathew narrated an event in which a company, Unilever, tasked its scientists to develop a nozzle for use in its detergent manufacturing process and they deliberately went through 449 failures to arrive at the ideal design. Most everything we know today about good practices for managing businesses, selling, communication, strategic planning, governance, etc. has grown through the failures and learning of those who committed their lessons to the record four our learning.

We are not often exposed to how much of a role failure plays on the journey towards successful outcomes. Creative inventors, entrepreneurs, and artists are often profiled as having always been destined for success with IQ above their mates, beyond-average hard work habits, being kick-ass negotiators, strategists, out of the box thinkers; generally super powered heroes. We get them and their success stories ready-made, creating this myth in our minds that they were somehow pre-programmed to succeed in contrast to us. We come to regard failure as a blip in the process (a traumatizing, embarrassing blip), yet in fact it IS the process – the process of how we learn, create, evolve. Almost every instance of failure is a revelation of a deviation from what we expect. These deviations contain learning opportunities for us to challenge our assumptions, approach, materials and even realm of possibilities. It’s an invitation to engage our creative mind in solving problems with solutions we might otherwise have not conceived if unchallenged. However, if we stigmatize it, we end up spilling good learning opportunities, delaying the revelation of new innovations, business ideas, solutions to social challenges, etc. I for one can honestly say I have both missed and wasted several good failures in my lifetime.

If there is one choice more than any other that could flip this, it would be to alter the environment around us regarding how failure is both received and addressed. We can and should create environments in which it is safe, expected and even exciting to fail. I have read some interesting such efforts like holding failure celebration parties in an organisation (see? Someone had tried my KFC idea before I did it 😊); having school failure weeks; providing penalty free space for those who quickly self-report errors in their work; or even simply adjusting your immediate response to failure. In his book “The Art of Possibility”, Benjamin Zander, a conductor of the Boston Philharmonic, explains how he trains his students when they make mistakes to lift their arms in the air, smile and say, “How Fascinating!” Where we have celebrated only successes delivered, we could begin to praise each other for trying, for experimenting, for demonstrating resilience and resolve, for daring to learn through our own critical investigations and having the courage to see evidence for what it is rather than what we want it to be (Syed, Black Box Thinking). This way we begin to alter a narrative that celebrating only what goes right creates – that it is possible to succeed without failing.

In our KFC celebration I explained to my daughter how great an opportunity she had received by failing and walked with her through how she should ensure not to miss the chance to learn from the failure. Even now I am still trying to get her to be less afraid of failing. I am trying to get ME to be less afraid of failing. We are not born with a fear of failure; it’s not an instinct, it’s something that grows and develops in us as we get older. Which means it can be countered. A fantastic world of colour and wonder awaits discovery. New solutions, business ideas, inventions, await beyond the threshold of failure. Shake off the fear and learn to your heart’s content.

Recommended reading:

1. Black Box Thinking by Mathew Syed
2. The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander
3. Adapt by Tim Harford
4. Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2019/2020 Global Report

If you have had some interaction with the discipline of economics at some point in your journey, you are very likely familiar with the name Adam Smith – he of the ‘invisible hand’ theory which went on to become a virtually religious creed in the development of much of today’s assumptions underlying the free market model of economic governance. The core of Smith’s thesis was that humans’ natural tendency toward self-interest (looking out for yourself) results in prosperity. I was quite intrigued therefore to find that the same author, in a separate work “The Theory of Moral Sentiments” opened with the following statement: “How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortunes of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it”. The striking contrast between these two positions is that in the former the focus was self, while in the latter it was the pleasure of seeing others happy as the motivation to enterprise and prosperity. Peter Drucker, one of the foremost experts on management theory in his work “The Practice of Management” appeared to agree with Adam’s opening reflection in “Moral Sentiments” when he noted that the only valid definition of business purpose was to create and keep a customer.

In our time though, the majority of enterprise is operated on the basic assumption of Adam’s first theory – the self-interest of man – even though his opening in “Moral Sentiments” more closely captures why an entrepreneur is often thrilled to be launching out on a new project. The overwhelming focus in business management, taught in the management training by most any business school worth its name today is on maximizing benefits (read profits) for shareholders, with most other stakeholder concerns being peripheral to this, most importantly the worth of the customer to the enterprise. Businesses do all they can to be efficient not so much because they are inspired to translate efficiencies into awesome customer experiences; these efforts are mostly sold as creating additional return or greater profits to shareholders. Sales efforts often focus on persuading customers to buy what the business is offering, even when the business has not invested in establishing whether they really want, or need what is on offer the way it is on offer. Customers often find themselves treated as incidental rather than central to the interests of the business, with the adage “the customer is king” sounding really condescending to them. Small wonder then that they are increasingly cynical about business.

Now look, don’t get me wrong. Efficiency is good. It is right for shareholders and other investors to earn a profit from the risks they take in any business enterprise. On occasion it is necessary to trim waste from the way the business is operating. The issue though is the focus. The primary beneficiary from trimming of waste should be your customer, with the shareholder rewards accruing as a byproduct of an enthused client. In the local enterprises in which I have seen cost cuts and other waste trimming efforts, the efficiencies have not been reinvested in research and development to develop new solutions for customers. On occasion the costs that have been cut are those relevant to customer engagement and marketing initiatives – those meant to give customers a meaningful engagement in the value creation process of the business. In place of new solutions to emerging trends, challenges and changes with customers, I have seen a larger focus on ‘incremental’ improvements to existing products, all the while driving hellfire sales efforts to impress on our customers how the incremental change is actually ‘innovative’ and worth an extra few shillings of theirs. Profits are growing not because of clientele and increasing revenues; the trimming of waste is what’s driving the bottom line. This will keep the lights on but may not be the most sustainable orientation if you intend your enterprise to be long-term.

I like the possibility that the greatest motivation for any enterprise is the creation of an experience that pleases and continues to create customers, with profit and all other financial benefits being the byproducts of this drive. It is an invitation to fall in love with your customers. This will require you to be fascinated with your customer (not in a weird way – you get what I mean!): who exactly are they; how do they live, what do their daily routines look like, how do they buy goods and services; how do they sell, how (and how often) do they communicate, earn money, solve problems, celebrate, mourn; what drives them crazy; the list is endless. You will need to find means to cultivate meaningful engagements with them, be present in their lives – share in their celebrations, identify with them in their pain and anxiety, work with them through their problem-solving processes. You will need to consider how to build systems that support this engagement into your day to day business operations, find partners and networks that give you access to this knowledge at scale. The most exciting part will be creating and maintaining a pipeline of solutions that meet your customers’ needs – both those they knew of and those they had not really gotten around to articulating – and finding ways to place these solutions within their reach; in pricing, location, distribution, name it! It will be a thrilling adventure to organize your enterprise around this aspiration within the context of the purpose for which your business exists. Along the way shareholders will receive their return – maybe not every quarter will be profit earning or maximizing, but as long as there is a commitment to the pleasure of the customer, a recognition in service to them that they are human, precious, highly esteemed, intelligent; there is every reason to expect that over time your enterprise will grow to scale and be sustainably profitable.

I am also excited that I have found recently some authors that hold this view. “The Age of Agile” by Stephen Denning is a really good read as a start on exploring the customer centrality perspective on business organization. There are also examples of companies, big and small that are making the effort to organize themselves around this principle. Amazon and Apple are two of the big ones that come to mind. Amazon in particular, made their first quarterly profit in 2001, and the first full annual profit in 2003 – 9 years after the company started in 1994. In this same period however, they were bringing in impressive revenues – $5.3BN in 2003 alone when they made the first profit. The company prioritized research and development of solutions to please their customers over the generation of profit to return to shareholders. In 2018 the company made $11BN in profits and the company founder is now the richest man in the world. Other businesses like Microsoft, Spotify, SRI International, Menlo Innovations (to name a few) are also seeing impressive business performance from the central focus on delighting their customers. Your enterprise can be one of those whose name is listed among these too.

Lately I have fallen into the habit of reading manufacturer details on consumables I buy, mostly to find out who made a product and from what country. I was doing this recently with a pack of teabags that I purchased and discovered that the company that packed the bags, Kenya Tea Packers Association (KETEPA) Limited was 70 years old and owned by 450,000 small scale farmers. That last statistic was most intriguing – a company this old, with this quality of a product and 450,000 small-holder shareholders! I had the opportunity to (literally) travel across Kenya just this last week and I could not get over the number of matatus (public transportation vehicles) I saw emblazoned with this or that SACCO (Savings and Cooperative Society). It appeared almost every last one of them, especially as we got into Nakuru and Nairobi, were 5^th generation Toyota HiAce vans – in my country the vast majority of these are owned and used by government and/or blue-chip commercial enterprises as corporate vans! These SACCOs appeared to have significantly increased the ability of their members to acquire and operate top class vehicles in a business where typical models used have been old and dated, with artificially extended lifespans. These observations compelled me to document some of the thoughts I have had recently about the power of partnership in expanding the scope and influence of a business enterprise.

In my country we have this tradition of friends and family coming together in a fundraiser for marriage celebration ceremonies. A bride and groom will hold wedding meetings to which friends and family are invited, and put on a most creative effort to raise funds for the celebration – surprise gift auctions, creatively styled fines for certain conduct during the meeting and fees charged for any service requested of the chairman, auctioneer, or other guest at the meetings. It can be so much fun to attend! The extent of zeal attached to these has an accompanying tinge of fear; if one does not attend or support these events for his family, work colleagues or friends, s/he may struggle to mobilize this support for their own function, or that of their children. Applying varying levels of the concept, we also contribute readily to the building of places of worship and, particularly in the corporate space, various charity initiatives like caring for widows and orphans, improving school and health infrastructure, and supporting road safety initiatives (often by painting zebra crossings). We are very involved in pooling funds to support the beginning of a new family and other bespoke interests of community, much less so when it comes to launching or expanding economic activities. I have never heard of a wedding meeting type approach by one family to soliciting support for a business project – new or running.  We do SACCOs as well; in fact, they have been a core pillar in the roll-out of the prosperity for all government program that was launched in 2005. However, the vast majority of these were formed with the primary of objective of pooling resources to offer credit to their members to pursue their individual income generating projects rather than have projects initiated and run as the SACCO itself for the benefits of its members (benefits that could include access to affordable credit, but not as the primary product). The largest asset on their financial statements is loans and advances rather than shares/ investments held in member ventures, plant and machinery, land & buildings. From the literature review I have conducted on them, it seems the majority of SACCOs in Uganda are initiated as ‘micro-banks’, whose core purpose is to fill the gap in access to credit between commercial banks and borrowers that do not have standard acceptable collateral for bank loans. While this is a commendable raison d’etre and has yielded benefits in some areas, it is hardly the height of experience of the impact of partnership on a business enterprise.

The opportunities partnership offers businesses for growth are immense – just look at the KETEPA example. In the area where I live alone I can count no less than 50 carpentry practices on my drive home. There are also a number of tailors, hairdressers, bakers, hardware vendors, name it. On average, they will individually employ 3-5 people, mostly retain their single retail outlet for at least 5-10 years without seriously considering expanding it or diversifying their participation in the value chain of their enterprise beyond their current engagement (with the statistics on average age of micro and small businesses in Uganda, more than half of these might be closed before their 5^th birthday). But what if, say, all the carpenters decided to associate and begin to build a mega-carpentry practice in the area? What if they decided to jointly purchase and own industry level door making, wood carving, engraving machines? How would this affect their product quality and its demand? What if the tailors in the area associated and pooled resources to purchase industry cutting edge sewing machines? What if these partnerships then resolved to begin producing their own raw material – planting trees and cotton (or other material) rather than depend on middlemen to supply them? What if they got into the transportation business to ensure they can always move their product to their customers at the most affordable rates? How about if they chose to open subsidiary enterprises to create technology that would enable them forecast trends in customer tastes or possibilities coming from increasingly strong concerns like preserving the environment or simply do call-center and support for their customers? If they applied themselves to do this, what would they look like in 50 years? How many countries might they expand to; how many people might they employ; how much money might they actually make? It is a reasonably safe bet that by then they shall be courted by the oldest and most prestigious commercial banks in the WORLD. Take that for financial inclusion! It is quite telling the number of high value companies that could not have existed today at their scale, spread and influence without partnerships:  William Hewlett and Dave Packard (HP); Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak (Apple); Bill Gates and Paul Allen (Microsoft); Thomas Edison, JP Morgan, Elihu Thomson, Edwin J. Houston, Charles A. Coffin (General Electric); Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger (Instagram), Jan Koum and Brian Acton (WhatsApp); Larry Page and Sergey Brin (Alphabet – which owns Google); Mark Zuckerberg, Andrew McCollum, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes (Facebook); Warren Buffet and Charles Munger (Berkshire Hathaway); Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp (Uber), William Durant, Frederic Smith, Charles Mott (General Motors), and on it goes.

Let me bring this home for the enterprise builder that has taken the opportunity to visit with me today and read through this: Partnership is worth exploration if you wish to significantly expand your enterprise. Through this you get access to knowledge, networks and funding that you cannot ordinarily reach on your own or (for funds) acquire on patient, friendly terms aligned to where you mean to go with your business anyway. Not all partners have to be on the business payroll to partner with you. Some may even take the form of what you could later formalize into a board of directors – advisers with whom you can brainstorm strategy, product technicalities, marketing/ positioning, funding strategies, markets, etc. on a consistent basis. However, it will be important for you to be explicit with them that you would like to invite them to collaborate with you in building your enterprise. In looking to identify partners, I would recommend you consider people that share your values and vision for your business, have skills, knowledge or expertise that complement your own, practice good business ethics that you admire and would be keen to adopt. If one or all of your partners also happen to have resources – financial as well as relational (read networks), it would be a significant added advantage.

A man considered one of the wisest that has ever lived recorded his thoughts on partnership for our reference today: “Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him who is alone when he falleth, for he hat not another to help him up. Again, if two lie together, then they have heat: but how can one be warm alone? And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him; and a threefold cord is not quickly broken” (This commentary is preserved in paragraphs 9, 10, 11 and 12 of the biblical record of Ecclesiastes – the 4th Chapter). If he thought it such a good idea, and in our contemporary times we have the example of those that have applied it and we’ve seen its fruit, it would do you hardly any hurt at all to avail yourself of it.

I have participated in a number of ‘corporate social responsibility’ (CSR) activities during my working time, and seen reports of numerous others: tree planting, zebra crossing painting, social assistance to orphanages, homes for the disabled/ disadvantaged; I have been involved with visits to babies’ homes, hospitals, prisons; school building paintings. All the while this was ongoing, the ‘core’ business of the enterprises with whom I did this kept going – the relentless pursuit of targets so we could make profits to report at year end as the primary shareholder value we were expected to deliver. These other initiatives were auxiliary to the ‘profit’ value – you could miss out on a year-end bonus share if you did not score the right target on this objective.

Now I did not mind the CSR activities in and of themselves. In fact I generally wished we could do more. What continually vexed me was the message the way they were run sent: “what you do daily from 8am – 5pm   (contract hours; we usually started earlier and many often ended much later) does not contribute to the community, it’s not a social responsibility”. In a sense, I felt like the CSRs we did were ‘hush payments’ to soothe a guilty conscience both on ours, our customers and our shareholders account; so we could feel better about making profit while there still remained problems unsolved around us.  I also hated that it cast the issues on which CSR focused in a light that they could not be solved sustainably (using self generated funding) – most interests supporting causes in this area tended to be of a non-profit nature, dependent on good will donations and grants, usually provided by non-resident individuals and/or organizations.

Here’s the thing though; what we spent our time doing for those 40 hour work weeks WAS a social responsibility (disclosure: I worked, and still work in banking and finance). We did a lot to make the lives of so many people possible – we provided safe storage for the fruits of their work, we extended them credit to seize opportunities they would otherwise not be able to sorely on their own resources, we made it possible for them to transact with partners in different geographical locations through various trade finance services, we provided them secure, transparent, non-repudiate means to pay their suppliers and/or receive payments from their clients – and in this context we supported them to employ staff and make payroll payments, settle their obligations to their suppliers and be the value to their customers they had promised they would be. They were able to trade successfully enough to make tax payments to government as they fell due, which in its way contributed to the ability of the state to fund the social programs falling within its care. The story of what we did though was not usually told this way – and even today it isn’t. Nor is this fact exclusive to where I work now. Most any commercial enterprise that has succeeded the survival stage and is now in a growth phase is grappling with this, or they shall if not yet. I find the biggest reason for this to be that we have generally accepted that a business exists for the primary purpose of meeting shareholder value – usually expressed in profits earned, from which dividends are then paid. More disciplined minds than my own have researched and presented their work studying this, and I have done quite a bit of reading around it myself. In my study I have observed that the profit motive as a drive for business and primary shareholder value – the way we generally understand it in my country – is mostly a western philosophy/ ideology. I find a more holistically balanced understanding of shareholder value when I read accounts of Eastern (Asian) economies and/or businesses, and when I read the articles and commentaries of their leading business leaders today. The one that has recently impressed me is “The Toyota Way”, a study on the Toyota manufacturing philosophy done by Jeffery J Liker. It was very striking to me just how much this company’s philosophy focused on the welfare development of the individual, how this care spread to the company’s partners – suppliers and distributors; and how their operation was built with their customers at its center – the customers literally decided the pace and organization of the operating model. It’s one of the best reads I have had, and am still reading it! I recall thinking to myself after reading it that nothing this company was doing would fail to qualify as a social good/responsibility – and their discipline in doing this did not conflict with their making profit either – lots of it in fact.

You need to recognize that your enterprise IS a social responsibility. It may not immediately appear so, it may present as your basic trade enterprise, but this is where writing your story, and the work on defining your mission come to great value. If say, you find yourself bothered about the standard of education in the country and are interested to do something about it, then that basic trade enterprise could be the means to raise the funding for your ultimate project, it could be the testing ground for the models you want to implement to improve the things that bug you, it could be the means of access to the network of collaborators with whom you intend to work on your dream initiative, it could be the training ground you use to prepare those that shall be running with you in the project; it could itself be the example in terms of organization, discipline or function that you intend to replicate to scale to solve the problem that bothers you. It is this narrative that will explain why that basic trade enterprise should be a going concern, and why you should work to ensure it is so. This narrative will also attract to you the right partners (shareholders) that identify what you are trying to achieve as value to themselves. This will not be inconsistent with you being profitable – as a matter of fact, it will form the understanding as to why you MUST be profitable (or more accurately, a going concern).

A literal example of this is Alibaba Group, founded by Jack Ma. He stated that his company exists to make it easy to do business anywhere. The group’s aspiration for the future is, “… to build the future infrastructure of commerce. We envision that our customers will meet, work and live at Alibaba, and that we will be a company that lasts at least 102 years”. In a 2017 letter to shareholders, Ma said, “While public shareholders expect us to be profitable, our raison d’etre cannot be merely to make money”. He explained further, “I believe there is a massive opportunity to help alleviate poverty and catalyze economic development in china’s rural countryside through technology and innovation. This is our opportunity to showcase what we are really capable of”.   Now how is this inconsistent with social responsibility?

Every business is, by its nature, a catalyst for change. No business can exist without creating a ripple effect by affecting its employees, the place it calls home, the environment around it or the people it serves ( quoted from “Story Driven: You don’t need to compete when you know who you are” by Bernadette Jiwa). For this reason, the careful delivery of your enterprise should not be something you take for granted – you never really know how many people shall literally live or die on account of the mission you have set forth to achieve.

The month since I last wrote has been an extremely eventful period – possibly the most eventful I have had all year so far. We had local council elections in Uganda at which I participated, rain that has not let up since February of this year, a week long work trip that turned out to be quite intense, my daughters getting serious about swimming, and France winning the world cup (yey!!). Without a doubt though, the most significant event for me was the History Makers Training (HMT) – a 4 day boot camp I attended on building value-based, no excuse leaders for national transformation. I do not recall a time in my life that I have done anything more rigorous that what this boot camp entailed. I read 3 books cover to cover, watched 4 educational movies, attended 9 lectures, did 15 deeply analytical assignments that included reports on each book I read and movie watched – all of this on no more than 7 hours of sleep for the entire 4 days. It was a thrill, though I definitely used far less enthusiastic words to describe it by the morning of day 3. The boot camp is the final session of a leadership training program, the Oak Seed Executive Leadership Course, offered by the Institute for National Transformation Uganda – which was the most eventful thing I did last year. I had been warned beforehand that the boot camp was no joke; and quite frankly, I did not have to do it. It only became a mandatory part of the course from the 21^st class; mine was the 20^th class. I deliberately chose to go through the training, at an extra cost, just so I could examine whether I had prepared sufficiently for the mission I have embarked on – exercising people in the discipline of organization for national transformation. I wanted to leave no room to make excuses about what I knew or did not know about what I am capable of in the future towards accomplishing this mission. I was exercising what I have since codified into a key behavior that will characterize the enterprise I am now building – prepare for the end you expect.

A recent survey I reviewed on the nature and scope of 1,839 micro, small and medium enterprises in Uganda reported that over 80% were involved in 5 or more activities, 70% did not maintain full financial statements, over 80% were not affiliated with any industry or trade association, 86% did not offer training to their workers; 65% reported stagnant or decreasing sales year on year, or did not know!! These numbers tell a story – the majority of our enterprises do not behave as though they intend to become regional behemoths or influencers within the next 20, 50, 100 years. Their organization stats suggests that they have not prepared to scale beyond subsistence level for the foreseeable future.

If you are like me (and I kind of think you are if you’re reading this), you have a yearning to do works of grand scale and noticeable impact on the life of your community or nation; something your children’s children will look at as the standard to beat. You are probably not too far off from your starting line – the day you first opened your kiosk, started your consultancy practice, opened your own law firm, built your first property for sale, imported your first bale of clothes for re-sale, name it. Perhaps some of you have been in your trade for years now, still working out of that one location, with the same number of staff you opened up with, and are beginning to get restless about your enterprise not scaling. It’s not going to happen by accident. You have to prepare your organization to scale from as early as possible in your entrepreneurial journey. Building for scale will require you to build more than just a product or service for sale; you will need to build a system that enables your organization prosper far beyond the presence of any single leader and through multiple product cycles. It will involve no tiny bit of mindset change especially for us in Uganda (and much of Africa) – a transition from a conditioning towards running enterprise or initiatives for survival and subsistence to one of building legacy and philosophically inspired enterprises; a switch from time-telling to clock building as Jim Collins (Built to last) stated it. This will require you to learn how to build systems whose specific purpose will be to deliver your aspiration over the time period you foresee. We need to get from the place where your greatest creation is your product or service to the one where it’s the company itself. The general elements of the system you should be seeking to build to deliver such growth include the governing values/ behavior you intend your organization to be recognized by, a defined purpose/ general goal of the organization, the operating environment – selecting or building the right people, establishment of the right policies and standards aligned to your behavior; determining your medium term strategies and the infrastructure you will need to deliver them, establishment of the short term measures and disciplines (control system) to get you to those medium term goals. In his book “The four obsessions of an extraordinary executive”, Patrick Lencioni identifies this system building and maintenance to be the core preoccupation of executives who desire to build extraordinary enterprises. In his telling, such an executive is preoccupied with building and maintaining a cohesive team, creating organizational clarity, over-communicating organizational clarity and reinforcing organizational clarity through human systems. I recommend you read the book to learn more on this.

You may be wondering now, “how on earth do you expect me to spend time on such luxuries when it’s all I have to do to make rent each month, save enough to pay my children’s school fees, keep my home functional day to day and just barely avoid bankruptcy – not to mention meeting my supplier and tax payments and paying my staff?” In “Built to Last”, Jim Collins recounts how Hewlett Packard’s (HP) founders started their business working out of a garage, trying to make ends meet (and figure out what product to produce) but with an already established philosophy about the company they wanted to build that continually informed the system they constructed and reinforced as they grew. Sony Corp. had a similar tale. A few others he mentioned happened to be in more comfortable positions to have this conversation. But not one of the visionary companies he studied achieved that distinction without this preparation. To build like this takes time, persistent focus and a significant level of discipline to not be distracted. The starting point is with you now though. If you have acted on the conversation we last had on the importance of clarifying the purpose/mission/vision that informs the existence of your enterprise, you have taken the first steps towards the building of your system. Think more (and write as you go) on just how large and influential you wish your enterprise to get. I have set myself a goal of leaving an inheritance for 200,000 Ugandans at the time of my passing – in form of business enterprises directly employing and, through their trade, creating growth opportunities for other enterprises along their supply chains. Teaching the discipline of organization is one way I intend to make this possible. I have already outlined the core behaviors that will characterize this enterprise, thought about the individuals I would want to invite to hold shares in it, what its pricing and dividend policy will be, what kind of individuals I will invite to its Board, and what character of staff it will need and how I shall go about finding them. I have also designed one of the services I plan to offer. I expect the execution of this to take me about 10 years. Once I have done this, I will simply replicate this system for every other venture the enterprise will engage in until I have achieved the scale I have ambition to hit. I should be in position to project the enterprise to a distinct regional influence 20 years from now. For today, I have all of this written down so I never forget what I have set out to achieve. Doing this will take no small level of discipline – which is why I did the HMT. You can copy this too, and write down yours. Then we shall hold each other to account as to whether we are making good progress towards our goals.

This has been quite a while coming I concede! I guess a part of me was going for that Marvel or Star Wars movie magic where we wait for part II with enthusiastic devotion (it may be a stretch for me but I hope someone has been reviewing the last posts in anticipation of this one – LOL).

I chose to share this separately so I do not overcrowd my last share. As I pondered purpose and its possibilities for an enterprise, I couldn’t throw off my mind the tantalizing possibility of what this concept could do for a country. Can a nation have a national shared purpose that explains to its citizens why in must continue not just to exist but thrive in the community of nations its people find themselves a part of? Something that gives context to the diversities of its people, foundation to what it calls its national values/ behavior/ character; informs its national policies, social justice structure and strategic global positioning? My questions are in part rhetorical, as there are some examples of nations that have (or appear to me to have) such a sense of national purpose: Singapore, Israel, China, Rwanda, Botswana, Germany, The Nordic states. My questions are an invitation for a Uganda (my home) to take a journey to discern why the community of nations needs us. I know they do, and many of my countrymen know this too. I do not know if they know it like I do, or if they would agree with it the way I believe it (or I with the way they see it). But think how useful it would be for us to agree a common understanding of why we exist as a nation: how it would affect our human resource governance – education, healthcare, social assistance; our investment policy – infrastructure development, determination of the right fit of FDI partners, development of home grown, viable and sustainable industry.

Following World War II and subsequent developments in theory and debate on the ideal model for national governance, much of Africa agitated for, and after a violent struggle, obtained recognition as independent states. From the literature I have read of that time, in spite of all our ethnic differences, we made the compromises necessary to the success of the independence struggle. To a significant extent we agreed on who the “enemy” was and rallied to counter “him”. We also agreed on who our heroes were, and believed their representation of the reason for the struggle, its costs and what the end benefit (promised land) we were agitating for was. Much of this fell apart once independence was attained; there is literature aplenty chronicling our painful 50 years after independence. One thing was proved though: we can band together if we have a common purpose, we can endure hardship, cheer up one another, agree who leads us and support them in the delivery on our intent – willingly and in numbers. And we can win! We need a reason; a reason why we must still be alive and thriving 100 years from now; why we must delay our gratification for a season, why we must make sacrifices, why we must be prudent in how we govern/ are governed. We need a goal to score that transcends ourselves. We need to find this reason and ensure it is accurately and securely passed on to those that come after us. The world will need us to shine, no doubt! We’d best get ready.

When I was young, I hung with a fellowship of Christians that one might say was ahead of its time. Today it goes by the name Watoto Church. It was there that I first came in contact with a purpose statement. That is to say, not just a glossy arrangement of words and phrases meant to look cute on a brochure; but what this fellowship had come to see as its reason for being. Today I am a member of an equally amazing fellowship doing incredible things in the lives of people – Worship Harvest Ministries. Here too there is a defined statement of purpose that is not just a hip sales pitch; it’s the heart that beats beneath everything we do: “Resourcing people in worshiping God and serving others meaningfully for community transformation”. I remember the Watoto purpose statement too: “A cell based community church, growing and multiplying as each one reaches one, touching those around us with the love of Jesus, bringing healing to the city and to the nation”. Why do I bring these up? Because I remember them! Even years after I have moved on I remember the Watoto purpose. No, it’s not because I have an amazing memory (I like to flatter myself that it is somewhere above average); it’s because both these fellowships are very deliberate about all the members knowing what we are for, what we add into our communities, how we change the destinies of our communities and the country. It will be flashed in every service (or as we call them in Worship Harvest, “garage time”); rehashed by the entire congregation led by the “MC”; it will be explained in detail in specially committed ‘Envisioning’ meetings, it is unrepentantly used as the yardstick for evaluating any activity, program, initiative, partnership, and overall ministry impact; the testimonials of all initiatives are presented to demonstrate how the purpose is a living – and increasingly being realized – intent.

I am very firmly persuaded that the passion that underpins living and community in these fellowships – together with the discipline of clarity through which this purpose is consistently communicated, practiced, assessed and reinforced – would not be any less transformative if it resided at the core of any enterprise, whether for profit or not-for-profit. In their book “Built to Last”, Jim Collins and Jerry Porras made this interesting observation in respect to purpose: “…Contrary to business school doctrine, we did not find ‘maximizing shareholder wealth’ or ‘profit maximization’ as the dominant driving force or primary objective through the history of most of the visionary companies”. They found in their research that visionary companies were generally more ideologically driven and less purely profit driven than their comparison companies.

When I contrast my church experience with my ‘marketplace’ experience, what quickly impresses me is that what for church are calls to action and rally-to-the-flag convictions on purpose receive more mechanical thrift in an enterprise setting. I have noticed this trend afflicts for-profit structured enterprises more than not-for-profits (though even with the latter there have been instances in which I was not impressed that the organizations truly considered their purpose as a true-north for their decision making e.g. operational models tended to be structured more to comply with the requirements of specific funders than with the core purpose of the organization). Most organizations did not really spend time speaking of their purpose; the pragmatic assessment of circumstances “now” was usually the more immediate guide to strategic decision making, hiring and organization structure than “how relevant is this choice to how we want to change the world?” Making the end-year profit target always dominated any other narrative that was written into the statements of purpose. Those nice looking grandiose sounding posters and banners with “Vision” and “Mission” tended to mostly be marketing tools. The staff tended to be cynical about these statements and conducted their work accordingly. The leaders whose task it was to communicate the purpose, articulate it, and demonstrate how it explained the life of the enterprise did an occasional town hall, video or email but generally did not speak much about this purpose. In all fairness, they tended to conduct themselves according to the examples that had been set before them. The passionate “i-could-strip-and-run-naked-with-conviction-about-why-the-world-needs-XYZ Ltd” is not really considered corporate decorum.

If the discipline of clarity of purpose has proved to be a significant element in the journey of enterprises that today measure their impact in periods of time over 100 years, then it is a discipline worth spending the time to practice and become proficient at. The knowledge of your purpose is an essential ingredient in organizing your enterprise to live intentionally. It’s the ever steady true-north of your enterprise. It will inform the behaviors you intend to be characterized by, determine the kind of customer you sell to, the kind of employee you will seek to hire, the form of structure you organize it into, the kinds of supplier you get into relationships with, the strategy of success you commit it to. It influences the scale to which your business will be built to grow. Very importantly, it is a core element of clarity around which your leadership team and staff will rally around in understanding the actions you commit yourselves to e.g., why should we source this item from country Y instead of country Z; why should we work at developing local resource yet the same resource is affordably available in region Q, why should we have an executive role of “Chief Happiness Officer” yet our competitors do not pander to such fluff.

You very likely already know (especially if you are the founder) or have access to knowledge as to why your organization came into existence at all. You certainly know how you hoped to make life better for your customers, transform your industry or vocation, support the future potential of your employees or re-write the destiny of your community or country. I invite you to write it down. Don’t look for it to be perfect, and do not be afraid to write it down as big and incredible as it actually looks in your head. Use the words that work for you rather than common boiler-plate terms. Write down what you believe rather than what you think is achievable (that comes later). It is very likely that after you do this the first time, the picture you had in your mind will get richer and acquire more clarity. Keep refining it until you are satisfied that it has achieved the purest form you can get to. Along the journey, in whatever version it is, put it in a place where you get to look at it often – on your desk, by your bedside, pasted to your dressing mirror or your car dashboard. Allow yourself to think on it regularly. Talk about it to those you trust to listen. Allow it to grow in influence in your business decision making process. There will very likely be some immediate benefits to this – especially if you find you are engaged in two or more activities. This statement can show which activities align with your purpose and should be grown further, and those which you should stop doing to free resources for the on-purpose ones. You may also find it helps you sketch the type of staff team you want to work with – which can be very useful in identifying, hiring and retaining the right team members in the right places. You may begin to spot opportunities for optimization of your supplier relationships. You will most definitely be clearer on exactly what type of customer is your king and worth courting; and what type you will be OK to lose. If you have it written down, communicating it later on will be so much easier.

Jim and Jerry include some helpful advice for entrepreneurs and small business managers in their book; not all of the visionary companies they studied begun life with a well-articulated purpose or ideology. Some didn’t pin it down till they had gotten over the initial start-up phase; in some it wasn’t until their second generation. However, all of them did so before they became big. The earlier you articulate your purpose, the better.

When I was in senior school, I hated history. It was dreary, a recitation of events and years; and an interpretation of the good or bad of these based on what the teachers narrated to us for note-taking. My mind never seemed to have an active role in those lessons. I actually persuaded the dean of higher studies at the school where I attended my A-level not to trust my ordinary level history score in deliberating whether history should be part of the electives I studied (it was so good it surprised me!). These days I can’t seem to get enough of history. I have consumed more of it in the last 10 years than I ever anticipated I would. I have found it to be a most illuminative preoccupation. I have consumed material on the history of Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, Great Britain, France, Germany, Church History; I have dug into the biographies of kings and kingdoms, countries and their struggles for independence. I have studied data on the rise of Islam and its influence on the political, military, economic and social organization of the Middle East and North Africa; I have read some material on South Africa, Spain, Singapore and Botswana. I have also dug into the documented history of events on the continent of Africa from as far before colonialism as I have been able to locate them, through our introduction to the nations of the world, slave trade, colonialism and on to independence and beyond. I have read critiques of this history as well since it especially intrigues me. I have also read biographies about leaders of multinational companies and the stories of their rise and continued success.

What I have found most illuminating is how little of our story is documented by us. I have observed that the nations that dominated Africa through colonialism and today through economic and military influence appeared more interested in our story than we were. And, quite naturally, they have documented it mostly in the context of how they saw us relative to themselves – a natural bias that I believe we would have shown had it been us writing of them if the tables were turned. When we finally adopted their systems of education, we ended up learning of ourselves not through the narratives of our fore fathers that knew us: our potential, our moments of greatness and greatest folly; but by those that met us while we were (in their eyes) weak, naïve, petty, barbarian ( a term generally used by a people that considers themselves ‘civilized’ to refer to everyone else that’s not like them. The Romans used it, as did the Greeks – in reference to the Persians; and, at their early republican stage, the Romans as well). In one way or another we learnt to see ourselves the way they saw us and ceded the role of chronicler of our life and times to them.

This phenomenon has, I observe, been replicated in our private and non-government sectors. Quite naturally, since the organizations of repute that occupy these spaces tend to be non-African in origin, it’s their stories about us – enshrined in the histories, visions, missions and values of these enterprises that we have adopted and committed our lives to executing. We execute the strategies they propose, based on their narrative understanding of who we are, where we are in our journey of maturity, what we want and do not want, what we need; with much gusto – even when we notice the misalignment between how they know us and how we see us. Again, I do not believe that it is done with deliberate malice on their part; they see us relative to themselves and make decisions based on that. Even at national level, I sense that concerning our priorities, we tend to co-opt the narratives of those whose financial aid and/or debt supports our national budgets in articulating our intent and strategies.

I have observed through my review of history how careful many rulers were about how their history was told. I found it particularly intriguing for instance that the Greek rulers emphasized to their students the history of their culture with a strong bias towards the accounts of the great acts of their ‘ancestors’. The impact of this education was so empowering on their youths. Alexander the Great for instance was very taken with attempting to imitate the valor of Achilles and this drove him to conquer the known world of the time before his 30s – even facing down empires reputably stronger than his own city-state of Macedon! Greater nations took pains to change or erase the histories of peer nations they conquered in a bid, I believe, to ensure that the conquered peoples had no story of themselves around which to rally a response against their conqueror in years to come. I believe this was a key reason why, in the biblical record of Nebuchadnezzar’s first attack on the Southern Kingdom of Israel (Judah), he carried away all the princes and learned men of the nation into Babylonian captivity – ‘leave no one behind who can remind them of who they are to cause as much headache as they have so far’. The Egyptians and Assyrians carved the record of their histories onto the walls of their palaces and temples, very careful that it aligned with the way they remembered events both good and bad. In some instances they left out the bad ones altogether. When I read the stories of a number of billionaires in the USA today, I have noticed that those considered the most inspiring tend to be the ‘rags – to – riches’ variety. I suppose that these are heavily popularized because they embody the character most admired by that nation’s people – the fact that their nation is not tethered to the old – school class systems of advancement; that if you apply yourself diligently you have a genuine opportunity to attain happiness and advance your estate in life. Most any story you read – whether that of ‘Commodore’ Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Lee Iaccoca, Robert Kiyosaki, Dr. Ben Carson, Barack Obama (I couldn’t resist); you tend to find this theme growing out to its climax of ‘happyness’.

I recall reading somewhere that naming is a means to communicate authority or responsibility over someone or something; the one who names you owns you. Your story, and the story of your enterprise is a powerful thing. It can be what fuels your growth for 100 years; it can be the reason you grow from a small unknown corner of Uganda to become what may be recognized as a Fortune 500, S&P 500, Forbes 100 company. It can attract capital to you – patient finance as well as outstanding talent. It can lead you into markets that stick, grow you a clientele that doesn’t drift, secure you the attention of policy makers and rulers. It can inspire a nation to grow from Third World to First in a matter of decades – and keep it there for centuries. So who is telling your story? Is it yours or is it copied? Can you write it down? Can you enshrine the desired end of your future into the core of your enterprise? Can you build your code of discipline as a company around that desired end? Can you negotiate events material to you in such a manner that you obtain the most desired circumstances for this story to grow, mature and thrive?

As a nation we need to take responsibility for the account of our history. Yes, so much happened to us; the trauma of the slave trade, colonization; we became one nation out of a significant number of smaller nation states defined along ethnic lines through a process we had absolutely no say or control over (the partition of Africa). Many of us lost land, property, prestige. Much occurred during that period leading up to our independence that was grievous on us. And to a not insignificant extent, we continued to prosecute these differences through the avatar of our national governments after independence. This however is only part of the story – the most documented part. There must have been accounts before of how we respectively came to settle in this land. There must have been things we were excellent at before we merged into one nation. We must have had industry worth talking about – rudimentary as it was. We must have had scholars, we must have had traders, and there must have been men of excellence worth copying in habit. We must have had persons of distinction in government, persons who by their skill negotiated settlements that averted wars, fairly distributed resources and formed the basis of successful alliances. We had religions and cultures too that reflected what we considered to be our core values. This account, together with our colonization to independence and after story needs to merge into a narrative that we can all share – where we are going together. When all these streams joined together to form the great river Uganda, what is the wealth of life in it now? What do each of us bring to the table to enrich everyone else? How do we notice each other and call out the names of our tribes with respect and honor? How do we sharpen each other, how do we challenge each other to excellence beyond our previous experience? How do we meet the wrongs that were meted on our colleagues in times past through our old systems, acknowledge them, and build a new consensus that will guide our relations over the next 100 years? Can we build monuments of reconciliation, cooperation, compromise and agreement over the events that we once highlighted as tragedies that divided us? What is our story? Who are we? Who are we going to show and tell the world we are? It is my desire that the development of this narrative become a key mission that drives the teaching of history in our schools and universities; and that parents are equipped with to inspire our children concerning what being Ugandan really means, to stir up the imagination of Africa on what our potential reaches to. Such a narrative will not mean we stop arguing and quarreling. It shall mean however that our fights shall be about how we get to the one ideal we have agreed we are. This is one area that I hope to see the Paideia Uganda project grow – becoming a credible, active partner in curating the story of this country to inform the organizations and, yes, governments of our future. Leading up to this however, I would like to see this project become useful in assisting entrepreneurs of Ugandan born businesses articulate their stories and provide the messages around which they shall organize themselves for sustainable long-term relevance – here at home as well as regionally and globally.

In my country’s national anthem, we are the Pearl of Africa’s crown. It would surely be something to record for my life how we saw that Pearl come to shine so bright that the rest of the continent was inspired to polish the crown to match and surpass the imagination of the world.

I have practiced my vocation (audit and risk advisory) now for just over 12 years. The early 4 years of my vocation I worked with an external audit enterprise. I was flustered (a simpler word failed to properly capture my mood at the time) by the fact that I was auditing the same clients and raising the same issues with them year after year in my reviews. My clients did not appear to be getting better for the time I spent with them. I decided to join their ranks so to say, and spent the next 8 years working within their systems just so that I could find out why my recommendations appeared hollow, maybe even superficial. After 8 years of observation I found nothing wrong with the recommendations (and I am not being a smug idiot as I say this either!). I discovered a number of human dynamics working in the spaces where I spent my time, usually originating from or reinforced by the top leadership: unwillingness to make hard decisions, little interest in engaging in the rigorous, time consuming but highly rewarding process of creative thinking and disruptive innovation, playing it safe; a psychological separation between ‘academic’ and ‘practical’ – this one usually applied as an excuse for why “that stuff learned in the Master’s program just cannot work in this environment”; a high appetite to avoid accountability or take responsibility; an affinity to always take the easy way out.

I have recently been reading Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson’s book “Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty”. The book studied the root origins of differences in incomes and standards of living separating rich countries from the rest of the world. Two interesting observations they put forward and supported with their research captured my attention. The first: wealth or poverty of nations has far less dependence on climate, geographical location, culture, religion/beliefs or even ignorance than has been put forward in much development publishing and economic theory we have consumed. They thoroughly ripped apart the cast of characters I was taught to hold accountable for my under-development. The second: The description of economic and political institutions as Inclusive or Extractive. Inclusive economic institutions were defined as being those that “…allow and encourage participation by the great mass of people in economic activities that make the best use of their talents and skills and enable individuals make the choices they wish”. Extractive institutions work in the opposite of this. Put simply, richer nations tended to be inclusive in character and poor nations were by pattern extractive. Through their research they also documented how certain regions came to be chained to extractive mindsets. In Africa’s case, it was interesting to observe that they documented the process as beginning before the slave trade and colonization, and our own leaders played a prominent role in the entrenchment of this character. Daron and James noted in their book how the politics of a region (politics being the process by which a society chooses the rulers that will govern it) tended to align with the character of the economic institution, with inclusive institutions adopting and reinforcing inclusive political institutions and extractive ones fostering extractive political institutions. They gave attributes of extractive institutions as lack of economic incentives e.g. guaranteed property rights, unbiased systems of law, provision of public services that provide a level playing field in which people can exchange and contract, freedom of entry to new businesses and individual choice of career; and the aversion of the ruling ‘elite’ to new ‘disruptive’ innovations. Throughout the book another pattern emerged that I found very important: even the rich nations of today that in character are inclusive did not being this way. They were originally extractive and faced a series of events that continually nudged them to transition from extractive to inclusive institutions.

So what does this have to do with organizations? I found that these national-level dynamics were applicable to explaining why some enterprises are energetic, full of verve, visionary, disciplined and consistently produce positive results; and why others stagnate and over time decline. Jim Collins in his book Good to Great outlines a series of factors he identified as characterizing companies that made the transition from good to great. I notice that the characteristics he identified are synonymous with an inclusive approach to organizational leadership. The “office politics” syndrome is typical of an extractive approach to leadership. And when the nature of the leadership is extractive, then EVERYONE behaves extractive: what’s in it for me, every man for himself, my advantage before the company’s. It creates an environment for corruption since what will be identified as the ‘ruling elite’ are preoccupied with protecting their privilege/advantage and everybody else is left to find their own means of survival. So asset misuse/misappropriation and overall inefficiency is rife and the customer is collateral damage. In such a space, vision, mission and values are marketing statements rather than the breath of the organization. Strategy is a public relations management process rather than a determined approach to winning; research and innovation are luxuries as opposed to a means to maintain capability to deliver the organization mission to its community. Long-term thinking…? Well, no one believes they are guaranteed the long-term so short-term focus is the default. As for those improvement audit recommendations? Who has the time to improve operations when there are political points that need scoring or when the recommendation is more disruptive than the leadership is willing to allow?

Reading Daron and James’ book I saw clearly that there is no rule of men or God that condemns us – Ugandans and Africans in general – to mediocrity and a perpetually undesirable standard of living or self-actualization. It is within our means to influence our institutions towards the character that best enables the realization of our full potential as individuals, entrepreneurs, and communities. We can begin in the spaces over which we have direct control and cultivate habits that encourage inclusive institutions to develop and mature. We need to do this too; the world needs us to rise and take our rightful place at the table of nations – not as a vote to be bought but as a voice to be heard, and possibly, even followed.

I highly recommend “Why Nations Fail” as a good read if you are exploring how to transform the organization culture of your family, enterprise, community or nation. I will be interested to hear your observations from reading the book too.