10 minute read
SUBTLE WAYS YOU MAY BE UNDERMINING YOUR BUSINESS SUCCESS
BY KIRIINYA KITHINJI
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Like most Kenyans, I have been the unwilling recipient of harrowing service experiences in the hands of public officials. The service reputation of officers in government departments such as the various lands registries is well documented as nothing short of legendary, albeit in the wrong direction. Excellent service is the exception to the rule in many public offices. The levels of customer service in some of the lands registries are so inadequate, that many clients believe that to get anything done, they need to "know somebody." That's just that the way life is, the reason.
In a sense, I can understand where such clients may have come from. These long-suffering consumers of public services intuitively sense that they are up against the entrenched, mostly negative cultures that our public officers at the grassroots level are infamous for. But I doubt that things were always that way. These negative cultures were not born; they were made by individuals over an extended period until they became the accepted standards of how things get done.
To be sure, some people have perfected the art of getting the services they want from difficult public officers by learning how to circumvent the system. Still, others opt for the pragmatic stance of "doing what needs to be done" to obtain the services they need from intransigent public officials. As rank outsiders, it is perhaps understandable that citizens choose to act in this way based on the impossible task of changing the entrenched cultures that govern the behaviors of these public officers.
But therein lies the problem: By taking steps to accept and live with a broken system, consumers of public services may
have unwittingly created the very cultural monsters that they confront daily as they seek the essential services that are only available in government offices. In other words, we have been sending signals over the years to public servants to the effect that the performance of their assigned duties are ‘favors’ and not obligations for which they are paid to deliver.
Add to this is the fact that there are usually no consequences attached to the performance or lack thereof of these public servants, coupled with the pervasive docile culture of the Kenyan society that prefers to shun the assertive pursuit of individual rights, and we have the perfect recipe for a full-blown non-performing and client-insensitive public service culture.
We have forgotten or are just unaware of the fact that culture is created by what we do as much as by what we don't do. When we fail to act when, or as we are supposed to, we invariably send subtle messages that we don't care and by extension, display the underlying beliefs, values, or attitudes that drive our behaviors.
These signals are particularly potent if they come from people of influence or leaders such as parents, religious and business leaders, and political leaders. Is it a wonder that corruption has become a way of life in Kenya, given that our top political leaders have always enjoyed its benefits without incurring the wrath of the Law?
Leaders have a way of creating and
entrenching the cultures of the organizations over which they exercise considerable influence. Moreover, the extent of their influence tends to be much higher in organizations that they founded or helped to establish.
Leadership attitudes, values, beliefs, and approaches to problem-solving all tend to filter into their organizations as the acceptable or normative standards of behavior. With time, these leadership behaviors become the dominant organizational culture. There are other ways in which leaders create organizational culture such as how they go about setting priorities for resource allocation and deployment, how they approach crises and resolve conflicts, how they respond to or act in highly ambiguous situations, and what they measure or pay most attention to.
The truth is, leaders are always creating culture, for better or for worse, either deliberately or just by default. This is a lesson that entrepreneurs as the de facto leaders of their businesses are apt to forget, many times to their detriment. For instance, by delineating which attitudes, customers, behaviors or performance standards are acceptable or not, entrepreneurs set in motion processes that guide actions of employees in certain directions.
Many business leaders rarely give thought to the fact that they are always sending signals by default or design about their priorities, which over a period will eventually result in organizational cultures that become the unseen but powerful drivers of the behaviors and attitudes of their employees.
To pick out the culture of an organization, the first port of call should be to examine how leaders and their teams go about executing their duties or responsibilities, their reactions to events such as crises and achievement of significant milestones, and their attitudes.
The process of setting behavior standards need not be deliberate; it can come from simple things like verbal reprimands for lateness, upbraiding employees for treating customers discourteously, telephone manners, and reactions to crises events will eventually communicate to employees the things that matter most to entrepreneurs. Before too long, these often unspoken behavior standards become the dominant and accepted way for employees to go about their usual duties and responsibilities.
Smart entrepreneurs are alert to establishing effective incentive systems early in their businesses to guide the behavior of employees in the knowledge that employee behaviors and attitudes are almost always aligned with the incentives available in their firms.
In the narrow sense, incentives simply refer to how business owners apply a system of rewards and sanctions aimed at directing employee behaviors in desired directions. The implied assumption here is that employees will tend to behave in ways that get rewarded and eschew those practices that invite displeasure from their bosses.
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However, in the widest sense, incentives can be viewed as those ongoing signals that entrepreneurs are always communicating to employees about what matters to them. Most employees will find it difficult to maintain the motivation to apply their efforts to tasks that do not appear to carry any weight with their employers. That is simply human nature. Instead, they will most likely direct their efforts where they yield the highest impact, in this case, measured by what appears to matter most to their bosses. This same reasoning can also be applied to suppliers, creditors, debtors, and financiers that form part of a typical entrepreneur's ecosystem. The upshot is that busine ss le ade rs (mainly entrepreneurs) can be the greatest contributors to their business challenges through the sub-optimal cultures that they have created.
As an illustration, consider the entrepreneur who habitually accepts low productivity, output, or poor service quality from her employees. Over time, the employees of the firm will eventually think of their poor performance or low productivity levels as good enough or as normative, even though they know better. After all, why bother with something the boss doesn't appear to care about or even measure? In response, the typical entrepreneur may simply choose to fire the non-performing employees and hire fresh ones. Or perhaps s/he could spend time whining to chama friends about how employees are continuously letting him/ her down. However, it unlikely that the new hires, or for that matter, the whining will solve the problem. The problem is primarily a failure of leadership, or more accurately a failure to set in place the right culture, mostly by what s/he failed to do. In other words, the culture that was created has come home to roost.
A recurring complaint among consultants engaged in business advisory services is that entrepreneurs frequently prove to be the biggest obstacle to worthwhile change initiatives. Have you ever wondered why the owners of many large firms tend to replace their top managers whenever they decide that some form of radical change is required to keep the organization alive or prepare it for future challenges? Or have you ever considered why many great and well-intentioned change efforts come to a cropper even after much energy, effort, and financial resources have been expended to make things work?
The answer to the first question is that it's rather difficult to bring about any lasting transformational change in an organization while leaving the existing culture intact. And here is the answer to the second question: It is much difficult to change the culture of an organization without changing leadership (i.e. what leaders do), which in some instances can only be effected by a change in leaders (i.e. the people who lead).
The lesson for entrepreneurs is clear. Even if we grant that you may not be in a position to replace yourself as the leader of your firm in the manner big corporates do, the time may be ripe to examine how your leadership input may have created the culture that is directly or indirectly undermining the success of your business. The results of this introspective exercise should be used to plan the deliberate steps required to create the organizational culture that will drive your business forward.
And for those entrepreneurs who are just setting out on their entrepreneurial journey, it would be wise to begin to set in place the building blocks of your vision of a great company culture sooner rather than later. The reason is that it is much harder to dismantle the offending aspects of culture in the future long after they have been established.
Mr. Kiriinya is the Director of Strategy and Advisory at Wylde International. Reach him via kirinya@ wyldeinternational.com
Effects Of Quarantine On Online Shopping In Kenya
Data from Pigiame shows that men have made the switch to online first shopping faster than women, and not surprisingly people under 40 are more active. 70% of shoppers shop through their mobiles, 28% with their computers and the remaining 2% using other smart gadgets like tablets. By Pigiame.co.ke
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Online shopping during this pandemic is definitely something to keep a close eye on as it has shown immense growth in some obvious areas and has managed to pull a few surprises too.
The old adage that crisis doesn’t make a person but rather reveals someone’s true character has shown us that Kenyans are quick to adapt as the world changes.
Data from online shopping site Pigiame shows that men have made the switch to online first shopping faster than women, and not surprisingly people under 40 are more active. 70% of shoppers shop through their mobiles, 28% with their computers and the remaining 2% using other smart gadgets like tablets. Reinforcing the fact that internet penetration in Kenya is overwhelmingly driven by mobile devices, and businesses have to adopt a mobile-first strategy to be successful online.
And what are people buying? As you might have guessed, protective clothing, masks and medical equipment took the highest leap with the entire population striving to keep themselves and their families safe. In second place is educational material with book sales growing by as much as 500% compared to the 3 months before the pandemic.
This is closely followed by electronic devices such as TVs, Gaming Equipment and Audio & Video Equipment. People are looking for ways to stay engaged during the lockdown to both prevent boredom and process all of the COVD-19 information made widely available by media outlets across the country.
Another surprising rise is seen in furniture, home decor, laptops and computer accessories. With more people opting to work from home, more investments are being made towards setting up a proper home office environment. Home appliances also took a steady rise, especially freezing units caused by panic buying in anticipation of a lockdown, especially for family units.
On the downside, the most noticeable casualty is the fashion and beauty category. Limited movement and significantly reduced social events have resulted in fewer people buying new clothes. Car parts, bags, shoes and baby clothes also experienced a dip.
Event planning, equipment hiring and car hire services are also affected as well larger investments such as houses, land and cars, with more shoppers opting to hold on to their cash in order to remain liquid.
