Male, pale and stale.

The first week I attended my Corporate Governance class, halfway through my MBA, this was the tongue in cheek description of most boardrooms. Granted, this was in the United Kingdom and it was not an entirely politically incorrect term.

So, seeing as I was not male, pale OR stale I was left clutching on to the hope that I was going to be part of the boardroom revolution. But my classroom composition was a dynamic that did not make sense either.

Out of a cohort of 85 students (10% from Africa) those of us signed up for CG were 4. Yes, four. 3 Europeans and myself. Did I mention that my classmates were three MALE Europeans?

As we continue to bemoan the meager statistics of women on boards, decrying the cronyism and Old Boys’ Networks that is representative of non-executive directorship, the jury is still out on whether this trajectory is likely to change soon.

A 2015 report in the FTSE 100 companies showed that only 24% of directorships were held by women with only 8.6% of executive roles filled by women.

The Guardian even ran a joke that there were more men called John running FTSE 100 companies than all the female bosses put together.

Closer to home though, African companies have minimal women’s presence on boards, making up only 14 per cent of directors on the boards of Africa’s top 307 listed companies. Reassuringly though, Kenya leads the pack with 19.8% of female representation followed by South Africa with 17.4%.

As a non-executive director of a board of an unlisted Kenyan firm in the financial services industry, I want to debunk some myths.

Women DO want to sit on boards. Most times though, the path to being appointed as an exec or non-exec member of the team is rarely straight forward. The fact that fewer women than men rise to senior management positions only narrows the obvious candidate pool.

Similar sentiments have been echoed in the ongoing #wef.

My appointment happened at a time when I least expected it, and 5 years earlier than the targeted date in my ‘master plan’.

But more importantly, when I was given the opportunity, I was ready. And I said yes. Unequivocally.

Board diversity is NOT just gender, but includes competency, independence, race, religion and so on. And no, having the token female board member, for publicity or quota’s sake doesn’t count.

Even after having attended 6 months of Corporate Governance classes, I still attend training geared at becoming a more effective director.

You CAN learn to be a great director. No, it is NOT an innate talent, though how you combine your skills, capabilities and competencies plays a role in getting you to stand out.

First published in http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/article/2000188587/client-satisfaction-critical-to-success-in-the-media-business

There’s an oft used phrase in business: innovate or die. Highly acclaimed companies such as Apple, 3M and Toyota have attributed this to their success, either in incremental or revolutionary improvements.

Closer to home, you have probably seen the discourse on pay TV with the new entrant of a movie streaming service into the market. Everyone and their relative has an opinion about how the service will disrupt the local pay TV channels, your local distributor’s business and the like. I won’t add to the noise.

What I would like to instead focus on is the power of disruption and innovation. A professor at Harvard Business School, Clayton Christensen defines disruption as the extent to which a technology displaces an existing market or industry, producing something new, more efficient and worthwhile, at once destructive and creative.

In the media industry, the move from analogue to digital inevitably creates a platform ripe for disruption, regulation interference notwithstanding. Beyond predestined industry changes, businesses need to understand that if clients feel ignored, their loyalty will rapidly shift, especially when a viable alternative appears.

Whoever said that we are living in the age of information, and he who has the information has the power was right on the money. But for some enterprises, direct feedback from their clients might as well be smoke signals for all the effectiveness they have on their operations. And this continues to baffle me.

In this day and age of social media where companies have multiple platforms on which to engage their clients, there is no excuse for not taking feedback into consideration when delivering goods and services. It is no wonder then, that in this particular pay TV clients are looking forward to cutting ties with vendors who previously seemed oblivious to their woes.

As more industries ripe for disruption catch the eye of innovators, the most notable ones being energy, education and health it will help for institutions, even those protected by legislation to recall that no one company is so essential that it cannot be replaced and no one single business model or sector is off-limits to a raw burst of change. And regulation will only be a stumbling block for so long.

But there is a flipside – the companies that go to great lengths to gather and respond to information in their organizations. I hardly ever watch TV. Aside from the fact that my hours of work do not allow me the luxury, the fight for the remote is something I always seem to lose in my household. However, I dedicate some time every couple of Sundays to watch the one or two episodes of the show ‘Undercover Boss’.

Let us first dispense with critical analysis from the smarty-pants among us. Yes, I know that being a reality show, it is highly scripted and there is a significant amount of footage that is left out. And after a while, regardless of the disguise created around filming, some staff on camera must have an idea that the purported explanation is a ruse and they are indeed on the above mentioned show.

And yes, it has been labelled as a blatant public relations exercise by the detractors. Everyone is entitled to an opinion.

For those who may not have come across it, the show features various corporate (and a few in the not for profit sector) executives who go undercover in disguise. They, among others, are on a mission to identify reasons why various outlets, in most cases franchised ones are not hitting their revenue and profitability targets.

Some are exploring how to support their franchisees better or whether various initiatives introduced by the parent offices are succeeding. At the end of it, most executives admit that they come off the experience having learnt much more than they had bargained for.

Scripting or no scripting, there are some reasons for which I watch the show.

Most people who are solo- or entrepreneurs want to build successful businesses and they are especially interested in seeing the backstory behind how other successful business owners built multi-million dollar ventures from scratch. This aside though, the extent to which some organizations will go to garner information that increases efficiency, staff appreciation and the bottom line always impresses me.

I will give credit where it is due, though. There is a certain food chain that has had ballooning outlets all over the city. A while ago, I saw an interesting exchange on social media where a patron expressed dissatisfaction with some elements of the service including parking facilities. I did not think much of this until I visited said establishment a short while ago.

To my pleasant surprise, the management had actually stationed a parking attendant to help clients find parking space. For all the ills, real and perceived, that this chain will be accused of in the future, they have garnered some loyalty from those patrons who felt listened to, and their pain points addressed.

And this is what real customer engagement looks like, corporate Kenya.

Most small business owners just want to run small businesses that allow them to take care of their most basic needs. They have no desire to grow or expand or create a lasting legacy. If you are as surprised by this statement as I was, then you probably assume that everyone who starts a business wants to create significant wealth and leave a legacy. I did too.

When one of my friends expressed the above sentiment, I hotly contested, arguing the reverse. However, the more people I speak to, the more this sentiment surfaces. And a few real world instances have gone towards supporting this notion.

Exhibit one. It was a friend’s birthday a few weeks ago. In typical gift-giving fashion I approached her local dressmaker to tailor something for her. Being the time conscientious person that I am, I made all these arrangements two weeks before the D-day; half the art of giving a gift is impeccable timing. I hope that that sounded as profound as I meant it to, I may or may not have just made it up.

Fast forward to two days before the birthday and the dressmaker calls me, sounding harried and frazzled. She was at the fabric store, and could not find the cloth that my friend had shown a preference for. She also needed me to send some additional deposit money so that she could purchase a more expensive option.

I was fine with that, after all, I reckoned, maybe my friend had deliberately delayed the process. But on speaking to my friend it emerged that she had asked the tailor to have the item of clothing ready by her birthday.

Exhibit two. One of my friends was moving house earlier this year. For most of his furniture, he engaged a carpenter whose woodwork skills were a joy to behold. Everything was progressing swimmingly, with only positive updates being given via the phone over how beautiful the furniture looked.

Towards the end of the job, he passed by the carpenter’s workshop before he made the last payment. And there he was met with shock and awe, and not of the good kind. There was not a trace of his furniture in sight. No, it had not been sold to a higher bidder. Neither had it been stolen, delivered to the wrong location or been kept in storage. It never existed.

Apparently, the common practice among some of these ‘jua kali’ artisans is to spend the money they are paid by one customer on non-business activities, and use the next deposit to do the previous job. They are, then, always one step behind.

The problem though, is that in a bad month if you were the last client to place an order your work will stall until the next patron walks in and hands over his hard earned money. Which will then execute your job. And on and on.

I’m now starting to think that there’s some truth to the argument my friends were putting across. What I am not sure of though, is why this is an acceptable modus operandi for micro enterprises. Is it a result of ignorance regarding the fact that they can build stable, sustainable businesses? Or is it a lack of ambition? Just a negation of my assumption that everyone who is building a business wants it to grow? Or is it a factor of all of the above?

As we go approach the 10^th WTO Ministerial Conference, it is especially important to understand the nuances around MSME’s, including debunking the myths around how to turn a craft into an enterprise. I am keen on the fact that this year’s conference was themed ‘Trade Works’.

However, trade does not just work. It needs a cohesive and consistent effort to ensure that it is reducing poverty and not just increasing the inequalities between the rich and the poor, in the guise of the former being politically aligned with the ruling elite.

Trade policies are a significant part of the equation that creates prosperity and economic stability. There is a reason why trade does not work for some countries, instead contributing to rising inequalities. Part of this is due to the fact that legislators do not spend the requisite amount of time into ensuring that the right local policies are being debated and effected.

Additionally, we also do not invest into the research that advices these policies. Knee jerk declarations, such as making an announcement that it will take 24 hours to register a business, and not having this implemented over a year later comes off as empty rhetoric.

Even worse though, is not evaluating the unintended consequences of the few laws that are passed, most of which are grounded in extreme short termism and protection of individual’s interests above the country’s.

While taking enterprises global is a noble cause, a significant number of businesses are a long way away from being ready to face global competition. In fact, most businesses are not even ready to play on the local stage, this is where our attention should be focused.