The Accountant-Mar-April 2017

Business Practice and Development
Several times when
advising clients,
less emphasis is
given on product
strategy – optimizing
this to market
needs, listening
to customers for
viewpoints and
improvements and
evaluating product
performance in
comparison to
competitors.
evaluating product performance in
comparison to competitors. You can
say the right thing about a product and
nobody will listen. You’ve got to say it in
such a way that people will feel it in their
gut. Because notably so,if they don’t feel
it, nothing will happen.
3. Talent
Research indicates that employees have
three prime needs: interesting work,
recognition for doing a good job, and
being let in on things that are going on
in the company. In today’s integrated
workplace, no leader can afford to neglect
the challenge of engaging employees in
creating the future.
Engagement was obscure in the past,
but it’s pretty much the whole game today.
For any enterprise, regardless of its size
or industry, it should focus into building
a resilient organizational structure that
recognizes and rewards performance,
identifies talent – short and medium
term, involves in decision making and
pinpoints potential high performers who
can build winning teams to strengthen
organizational performance.
More often than not, anenterprise
favors a reactive approach to attract and
hire talent – for long that has been modus
operandi. Today, I work with diverse
enterprises to build a robust future talent
pipeline (6-9 months) by projecting their
growth and its manpower needs in the
short-medium term. As Warren Buffet
states, “Somebody once said that in
looking for people to hire, you look for
three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and
energy. And if you don’t have the first, the
other two will kill you.”
4. Robust Processes
When was the last time you considered
accountability, reporting and governance
as key drivers to organizational
permanence? Having processes is halfway
to the summit, but developing
tangible metrics is the course to victory.
Today’s organizations are faced with
changing market dynamics where quick
decision making and innovation are a
pre-requisite. Hence, if your goals are
not backed by clear and measureable
metrics to track performance, decision
making and governance, it won’t be long
before you end up on the drawing board
reviewing your ambitions for the short
and long-term future.
5. Proper Adoption of Social
Media
One of the biggest challenges
facing CEOs and a mammoth of
enterprise’sentrepreneurs in this yearand
moving forward is how to effectively
reach audiences online, specifically, social
media. More than one million Kenyans
use Twitter. Twitter growth in the country
has doubled on a year on year basis. Gone
are the days when information travelled
through traditional forms such as
brochures and flyers – as increased usage
of social media is employed to effectively
communicate press releases, offers,
product advice, amongst others. However,
as much as the adoption of social media
has increased on an individual level, most
enterprises have fallen prey to the failure
of devising and adopting a social media
strategy. I have dealt with business entities
who once saw social media as a secondary
goto-market strategy. Today, they find
their clientele demanding solutions
to resolve their issues mostly through
Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Hence,
reaching customers online will be one of
the biggest challenges facing `to-go-to’
enterprises of choice in the modern times
ahead.
Auditing the Past Experiences
to inform the way forward
It is equally imperative to consider the
following as you “audit” this in tandem
with other enterprise leaders:
DO’s
• What do you wish you had achieved
before? What do you want to do more this
year and this time round?
• Reflect on realistic goals i.e. You want
them to be attainable, but you have to
work just a little more to get there with
available resources.
• Create a 365-Day Action Plan that
details the steps you and your team need
to take to achieve a goal. E.g. To increase
Sales by 18%, the enterprise needs to
hire two sales executives, open one new
location and increase prices by 2%.
• Arrange for a monthly or quarterly
meeting to see how your plan is unfolding.
If there are obstacles from completing the
item, work to mitigate it.
DON’T’s
• Avoid generic resolutions like “grow my
business.” Be specific.
• DON’T set too many targets or go into
greater detail than required. Too many
details lead to confusion, conflicting goals,
micro-management and failure to execute.
MARCH - ApRIL 2017 19