Tanzania: Entrapreneurship

The concept Intrapreneurship is widely recognized as a new luster to motivate employees and enhance organizational performance through product and procedural development within a company or corporation. The concept entrapreneurship essentially embodies practices meant to encourage employees in developing their own ideas, innovations, and techniques into solid plans of action that benefit the companies they work for and pioneer their distinct growth and successes. When I visit the African Barick Gold Mine Dar es Salaam offices located at Masaki I enjoy reading a list of ABG’s values written on a well branded frame at the reception. One among the many values I love most from the list entices “Behave like the owner.” This short phrase is in fact very loaded because it requires employees to understand the path, values, attitudes, deeds and practices that precede ownership of such an establishment and encourage them to usurp and personify those elements. In literal sense the Barick management emphasizes the need for their staff to be corporate entrepreneurs; that they should embrace entrepreneurial values of hard work, risk-taking, optimism, creativity etc. Corporate entrepreneurship finds opportunity for expression where there is a room for employees to work independently or in a certain degree of autonomy to incubate new ideas and innovate new products. The logic behind is very simple. When an organization grows bigger and complex so are systems and processes. At that stage delegation becomes of paramount importance as the founding entrepreneur finds harder to get involved in every detail and therefore rely upon his/her team to deliver results in their respective areas of expertise. He/she is therefore forced to develop the entrepreneurial culture and structures which promote creativity and innovation among the team. An entrepreneurial culture creates an environment in which research and development is encouraged so as to produce new products as well as new and better ways of doing things. You may be asking yourself who are these corporate entrepreneurs, what do they do differently and how possible can entrepreneurship be exercised in a corporate environment where there are already systems and rules of engagement? Dr. Pawan Goenka is a classic example of corporate entrepreneurs. An Indian by nationality, Dr Pawan worked for so long with General Motors one of the leading car manufacturer in the world. He acquired skills and experience that when he joined Mahindra and Mahindra (M & M) in India, he was able to develop the successful Scorpio model for M & M and refined the way the new car design and development was done. Under his leadership, M & M invented many others new products including Pick Up, marshal, Armanda 98, Bolero and Loading. Today’s competitive job market is seeking employees like Dr Pawan, an employee who create new ventures, compete aggressively at the market, innovate new products, renews organizations, innovate processes, take risks and are being proactive. It’s important that you aspire to be an entrepreneur working in a corporate entity because intrapreneurs are the ones who turns organizations around. They activate companies’ profit centers, promote operational efficiency and increase the competitive edge of the business. Such individuals command a very high price tag and beyond that they can make very successful entrepreneurs when they decide to start their own businesses. Their working habits and attitudes enable them to excel beyond compare. What should this mean to you? An organization should not be viewed at the only beneficiary of your creative energy. When you set your mind to consider an organization as platform for you to exercise your talents and demonstrate leadership you, will grow very fast in a career. Despite workplace challenges you must focus to deliver results and build your personal capabilities which will help the organization realize your potential and more importantly increase your own portfolio for the jobs to start looking for you and not you looking for the jobs. One day I had a breakfast with one of the youngest corporate leaders in Tanzania. He worked with the Standard Chartered Bank before moved to National Bank of Commerce (NBC) as a Chief Executive Officer. Ephraim Mafuru has an outstanding career experience in the banking sector and when I met him I wanted his opinion on career excellence and this is what he said “when you work in a corporation effectively and efficiently, when your contribution is significant and there is value addition to company’s products and services you won’t struggle for a higher pay. The management itself will never want to lose you and will do whatever that is within the means to retain you “ Why companies are looking for entrepreneurial staff We acknowledge industrial leaders like Ali Mfuruki (Founder, Infotech Investment Group) and Said Salim Backresa (Founder, Bakhresa Group of companies) because they have built their businesses from the scratch as a new venture. We salute such people for their dedication to start small and work tirelessly to grow their businesses into big empires. But quite often we forget that one of the characteristics of successful entrepreneurs like Bakhresa and Mfuruki is their ability to poach talents, recruit and maintain entrepreneurial staff. They understand that an organization is nothing but motivated, passionate and energetic people thus focus on building a team that will move the business at speed while embracing change as an opportunity for growth. This was not the case many years ago when industrialization and mass production started to take root in Europe. During industrialization, it was very tough for human resource managers to convince their management stretch their financial muscles to pay a high price to win recruiting a talented staff who seem to possess entrepreneurial attributes because the development of mass production systems did put in place methods and techniques which depended very little on staff input. Employees were expected to follow the instructions set by the management, do the routine work and there were no room for innovation and creativity. This model is still found in many manufacturing firms especially in developing economies like Tanzania where some corporate leaders are slow to adapt to technological changes and reluctant to create an empowering corporate culture that promotes employees ‘ capabilities to drive change. However, an increase in competition among firms as a result of a free market economy has forced companies in various sectors to consider entrepreneurial leadership as opposed to the management model in which the management tends to sit in the offices and develop instructions for the staff to execute. Instead companies in the modern era are trying to invest so many resources into recruiting and nurturing intrapreneurs alongside creating the needed supporting environment for their staff to be at the center of creative, thinking and innovation for their own success and that of the organization. How to develop and nurture entrepreneurship in your organization It’s becoming evident that the innovation and aggressiveness of entrepreneurial ventures are threatening the survival of big corporations which have no option rather than building intrapreneurs. Recently, Saimon Sanga one of my very good friend whom we went to school together joined African Barick Gold (AGB). He is currently serving as the HR and Administration Manager. I have known Saimon for the past ten years and his leadership and managerial skills has always amazed me. Every weekend, I try to create a space for me to meet people like him that I can benefit from their rich entrepreneurial thinking and experience. Last weekend I invited him for lunch at home and we had a very fine moment of ideas and experience sharing. Simon shared with me an insight on the difference between a traditional and entrepreneurial corporate culture that I thought to share with you. He pointed out that two factors which differentiate the two are the corporate culture and structure. The corporate culture entails the company’s core values and norms and the structure entails the organizational hierarchy with its various systems and sub systems. While in the traditional corporate culture there are still bureaucratic tendencies and conservative decision making processes which forces employees to follow instructions, fail to initiate things, fail to try, fail to decide, avoid mistakes, fear challenges and play the blame game, entrepreneurial culture emphasizes on the ability of employee to create their personal vision and mission, integrate them to the company’s vision and mission statement and allow them to try new things. In an entrepreneurial culture, failure is not seen as an end in itself but an opportunity to learn. When I heard it from Sanga this time around, I also remembered what my lovely wife Lilian told me sometimes at the back. My little daughter Cherish who has now turned two years is becoming naughty trying out everything that gets around her. And when it happens that she gets hurt, I feel so bad and become mad on her for what I think she must not do. You know as a father you just found yourself protective for your kid against dangerous games and plays. And Cherish is undergoing a stage in which she wants to do everything that she sees her elders do even the toughest jobs that I know she can’t handle. I was therefore hesitant to leave her try out things and I was like why should you do this Cherish? But one day her mom made a very powerful observation. She told me “Paul this is the time for her to learn. Children learn by imitation and trying things out. This is her time. Let her do what she wants to do as long as she remain safe and it’s the only way for our daughter to exercise her mind and learn. When she makes mistakes just talk to her. Tell her this is bad and take the lead to show her how to do the right thing”. Immediately I took that advice and eventually it worked. To date she teaches me some of the things that I had instructed her not to do before. And every time I want to know if she still remembers what I taught her, I just try repeating her old mistakes like getting near fire and guess what she does? She comes so close and start telling me Acha! Acha! Then I know that she still remember that this is not good. The examples above provide a very important insight to consider if you really want to turn around your business. It’s doesn’t matter whether you are running a small, medium or large corporation. The principals are always the same. Good employees are not falling down from a tree like mangoes. If they are already good then sometimes somewhere, someone did invest in their growth. It’s as simple as that. If you want the best, you must put deliberate put efforts to grow an entrepreneurial staff so that your team stays passionate, motivated, inspired and knowledgeable about your company, your industry and its global economic trends.