Imagine darkness. Then, see the light.

Your organisation was recently hiring. This process in itself is stressful for all employees that will be interacting with the new colleague. There’s a lot of anticipation and excitement. What will the new person belike, what will they bring to add value, what can we teach them, what can we learn from them? Many questions that will promptly be answered during the onboarding process, provided you do it right.

There are several documents your new employee will have to clear with your HR department. Employment Contract is the first step and it is usually discussed in detail during the negotiations, when the decision to hire is being made. Employment Contract should contain all the general terms of the employment like salary, benefits, annual leave, medical leave, maternity/paternity leave and so on. There is one strange clause employers like to sneak in here, which is about employee not allowed to take a job with the competition afterwards so I would conveniently like to demystify this clause once and for all: it is a human right to be employed anywhere – and the clause doesn’t hold in any court. So don’t waste your time with it.

Next piece of paper is a Job Description. True value of your new employee is described here and onboarding should pay serious attention to covering all aspects of the job description for the newcomer. It is very common that employees, who are left to their own devices at the new workplace, settle in and perform the obviously required duties while completely neglecting the less obvious ones. At the end of the day, non-performance of duties on the job description is really the responsibility of the manager who failed to activate the employee, not the other way around.

Employee Handbook should contain all the rules of the workplace. Great organisations have very detailed Employee Handbooks that incorporate Codes of Business Conduct, Anti-Corruption Policy and so many other good things. Each business tells its own story and builds its own culture so make sure your Employee Handbook describes your culture accurately in as much detail as possible. Employee Handbook should contain all company policies, rules and regulations and you should request each employee to confirm in writing that they have read and internalized the complete Employee Handbook. Each employee, goes without say, should spend time on reading on the rules and asking their immediate managers for additional guidance.

Most important thought when developing the Employee Handbook is ‘assume nothing’. If you don’t want alcohol and drugs at the workplace, spell it out. If you have a particular dress code, describe it to finest details. If you have rules for personal telephone and internet use, define them clearly. Many a good employees have failed to bond with their workplace due to unclear and obscure rules. Make it easier for your newcomers to settle by spelling it out for them.

This pretty much covers the paperwork, now what about people? It is essential that your new employee is assigned a ‘buddy’ for the onboarding period. Yes, there will be the onboarding period and you have to decide how long this will be. In most cases one month is enough but if you are providing specialized training to your new employee, it may take two, three, even up to six months. Going through this period knowing there is an office ‘friend’ to rely on will be much easier for the new recruit.

Buddy has a very big role to play. He will be the one to demystify all issues the newcomer will face during the onboarding period. He’s also responsible for ensuring newcomer has all the documents, signed off access to all areas of operation, company Identity Card, keys, logons and passwords that the newcomer requires for their job and so on. Buddy also has his own job to do so the stretch to cope with his own responsibilities and having to introduce someone new to all aspects of their job and organisation is not a small feat. This is why the role of a buddy is so important and delicate. Choose the buddy wisely, this should be a strong, communicative and capable person with no fear of failure, someone diligent and passionate about your organisation. Rare to find!

Onboarding has to have a set duration as well as the predetermined milestones that newbie and buddy have to achieve in order to make the process successful. If you are onboarding a call centre employee, you need to think about the type of calls he will handle, measurement for success, type on information he is required to understand and provide, lines of reporting, lines of escalation, when to escalate issues etc. All aspects of the job have to be covered during onboarding. It all has to happen.

If you are onboarding a restaurant waiter, think of serving him dinner at your restaurant. Let your best servers deliver exceptional service and explain that the establishment expects nothing less through their actions. Then the buddy can take over and deliver the micro-training that covers all procedures and finer details.

Throughout the onboarding process, you are required to have regular interaction with the newbie in order to give and receive feedback that will guide the rest of the onboarding process.

As you can see, as a manager of people you are expected to be structured, knowledgeable and innovative, able to tailor action to the nature of the person you are onboarding, able to receive feedback and adjust the onboarding process adequately and timely. As a manager, you don’t just employ the right people. You don’t throw them to the deep end. You help them build the knowledge base and confidence to do their job and do a great job. The more you immerse yourself in the onboarding process, the more rewarding the results: confident employees who feel respected, valued and proud to be treated as valuable contributors from the very first day of onboarding.

Every manager faces the prospect of hiring short-term at least once in their career. It is a situation that evokes mixed feelings and calls for tailored solutions, yet your average manager prefers to have permanent, safe solutions as opposed to looking for a quick patch.

The need for short-term hire arises when permanent employees can not perform in the job due to absence, illness, pregnancy, study leave, travel etc. Who you get in as a substitute hugely matters because your short-term hire has to perform from day one and has to match the level of the permanent employee performance, which is never an easy task.

Looking for a short-term hire is a quest. I was recently in this situation and I called a number of agencies offering temps, only to be disappointed because to them, most important part of the conversation is to ensure I sign the contract; very little probing about the person I need to fill in the gap. I know I shouldn’t judge anyone based on that one phonecall but It somehow didn’t seem right – to talk contract first before even understanding the need my business has.

International organisations have their hiring policies for short-term hires and HR departments follow those policies to a high degree of success. Most businesses resort to hiring on recommendation for a short-time hire. It is seldom advertised and it is usually the incumbent who helps find the right person to close the gap.

This can be a good thing – your employee gets the replacement for the said period, helps them settle down, understand the drills and so on – but this can sometime backfire. What if the incumbent was in a hurry and did not rationally observe the abilities and skills of the person they recommend? Then the business suffers, of course.

Temporary hires have to be approached with utmost care and the organisation must give them maximum support and engagement during the short onboarding time. In other words, if you want your temp to be successful, you have to spend time to intensively train and engage. Temps must not be left to their own devices – remember they are hired for a period of time, to perform specific actions and they have no interest in doing your work for you – they can comfortably sit and wait to be shown what to do, at your expense. So engage them immediately.

I strongly advise that temps fill in time sheets or that their supervisors take note of performance and output. Temps are not keen on producing detailed reports on their work – they usually do not know what they should be reporting on so it is your responsibility to manage their output and evaluate its relevance and correctness.

Things will go wrong so ensure you have a relationship from the start. Obviously, this person will not grow on you like your other, permanently employed, colleagues. Still, as a manager, ensure you offer your presence and make it clear that your short-term hire can have access to you any time the need arises. This will give them confidence that they are also valued, and help them clear with you any issues that may hinder their performance.

A few days should e enough for any temp to reach 80% performance level of your permanent employee if you are in service industry. Production line performance can peak within a day, depending on the level of skill and confidence the short-term hire has. Short-term hires in call centres have to be given maximum attention and crash-programme training in order to ace the calls armed with knowledge and confidence.

Your experience with the short-term hire may grow into a solid working relationship and you develop trust, reliance, confidence in this person and you want them to stay. This is a delicate situation as the person they are replacing may feel intimidated, concerned, threatened. If your short-term hire appears to be the winner, make sure you communicate to all concerned parties in time and find a plausible solution to retaining the temp and the permanent employee, while providing both with sufficient work assignments and ensuring they work as a team, with no animosity.

Sometimes your temp will outshine your permanent employee by miles. I can’t advise you what to do but I’ll tell you what I’d do: I’d retain the temp. Clinging onto your ‘C’ players is never wise and finding ‘A’ players is never easy. But that’s my performance-oriented thinking and I acknowledge and appreciate that many businesses build their strength on empathy and togetherness, rather than performance measurements.

But more often than not, your temp turns to be a lukewarm performer, unable to fill in the shoes of the job. What do you do then? Do you boot the temp out and call your permanent employee back from leave? You can do that if it’s an annual leave and your colleague did not travel to Antananarivo. But if someone is giving birth and someone else defending their master thesis at the university abroad, you are stuck with your temp. This is why you have to have a plan ‘B’. Always plan for distributing the workload among the existing team members as the worst-case scenario.

Word of advice: bringing a temp into a team that’s weak and disjointed would be a wrong idea. Teams with internal rifts tend to vent their emotions on the weakest links and in this case your temp would be the punching bag. On the opposite side, any temp inside a strong and cohesive team will be given the platform to excel and will be able to receive help and guidance all the way.

Think hard about your strength of your people and organisation before you make this decision to hire a temp. Will your team support the short-term hire and create an ambassador for your business, a team player who will be able to jump in when needed and possibly stay on? I hope you find the way!

A new year is already under way and we are shortly heading for elections; this means two months are gone and you very likely haven’t looked at your strategic plan for 2016 because your key people were on holiday, came back to an overwhelmingly loaded in-trays and still can’t lift their heads off their desks. By the time the Christmas and school break backlog is sorted, you are likely to travel to avoid being in Kampala during the elections. So your first real strategic session for the year will happen somewhere in March, falling three months short for planning and delivery. That’s Ugandan business in any given election year.

With elections out of the way, life inevitably has to go on and you will crave to answer a few questions about the business you run. Questions like “where are we going?” then “How do we get there?” and “What resources are required?”

These three questions are the simplest form of probing your business for strategy. I can go into complex details on how to create a business strategy; I’m sure you’ve done it many times before yourself and you are still very likely searching for the right and the easy way. And this is totally allowed – we need to drive ourselves as managers and leaders to always find simpler, easier and more efficient ways of doing things and the process of creating strategy is never cast in stone. Improvise, engage, read, learn and implement – this would be my advice, always.

When defining your strategy, look at defining your company’s direction. Direction alone is not a strategy; direction merely spells out where you are heading and where you wish to be. Strategy largely delivers answers to the questions on how to get where you want to be. But direction is essential for selecting the right means of transporting your business from where it is to where it should be. Same as if choosing to travel to South Africa on a bus – you will undoubtedly reach there but how long will it take and what toll such a trip will take on you is the thing you must consider before you decide to walk out of the airline office because business class ticket is too expensive.

Time, comfort, cost, wear and tear – things to consider when thinking strategy.

Review the desired outcomes for the year. The big picture, the abstract, intangible statements like “become the market leader” or “grow the brand love”. Think of your business in context of the market place, competition, economic conditions etc, while trying to see yourself through the eyes of your customers. What is the image you want your customers to see at the end of the year?

Now bring in the more specific goals. What percentage of increase of turnover? What particular certifications? New territories, departments? New products? While at this, also try to set some priorities. Priorities are great to keep you in check and guide your way forward.

Finally, you have to look at resources. Do you have what is required in terms of assets and finance? If you do, great! But if you don’t – look at another mini-strategy on how you are going to get them. And look at the people who are supposed to carry out your strategy from a piece of paper to a large, fat bonus for everyone at the end of the year. Do you have the right people to execute your strategy for 2016?

In one of my roles I do not have the right supporting staff to help me with the execution. And you know what? I’m fine with that. The role is too important to be handled by someone unfit and I’m prepared to wait until the right person is available. Critical roles have to be supported by highly competent people, otherwise you risk to lose credibility. Less critical roles (or processes) can easily be used as a training and testing grounds under strict supervision by the seasoned team members. But the overall aim is to have in place people who will deliver what is required to correct specification and in the shortest period of time.

This is where organisations have to use tools like Capacity Grid to determine who the top performers are and who requires training or a boot. Without the ability to determine who is who on a scale from zero to hero, you and your strategy are left in total darkness.

The right person in the right job is every manager’s and every leader’s dream. The tool I use to put the two together is Predictive Index, where I can define the job and then look for the right personality to fill the role. There is a level of accuracy that sounds like magic and I’m certain it is magic – this is what we thought most sciences were just up until a hundred years ago. Now that science is finally making clear connections between human behavior and needs at workplace, managers can rejoice because the style of management has changed for the better – based on understanding the abilities and capacities rather on senseless enforcement or rules, demands and targets.

Once a manager is able to define strategic jobs in the company, determine the talent required to run those jobs, outline the kind of human support the team leadership needs and identify perfect match for each job – he will deliver on any strategy – provided the employees know what is required and believe in the outcome.

So even with the right team, communication is imperative. Constant engaging and briefing brings clarity and enables people share and most importantly exchange information. Strategy, simply, isn’t a job for one person and one day. If you really want your employees to deliver on your strategy, take your time to define strategy together: Your employees will be the best source of insights to keep your ship sailing firmly on course.

Any organisation, especially in the times of growth, will experience the challenge of advertising for vacancies and sifting through hundreds of applications, one more qualified than the other, making the selection very difficult. We all want to hire the best candidate for the job and this should always be the aim, irrespective of who’s related to whom – if you have your company’s best interests at heart. But the process in reality is never that simple.

You receive two hundred applications for a customer care job. Quick sift through qualifications will knock out a hundred, leaving the qualified and over-qualified in the game. You now pay attention to writing style; most can write well but you see gaps in education through some basic mistakes like starting the sentence with “Am…”. This leaves you with about forty applicants. You should not discriminate on gender and tribal basis but you will drop foreigners because of the complicated work permit process, so you remain with 35 applicants.

What do you do next? Do you engage your HR manager, customer care department manager and a couple of others in five full days of interviews, do you just draw a few people out of a hat and fix them in a one-day rapid interviewing session? Do you personally conduct the interviews? Who prepares questions, who asks them? Who takes the score, no – wait – who prepares the score sheet, who compares the scores after the interviews? How complex is your interviewing procedure? And – what are your chances of still choosing the wrong person?

Take the job description for this job (you have it, of course) and first, try and imagine the ideal person. Make some notes, this should be a reminder as to who you are looking for. Visual impression is reasonably important, the new employee should resonate well with the overall visual impression of your company. If the applicants really want a job with you, they should research in advance how to present themselves at the interview. Voice and expression are the other important attribute. If your team and your customers have to listen to this person all day long, they better be in a possession of a very pleasant and soothing voice. Finally, eloquence and wit should be the deciding factor. You want smart and capable people around you, especially if they will interact with your customers.

On D-day, you are ready with your questions just as much as your applicants are ready with their answers. The ones who will impress you the most have, most probably, rehearsed the interview to the finest detail, alone in front of the mirror or with help of their support group. They will be prepared to roll off their tongues exactly what you want to hear, making your choice even more difficult. Scores are pretty even across the board and you are ready to employ everyone you’ve seen on day one yet you have four more days to interview the remaining 28 applicants… and you realize this is a bit of a nightmare.

At this stage you make a mental note that you’ll get a recruitment agency to do this job for you next time. Wait! You’ll actually hire a company that has nothing to do with your business, to recruit for you the person you need inside your business? I wonder if this is a sound decision, but this is a story for another time.

What if you are actually able to employ some science in this whole recruitment process? What if you are able to define exact parameters to describe the job and thereafter able to determine which candidate has the matching parameters that fully satisfy the demands of the job?

What I first experienced the Predictive Index, I was pretty fascinated by the accuracy of the report that was delivered to me by my husband to be. He did the wise thing – he made sure he understood my behavioral mindset from the very start of our relationship. That fascination with the behavioral survey system made me study Predictive Index more, until I implemented it in my own company to simplify the recruitment process. No prior HR knowledge or education is required which makes Predictive Index training of top managers a very attractive prospect. Majority of top managers trained in Predictive Index will tell you that this was the most valuable training they received in their entire life. And companies like Nestle, Maersk, BAT, ThoughtWorks and some 100 out of Fortune Magazine’s Global 500 companies around the globe.

A simple assessment of the job you are advertising will give you a behavioral pattern of the right candidate, as well as the right statements to use in the creation of the job advert, that will resonate well with and attract the right candidates to apply. Next, after scrutinizing the applications for eloquence, writing skills and correct qualifications, you invite the potential candidates to complete a survey that takes five to ten minutes online.

Each survey will result in a report and a pattern; invite for interviews only the applicants with the behavioral pattern same or similar to the behavioral pattern of the job. This can save you days of engagement in interviewing people who will tell you what you want to hear but will not necessarily be the right fit for the job.

Once you have the tool that enables you to find a behavioral fit for the job, your interview can focus on discovering competences and evaluating the cultural fit. It sounds too good to be true but it is: Predictive Index is helping organisations achieve their business objectives since 1955, and is based on decades of painstaking research into the employee behavioral needs at the workplace.

Your selection interview can finally become the last check before you welcome someone into your company, without hesitation, knowing that you are employing the right person for the job, with the right talent that’s required to excel in the job. Selection interview finally becomes just that: selecting the best fit among all the great choices.

In an extensive interview in New Vision on Monday 25th April 2016, ED KCCA has given us her view of the achievements of KCCA in the past five years.

KCCA staff some time early March 2016 digging up potholes on Kanjokya Street for repair. Potholes are still gaping open end of April 2016. Meanwhile they were breaking their own law – buying food on the street from a vendor.

Sitting here at Kanjokya Street, looking at that clogged water drain and the potholes carved out over a month ago by KCCA team, I can’t help but wonder why this otherwise smart lady doesn’t see the world through Kampalans’ eyes.

I agree, five years ago she was put into an organisation that was hugely corrupt. Today, comments I hear are that it isn’t so bad any more. She implemented some fantastic solutions like eCitie – which I praised endlessly during the judging of the last ACIA awards because it was one of the most complex and innovative (in our Ugandan terms) application of the year. Also, the train we waited for five years since the first promise, happened! It is allegedly still operating – I haven’t been so can’t confirm, though I want to make a round trip one of these days, just for the nostalgic experience of travelling by train.

Then, mentions of proper systems being put in place to run the KCCA administration; audit to list the assets, improvement in revenue collection, developing schools and hospitals together with partners, increase in revenue collection, increase in garbage collection, arresting non-compliant citizens, investing in youth groups, developing markets etc. All said in the interview is positive and excellent – but is it enough?

On reading the interview the second and the third time, I understood where Jenny draws the sense of achievement. Indeed, administratively and internally, KCCA must have transformed in some sense. I hear there are daily prayers, the place is very clean (although two cleaners asked me for a job), security is checking visitors, there are even a few places to sit. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to sit on a bench in the courtyard because the bench was planted on grass and we all know how touchy KCCA is about stepping on grass – so I stood on the walkway until I was assured by an elderly employee it’s okay to sit on the bench.

You can see things are looking up at KCCA by glancing at the parking yard – all spots are full. Gone are the days you could park at the side parking to go to DFCU, also gone are the days your RAV4 looked decent among he buddies – now it looks shabby and old among all the spanking shiny wheels. So indeed things are better.

Let me not miss to say that everyone is looking so smart, especially if they follow Jenny to a meeting or a presentation to donors: You can easily mistake the team for the cast of LA Law or something, walking confidently, boldly, one step behind Jenny, one person carrying her documents, another with the handbag and the third with phones and tablets, while at least one is circling around the group with a good-sized digital camera, zoom and stuff in tow. That’s how we be, all sassy and all documented for posterity.

Also mentioned in the interview is the City Festival where businesses and partners put together some 1 billion shillings to make it happen for Kampala. A real cool party where everyone is invited but only a few benefit from.

5 years of KCCA. Is it really spectacular?

About two weeks before the KCCA interview, I tweeted this photo. My humble evaluation of Jenny’s 5 years in office. Or – what has KCCA done to change Kampalans’ pain points and what are the respective results. Here’s what I was thinking: let me list what pains us the most and let me express a sincere opinion – is it now better, worse or the same as five years ago?

My favourite slum, Kamwokya. Only a kilometre away from Acacia Mall.

Slums are continuously growing and getting more populated. Not one of our slums was identified as a pilot project for resettlement, urbanisation, infrastructure improvement, build of planned sanitation system, relocation, paving or anything of the sort. Most densely populated areas in Kampala remain filthy and hopeless and – there is no hint that anything good will ever happen to them. On the issue of slums, it’s a fail.

Heaps of garbage in Kamwokya do not differ much from heaps of garbage on Kanjokya Street.

Garbage is overflowing where it never used to. Burning of garbage happens daily from Mukono to Kololo, irrespective of whether the residence is posh or poor. Everyone trying to save the little money by polluting the already heavily polluted air in Kampala. This is directly connected to education – actually the lack of it. KCCA had no communication plan or campaign that will address the issue of educating residents of Kampala on how to sort and dispose their garbage. Besides, garbage collectors should be the ones to make money from sales of recyclable materials. Regarding recycling – KCCA had made zero effort to sensitise, publicise or enable citizens to participate in caring for their environment. Shortlisting and zoning garbage collectors is simply not enough and does not equal to service delivery.

Bodas. Everywhere. What are we doing with these guys?

We registered boda-bodas and then? What? Did we ascertain their riding capabilities? Did we ensure they have two helmets? Did we issue them with stages and areas where they can operate? Did we inspect their bikes for safety features? Did we create a call and despatch centre to enable customers call professionally trained and licensed boda-bodas? Did we mark the lanes for boda-bodas? Did we mark the no-boda zones? Did we train boda-bodas not to drive against the traffic, not to turn or stop abruptly in front of vehicles, not to stop in corners or on zebra crossings, not to block gates, roads and passages? Yet this is the most-efficient mode of transport we have in Kampala. Now, a total failure associated with road accidents, deaths, mugging, rape and many other negative things that happen in our city.

Having a market block one lane on Entebbe Road at Kibuye does not help the traffic buildup that starts from 5.30 am.

Traffic, ah traffic. Does it come as a surprise that a thousand or more new cars that monthly arrive to Uganda will hit our roads in Kampala? Some of our old Kampala cars will be sold to run as specials in villages but most will stay here. The man needs a car, his madam needs a car, his side dish(es) needs a car and so on. Gone are the days when a reasonably-to-do family will have a family car, period. Have our roads widened, multiplied, self-healed in the past five years? What about escape routes? Northern Bypass is as slow as DeWinton Road. Till now, all roads lead to city centre – which you almost always have to travel through, no matter where you’re going.

Enforcer. Waiting for me to give money to beggars so he can pounce and arrest me. Luckily I know the laws!

Enforcement of laws is done only by the principle of the stronger. If it’s a woman selling mivumba or a child selling bananas, let’s send them to Luzira or push them under a moving car. But if it’s a mogul grabbing school land or keeping the hoarding around his hotel construction site for ten years, let’s leave them. If it’s kafunda and boutique owners grabbing the only green park in the city, we love them! If it’s a construction site that collapses and kills people – ‘We told them!’ Enforcement is non-existent and we all know what happens to a city where laws are not respected. No wonder street vendors sell more and more toilet paper these days as we are sinking deeper into it.

Roads and pavements – I scored this with a hint of improvement. Indeed there is one new road I enjoyed a few times and it came with a pavement – that one from Wankulukuku to Nateete. Drainage was done as an afterthought but at least the road is there and it’s really nice, a good diversion out of town towards Entebbe when Clog Tower is impassable. But Lugogo Bypass has remnants of pavements eaten by grass, bushes and erosion yet it is a pathway for thousands of schoolchildren that have no option but to walk on this fast and busy road, hoping that boda-bodas and the rest of the traffic will have mercy and miss them. Priorities are not in place, there is no maintenance of pavements and walkways in these specific areas around schools, hospitals etc.

For the number of cars that have to come into the city, there is no improvement in the parking system or increase in the number of parking spaces. There is no education about parking – why you should park the car and not double-park and block the street. This compared to the need – the number of cars that need to park, is another poor performance mark. Even though we will soon get our first parking house opposite Blacklines House where Mugisha Barbers used to be, I doubt this will solve the deeper parking problem in Kampala. Leave aside I had to park in the bowels of Mabirizi Plaza the other day and I am still deeply scarred by that experience. So a long way to go.

Jenny looking lovely, as always. Photo credit: The Kampala Steward Magazine

Jenny, darling, seems you were focused on internal KCCA issues and cosmetics (first thing you did was to rebrand, last think you did was to run a contest in New Vision for designing your Carnival dress). You have grown an impressive PR machinery that eats well and writes very nice tweets and Facebook posts. Photos are stunning. You are also the Editor in Chief of the Kampala Steward Magazine where you also appear in some very nice pictures. So PR is not new to you but you need to understand it is used as support, not as the main act.

To quote you, Jenny: “Transformation is a journey, not an event. Step-by-step, day-by-day, working with you, Kampala is being transformed.” You block all your critics on social media, depriving yourself and your entire team of the opportunity to hear a different opinion. I say entire team because the guy who handles your Twitter accounts goes blocking people on all of them at once. So no point in saying you work with people because you don’t. You work with your team, the hand-picked ‘yes, ma’am’ crew who don’t care about this city. See your main PR guy sitting comfortably on the commemoration stone – a thing you wouldn’t do anywhere in the world, going to show the level of respect for our past.

Whatever was commemorated on that plaque doesn’t matter. All things, people and means serve to relieve the heavy burden of KCCA PR job. Photo credit: The Kampala Steward Magazine

What do we get? More floods, more garbage, more pollution, more traffic, More theft, more insecurity, more diseases, and indeed more of every single catastrophe that is mounting on Kampala on a daily basis. For that, I profusely thank you but – NO, THANK YOU Jenny.

**** Images refused to place themselves in proper orientation so forgive me if you get a stiff neck.****

This quick phrase rolls off our tongues without a doubt in our minds that it’s true.

But, do we?

A reckless driver who knocked Bruno dead.

A mother who walks by the roadside, holding her child by the hand. The child walks in the middle of the road.

A young man hurling stones at the village dog.

That drunken guy who started a fight with his fisherman friend come enemy, and over that woman who has fifteen kids from eighteen fathers, whose drunken eyes look up to the sky as she is saying “take me” and you wonder if she’s asking the man or God.

That businessman who poured the debris from his construction site onto the road.

A boda who rides with the guy who snatches ladies’ handbags.

A beggar lady who borrows kids from her slum to take them to Kampala road for work.

A fat and ugly woman who stole the kid in the village and gave it to the omuroogo to slaughter and sprinkle her with blood so she can look beautiful and attractive to her man, who has two teenage side dishes he both infected with HIV.

That employee you fired with a termination letter on five pages, listing just a fraction of incidents where money wasn’t properly managed.

That politician who wants to be in power now because it is his turn.

That lady who wakes up every day married to a wrong guy for the wrong reasons, trying so hard to justify the mess she’s in and yet all she wants is to cuddle by her lover’s side.

That woman who brings men home to earn 5,000 while her kids are sleeping on a mat under her bed.

That man who asks that woman to go live for 10,000.

That man who sleeps with every woman in his office and sometimes calls in two of them at the same time. And them who go to his office and thereafter have tea in the pantry, plotting how to fire that single mother who’s not been tasted yet.

A woman who spits in her boss’s tea.

Boss’s wife who belittles that tea-lady.

And so many others, pointless to try to list them all because every day, there will be another disappointment and another reason for God to turn the deaf ear to Uganda.

What have we done for each other to say “we deserve better” with such entitlement? What is our human contribution to another human being – when we fail at “Good morning”?

Until we ask hard questions and give some good answers, we don’t deserve even this much that we got. We are just lucky we are not at each others’ throats because the way we are building, the way we are giving is just not good enough.

We deserve to wake up and begin working towards creating better.

The holiday mood is over and it’s time to get to office and plunge into yet another year of hard work and splendid achievements. Sure, you have your personal dreams to achieve but if you are a CEO or top manager, your work ethics will not allow you to put yourself first.

Half way through the year it will be business as usual, god days, bad days, stressful times and very little time to relax and recharge. A day in March looks the same as a day in November and if you don’t keep tight track and record of your activities, sometimes you can’t even tell the difference.

Objectives. The only thing that will keep your business brain on track and deliver a measurable definition of your success. I know, a lot of people talk about objectives and the SMART formula; most businesses go through objective-setting but results are not really taking anyone splendidly ahead. It’s a tough economy, difficult business environment, there is no money, people are docile – we can find a million more excuses.

But what will happen if you do this exercise properly? Pick up your strategic plan for 2016. Call in your key managers and define, together, what should be your key overall business objectives for 2016. Three to five, no more.

Look at each department and define their key objectives that ensure each department supports and fully focuses on delivery to overall business objectives. Again, three to five key objectives.

Now – the tough thing. Do you have the right person running each department, the right driver who will deliver to you? How can you know? I’m sure all your managers are great people but I’m also sure some of them don’t quite deliver.

I use Predictive Index to define the behavioral profiles of the key people who lead teams that deliver on business plans and business objectives. The beauty is that I am able to define each behavioral profile through a simple and automated process. Business objectives can change everyone’s job objectives – this means job requirements can change so much that the current person in the job loses comfort, confidence and competence to fulfill the new role. Instead of insisting, it’s better to redeploy and find a more-suitable person for the role then to ruin the incumbent completely. Objective-setting must reduce stress and ambiguity.

Once you define key objectives for each department and ensure each head of department is able to cope with the new objectives with minimum support, you are in for a smoother sailing. Heads of departments work with their team leaders and employees to define individual job objectives, keeping all eyes on the overall objectives for the business.

Sounds simple but it isn’t. It is in our human nature to do these deeply personal administrative exercises in the most superficial and rosy way. We will write things that look beautiful on paper but will not focus on executing them. Daily routine that we are so well used to, soon takes over. Objectives are put aside, together with the job description, and are soon forgotten.

Best trick to remember your objectives: pin them up everywhere you can see them. I have our Vision and Mission pinned up everywhere: even in the toilets, together with our Quality Policy. Any visual presence is better than none so define your own visual spaces where to your objectives will be physically present, in front of your eyes daily.

Do the constant checks. Draw achievement graphs, have them pinned up in your visual field. There is a huge value in these visual reminders because they demand that you see, and think. There is a huge satisfaction in adding successful results to your graphs, as well as a huge source of motivation when having to note down failure. Discovering fails on time is one single management tool that can help you keep the business on track.

I believe you have to review your objectives every two weeks, and everyone else’s under your direct management, at least once a month. There is a business tool that is dreaded by everyone I have ever worked with in Uganda: weekly and monthly report. I hope you have a better experience with reporting but this is just not something that comes naturally to advertising industry, and the excuses are so many – I could write a book. Yet accurate and regular reporting is the easiest way to keep everyone in the loop and everyone on track.

Never make the reporting a part of any of the objectives; rather make it a condition of the job, like coming to work, or coming to work on time. This is the only way you will receive reports and be able to evaluate success achieved by team members who directly report to you.

If you are a CEO or department manager, don’t forget to give feedback. Most reluctance in reporting that I have continuously faced, stems from employees’ assumption that the report is not being read by anyone. Read it, evaluate it, deliver feedback real fast; this will keep your employees engaged and make them feel valued and close to you. It’s the best way to cross the abyss created by the fear of authority I once wrote about.

Set yourself for success in 2016 with this easy process to follow:

1. From Strategic or business plan, define 3-5 key business objectives (follow the SMART formula)
2. Set your own objectives completely in line with business objectives
3. Set objectives with your direct reports, 3-5, completely in line with your own and overall business objectives
4. Evaluate your own results frequently, at least twice a month
5. Have visual representation of your objectives and results near you
6. Receive reports and give feedback frequently

In business, you are the most difficult asset to manage. Make your management task easier by pledging and fully demonstrating commitment to Management by Objectives and leading by example. Let me know when you see the difference.

Uganda is relatively immature when it comes to employee ethics, business etiquette, professionalism and proper conduct at the workplace. I will illustrate this with a simple example: observe the time-keeping at your own office on a rainy day, or arrival of attendees for a meeting or a training session. And this is just the simple requirement of their job – to arrive on time.

Almost every sector in Uganda complains of corruption at all levels of employment, including top management. Therefore everyone’s assumption is that they can buy their way into any deal and buy their way out of any trouble. Currency of corruption is majorly money when dealing with authorities but in organisations and at inter-personal level this currency is often friendship, praise, sex, relationship, protection, nepotism and so on.

Very common scenario where employees’ stay in the organization is shortened by circumstances is getting involved with a colleague. A female employee in a (usually secret) relationship with her colleague may still be excellent performer but chances are she will involve herself in the job both professionally and emotionally; any situation that involves the employees in a relationship may impact everyone’s performance. Since all our workplaces in Uganda create cliques and thrive on gossip for in-job entertainment, the consequence of such situation is that the female employee finds herself under pressure from all sides and something’s got to give, most often in form of her resignation.

Male employees face a different kind of common scenarios. It is usually either excessive popularity among employees or the opposite, not finding a friend to lean on.

Hugely popular employees get away with a lot; they will mostly shift their responsibilities to others and use the time they had freed to build empathetic, proactive, positive relationships in the workplace. They will continue building their popularity in order to gain more favours from colleagues who look up to them. These charmers require tight focus and clear deliverables with frequent reviews because they are likely to have the whole team happily do their job while they steal all the praise. This behavior alone can create rifts and dissatisfaction within the team, when the reward is not equally distributed to everyone who contributed to success. The charmer won’t tell you that his work was done by everyone else because he wants the popularity and success only for himself. Team reaction is often a silent strike, where they refuse to do any work under the instruction of the charmer.

The unpopular employee will either draw the wrath of the whole organization on himself or quietly fail to connect to anyone, including the job he’s hired to do. If you have no one to bring you into the politics of the organization you are left alone to dry, like a fish in the sand. Not a promising start for your career development.

The examples given are based on personalities and it is these personalities that do or do not fit the organisation’s culture. Hence it is hugely important to define the culture of your organisation, what it stands for and what kind of people it wants to attract. If you have the HR department, their job should be to constantly and consistently convey the messages related to organisation’s culture to all employees, new or old. Consistent reinforcement of the organisation’s culture message is the uniting factor for the whole organisation.

So, is it okay to fire and hire and how is the turnover affecting the organisation and its people? Of course, letting go of an employee is never a pleasant task for anyone in the organisation, even if it happens during probation, after a short time. Employees make friends immediately – remember, everyone wants to be accepted and popular and the first days in the job are used to achieve this. So when the decision is made that someone is not suitable for the role, the whole organisation is more likely to mourn the departure of the colleague than to objectively see that the person was the wrong fit.

Hiring process is what management must rely on for success of each new hire. Organisations spend huge amounts of money for onboarding, induction, mentoring, coaching – only to eventually let go of someone who turns unsuitable for the role. Therefore the emphasis must be placed on hiring for success.

I have experienced many a wrong hire in my career. My company’s culture focuses on giving opportunities to people who want to start a career in advertising. My agency has shaped and produced many specialists in the advertising industry and experienced a lot of heartbreak when people had to leave. I got better on the hiring by using Predictive Index to determine individual’s suitability for any particular job. With time, wrong hires were phased out and a consistent, strong team was put in place.

When someone has to leave, there is emotional disturbance at the workplace but employees are free to continue relationships outside work. It is important that the employees clearly understand the reasons for letting go of their colleague. Soon enough, they move on to looking after their own benefits. After a lapse of time, when they unearth all the shortcomings of the former colleague and see the scope of potential damage to the organisation if that person remained in employment, they are relieved and life goes on.

Until we arrive to the level of professionalism where every employee is clear on his job requirements and deliverables, where inter-personal communication focuses on job delivery for the benefit of teams and organisations, businesses will continue to hire and fire. There will be heartbreak and unpopular managers who are tasked with making unpopular decisions, for as long as our focus is on our selfish, personal interests and relationships. The day we start focusing on professional job delivery and overall benefit of he organisations we work for, it will become difficult to hire and fire because everyone will be doing their job, and doing a great job at that.

There is a special breed of ad men in Uganda who I call the “self-proclaimed advertising gurus” because, truth be told, they hold little capacity for knowledge acquisition and even less capacity for proper knowledge processing and implementation. They are extremely damaging to their agencies and clients alike.

The individuals I’m describing here fit pretty much into the same scenario: a guy – it has to be a guy; little chubby or just skidding off the fitness line because of all after-work beers and tequila shots. Losing his eye-sight for not eating carrots as a kid, so glasses give a hint of sophisticated, quasi-intelligent look. Hair must be a bit of a mess. It’s not dreads because he thinks dreads will make him look gay but it’s those whatchamacallit short tangles that can be combed if there’s a serious client meeting in the offing. There will be a tragic story about his difficult childhood somewhere in the mix. He’ll tell you how he’s self-made orphan who lived on the streets and scavenged for life, paid for his own schooling and suffered immensely till he got his first break. Into advertising. And now – he owns the place.

He’s big and loud. He laughs loud and in such a way that everyone hears him, even the neighbours want to know what he’s laughing about, thirty times a day, so loudly that he stops everyone’s work in the tracks. Interestingly, people around him (after getting to know him) don’t laugh much – they are probably way beneath him on the intelligence scale so they don’t understand the humour and sarcasm – or they simply don’t have the time for his blunt, sexist and rude bullshit.

His talk is all about his own greatness, his success, his achievements. You may think the agency that employs this guy has just won national lottery in the US or Germany, he paints himself in colours of pure gold and his contribution to the agency, in his words, is every day worth his own weight in pure gold. But his success with clients is – without agency team’s push and support – pure talk and no signature on the dotted line.

Clients love him though – especially female clients. His sleazy ways of spilling his charm bring about unnecessary winds formed by batting of eyelashes in any girl-filled meeting room. He picks the ones to flirt with, with almost surgical precision. He doesn’t stop at flirting, situation permitting. He will go all the way but in a creepy, secretive way so no two girls know about each other and yet they may well be sharing the same office, in some cases even the same desk.

Everything is a game for him and – everyone is game. He will take his sweet time toying with his work, ‘researching’ as he says, ‘beefing it up’ but on the day of presentation you will be in deep shit if you don’t have an alternative presentation or if you didn’t have a gun on his head for the past 48 hours.

Girls are game, best game for him. Agency juniors, especially those assigned to him for coaching, freshly recruited, inferior to him, vulnerable and available. They laugh at his jokes after  a few drinks. They easily share of themselves – after all, he’s their mentor – and they easily end up in bed with him, filling their workdays with regret after the bliss is over (or as soon as he jumps at another one).

A child or two will happen as a consequence. A few rings will be placed on a few fingers. That “Diana” ring that you buy inflight on KQ is always handy; his wife never got one so even if she finds it in his pocket it will be her surprise gift. He carefully ensures that his girls never become friends with one another because they’d be staring at each others rings and wondering WTF.

He is pompous and self-absorbed. He knows it all. His way is the way to lead the agency ahead. He knows the best solutions, he knows what will work, he knows all the insights – with not a day of research, not a moment in the field with consumers, not a question to anyone. He gets it all on the internet. Including complete creative solutions to slap the Creative Director on the face with. All downloaded as it’s been implemented in other markets before. All future award-winning stuff.

He is the best commercial brain ever. He can add two and two and read his own payslip – he can, I assure you. But to viably distribute the budget of any sorts – including his own salary – is a trick. He is in the MDs office once every two months with requests for advance. Remember, he earns as much as all the agency juniors put together, but it’s never enough for his lavish lifestyle. When he gets a ‘no’ the manager is a total shit person, no matter what. And the world will know it because his loud mouth will be talking and building interesting stories to tell. His imagination will add meticulous detail to substantiate on the credibility of his story.

He has nothing nice to say about the people from his past. He severs all the ties. He poisons relationships. He takes premeditated steps to break people apart – without realising that the paths cross, slowly but generously, and people meet again and again. His world is himself, his stories and unfortunate people who believe him.

The day he leaves is the day everyone sighs a breath of relief. The day he steps into the competing agency is the day we don’t celebrate – we actually feel sorry for the competition. There is a reason he is not starting his own business – he wouldn’t know where to begin. It is also uniquely easier getting jobs by agency-hopping (some of the hot gurus are moving countries as well). Sure, he has a great CV because that probation of three months here and six months there all of a sudden becomes several years with managing all of the agency’s accounts, even the ones the agency never had. The CV that had huge gaps becomes a hot one. Pity managers in East Africa don’t call each other to check who is it they are employing.

But they eventually realise who their advertising guru is: lazy, alcohol-comatose, sleep-deprived, pompous slow-motion guy who comes to work each morning only to sleep off the crazy night before. And soon enough, the boot is on the ass.

The resort is now on doing something new, like starting a digital agency or becoming a social media guru, or writing a blog or – for a few wise ones – sober up, get hold of a job and actually do it well and shut up about their own greatness for a while. All of a sudden we have these specialists who know it all about the media so new that it is still appearing on the budgets of only about 5% of advertising clients. There’s all that expertise and knowledge you’d think you are hiring the whole starting Facebook team itself in this one single man. And the wheels keep turning. Clients keep buying into it, agencies keep getting burnt, life goes on.

He thrives and survives. Until less and less drinks are bought at bars, until all the jokes are told, until all true colours come out on the surface. For such people parade their principles on the highway while their character travels through the dark forests.

You will spot this character in many people around you. Don’t judge them too harshly as some can still be enlightened. Some were led down the wrong path by their mentors, the earlier gurus. Some just don’t know better but are willing to shape up. Assess the damage they can cause rather the value they can create and decide carefully, knowing what you want to get out of them. And get it first.

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For avoidance of doubt, there are several people I personally worked with who shaped the character described above, it is not about one single person although that one was a particularly diligent and quick learner.