There are few professions that give one a latitude to excel at different jobs. Accountancy is one of them. A master at numbers and a bedrock of key decision making across the business, there are few fulfilling career options like becoming a professional accountant. You would be right to call me an accidental accountant. Limited career guidance during our secondary school times meant that we drifted our aspirations to professions that were common in our rural communities. When you were sick, you would go to the doctor or nurse at the local dispensary. When the bicycle broke down, you took…

In organizations, we have gotten so many departments; Human Resources, Finance & Administration, Sales, etc. Do we really need all these departments? For example, if you a HR department, what value do they put on the table? What are the key focus areas they should be held responsible for? If you don’t ask such questions, the chances of having people in HR who just come to sit, create a lot of chaos in the organization are very high. HR role is not to recruit. Their role if it ever exists is to facilitate departmental recruitments. What do I mean by…

As a leader, you are going to have huge challenges if you don’t make the right choices. Which kind of markets do you go into? Which kind of people do you employ? Are you going to focus on brick and mortar as a financial institution or leverage from technology, which kind of technology to deploy? What choices are you making in your business as a chief executive to move ahead? Leadership is about choices, either you choose A or B. when you choose A, it means you deliberately ignore B. The biggest challenge with mediocre leadership is trying to be…

Continuation of point 4 #5 Failure to prioritize and finance what matters most As a leader, you need to know what is in your way to effective strategy execution. There are certain things as a leader you need to get right. And alignment or having insider things speak together is very important. It is like having a car not well aligned. If you are driving through a straight road, put your hands off the stirring wheel as the car moves, if the wheels are not well aligned, the car will tend to veer off. To drive in a straight path, you must…

Continuation of point 3 #4  Lack of effective communication Ask all your top managers in a meeting to write down the top three strategic challenges to the business and how they are fixing it. Chances of getting different answers are high. And that is the diagnosis for poor strategy clarity. Turn your meetings into productive meetings. Have clear targets for each of your managers and standard reporting formats to enable reporting consistency. Poor articulation of the common target to all departments is a huge roadblock when it comes to effective strategy execution.  You have HR thinking their focus is hiring people…