CEOs - Please Don't Trade Your Flexible Management Style For The More Tempting Adventurous Type

Australia experiences the furry of the bushfire season perhaps as frequently as Kenya's Maasai Mara hosts visitors out to experience the pasture-triggered wildebeest migration that comes about twice annually across the Mara River, to and from the Serengeti. Interestingly, as these two events independently unfold astride the far-flung lengths of the Indian ocean, they are as much weather-dependent as they are instincts-driven.

For a long time, the ignition and spread of the Australian fires were attributed solely to the friction of highly flammable plant matter set vigorously against each other by raging winds that also fan the same fires into a real hell on earth for humans and animals alike. More recently, another creature was added to the list of deadly fire spreading agents.

The Australian Kite, very much like its eagle and hawk relatives, is gifted with excellent vision. From very high up in the sky, the Kite focuses its legendary eye lenses to sight rodents and snakes in their real-life sizes. This feat enables it to determine with precision if the prey in focus merits its routine energy-sapping attack or not. Severally, these birds have been spotted while skillfully ferrying burning sticks interchangeably with their beaks and talons. For maximum effect, they drop them off from precise points into the thick dry grass. And soon enough, as the birds circle in the air expectantly, the migratory paths of the fire-fleeing prey below become apparent and they make very easy pickings for the birds. Sadly, the unforgiving fires rage on and decimate anything on their paths long after the hunt is over.

Satisfaction comes at a very huge expense. In the dreadful aftermath, the collateral damage from the long trail of unintended consequences is viewed as an act that nature willingly took against itself. No one goes to jail for it despite our knowledge of the true arsonist. The kite's actions are like those of the adventurous manager.

This bird's role in the ecosystem's food chain is of a micro nature and should go nearly unnoticed in the wider scheme of things. But it goes beyond its scope and affects the macro environment in ways that it can neither reverse, nor at best attempt to minimise on the effects of its lethal acts. That is how adventurers managers go out of their depth.

On a totally different tangent, the flexible manager that we all ought to be ensures that everyone in the team plays their position well. He will tool them and give them the space needed to work but will not let things get out of hand.

The folly in the adventurous manager is that they had the qualities to get them to the position but they lacked the wisdom necessary to thrive. Like the Kite, they demonstrated vision. To survive, they showed initiative and intelligence by lighting the fire to keep the organisational goals alive when under close supervision. But they never cared to determine how much wastage was acceptable when allowed to take decisions on their own and so they burned down the stock-filled warehouse.

Several rodents and reptiles get consumed in the fires and the Kites go for many days thereafter without fresh supplies from the same area just because they were after that one rat or serpent. In order to hunt down one snake, potentially, a thousand must wastefully fry in the fire. Adventurous managers never weigh the consequences before acting. They raze organizations to the ground and then like Steve Urkle in the sitcom: "Family Matters", they ask: "did I really do that"? By then it is too late to recover.

Some of the adjectives that go with the word 'adventurous' include: venturesome, daring, daredevil, rash, reckless, foolhardy, and mean. It can loosely be defined as: "exposing oneself to danger more than required by good sense".

The flexible management style allows people to learn from their mistakes because that is how we gain experience but it often will be within reason. Unfortunately, the adventure-loving kinds are not as approachable for counsel or review.

In the '90s in this country, we had an expatriate manager who was deployed by his parent multinational group to manage the local subsidiary. When he arrived, the company had a functional training school that lent it an edge over rivals. By all standards, its workforce was visibly superior. Added to this asset were several strategically located buildings that beefed up its balance sheet whilst providing it with suitable branch locations and a good-sized staff complement at a time when the economy and technology still supported their continued employment.

Within a very short time, the asset-stripping began. The training school that sat on a reasonably sized piece of land with its well-developed infrastructure was hived off and sold to a willing buyer. The proceeds immediately went to the company's bottom line. This earned the CEO a handsome bonus for exceeding the budgeted profits objective that year. But the company instantly lost its competitive edge and went on slow puncture mode for a very long time. Expatriates and senior management still went abroad for training but the bulk of the locals had no place from where to upskill anymore. It's only in recent times that advancements in training-centred technologies have come in to bridge the gaps albeit, with everyone else moving at the same pace.

The following year, the buildings across the country were gone and this time around, it affected several jobs. As the murmurs of dismay got louder, the finger-pointing seemed to invite sporadic trigger-happy thoughts. The CEO responded by acquiring a military-grade vehicle with bulletproofing and enhanced security features. His personal security was beefed up too. Interestingly enough, the presence of bosses from the head office coincided with a violent students strike at the University of Nairobi. They got trapped in the stone-fest on University way. The indiscriminate pelting gave every car on the road an equal chance of damage save for the wonder car. The CEO's point was made without any further struggle to justify the purchase. The terrified executives thanked him for his foresight given that they emerged from the incident unscathed. Talk about the ironies of serendipity and profiting from one's blunders and at the expense of other people's miseries.

Whereas at that time, another multinational in the same industry sold off its training school too, it was the pioneering actions of the first company that set the bar for the rest. Again those adjectives: venturesome, daring, daredevil, rash, reckless, foolhardy, and mean describe the episode above.

For a very long time after the schools went, the industry in question within itself, experienced an increased back and forth in the poaching of staff and a steep rise in emoluments doled out to entice experienced staffers from the competition. Someone had to foot the training bill. The big two players, having done away with training, made the rest of the industry a dependable college from where they sourced ready-made staffers. But not for too long either because some of the smaller players went on an impressive growth trajectory. Things went full circle and they raided the big two mercilessly. Those school discarding decisions cost the entire industry dearly because they were made for selfish reasons. The desire for a higher bonus at the micro (company) level had ramifications at the macro (industry) level. Such rapid staff movements raised all manner of risks for the organisations, customers and country as a whole. The fire burns on years later but the kites are long gone.

Today, the two companies that sold their training schools are no longer the two indisputable industry leaders that they once were because local outfits have overtaken them partly because of their adventurous management decisions from far back in the day. And please don't let anyone fool you about the foresight in such actions in retrospect of today's revolutionary technologies. At that time, they had no clue or reading of the future. It was purely bonus driven.

And still within Kenya, in the 1990s our South African brothers matched northwards in what seemed more like celebrations marking the collapse of apartheid than the actual strategic business moves that they ought to have been. The southerners arrived in style. They set up all manner of businesses and talked really big. But after all this shebang, the Indaba failed to kick off as it lacked the numbers. The economy did very little to let us know how to resonate with the beats and we showed no corresponding excitement. (In Kenyan lingo, we innocently pulled a stoneface, and a proper shtan at that on most of the affair.) Multichoice and Stanbic are the obvious exceptions that have had the endurance to go the full haul but on the backs of a huge UN-led expatriate community and the local business community.

On the mass-market side of things, the results were largely disappointing for a number of reasons.

First, we must agree that the onslaught was a big adventure because too many wrong assumptions were made.

The copy and paste approach failed the culture test. We had the same skin colour but ours was a different operating software that never integrated at all with theirs. No one really took their time to understand us.

Kenya at the time also had a very tiny middle class largely comprised of poorly paid civil servants and hardly with any disposable income. The concept of consumerism being advanced was not sustainable given the circumstances. The credit card culture preferred down south was novel for us and banks shied away from the mass market in favour of government bonds.

English is often equated to a good education. That it was widely spoken here made many South Africans believe that just as it was back home at the time, it was a sign that we had money. In Kenya, money does not always follow the educated or well-spoken types. They took a pretty good bite of this bait but it all came to naught.

Most of the guys brought in to head operations here were like fish out of water. We needed amphibians. They had no local experience save for their fine South African touch. That made their decision-making process very adventurous because they were thinking for a South African market and executing it in Kenya. Most of them closed shop and returned home to answer that hard question: "what really happened"? Hasty decision making lacks the benefits of the sound and well-grounded experience behind informed decision making.

But today, with better assumptions and several fitting amendments down the road, they have managed to make remarkable inroads. This time around the indaba is real. Make no mistake about that.

We cannot afford to laugh at them for what goes around comes around.

Let me bring those adjectives, here again: venturesome, daring, daredevil, rash, reckless, foolhardy, and mean.

These are the same words that describe many of our compatriots who find it hard to adjust themselves to the realities in Tanzania. When we take our Kenyan mentality with us to this country, we find ourselves in trouble. When you apply template-based behaviours in a new environment, you court trouble. What was otherwise a flexible management style in one environment ends up slipping away into one of an adventurous kind in another, and soon, your micro-decisions affect your macro environment. When you are out of your culture station, it is critical that you understand the ground rules so that you are functionally configured for your new environment. Now, that is a flexible management style at its best.

I once worked for an organisation that was actively growing its regional presence. In some of the markets, we encountered work culture challenges. They were slower-paced than our strategic plan had anticipated. We already had our objectives cast in stone and time was fast ticking away. We needed to urgently overcome the resistance. The solution lay in getting totally fresh people with no industry experience, save for an exceptionally good attitude and good exposure to our own operating culture.

Those we selected had been to university in Kenya and this helped to minimise the cultural challenges associated with learning.

We brought them over to Nairobi and rented a house for them so that we simulated a homely environment as we set formal house rules. That home-to-work-and-back-home experience was just as crucial for us as it was for them at the time to discuss and learn from one another's daily encounters. The house arrangement helped us to cut off entertainment-related temptations associated with hotel settings. We trained them extensively for three months. The camaraderie that developed from their living together proved to be a great asset back at work. It made it easier to drive and sustain desirable agendas widely.

They hit the ground running back home and delivered as if they had been working with us for a much longer time. The resounding success encouraged us to bring in a few more cohorts, and they too never disappointed us at all. These people exercised a flexible management system and helped their colleagues to shake off the waiting-for-the-boss mentality. This subsidiary experienced unprecedented growth on the back of a positive cultural infusion and fresh legs.

Had we gone down to that country to push for change within the workforce just as it was when we took over, we most probably would have ended up applying an adventurous type management approach. Dale Carnegie, in his book: "How To Win Friends And Influence People". Sums it up for us: "a man convinced against his will, is of the same opinion still". Once we had their will, we won them over. I credit everyone who was involved in this process for the great results.

A flexible management style often has acts of courage to it but the adventurous style has a reckless aspect to it. Courage and recklessness are worlds apart. Courage is about overcoming your fears to do what is right. Recklessness amounts to sheer thoughtlessness and many times it is misinterpreted by the adventurer as a gift of freedom for their loyalty.

Most adventurous managers find their way into top seats through demonstrated loyalty to the powers that be. All that the bosses want in such a multinational set up or in organisations that are 100% employee-run are compliant people. They are brought in to forestall the actions of competing forces. A team of loyal managers is such a precious thing for the ambitious senior executive who hopes to run things well from the top. Sometimes, the only one available to keep the agenda going is the adventurous type. They grope in the dark when left alone to run the organisation. And for a while, the godfather covers up things and when they heat up, these types get transferred to safer grounds. The hard-working flexible type manager is now sent in to clean up and get things back to normal.

When the adventurous manager has a score to settle with someone within the office, he will quickly assemble an attack team. Normally this would be against someone that he views as a threat to his continued stay perhaps because this guy is better qualified, or has a lot more experience than him. A similar situation arose in an organisation that was well-regulated. The principals stationed abroad wanted their less experienced man at the helm but the regulator insisted on having a different Principal Officer with the requisite experience and the technical qualifications for all correspondences with them. What ensued, was a no holds barred fight between the CEO and the Principal Officer who doubled up as the General Manager in charge of one of the business divisions.

The CEO would normally have his secretary draft the letters and then pass them on to the General Manager for signing and onward transmission to the regulator. But often, he rephrased the letters without seeking the concurrence of the CEO who officially was the boss but technically was not recognised by the regulator. The GM always meant well because he never painted anyone in bad light, but the CEO caught feelings.

So the attack dogs got assembled and with fine toothcombs, they managed to pin down the General Manager for authorising a purchase that exceeded his mandate by 50 bob. The CEO often exceeded his approval mandates by wider margins but he was not the one under investigation.

The GM was kicked out of the company and the CEO assumed the role of the Principal Officer. He filed the changes with the regulator in writing and went out to celebrate this feat with his loyal team. Nothing unusual happened for a long while and to him, all was well.

The annual licence renewal season arrived and all the industry players applied for it. Three months down the road, the regulator advised the public through a newspaper advertisement of all the licenced players. This particular company was missing from the list simply because the organisation did not have all its correspondences signed by a compliant Principal Officer. So technically, they never applied for the licence renewal despite them having submitted the paperwork.

Additionally, all was not well with the books of accounts besides, several anonymous letters touching on the CEO's conduct had streamed in.

The sacked GM, meanwhile, sued the company for wrongful dismissal and won his case. The company was forced to reinstate him at a time when the regulators demanded a change of leadership as a condition for the licence renewal. The regulator insisted on a local manager and the GM was grudgingly given the position of CEO.

What followed was a complete cleanup and all the attack dogs were out of their jobs as the former CEO was airborne back home. We must be thankful for regulators whose timely interventions save companies of adventurous managers. The economy can Ill-afford them for we already have many kites to deal with at this instant.