We all have a right to voice our opinions on any issue, but we also have a responsibility to make such contributions from well informed and objective perspectives.

What you’re about to read is a true personal story. The education and information I offer through this article can help many – if they keep an open mind.

You see, most of us have known the manufacturing multinational the story below is about, for most of our lives.

Most of us drink their products without sparing a thought for how they keep their operations running profitably to pay salaries and declare dividends to shareholders. This, despite their having to deal with the erratic and harsh climate in Nigeria’s socio-economic environment – that we all complain about!

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Tayo Solagbade’s
Performance Improvement IDEAS
(PI Squared) Newsletter

NB: This PI Squared newsletter will be published weekly, on Mondays, in place of the Speaking/Web Marketing IDEAS newsletter, starting from today – 15th February 2016. I’m reinventing my Monday newsletter content and theme, to accommodate my vision of serving the growing audience of serious minded individuals and organizations reaching out to me, with information, education. news and research findings designed to help them do what they do better.

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How Long Should Good, Lasting Change to Prosperity Take to Implement in a Badly Abused, Nearly Crippled Socio-Economic Entity? [Real Life Case Study of a Struggling Multinational Manufacturer That Turned Its Fortunes Around vs Prospects for a Nation’s Economic Revival]

We all have a right to voice our opinions on any issue, but we also have a responsibility to make such contributions from well informed and objective perspectives.

What you’re about to read is a true personal story. The education and information I offer through this article can help many – if they keep an open mind.

You see, most of us have known the manufacturing multinational the story below is about, for most of our lives.

Most of us drink their products without sparing a thought for how they keep their operations running profitably to pay salaries and declare dividends to shareholders. This, despite their having to deal with the erratic and harsh climate in Nigeria’s socio-economic environment – that we all complain about!

Despite all that goes wrong in Nigeria, companies like this one I served in continue to forge ahead, doing what they do.

Few of us however ever stop to wonder:

How do they do it, when our governments struggle? How do they recover when things go wrong for them?

I have been a part of those processes in such companies, and that is why I know we can all learn a lot from those who run those organisations and keep them going for decades like they do.

In the rest of this piece, I share my insights based a true story from the first 4 years of my stay (between the ages of 24 and 28) in that company.

If you keep an open mind, I guarantee you will come away with useful insights.

I once had the unique privilege of participating in a major change implementation process involving turning around the fortunes of the Nigerian arm of multinational socio-economic entity run by European expatriates in collaboration with Nigerian colleagues.

That experience is what equips me to see what most others miss (or simply refuse to see). It gives me an advantage of a superior perspective.

For that reason I feel obligated to share my insights, with reference ti a bigger socio-economic entity like Nigeria, especially in light of the uninformed conclusions I see many drawing, in a bid to assess the current government after its first year in office.

I was recruited as a Graduate Management Trainee (Technical Function) in October 1994 along with 11 others.

The organisation was limping badly – operationally and financially, following the devastating ban on wheat importation, and as a result of poor management, that had necessitated appointment of the new leadership that welcomed us.

They told us we were to be trained as a new generation of managers, in the drive to get the company fully back on its feet, to achieve improved output and profits over time.

The changes that had to implemented were varied, harsh, and sometimes not popular. Cost cutting was commonplace, and in production it manifested in form of frequent Variable Cost Reduction trials.

To implement needed changes, the parent company had sent in “PH” (his initials) – a reputed no nonesense turnaround specialist with an intimidating track record of getting desired results.

Sources in the grapevine had it that he’d risen through the ranks, right from the shop floor, and so knew the business inside out. He wasted no time in asserting himself, and soon began pushing belt tightening Best Practice initiatives requiring smart repair and maintenance of decades old machines considered spent, with a view to producing output rivalling that from new plants!

Some old (Nigerian) hands in senior positions kicked against the proposed changes and new philosophy openly and behind closed doors.

PH and his team took note but kept pushing. We the new breed were soon inducted, trained and redeployed to different sites.

Periodic restructuring, retrenching and retraining of other staff also happened as time went on.

PH left at a point I cannot recall, but not before the needed initial strategic changes had been set in motion. People willing to ACCEPT the new ways of doing things had been retained, while those assessed to be unwilling or unable to adjust, had been let go.

I’ll never forget the phrase “a lean and fit organisation”.

That phrase was drummed repeatedly into our heads. That was what the new company envisioned was to evolve into.

By 1998, a new workplace philosophy and culture had been entrenched, and many of us had been assigned key roles to play – some (like me) getting trained by the company’s corporate Best Practice Champions to facilitate workplace organisation changes in our breweries.

Around this period, the desired results had began to emerge in form of consistently improved outputs and sales.

The Variable Costs Reduction initiatives enabled us evolve ways to lower operating costs without losing output or damaging product quality.

The result was that profit margins grew without the company needing to raise selling prices. I saw this happen and it excited me greatly. This is why today I keep telling my Farm CEO clients to find ways to increase their profits without raising prices, as a means of mitigating the harsh impact of the rising input prices they face.

At a point, we had done so well – with those same old machines previously considered “spent” – that money made from sales had been enough to purchase a brand new bottling line, reportedly one of the fastest in Africa at the time!

Suddenly, all those wise “senior managers with many years on the job” who’d complained about the futility and needless hardship of producing with such old, leaky and rickety machines looked silly – on hindsight!

At least to me they did, because I’d been opportuned to witness the BEFORE and AFTER realities of the “changes” that had been implemented during the 2 to 4 year period that had passed!

I went on to play more active roles in influencing many more positive workplace changes (using my self-taught spreadsheet automation skills) by drawing inspiration from what I’d witnessed and participated in with regard to improving production operations in the company.

What I knew gave me the conviction to push my ideas, initiatives and solutions forward, even when supposedly wiser/more experienced senior colleagues scoffed or raised objections often to preserve the status quo.

I kept pushing knowing that I could over time develop my approach or strategy in a way that would deliver results they would welcome.

Guess what?

I did!

In fact, by the time I quit the company to go into self-employment building and selling custom spreadsheet apps for a living (as I’ve been doing for 14 years now), I’d gained companywide recognition for using my spreadsheet automation skills to develop apps that replaced paper based data handling and report generation in the departments I worked. Click here to read details in my resume.

So much so, that other departmental and sectional heads approached me to help them develop similar solutions for use by their team members.

Over 4 of the custom apps I built were adopted for formal brewery level reporting. The best part of my story was that I did all that in my spare time while still working full time in the company as a brewer/manager.

I got no extra pay, neither was I given time off from work (I should add that it never occurred to me to ask, because I enjoyed doing it)!

As a result, I tended to literally live in the brewery – leaving late (sometimes past midnight) and arriving early (often before 5a.m).

So you see, I had it tough during those early “change” years in that company, but the results that I saw accrue to the company and to us, the individuals in it, (though they took 2 to 4 years to arrive), taught me that real lasting change from a bad socio-economic situation to one that is close to the ideal one desires, will often not happen quickly or without prolonged pains/hardship.

To think otherwise would be foolhardy.

What matters is having the right leadership driving the change.

The decision makers in the company I worked for ensured that happened, and success came as a result.

Now, coming back to Nigeria…

I believe Nigerians chose the right leader – in Muhammadu Buhari, during the last (2015) presidential elections – to drive the needed change.

However, compared to the company I worked for, Nigeria is a much larger socio economic entity.

At the risk of stating the obvious, it is an entire country with multiple nationalities of people numbering a quarter of a billion people!

In addition, Nigeria has suffered myriad forms of abuse at the hands of a series of leaders.

On top of that she has detractors (actively working to create difficult conditions for progressive governance), who unlike the CEO of my company, the nation’s president cannot simply layoff or ask to “leave”!

All of the above, and more, make any suggestion that Nigeria’s fortunes should have improved within one year of a new leadership in power, too much of an irresponsible joke.

It took the company I worked in close to 4 solid years to regain any semblance of the stability it desired, despite the times not being as harsh as they are today.

This is why I believe that to expect Nigeria to get back on its feet faster, or to judge the new government incompetent after only one year in office, following extensive bastardisation of the nation’s resources that happened before it took over, makes no sense whatsoever.

As far as I’m concerned, I only expect to begin seeing tangible fruits of this new government’s current labours from 2 full years after it has been in power.

And I’ll only be prepared to pass any form of judgement on their performance at the end of their 4th year in office.

So times are hard, but they are the result of preceding years of mismanagement which this new government has to start with. Like it happened with the company I worked for, tough decisions and changes will have to be taken, made and endured by everyone involved.

Complaining and blaming the current crop of leaders will not help matters. Instead we must join our hearts and hands to support this new team to succeed – for all our sakes!

SDN Blog™

New posts from last week*

Monday:

[Tuesday]:

[Wednesday]:

[Thursday]:

[Friday]:

Evaluating and improving Your Poultry Layers Farm Performance – Useful Resource URLs (Based on Real Life Correspondence With a Farm CEO)

[Saturday]:

Common Sense Evaluation of ROI from Your Social Media Marketing (Hint: A Busy “EMPS” Driven Facebook or Twitter Page is No Guarantee of Sales)

[Sunday]:

Protected: Selling Your ExcelVB Solutions – Example of Promotional Strategy: Boost Hospital/Clinics Records Management Using Smart ExcelVB Automation [Hint: Custom MS Excel-VB app built for a Lagos-Nigeria based Medical Clinic]

Protected: THE FARM CEO (Issue 47): Meet “IFAMA” – the International Food and Agribusiness Management Association, Mission, Vision and Strategic Plan, Purpose and Mission of IFAMA Regional Chapters, International Food and Agribusiness Management Review