Addressing Critical Development Needs of African Economies:
AFRICA CENTRE FOR BUSINESS LEADERSHIP ( Draft Vision Statement)
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Introduction |
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Effective business leaders bring vitality, challenge and a combination of key management skills for ensuring the success and sustainability of the organisations that they lead. They are responsible for the development of strategies that should be conducive for the success of the enterprise and also for implementing innovative strategic options to create competitive advantage for the business sector. Successful leaders are then able to motivate others who work with them, leading to the building of strong teams that can take ownership of outcomes.
The MMF and MUPSF are working towards the launch of an African Leadership Development Programme in conjunction with Makerere Matters.[1] The Business Leadership Programme will consist of study of case histories of success of leadership and draw relevant conclusions for the East African business environment. More importantly, the Leadership Programme[2] will be involved in developing an understanding of the success of business leaders in East Africa by commissioning its own case studies and addressing the training and development needs of business leaders within various sectors of the economy. |
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The development of business leaders is most successful where there is a generic and ongoing investment into skills development to reflect various hierarchies of need. Senior business managers and directors also have to demonstrate crosscutting skills that enable them to work across different business sectors and to respond to the needs of a real market place for expertise. |
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The use of sectoral approaches also raises questions much as there are many perceived benefits. Apart from issues relating to the integrity of sectoral models and the resulting strategies, critics also point towards the costs and benefits of sectoral data and where the responsibility for sectoral studies must lie and how the costs should be met. This also raises the question of ‘opportunity cost’ – should any available resources not be applied to deal with urgent skill shortages rather than investing in expensive modelling exercises? |
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This is a debate worth having[3] and further guidance will be included in the planning information to follow. A proposal for assessing the need for managerial skills is outlined in Appendix 1. However, at this stage the programme aims to work with sustainable information gained from partial surveys and interviews with senior business leaders and sources in industry and commerce, views taken from the professions, government and overall assessments carried out at Makerere University. |
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2.0 |
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Developing a Business Plan for the Centre |
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2.1 |
Areas of Interest |
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2.1.1 |
Assessing the demand for business leaders in the African context, the unique factors which impact on the definition of need and lead to success or failure in the real environment of the market place. This could include surveys to ascertain needs and direct interviews with senior leaders |
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2.1.2 |
a) Analysing the African business environment and extrapolating special training needs at three levels of impact- the global or general factors, leadership factors that are applicable to specific roles and functions and the skills that leaders need to deal with functional issues. This can be summarised as follows:
- Global needs reflect the mainstream environment and represent the essential needs that all good leaders must have. These include developing vision, mission and partnership skills. Conversely many leaders also need to develop these global skills and could even benefit from mentoring where possible.
- Occupational needs which sum up the core business leadership needs for a specific sector of the market, for example the key issues in African air travel management or developing sound human relations departments to boost productivity of the organisation.
- Functional needs, which highlight dedicated tasks that leaders need to perform eg how to write a good speech, how to manage a Press campaign.
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2.1.3 |
Preparing to address business-critical needs by offering a range of services. This will entail establishing and running a comprehensive mix of services to include education and training, management and organisation development, consultancy skills and on-the-job internal solution providers. |
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3.0 |
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Critical Success Factors for the Launch of the Centre |
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3.1 |
A detailed statement will be prepared to reflect evidence of demand in the Ugandan and East African business markets, describing scenarios of success and assessment of needs under various conditions[4]. |
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3.2 |
The Centre should also aim to provide specialist training to cover the needs of various employers in the economy, for example, management skills for engineers, business planning skills for branch managers of a major bank and so on. |
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The Centre should also aim to provide dedicated services for key major organisations to support managerial skills audits carried out by human resource (HR) departments. The evidence of need can also be drawn from staff performance appraisals and the success or otherwise of embedding performance management in the client company. |
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3.4 |
The Centre should aim to reflect a cohesive approach to the delivery of services aimed at addressing the key issues relating to business leadership effectively and constructively. |
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3.5 |
The Centre should also launch a three-stage prospectus for marketing a new range of services. The prospectus will also form the basis for a fund-raising platform in Europe, to be put forward to various sponsors by Makerere Matters. |
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4.0 |
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Ensuring Effective Utilisation of Resources |
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4.1 |
A useful guiding principle is that the MUPSF-led programme will be based on profit redistribution, where income from successful or highly profitable programmes will be used to subsidise the less profitable projects in the same market. Details are to follow. |
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4.2 |
The second guiding principle relates to effective utilisation of internal expertise and ensuring crosscutting operation. The process of developing ‘marketable solutions’ also offers the opportunity of matching and utilising the resources that are available at the University. |
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4.3 |
The adoption of these principles promotes value additionality. Various examples are given below:
a) The Makerere University Business School could be contracted to carry out research into market needs and also develop a core curriculum for developing a specialist module
b) The MUPSF should devise a late afternoon or an evening programme of leadership networking where senior leaders would be invited to speak. The network would then help to generate loyalty to the brand.
c) The MUPSF can also quantify the resources required to implement the leadership training programme, consisting of a combination of the following resources:
i) Staff and facilities costs for the entire programme now being developed in conjunction with Makerere Matters
ii) Direct costs of service launch and marketing of the Five Phase Programme now under development
iii) Direct costs of research and development to be charged out by MUBS
iv) Costs incurred for providing lecturers, travel expenses and subsistence
v) Budget for developing internal competence for all five programmes, i.e. training and developing new staff and existing staff to deliver dedicated services
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5.0 |
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Tentative Basis for a Centre Marketing Plan |
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The main of the centre is to offer best value to service users and sponsors. In this regard the customer of the centre is the sponsoring organisation or employer. Core values of the training programmes will need to be defined in order to meet the needs of employers and delegates. Investment in quality control will be a priority. The provision of other services such as boarding, food and study materials must be guided by the fact that all these attributes have an impact on developing a ‘brand’ for the new Centre. |
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Other provisions to note are:
a) Market segmentation:
Business leaders tend to be status conscious on the one hand and do justifiably warrant investment in developing dedicated service packages. For example, chairmen and chief executives of major East African countries will expect separate and dedicated provision to reflect their needs but also to reflect the composition of the workshops and seminars; they expect to share scenarios with their equals wherever possible. Similarly the targeting of leadership training projects at neighbouring countries warrants market research and investment in the generation of new content.
b) Service-mix:
The business leadership programme will start with an optimal mix of services, reflecting the needs of the market on the one hand and also the investment required in developing the optimal infrastructure for delivery. Finally the cost of the service mix will also define the income generation targets for the MUPSF. The interrelationship of service mix and revenue is outlined next.
c) Income Generation and future sustainability:
Income generation is a critical success factor. The Business Plan targets send key signals to funders and sponsors – that the service programme seeks self-sustainability in the long run and also, it can offer an effective ‘exit strategy’ which precludes dependency on external funding. The other reason for ensuring income generation is that some sections of the ‘weaker’ or less popular programmes will need to be subsidised by the more profitable ones.
The Centre’s programme will be able to benefit from profit redistribution. Progressive and high quality business leadership training courses will always generate interest provided the quality of research and development and the standards of delivery are able to generate suitable customer testimonials.
d) Specialisation:
Market segmentation also allows specialisation by level of impact or by specialisation by sector of the economy. Examples of key services are:
- In-house training for large enterprises with multi-site operations such as banks, insurance companies, government departments and local authorities.
- The entry into in-house and customised service provision opens the doors to consultancy services, a major aspect of value additionality. |
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6.0 |
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Tentative Conclusions |
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The development and launch of the Business Leadership Programme through a dedicated Centre for Business Leadership constitutes the first of the five programmes of collaboration with Makerere Matters. It defines the business process and methodologies for structuring the new services as income bearing services. The choice of this approach has been influenced by the following factors:
a) Shared enterprise
MUPSF will be keen to draw on internal resources but also make a major contribution to developing their expertise and using their talent for their benefit and for the benefit of the university. For example, all anticipated programmes would work in conjunction with the MUBS and other faculties, a factor to be determined.
b) Shared costs and benefits
Makerere Matters’ fundraising programme will emphasise benefits of inter-departmental collaboration in terms of skills transfer and shared capacity building. This aspect will be elaborated in the Business Plan.
c) Joint Resource Development
The delivery of MUPSF-led programmes requires investment in capacity in the form of shared machinery for programme development, quality control and marketing. A ‘programme unit’ will take responsibility for the development of promotional literature, marketing, mailing and following up of all mailings to ensure maximum take up of places[5].
d) Benefits of synergy
This is obvious but shared programmes also attract quality, departmentally shared knowledge and enhance the economics of joint learning and development.
e) Creating competitive advantage
Quality and persistence is the key to long-term sustainability. The Ugandan, if not the East African market, should begin to see this initiative as a leading edge service provider, which reflects local issues and challenge. There is scope for working with an untapped resource- the vast number of skilled and experienced Ugandan business leaders who can bring practical experience to the service and through their own engagement also see the new Centre as a resource for their own senior managers and staff for appropriate courses.
f) Sustainability
Overseas funders and sponsors value all actions that are taken to achieve sustainability. Sharing expertise and developing joint revenue streams is a first step towards alleviating their concerns that the MUPSF-led venture will create a dependency relationship from which they will not be able to pull out without suffering risks to their reputations as benevolent funders and sponsors.
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For further information and details please contact:
Kalwant Ajimal FRSA
MMF
E-mail: Kalwant.ajimal@btinternet.com:
27 April 2008
[1] This outline paper is a potential section of the Makerere Matters Business Plan; further editing will provide material for reconfiguration under new sections. As a result many of the issues are only dealt with in an outline form. Further work is needed to develop these principles to win respect from funding agencies.
[2] This is a working title and possible marketing name. The structure for delivery as outlined here for developing the MU Business Leadership Programme will also apply to the delivery of other projects under consideration.
[3] In Zambia, during the early 1970s, a Survey of National Managerial Manpower Needs was funded by ILO/UNDP provided key evidence of need by identifying managerial skill shortages in key sectors of the economy. The results of the survey became the focal point of various interrelated programmes for management training and development.
[4] All business and civic leaders require training as an investment in continuous development of leadership competencies and there is always good evidence of demand. However, it is always helpful to relate business solutions to known market conditions. This principle is used internationally and no market needs more or less training provision for developing business leaders. These needs are universal but solution providers have to be skilful in addressing the needs and targeting effective take up rates for services within the context of local markets.
[5] Kalwant Ajimal was responsible for the rescue and turnaround of a major management and organisation development centre in Zambia. Following its re-launch, it became a centre of excellence for training and consultancy and a substantial income generator for the organisation. The revenue surplus was used to meet the cost of less secure revenue generating options such as women’s programmes, small-scale agriculture and support for the voluntary sector.
