Leading Experts Share Insights on Developing a Clear Business Vision for a Post-COVID Future
Starting a business is an act of courage. A bold step in the direction of your dreams. However, to build a business that lasts, it is important to move from dreaming to action. Develop a vision so compelling that you can build a clear plan and inspire others to come along with you.
In the words of the visionary Steve Jobs, he said “If you’re working on something exciting that you care about, you don’t have to be pushed. The vision pulls you.” Are you curious about how you can do this in your business? Keep reading...
In the AWEC Virtual General Assembly held in March 2021, we hosted several workshops that allowed for reflection on the lessons learned in 2020 and planning for 2021 and beyond. The insights and lessons from the sessions are all you need to build a compelling and stable business vision.
Among the highlights were the interactive pitch workshop and Learning Labs covering important topics like data analytics, organizational culture, and risk mitigation. Keynote speeches were delivered by AWEC Alumna, Temie Giwa-Tubosun, Founder & CEO of Lifebank, and Payin Marfo, Founder of Ladybird Logistics.
Practice Readiness By Preparing for the Next Shock
To kick off the event, Lifebank founder and AWEC Alumna Temie Giwa-Tubosun stressed that in order for African women entrepreneurs to take advantage of the opportunities arising during a crisis, they need to swiftly shift from preparation to readiness: “The great shocks [of Ebola and COVID pandemics] are opportunities that ensure our businesses are anti-fragile. As women leaders, we must be prepared to meet crises with calm, innovation, and speed!”
Temie some of the strategies that enabled Lifebank to thrive during a time when most businesses struggled:
Pre-Shock: The work women business owners should be doing before crisis hits
Establish and secure foundational structures and systems in order to capture your business progress and processes to ensure it does not grind to zero.
During shock: The strategies to grow the business while in the midst of crisis
Think ‘Creative, Agile, Focus.’ What do you have that you can leverage or what ideas or concepts have you not fully explored? Be flexible and ready to adapt when necessary and remain focused.
Establish partnerships. You cannot work or survive in a vacuum.
Post-shock: The plan of action for once the crisis is over
There’s no substitute for preparation. Evaluate institutional capacity by assessing your organization’s enabling environment and how it impacts the business
Update Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). Aim to achieve efficiency, quality output, and uniformity of performance, while reducing miscommunication and failure to comply with industry regulations.
Leverage technology. If your business has not already gone digital, that should be your next priority.
Establish KPIs and metrics. These give you a snapshot of the organization’s current performance when compared to its goals.
Use Data as the Fuel for Business Growth
In her Learning Lab, AWEC Mentor Suzanne Brune, a Senior Manager in Business Consulting at EY, explained the ways in which utilizing metrics and data allows for improved decision making and greater growth. As many businesses needed to pivot to accommodate public health and economic restrictions in the past year, using analytical tools to evaluate these changes allows entrepreneurs to make informed choices.
“As human beings, we often make emotional decisions first, and then we rationalize, but business analytics is the opposite of relying on intuition and guesswork”, said Suzanne.
Companies that leverage data to drive decision-making often gain a competitive advantage, reduce business costs and increase profit. How? Suzanne elaborated by saying, “The information you get from analyzing data enables you to uncover insights to help you predict the future and improve your business operations.”
African women entrepreneurs often shy away from using data analytics because they wrongly assume it is complicated and difficult to implement. But Suzanne implored all small business owners to incorporate analytics from the beginning and that they do not need fancy tools to analyze data.
The key for any good data strategy should be to analyze the past to predict the future. Suzanne shared a four-step process to develop a data strategy:
Strategy & Planning: What is your data vision?
What kinds of decisions do you want to make with your data? For example, do you want to launch a new product or hire more employees?
Architecture & Integration: Where is my data?
Do you already have data? If so, where is it? If not, where could you get it?
Analytics & Visualization: What does my data look like?
Is your data in a state that it can be used, or does it need to be ‘massaged’ [a term used to refer to cleaning up data sets of unnecessary information or formatting it to tell a story]?
What kinds of tools could you use to view the data in a form that you can make decisions?
Governance: Who is governing my data?
Who will manage your data, and how often will it be refreshed?
How would you measure decisions you have made using data?
Thinking through a data strategy gives you clarity into what kinds of decisions you can make. You may have data available that you do not know you can use to make critical decisions for your business growth and operations, including accessing and measuring company culture.
Design Your Organizational Culture Since it Impacts Business Performance
Company culture is powerful: It can impact sales, profits, recruiting efforts, and employee morale, whether positively or negatively. A great company culture attracts people who want to work or do business with a company. It can inspire employees to be more productive and positive at work while reducing turnover.
Considering how many businesses needed to adopt some level of remote work, culture has proven especially critical in ensuring that employee morale doesn’t take a hit and workflows continue to be
efficient.
“Organizational culture, if not predefined, will result in teams behaving the way they tend to believe is right”, said Maryam Darwich (MSc, BA), founder and lead consultant at Afriqia HR Solutions and AWEC Alumna.
Not being intentional about your culture can result in settling for your employee’s values, which may not match your standards and can be detrimental to the business. So as a business owner, where do you begin?
With subject matter expertise in human resource strategy and development, Maryam shared insights on assessing and improving company culture.
Consistent Feedback: The key to success in organizational culture is to evaluate yourself, your team, and even your clients constantly. Allow for open conversations, ask for suggestions on how to improve, and implement recommendations regularly.
Talent Retention & Growth: Retention is based on the culture that you are currently creating within your organization and is not based on perks and benefits. If you don’t have the infrastructure to retain great talent, there is nothing wrong with being an organization where good talent grows before moving on.
Pulse Check: Organizational culture is so dynamic that you need to keep your eye on what is currently happening. Be honest and prioritize self-reflection to ensure you are aware of areas that need attention.
Future Proof Your Business by Risk Mitigation
The speed at which businesses need to adapt and change continues to accelerate. COVID has been a recent catalyst for a change in how businesses grow and serve their customers. As entrepreneurs, we need to design firms that are flexible and agile.
Consumers and employees have increasingly high expectations for how a company should operate and its services. Yet, despite this reality, many organizations continue to fall behind. They simply can’t keep up with our rapidly changing world. This inability to “future-proof,” unfortunately, for many of them, means an almost inevitable demise of the business.
“Formalize risk management and start developing your risk mitigation strategy! These are so important because they are the basics in business,” said Benard Chitunga, Senior Officer at the Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa (AFAWA), an initiative of the African Development Bank Group,
He outlined several risk areas, including:
Financial Risks: Understand how to reduce, transfer, accept and avoid these
Know your numbers. Entrepreneurs must understand their business valuations and know when the business will break even.
Stress-test the business through modeling. Entrepreneurs need to count the cost of doing business. Start talking to professionals who can stress-test your business with the worst possible conditions - it will build resilience. Ask questions like, ‘What happens if my business does not generate sales for two months?’
Strategic Risks: Establish vital business frameworks to address these effectively
Create a business strategy. Most individuals can start a business, but not everyone can outline the steps to ensure sustainable growth.
Formalize decision-making. Ensure that all decisions are recorded on paper for purchases, expenditure, and even informal conversations as a business owner.
Decide your ideal structures. For essential business functions, entrepreneurs must take the time to create strategies for production, operations, marketing, valuation, trends, research, planning, etc.
Benard ended the session by challenging women business owners to be mindful of these steps that will allow them to build a credible business.
Have an Exit Strategy
The virtual event concluded with an entrepreneur who broke the glass ceiling in 2018 when she set up the first company to employ only female truck drivers in Ghana, West Africa.
Payin Marfo, Founding Managing Director, Ladybird Logistics, brought the AWEC Virtual General Assembly to a close with a heartwarming keynote. She shared her story of how she built the company and planned for exit.
“As an entrepreneur, it’s important that you have an exit strategy and know when it’s time to leave,”
Payin said. She provided attendees with advice and insights from her journey as an entrepreneur.
Empowering women is fulfilling. Economies grow, families are lifted out of poverty, and children are educated.
Make history using the First Mover Advantage. Your attitude can open the gates for other women. Always see this as an opportunity to pave the way for others. Do it right to leave a positive legacy.
Recognize when to move on - when you decide, do it. Don’t think that your company cannot function without you. You are not your business!
Stay focused, avoid distractions and celebrate successes no matter how small.
Have fun to keep your sanity.
By telling her phenomenal journey, she left the entrepreneurs feeling inspired and challenged to do and be more.
As Jack Welch said, “Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision and relentlessly drive it to completion.” The best time to start was yesterday. The next best time is now, so just do it.