In just 10 years, Africawide has grown from a consulting outfit to a well-established, multifaceted firm with more than 60 permanent employees working across five divisions. Overseeing all of those – from Africawide Consulting to Africawide Capital and all the direct services in between – is founder and CEO Raymond Chiimba.
Ask him how he keeps track of it all, and he’ll shrug and point to what he calls ‘the usual management tools’. At a management level, he says, ‘it’s about meetings, reports, dashboards, interactions with supervisors, and just keeping abreast of the entities themselves. Then, when it comes to the competitive environment, it’s about reading, attending conferences, interacting with other businesses… Keeping your finger on the pulse about where things are going’.
That’s as much out of interest as it is out of necessity. ‘We live in a rapidly developing, rapidly changing environment,’ says Chiimba. ‘Wake up tomorrow and things are different from yesterday. As a business leader you must always be watching and scanning the environment, following specific newsmakers, trendsetters and commentators, and attending development conferences.’
That ever-changing environment is a challenge for all businesses – especially those, like Africawide, that operate in the tech space. Chiimba recalls working tirelessly in the early days to get the company established and competing against bigger, better-resourced rivals, all while adjusting to the changes in the tech landscape. ‘Staying ahead of the curve means appreciating the fact that if you keep on doing the same things, you’re going to get the same results,’ he says.
‘You need to think, “What can I add to what I have that will make me different, sharper?” At Africawide we have identified technology as a differentiator, so we are constantly innovating and looking for the latest, smartest ways of doing things. Some of our competitors have deep reserves, so we have to chip away at their dominance by doing things smarter.’
Africawide is in that in-between space where it’s too well established to be a start-up, too big to be a small business, but not quite big enough to be considered an industry heavyweight (at least, not yet). ‘We’re established in the sense that our core, which is in the professional services and consulting space, has enabled us to build some prominence and accumulate resources,’ says Chiimba. ‘But we’ve also realised that there are sectors that are up and coming, and there are no preordained participants in the business of the future.
‘We have made a conscious choice to participate in that arena. We have start-ups in new areas where we see opportunities, but we are also established in the field where we came from.’ Chiimba is the first to admit that he’s not an expert in all the technological fields in which Africawide now operates. But it’s not his job to be one. ‘My leadership philosophy is premised around the idea that you’ve got the opportunity, you’ve got the respect and the support, you know what we need to do as a team… So let’s get it done,’ he says.
Chiimba adds that he doesn’t want to compete with his employees – ‘my people’, as he calls them – in areas in which they have expertise. ‘I start by recognising that they’re experts in their area,’ he says. ‘But as a group we each have roles to play. ‘My role is to lead the organisation; your role as an expert is to bring your smarts to the table. If I eliminate any sense of competition with my people – let them know that they don’t have to outsmart me or show me up – then I won’t feel that I have to put them in their place by showing them that I’m the boss. Everybody has to be clear on their place within the structure.’
While that may sound like a top-down approach to leadership, one really gets a sense of how Chiimba works – and why Africawide has been so successful – when he talks about how he manages failure. And make no mistake: when you’re operating in a disruptive, innovative space, there’s plenty of room to get things wrong.
‘There’s no place for humiliation or for crushing someone’s spirit in the moment of failure. As a leader you need to know the balance between correcting someone and letting them know that it need not go any further. If you take the time, in that moment, to assure the person that it’s just about this specific performance and no more, that can lift the burden that comes with receiving correction,’ he says. ‘Managing failure is a big component of leading people. In every business there is disappointment, missed targets, or even just the feeling that comes from inexperience or immaturity. A leader’s job is to lead people through those moments.
‘I often hear people say that they don’t tolerate failure. Those are words. That’s not the reality of life, and it’s definitely not the attitude we carry at Africawide.’ As for the future, Chiimba is clear on the role of technology in Africa’s development. ‘Technology is a great equaliser. Africa can leapfrog years of development through the smart application of technology. And we mean to be a part of that – Africa wide.’
