Leaders who can help make Big Four a reality

Don’t waste your time reading too many books about leadership. Leadership is three things only: Envision, Empower and Enable. Let us define these first and then see how they are being applied to the Big Four agenda that the President has declared to be his legacy project.

The delivery and success or failure of the Big Four will teach us many things about leadership that we can apply not only in business, but in our personal lives as well. One day, not in the far future, we will look back and identify what went right or wrong – all in the context of Envision, Empower and Enable.

There is no leadership without clear vision. No leader can inspire people if they do not have a clear vision. The prophets were lucky that God sent them the vision. Mere mortals like you and I have to create our own vision. Vision is the ability to see the future and the results that you want. Great leaders will often incorporate the ideas of others and get people to support that vision.

It does not matter who created the vision, it is always the leader who articulates, drives and owns the vision. I once saw a billboard in India that quoted Ratan Tata, which said; “Create vision and the means will follow”.

I have made that the bedrock of my motivation behind all major projects. Too many people worry about not having the means or the funds to do big things, but if all people waited until they had the money to do things, then nothing would get done.

President Kenyatta has a clear and powerful vision with the Big Four. If every Kenyan had a roof over their head which they owned (low cost housing), free medical care (universal health care), a job (manufacturing) and affordable food (food security), then Kenya would be a different country.

Single project

Can it be done in the next two years? Unlikely. But if this starts now, it will pick up momentum and in the next decade change our lives and country dramatically. Kibaki’s roads were not completed in his tenure, but his legacy lives on. President Uhuru’s vision is powerful. This is the first prerequisite for leadership – Vision.

Empower. Who is empowered to deliver this vision? Who has the mandate to deliver this project? Unfortunately, government. The Government has too many chiefs and in the end there is no clear ownership of any single project. Second, government is by its very nature moving at 20 kilometres per hour and we need to move at one 120 kilometres per hour to reach our destination.

If we don’t change strategy, we will not get there. If you study any of the countries that progressed at a super speed, you will see that every critical project had a specific champion who was held responsible for its successful delivery. That person lived and dreamed of nothing but his specific project.

Initial hiccups

They made sure it got delivered. They often had a direct reporting line to the President who ensured that all roadblocks were removed. When you allocate such critical projects to ‘ministries’, they get buried in layers of bureaucracy. This is what is happening in Kenya today. Consequently, we are nowhere close to achieving our goals in the time-frame that the President wants. If we do not appoint empowered people to deliver, then we are doomed to failure.

Enable. There is no point to have a vision and then empower people but then they do not have the funding and authority to deliver on the vision. Despite initial hiccups in raising money through local taxes and deductibles which were challenged in court, there is a clear effort being made to find the funding to get the job done. Even in his recent visit to Russia, the President asked for their support in building low-cost houses.

The Qataris agreed to fund us, just as the World Bank. Local entrepreneurs can do this without funding from abroad. Morocco has the most successful model in the supply of low cost housing in Africa. It’s all done by Moroccan companies. That’s the model we need to study.

The problem with low cost housing is that the cost of building materials is too high. This calls for some tax and duty cuts to make these products cheaper.

If we remove VAT from building materials, this would dramatically change the cost of construction. Government needs to do a cost-benefit analysis of the loss of these duties and VAT versus the value of hundreds of new houses for wananchi. Is the third prerequisite in place?

Kenya cannot afford to fail. Galana may have failed once but the vision is too big to stop just because we failed in the initial test. The vision is great. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. It’s time to reboot our strategy. It’s time to rethink our leadership model quickly. It’s time for change.

Mr Shahbal is Chairman of Gulf Group of [email protected]