Traits you need to become transformative in business

To succeed in business as a leader, you must be transformative in nature. Those who conform perish. Those who transform succeed. So how does an entrepreneur do this?

Dr Paul Kibicho, CEO of Panorama Consulting Company Limited and the author of The Transformative and Authentic Leader of the 21st Century, tells us how.

Think about what will you do differently from other people

Your business might be showing signs of dying but there are still prospects of the business growing. So how does this business grow? By doing things out of the ordinary. There was a bus that had a slogan: We lead, others follow.

Someone went to find out what the bus was offering and found that it only had an old music system. So he included a DVD and comfortable seats in his own and said; “We lead leaders.”

Somebody else did a gap analysis and found that the only thing “We lead leaders” was offering was comfortable seats and a music system, so he came up with Wi-Fi, convertible seats, toilets, breakfast, charging ports within the seats and he said; “We are the ultimate leader.” Somebody else saw that and came up with air-conditioned buses, beds and said; “We lead the rest.” That is being a transformative leader.

Know yourself

You must know what are you made of as a leader. What is your personal philosophy? Unless you understand the stuff you are made of as an individual, you will not be able to excel.

There are four main character traits: melancholic, sanguine, choleric and phlegmatic. In two main categories, there are introverts and extroverts. Who are the people within your company who share the same personality traits as you and how can you use their personality traits to propel your company to the next level?

Outdo your competitors

In order to become a market leader, you must keep your eyes open. What are the competitors doing? When you realise what they are doing, you create a competitive edge by offering value addition benefits.

For instance, if you sell only beverages, how do you make people come to your restaurant? By bringing on board varieties that are people friendly. So don’t just sell tea. Have cappuccino, chocolate, milo, Ketepa, Eden tea - give people variety.

Understand the environment you are operating in

What are the kind of people that live in the area in which you operate? You need to know this so that you can understand what you can do as corporate social responsibility, which will endear you to the people that you live with.

In the process, you create a market of your own, which will be giving you more business through referrals. If you find that people have health issues, why don’t you have a free medical clinic day where you bring people on board?

As you do that, you will have a hidden card of letting them know what it is that your company does. So you create a very fertile ground where people say; “We appreciate what this company has done for us in terms of checking our health.” In that process, you will have already made a name for your business.

Be in tune with your employees and their needs

Identify key leaders in your business. Who are the drivers of your business? What are their competencies? What are their philosophies? This is in line with the business. How conversant are they with the products and services that you offer?

It is not about salaries. A transformative leader will not only look at their salaries, but also other benefits that accompany the salaries.

For instance, you can give a comprehensive medical cover for their immediate family members, have annual salary increment for people who meet their Key Performance Indicators, maternal and paternal leave, Work Injury Benefits Insurance, terminal benefits and/or retirement benefits? Do you do off-the-job or on-the-job training and how do they revolve around helping your productivity?

Do job analysis, job description and job specification properly, so that whoever you bring is the right fit for that particular area. Nowadays, companies and even churches have areas where mothers with infants can breastfeed.

Because you have human capital that cannot be replaced by other individuals, you should aim to retain that talent.

Learn from the mistakes and successes of others

You need to do market analysis. Continually ask yourself: What has made other companies fail? You analyse the market based on what you are doing.

Ask yourself, for instance, what made Kodak fail? It is because Kodak was lethargic to change. They clung too much to the old way of doing business and did not do digital commercialisation fast enough. People are now embracing the Japanese philosophy known as J.I.T (Just In Time) philosophy. For example, in a car assembly plant in Japan, you likely won’t find an inventory. There will be no store for tyres.

As soon as the point of fixing tyres comes, machines come and fix the tires. So you have cut the cost of inventory, Similarly, you have to ask yourself what your business involves.

The minute you know what it involves, you must make sure you are in tandem with the market. A transformative leader will always make a customer-oriented product, meaning that you are resonating with the market.

Keep evolving, intentionally

You don’t just wake up to operate a business. You have to ask yourself: After I have achieved this, then what? You must have the What If function. In the event X happens, what will follow that?

The word transformation means moving from one form to another. The greatest form of madness is doing things the same way year in, year out and expecting different results.

So get out of your usual environment and get yourself out there to acquaint yourself with the customer and what they need. Companies that are customer-oriented are the companies of the 21st Century.

Gone are the days where people had a wait-and-see attitude. You have to become proactive in terms of the market. Where are we headed? You remain relevant in business by moving with the wind of the current trend in life. Nowadays people have Instagram and Twitter handles. Your business should be on them. It is either you shape up or you ship out.

Because you have to live with people in business, you have to continually ask what you can improve in your life to ensure that the customers you are targeting are also happy with what you are doing. In Kenya we do not enjoy monopoly. Even Kenya Power will get competition with time. So one thing that people must learn to do is to always be ahead of the pack.

Be a skimmer

Skimming is taking advantage of a business when it is very new. For example, when Apple products came, they were very expensive, but now they are much cheaper. However, they were able to make money at that point in time before competition caught on.

Because people will continually copy what you are doing, how do you remain relevant? By ensuring that when the idea you have had over the years starts becoming obsolete, you come with another idea that replaces the old version of doing things.

Diversify

A transformative leader will also make sure he goes to other environments, sees what other people do and see how best he can incorporate that particular idea into his business, and then enter into conglomerate diversification.

Conglomerate diversification is when you take a complete departure, like starting to sell cement when you have been making flour. Aliko Dangote became the richest man in Africa because he was able to throw his eyes into different countries within the continent, found what they needed and provided solutions for them. He is now an expert in many fields.

You can also choose to do or start with concentric diversification. Say you have been producing human food, like flour, but along the way you realize that the by-products of what you are making can become another product for animal feed. You can develop that into a second business. You would be doing something similar to what you already do.

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