Recently, a top director in Uganda exited one company to another. At his previous company, numerous people celebrated. The celebration wasn’t because they were happy about this person’s achievements, but they were happy about a good riddance. Here’s a director that had killed careers, gaslighted his team, caused many to question themselves and overall brought out the worse of herself in every space.
He was feared but never respected. He ruled by silencing every other voice that claimed to be clever. Many checked into therapy because of this director. Not even his fellow directors were spared. When Mark Antony was eulogizing Caesar, he said; “the evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.” For this director, his evil will live on. There are many people whose careers stagnated simply because they happened to share the same space and time with this person.
Yet, this director’s corporate profile reads only greatness. In the profile, there is no mention made of the harm he caused. Harm that will take decades to correct. Will he transfer this same character and personality to the new posting? How does the corporate space keep track of such directors? Should they simply go scot-free with no mention of their past? Should they simply transfer to new companies as though nothing happened?
That gets us to thinking more about company culture in Uganda. There’s a growing scarcity of visionary and charismatic leaders. Instead, we have leaders that have read Steve Jobs, admired what he delivered and gone ahead to adopt the worst of Steve Jobs hoping that it would give them the greatness of Steve Jobs. We simply don’t have leaders that can rally employees towards a vision. There’s almost zero inspiration and purpose. Thus, leaders have resorted to threatening, and abuse. For if everything fails, then crack the whip, the old way, use fear and drive them to any result.
As a result, company culture has gone to the dogs in the Ugandan Corporate Environment. Human Resource has resorted to its good old self, of simply looking on as evil gets meted out. Legal exists to stamp the decisions of this skewed directors and managers. It’s high time a conversation starts on a need for something better, on a need for a reform. Bad leaders should be called out, and called out in public. There must be a public board to track leaders, so that we do not produce a generation of misled employees. Poorly led employees grow into poor leaders. We must stop this cycle.
It starts now!