The most important job for the UEDCL MD at the moment is one of building one strong and coherent culture. He is merging two cultures. And one of the things that goes wrong in mergers and acquisitions (M&As) is usually the failure to merge culture.
UEDCL has inherited over 98% of UMEME workforce, you can consider this to be some form of M&A. That means, he is dealing with two cultures. Two strong cultures.
The people from UMEME will be saying, look this is how we always did it back there. Those at UEDCL will claim, look, this is how it should be done.
Culture is the hardest thing to build in an organization. It is the easiest to destroy. Hardest to build. Hey, culture is also the thing that can give you the highest returns. When you invest behind culture, you can always rest.
The thing also with culture is that almost no one knows how to rebuild it once it has been set. Because culture is not a quickie. You don’t wake up, do a few team buildings, celebrate birthdays and then you think you now have a new culture. Culture is not just adopting new slogans. Culture is a continuous deliberate set of efforts, symbols, rituals, actions. What you are trying to do with culture is to ensure that when one person says YES, everybody hears YES and understands YES.
That means from the operational culture to the financial to the procurement culture to the people management. If you talk about customer service, everybody in the organization should understand what you believe about the customer. Does everybody perceive customer satisfaction the same way? What about the processes? Does everybody interpret efficiency to mean the same thing? What gets rewarded? What gets recognized? What are the unwritten rules? What are the shared myths?
What if some Ortega calls for a new meter but deep down, we all know finance has put a freeze on purchase of meters? Or one requires 10 signatures to sign out a new meter from the material store? With a million other documentation?
The other thing with culture is that sub-cultures also develop. You can have five organizations within one organization. Because culture is an attempt to make the organization function as one. Quite often you will find that the organization is pulling in different directions. Sometimes it starts with conflict at the executive level. The finance director will pull their way, the operations director will pull their way and this will trickle all the way down.
The role of CEO or General or MD is to set the pulse. It is to orchestrate culture. MD is the number one culture champion.
Great leaders walk their process. Great leaders are on the ground. You must find an informal way that information gets to you. That could be a simple call to a random customer every week. And just chatting with them. You call someone in Mukono and just get their experience. But it is also a conversation with your internal team. Sometimes you get down to procurement and realize that they are stuck with procurements because more work has gone now into compliance than in actually serving a customer. If you are spending more than two weeks on a procurement, something is definitely wrong. It is understandable for big projects, but certain items such as meters. There are better controls for fraud.
And if the UEDCL MD fails to recognize this culture challenge, then the country will suffer. He must build a new UEDCL mentality. And culture must also be communicated and felt. It must be experienced.
Of course, that definitely means a proper strategy. You do not build culture in the absence of strategy and vice versa. And unfortunately a few people understand strategy. Everybody uses that word but it’s the most misunderstood word.
If the UEDCL MD cracks culture, he will have done the hardest part of his job. The rest is easy to come by.
Unfortunately most MDs avoid the culture challenge. Because they have short tenures and need to declare some short term results. This, many go for the easiest thing, playing with the P&L. And true to it, you can always declare a profit when you play well with the P&L. But this doesn’t create value in the long-term. In the long-term, what actually creates value is culture.
Organizations, homes, people, countries, they all differ based on their cultures. There is a CJs culture, there’s a Naalya culture. There’s a Bbrood culture. There is a Middle East culture. There is an AbInbev culture. And culture is hard to copy. That’s why Ugandans will travel and see all these great things in Germany or China but they won’t be able to replicate them. In certain cultures, greatness is expected.
Speak to a microbiologist and they will tell you, culture is the most important word. With the right culture, you can grow the right thing. Wrong culture and things will die.
When it comes to communicating culture, President Kagame is one of the best people at it. At every chance, he will remind Rwandans of who they are, of what is expected of them, of their will, of their dignity, of their valour and courage, of being ready to fight to defend what they have created.
Culture, culture, culture….