At Ortega Group, we are driven by one core idea, that of defining and articulating Ugandan Excellence. We do not see this role as a one-off, as a destination, we see it as a continuous journey. It’s a journey that must be walked every day, one person reaching out to tell another about it. One Ugandan organization spreading the message to the next. And together, Ugandan individuals and organizations must work towards a common definition of Ugandan Excellence.
Thus, if you asked us about Ortega Group? What do we do on a daily? We wake up as an organization to define Ugandan Excellence. We show up to add a brick to the house of Ugandan Excellence. We were not the first people to use these two words. Many did use them before us in passing. We count ourselves as the first people to take this idea seriously.
One of the sub-layers to Ugandan Excellence is the ability to show up every day. It’s building a culture of showing up every day. There are moments when the business will go through deeps, yet even in those moments, the difference between good and great companies is that the great companies show up even in the worst moments.
There will be moments when a great airline will face challenges of a delayed flight. No airline survives such moments. Again, what matters is that the Airline shows up even in those lows. And showing up in a way that speaks to the future they are creating, showing up in a way that highlights their mission and values.
For individuals, it means an employee showing up even on days when it’s extremely hard. Are you able to just show up? Not show face but show up. Showing up is not about appearances, it’s about action. Action could be mere observation, a mere interrogation of the insights, it could be reflection on the past actions. It matters that one shows up and works on their business.
For business leaders, they must show up every day. There should never be a moment when the people in your stead think you failed to show up. Showing up also calls upon vulnerability. When Covid-19 happened, it tested leaders. The great leaders were able to confess that this was something completely unexpected, a rare event and yet they never cowed away from the duty of leadership. They showed up every day and learned from the arena of the pandemic. And as leaders showed up, their teams too showed up.
In the Brewery Sector, Covid-19 is when Uganda Breweries Limited (UBL) regained its market share from Nile Breweries Limited (NBL). Well, it’s because UBL built a culture of showing up. Every day, on the different Whatsapp groups, employees were showing up. They were innovating on their feet, seeing ways of how to reach their customers and consumers. The teams at UBL also showed up through cross-functional working styles. For the first time, a person in Logistics would be supporting Human resource on unlocking a human capital problem. It was not about one’s individual KPI, it was about an organization showing up as one team in the pandemic.
The story is not any different from Stanbic Bank too. Some of their most remarkable wins came from their Covid-19 efforts. It was a bank that chose to show up every day for all its stakeholders. It showed up for the employees, there was an assurance that none would lose jobs. And that took a lot of confidence to proclaim that. And once they’d proclaimed that, they moved to put strong foundations underneath those promises. Showing up is the ability to back up your promises with the work.
One of the most competitive cities in the world is Lagos. In Lagos, the businesspeople have learned the art of showing up. It doesn’t matter the time, the season, a Nigerian restaurant once it chooses to show up every day at 7am, it will always be open at 7am and food will be ready to be served. The thing is, once one restaurant opens at 7am, the next one will start opening at 6am. It’s cutthroat competition, you compete for every inch of space, for every customer, for every hour, for every moment. Showing up is both an art and science.
It’s an art because you need a winning aspiration, a guiding philosophy that enables you to show up every day. That’s why organizations must always sense check their purposes and how people are connected to these purposes. And if connection is lacking, it could be that the purpose needs revision or articulation. For when people in an organization are connected to purpose and mission, and when the values are lived, then people learn to show up every day.
Showing up is a science because you must also build the tools, the environment that enables one to show up every day. Managers must articulate tasks for their team. Leaders must learn to lead. And the data structures must be perfect to create the insights that enable people to show up and make the right decisions. We are not afraid to claim that businesses that show up go a long way!