How and Why Organizational Culture Is Taking New Dimensions in Top Regional Brands
By Mwangi Wanjumbi – Newtimes B. S. CEO & Chief Consultant/Trainer
Undoubtedly, most CEOs will quite agree with Seni Adetu, of East Africa Breweries Limited, whose ideas I interacted with during a recent management forum. This CEO, who has been at the helm in different multinational brands in the last 10 years, is certainly in a class of his own. It is no wonder then that East African Breweries has taken over the charts as East and Central Africa’s most capitalized company. And what has been Seni Adetu’s secret in continually growing the East African giant, which is well known for persistently flooding the region with different brands of frothy waters?
This CEO’s presentation brought to mind some interesting scenario. It is a scene setting process, at the commencement of a 3 day open training program. The delegates continue introducing themselves one by one, making sure to name their sponsoring companies. A pattern takes shape at some stage. I am currently working for … Soon after the introductions; I get back to the affected delegates, seeking to understand why they used ‘currently’ to describe their employment situation. Could they be on transit jobs or something like that? I wondered around to the consternation of all.
Naturally, the description depicted a situation of wanting commitment to the employing companies, which were ironically sponsoring the delegates. Nonetheless, we treated the matter with a light touch and continued with the training as if nothing had happened. Since then, we have in our firm entrenched training content aimed at improving the integration between employee and employer brands, especially during our organizational culture change programs. Many employers will no doubt agree that this brand integration is a major concern to them. Why?
In fact, organizations can no longer take the human capital for granted in a fast changing world. Technology is continually advancing at alarming rates. Social cultural influences are also continuously shaping people behavior. Information is freely available from the internet, social media and other sources. Indeed, the operating environment is dynamic, sometimes almost beyond comprehension. Further more, in a highly competitive world, organizations have to go to great lengths of managing reputation, which can at the touch of a button escalate either positively or negatively. However, the more positive the escalation, the more desirable it is.
Surprisingly, one of the greatest sources of communication of the organizational situation is the employees themselves. They do not even have to do it explicitly. The existing relationships are more often than not revealed by the employee attitudes towards the employment situation. The same cannot be concealed from other stakeholders including customers, who react to the state of affairs as they deem appropriate.
This is even worse in this knowledge era of the 21st century whereby the management pyramid has ostensibly been reversed. The work of CEOs and the senior team is to support the rest of the workforce to deliver the desired results. Yes indeed, the era of executing command and control systems no longer belongs to our present times.
Incidentally, this message was continually hammered home by Seni Adetu. In fact, the same cuts across most of the presentations that I have in the recent years, witnessed being discussed by CEOs of top regional brands particularly during Management and Leadership Forums. Good examples include Bob Colymore of Safaricom, Titus Naikuni of Kenya Airways, Nelson Kuria of CIC Insurance Group Limited, Julius Kipng’etich of Kenya Wildlife Services, Vimal Shah of Bidco Oil Refineries Limited and many more.
Interestingly, no organization will in this knowledge era succeed in concealing information from the employee brands, now appropriately recognized as organizational intellectual capital. So, in a situation where the employees are supposed to deliver results, it is imperative that they be empowered and fully engaged with the respective organizations. Only then will organizations avoid backlashes occasioned by challenged integration of the brands.
It is no wonder that Seni Adetu has gone a few notches higher in ensuring that his employees  are not only citizens of the respective countries, but also of East African Breweries Limited. Strikingly, he has employed the services of Employee Engagement Managers whose role is mainly to monitor employee attitudes and relationship with the company, quite independently from the human resource department. Ideally, this role is elsewhere ordinarily assigned to the human resource function, wherever recognized.
The question to other CEOs and Business Executives is, how is your organization wired on these human resource matters, which form part of the organizational culture? Ideally, organizations may not need to be overstressed on where to start in the event of need to realign their culture. We have quick and long lasting fixes through our organizational culture change/employee re-branding solutions.