You want to go into business? Learn to make better and timely decisions

We all wish to advance in our careers as well as in business. Leadership can be a very lonely place mainly because of the weight of decisions that one has to carry. Towards the end of 2002, I landed my first management job as a team leader at Zimbabwe Insurance Brokers. I soon learnt how lonely it can be as a leader. In the insurance industry if you lack integrity, you will not last one day longer than necessary. Before I joined the company there was this team member who had conducted a corrupt transaction that eventually came in the open. Unfortunately for the team member, the Mazda 626 Cronos that had been poorly repaired belonged to the spouse of one of the senior managers at SMM Holdings. Then our company as well as dozens of prominent companies were  subsidiaries of SMM Holdings. This SMM Holdings senior manager went on to become an influential government minister and he was still a minister in the outgoing Zimbabwe cabinet.

 After I joined the organisation, the Managing Director came with the client to my office and told her that I would take over the issue and I started solving it. I started dragging my feet when it came to the disciplinary of the staff member. I do not know whether it was the fact that he was old enough to be my father or the fact that I could not gather the courage to start a process that could lead to his dismissal. One day the MD passed by my office and he did not even go through the General Manager whom I was reporting to. He was angry and he told me that, “Mr Kanyoka, you are handling this guy with kid gloves”.  Eventually with the help of the Human Resources officer I concluded the disciplinary case and we let go of the employee. It was a very difficult process for me. Leadership is not about being popular but about doing the right thing for the organisation to survive and prosper, however everything must be done within the confines of the law as well as the culture of the country

If you want to be a leader, you must start learning to make timely decisions wherever you are. For example you might be a trainee at the lowest level, when you refer any issue to a senior instead of just asking what to do you must also make your suggestions and if your suggestion is overruled find out where you went wrong and correct yourself. With time you will realise that more and more of your suggestions are being accepted and that is how you grow. Leadership mentoring also starts in the community, I come from North East Zimbabwe from the Zezuru clan we also speak Shona. In my tribe males are automatically assigned leadership roles. For example some of my older cousin sisters would wait for me to make the final decision. My father died when I was 14 and as the eldest child and son, I would have to take decisions that my father would have ordinarily have taken. I only realised later that my mother started mentoring me to be a leader long time ago. When my mother started receiving the megre widow’s and dependent’s government pension, she would always ask me for input on doing the budget for the household. As a result, I started learning to save money at the age of 15.  When she started a tuckshop at home, I would run it for her. When she started poultry projects, I would be involved in the running of the project.

One of the most difficult decision, I had to deal with was in early 1996 when I was told my sister was pregnant. My sister had just failed her O’Level examinations. It was up to me to tell her to go away from the house to stay with her boyfriend as per the custom in our tribe.  My sister left for a number of months and stayed with the boyfriend. At that time I was now teaching about 200km from home and during the school holidays, I saw that my sister would walk about 2km from the place where she was lodging to come with the child to eat at our house. It was clear that her boyfriend was not taking care of my sister and my nephew. It was painful for me to see her like that eventually I told her to come back home with her son. The following year my sister went to night school and passed her O’Level with very good results. She then came to stay with me in Avondale, Harare and went to the University of Zimbabwe’s A Level night school. Around 2001 my sister eventually got a good job and she was able to look after her son and she sent him to good schools and she raised him into a good and responsible boy. About two weeks ago my nephew who is now in his second year at University of Pretoria came to visit us and I thought to myself that life could have turned differently for him and my sister.

Every decision has consequences and in my over 22 years of working, the worst managers for me are those who get paralysed when the time comes for them to make decisions. It is better to make bad decision than no decision at all. We all make bad decisions at one time but the idea is to learn from our mistakes. Last year after I resigned from my job in October and went back to Zimbabwe. I had the time and the resources to farm tobacco and I eventually decided against doing so because of the economic environment. In November 2017 Robert Mugabe was eventually forced to resign and the environment changed for the better and I regretted my decision. This year after a gruelling election period, there has been times that I have asked myself if it ethical to invest in a country where elections are clearly stolen. I know that it is not about my personal feelings. If I pull the plug on my investments, it means dozens of people can be affected adversely. The other truth is that for democracy to flourish, there must be economic growth in Zimbabwe because the more people are impoverished the more Zanu-PF can hold on to power. About 24 months ago, there was an SRC election at the University of Zimbabwe and there were serious allegations that students were bought with plates of food to vote for Zanu-PF candidates. If educated people can be bought with food then what about poor peasants in the rural arrears?