Formula For Success Dream Big, Start Small...(Part II) Website
Now you have your big dream, you’ve started small and there is an urge to grow the business; expand capital and employ more hands, what do you do? At the centre of it all should be the need to respect all people who come your way; your staff, your clients and stakeholders. According to him, people waste a lot of time talking about customer service but he believes if you respect people you naturally will provide good customer service. What you do next is to set up structures and systems about how to deal with clients, core values of the company, laws and procedures in every aspect. So you set the systems up and they are documented and transparent to everybody. Then you have to build capacity, invest in people and appoint the right people if you can afford to pay them; build capacity in infrastructure – the right office building, the right setting, get your staff to feel that you care for them. Indeed build capacity in everything including your health - exercise and make sure you have the strength to carry the business to where you want it. Don’t waste money, he warns and argues that most people will take the company’s money and go sit on the front pews in churches for people to know that they’ve made it, or they will take money and go for funerals and go and sit in front and put all sorts of chains on their necks and let people see that they have come. They’ll try and buy big cars and big houses and all that. But this is money you can hold onto, to employ the right people, to put the right structures in place, to employ the best IT systems. “Invest in the company, invest in the future of the company,” he stresses. It is said in business that profit is for the owners of the company, which is clear because you transfer profits to shareholders fund or equity and things like that. “I think it should be renamed account for sustenance and growth because really profit is for sustaining the company and to grow it.” “It has to really, because you can hit some bad patches and if by that time you don’t have reserve funds, the company can go through really bad times and perhaps collapse.” Employ competent personnel Myjoyonline Ghana News Photos | Success unlocked Success unlocked When it comes to employing people, give it to the most competent. “You should set up a board to interview people and of course if your cousin is qualified as well as is the best person among the interviewees, then you can give it to your cousin, I’m not saying discriminate against your kind. It must go to the person who is most qualified. You see, the thing is if you put the wrong person in there it drags the whole company back and you put the right person there and he or she helps drive the company forward and therefore you can even have more for your so-called relatives if you so desire. So there has to be clear-cut procedures; one, the person you want and the qualifications that they should have and go in for the best that you can attract and to pay.” And what about someone employed to manage this business and to achieve set targets, what must be his attitude? “Respect for all. You have subordinates and you have to treat them fairly and you have to let them feel that they belong – everyone who meets you should feel that yes you have due recognition for him as a human being, you respect him as a person and he feels that he can get close to you. And the way to do it is to apply the systems evenly and fairly to everybody, so that everybody has equal opportunity. It works wonders.” You should respect everybody as yourself, and the way to do it is to have systems and say that if it is me it applies and if it is you, it applies. “And most of the times especially with our leaders and MDs, just like the chieftaincy thing, they would set the rules and they are above the rules.” When do you open up and cede some control? Capt. Amoabeng warns that you need to be very careful when you start getting recognition or you feel that you are making the money because just your egoistic tricks can collapse the whole business. “You have to try and stay simple and have a lot of humility. I think you are not better than any person and you are supposed to play a role here and just play it nice and respect people as you play that role. “Now depending on the dictates of the business, if you have to expand to take advantage of other things, you don’t have to own a hundred percent of a business that is not doing optimally. It’s better to own 20 percent of a good business than to own 100 percent of a bad business. So I am not too bothered at all about opening up. In actual fact I think you probably have heard that at Unique Trust, we’ve grown a good company, we still have opportunities out there and because we should respect everybody, we will put a part of it in the public domain, let Ghanaians enjoy part of this company. We are going on the Stock Exchange and depending on regulators, during the first half of this year we should be quoted on the Stock Exchange. “So we are not afraid of opening up for example. We think …already we are running a very transparent company, we are paying our taxes, we are not doing any funny things here that we want to hide so going on the Stock Exchange is a matter of course.” Integrity Beyond being disciplined to a fault and having commitment, honesty is very crucial. “I think you must be seen as a man of integrity, be very honest with all the people that you deal with. I think it is one factor or one component which is very, very crucial. People you deal with; your staff, your clients and everybody should be able to look at you in the face and say that I believe what this guy is telling me, he respects me and he will not lie to me. I think it’s very, very important.”
Source: MJFM
