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I was speaking to a friend recently. He used to work in corporate but in production. And we were discussing about business (as we idealize it) and business (in the trenches).
He told me that as soon as he got his money, he had a vision to start a factory. He started ordering equipment from China and even fabricating some locally. Finally, he told me; “Ian, I didn’t need to do all that. I was starting business like a corporate…”
He even narrated a story when he took some of his product to a Kikuubo distributor. Then the Kikuubo dude pulled him aside and asked; “my Son, these products you’ve brought them with your car? And which car is it?”
Then the distributor told him; “my son, that’s not how they do business. For you, you’ve not calculated that this ‘transport’ is also eating into your margin?”
Long story short, with five years on the ground, my friend now has a different approach to business. He believes in really optimizing that shilling, to only spending only when you must and have considered every other alternative. He gave me an example; “see Ian, why would someone go buy tanks, when they could probably start off with some big saucepans?” So corporate blinds people from the realities that in the real world it’s iteration. Yes, you know you need to buy this machine, but how can you start off with something that replicates the function of the same machine? It’s easy today to see the Sumz factory and fantasize, but they’ve been through the trenches of doing most things manually, the traditional way.
Today, I then read a post of X where Dr. Ola Brown was asking a similar question; “Why is it that more of our top bank GM’s/Corporate leader from FMCG’s etc aren’t starting successful companies of scale?”
That’s to say; “why is it that someone can be a successful MD at Stanbic or Unilever but when they leave, they can’t start another Stanbic or Unilever?”
Dr. Brown says that it’s just hard for most people to downgrade their lifestyle from the soft 9 to 5 life to hard entrepreneurship. She says that corporate titans are sensitive to perception aka Banandaba Batya.
That’s why one of the things corporates do once they’ve left their former jobs is to upgrade their car or house. They have to signal that they’ve maintained that status.
Ola says, “an entrepreneur will have no issue doing economy if business is expensive. But a former MD accustomed to Business class will insist on Business class even when it’s now costly on them.”
My friend says the other reason is because the corporate system is structured in such a way no single person can ever be bigger than the system. And you can run and rise through that system without ever knowing how the system works. It’s designed in such a way that everyone is replaceable from the people in C-suite down to the ones on the frontline. You can be a successful MD of a beer company but not be able to start a beer company from scratch. Because again, you gain experience of managing things, not starting them from ground.
The people who make it outside corporate are usually those who swallow the humble pill and kill their former ‘status’. One of those is another friend of this Kingdom. He used to be a top manager at NWSC. One day, after he’d defended the biggest budget for his region, he got a thought and decided to quit. And quit to go where? He went to Kisenyi, down to those fabricators. He didn’t speak with his father for over five years. His father couldn’t imagine that instead of introducing his son as someone who is a manager at National Water, now he should say, “my son is there in Kisenyi experimenting with his ideas.”
He killed his status. He went to Kisenyi, gave them something they didn’t have, and in turn, they gave him something he lacked. Long story short, his big gamble paid off, and today the father is of a different opinion.
The biggest demon in corporate is the demon of status, of the titles. And corporate doesn’t run out of producing them. Another friend who worked in the Bank told me; “we were allowed to take on any title we wanted on our business cards, as long as we brought in clients…”
If you go on LinkedIn, you will see those titles. You will see the ‘big things’ people have done. The point is, most people cannot replicate the same things on their own. This is not to deny that corporate has the big wallets which an individual may lack when they set out to do their own things.
But the status thing, it’s the biggest trap. And it comes from one issue - trying to live a life for other people, the Banandabba batya syndrome. And status games are crazy, they are zero-sum.
I personally avoid status games or make a mockery of titles. I remember telling most of my friends that your title is only important inside this gate. When you get out of the gate, the boda guy, the next person you meet on the road doesn’t care whether you’re the Programming Manager in charge of climatic resilience for marginalized communities.
The only title I care about is that of King. Awo I can fight. Because you’re a King for life.