If Bob’s successor isn’t Kenyan, it’s not due to graft

Among the many narratives that the death of corporate icon Bob Collymore provoked this past week has been one on whether he should be succeeded by a Kenyan or a foreigner at the incredibly profitable Safaricom company. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the sub-text here has been corruption.

EFFECTIVE MANAGERS

On social media, where most unalloyed conversations take place, Kenyans are split along those that feel that a Kenyan CEO will very quickly run Safaricom aground, given the suffocating nature of corruption in this country. Others feel that we do have competent people here that can take up the mantle and weave their own melody of success in the tradition of Michael Joseph and the late Bob Collymore.

I am not aware of another situation where Kenyans have taken an interest in corporate succession and used corruption as the frame to decide between Kenyan and a foreigner. I find it misleading and dangerous.

One assumption being made here is that a community of people, in this case Kenyans, are inherently corrupt and not one of them should be trusted with the management of a successful company like Safaricom. The other is that success for companies must necessarily be measured by the tonnes of money that they make, without too much attention to the context and environmental factors at play.

While no one will dispute the fact that Bob was extraordinarily successful at Safaricom, it is discourteous to gloss over the success of many other very effective managers that have sat in Kenya’s corporate C-suites. Indeed, so successful have they been that Kenya’s business sector is generally cited as an example to be emulated, and the reason that the country has built a resilience to survive the ineptness and avarice of its political leadership.

Many corporations, certainly in East Africa, and across the world have come to fish in Kenya’s corporate waters for the leadership that they need to run their companies. Many Kenyans are successfully holding very prominent corporate leadership positions in international organisations.

WORK ETHIC

Corporate leadership, we are told and have experienced, is about creating conducive environments for teams to work optimally to the limits of their abilities. It is about understanding the competitive environment in which the corporation is operating, defining clearly what your competitive advantage is and setting and executing strategies that continue to deliver value to shareholders.

So, whether you are managing a giant Safaricom or a much smaller company, the same principles will apply, even if the complexity of operations and the cost of making mistakes will vary. That is why some corporate heads are paid millions and carry home handsome bonuses, while others earn more modest salaries.

So, are all these professionals and corporate leaders that are successfully running companies going to fail at an opportunity to run a bigger entity because of corruption? Most definitely not. I think that corruption thrives on loose governance structures, in situations where accountability is not taken seriously, where the ethic of working hard for just rewards has been eroded and where personal integrity has been replaced with greed and deceit.

The Kenya government may prefer to have a Kenyan at the helm of Safaricom but it is not its prerogative to decide. It is also true that the company did not wobble when the leader was away for nine months for treatment. In all probability, the Safaricom board and its principal owners have settled on who will succeed Bob. If it is not a Kenyan, it is not because they felt that Kenyan executives are either not technically competent or morally chaste.

Tom Mshindi is the former editor-in-chief of NMG and is now consulting. [email protected], @tmshindi