Sthoothie

Oh wow, a very busy week is ended. It's been almost whirlwind but also very fulfilling. How was your week dear friends?

Sthoothie is the Sri Lankan word for Thank You. A big thank you to the company we worked with, our school and to my team for a truly rewarding consulting experience. My pre-conceptions about what the week would involve and how it would turn out was quite far from the reality we walked this entire week.

Our client company were very warm and welcoming from the minute we stepped into their offices. The CEO was quite open now that we were face to face and gave us an overview of the organization and their challenges. It became clear very quickly that they were doing well but are looking to ensure that they could sustain their success into the future. At this point, they have poor visibility of their success enablers and finances. 

One thing I took away from the International Business Assignment (IBA) experience is that developing countries seem to have the same basic problems. Cultural differences also add their own dimension to the issues experienced, especially by small and medium enterprises. 

Full Understanding the workings of any business would take more than a week but the openness of the CEO of our client company made things a bit easier for us. The foundational problems were immediately visible but are not what we can solve for them in the time we had. We put together a strategy document which we believe if implemented, would go a long way to ensure the business continues to exist in the long term. I was part of a wonderful team of 4 and we split up the work amongst ourselves and managed to get it all mostly done by Thursday evening. We even went undercover to do some competitive analysis! James Bond would have been proud of us.

One thing that became clear by the end of the week as well was that the CEO knew practically all the things he needed to do, but asked us to come in so that we could say those things to his management team. He really wanted a third party to corroborate the ideas he had been putting up in the hope that will ginger his team to adopt and buy in to his plan. It was gratifying to realize that our proposed strategy was in sync with what the CEO had in mind as well. 

The biggest need that I personally feel he has is an advisory board because it was also clear that the CEO finds it difficult to push his people and make the tough calls. An advisory board would hold him accountable and push him to make and execute on the tough calls which are really important for the continued success of the business.

There is a political issue that has a major impact on doing business in Sri Lanka. It shows that having a political system in which the people's voice has power is good but there is the downside risk that politicians may take decisions that don't augur well for the economy overall in an effort to please the ordinary man on the street. In Sri Lanka's case, the labour laws are skewed in favour of the employee, such that terminating an employee, irrespective of the reason is an Herculean task. This obviously doesn't augur well for small business especially so companies end up with a lot of dead wood they can't touch.

So all in all, I've had a rewarding week and I hope you did too. Final thanks to God for keeping all of us that came all the way here and will no doubt take us back. Everyone has had a good experience, lots of adventures and no one fell ill or had any untoward incidents. I'm looking forward to hearing all about the experiences of our colleagues that went to China, Japan and Zambia the next time we are all together.

All work and no play makes Bunmi a dull student so now that work is done, it's time to play! I'll gist you about that next week. In the mean time, Have a wonderful week ahead.

Blessings on You and Yours.