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Opportunities & Insights from Across Our Community
Hi everyone, here’s what we have for you this week:
Leaders must strategically position their department within their company’s business decision-making culture. In this week’s episode of The Everyday Leader, we hear from Timothy Mburu at Madison Group Kenya, who shares about his experience navigating disruption in the fintech sector over the past two decades. Listen here.
Some rising managers feel under supported. Our 2022 Manager Growth Survey results indicated that 1 in 3 managers who are expecting a promotion do not feel their company provides them enough career growth opportunities and resources. Check out the full results here.
Planning your team’s 2023 leadership development programs? We hosted a panel discussion last week with two Talent leaders to hear how they go about annual planning. Watch the recording here.
Read on for more details…
Driving early adoption within the fintech sector, positioning your team strategically within your company, and aiming to be a pull leader
Here are a few highlights from the conversation with Timothy:
Highlight the true business value of new technology to drive early adoption: Having worked at a number of large financial institutions, Timothy has seen firsthand the rapid changes within the fintech sector over the past two decades. Many of these financial institutions were not early adopters of new technologies, which has proved detrimental. For example, many banks in Kenya were initially very hesitant to integrate with MPESA, but are now eager to catch up and align. As an internal stakeholder, he has learned to better pitch new technology opportunities to management by more clearly highlighting the value they deliver and providing case studies, rather than just talking about the novelty of new types of technology.
Position your team strategically within your company’s business decision-making culture: Timothy has seen some companies approach IT simply as a cost-center, and don’t include in decision-making. Meanwhile others have relied on IT too heavily to develop innovative technologies on behalf of the company without providing sufficient direction or resources. He credits team cultures that have an open-door policy with their top leaders as enabling conversations that lead to a better balance. He also credits his own personal superpower as the ability to translate technical jargon to easily understandable concepts for business leaders.
Aim to be a “pull” leader rather than a “push” leader: Timothy has led teams across a range of different companies and sectors, but continues to strive for further improvement for himself. At present, he wants to focus on inspiring team members to deliver on goals, rather than pushing them to do so, as this is more sustainable. He has gathered helpful frameworks by studying management techniques through online courses and resources.
Manager Growth Survey Finding
CoffeeChat's 2022 Manager Growth Survey was a pulse check of how managers at companies across Africa feel about the leadership development opportunities and resources available to them. We heard from managers at over 100 companies, and have highlighted a number of important trends. Check out the results here.
One key insight was that 1 in 3 managers who are expecting a promotion do not feel their company provides them enough career growth opportunities and resources. A good place to start for any Talent leader is to understand how their own middle management feels about their current opportunities and resources.
Recording: 2023 L&D Annual Planning Panel Discussion
Last week we hosted a panel discussion on the topic of "Learning & Development Annual Planning" focused on: 1) How do you and your company approach annual planning for your L&D activities? 2) What are some of your L&D priorities for 2023?
Our panel featured Nicholas Kasidhi (Global Director, Talent & Capability Management at Living Goods) and Chibuzo Ihentuge-Eric (Head, People & Culture at Bankly)
Reach out to our team at CoffeeChat if you’d like to discuss options of how to include 1:1 professional and peer coaching. Get in touch here.