Brittle, anxious, and still in business

The real world, where executives face spectacularly difficult and highly fluid operating environments without the luxury of the “everything is going to be ok” echo chamber.

I came to learn that the VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) world we were introduced to in the 21st century has now morphed into a BANI (brittle, anxious, non-linear and incomprehensible) post-Covid world.

Brittle and anxious define many of us any time we get communication from the taxman. Especially those confounded, unneccesary “Happy Customer Service Week” emails that serve no purpose other than to get our stomach sliding straight to our feet like an elevator whose cords have broken as it approaches the 12th floor.

In a country with one of the most unpredictable tax regimes on the continent, doing business predictably is running an anxiety inducing 42 kilometre marathon backwards.

Enter stage left: Non-linear. You think that you’ve taken one step forward rerouting your product to your European export market buyers, since the Red Sea route was blocked by the Yemeni Houthi rebels and it takes 30 days longer to get your product to market.

Out of the depths of cross border trade hell come Trump’s tarriffs that wipe out all the gains made. Suddenly, your avocadoes are competing with Mexican avocadoes that have sought new markets following the Trump tarriff woes. You’re forced two steps back. Find new markets or drop your prices to make your goods competitive.

Enter stage right: Incomprehensible. Artificial intelligence. How does a business leader lean into this newfangled technology that is not going away? What does it even do? How will it impact customers, staff, products or services? Two weeks ago I needed to undertake some research for an assignment. I contracted a university student to do the research for me and gave her two weeks to give me her findings.

I happened to be on an online conversation with a friend in the diaspora about the same topic whereupon she told me to hold my cup of tea for a minute, while she put my query into her AI tool. We continued chatting and within 10 minutes the AI tool had produced the data that the university student had spent two weeks trying to get from the internet, with 10 times more detail and refinement.

My researcher’s casual job went up in conclave flavoured white smoke right there and then. Especially since she was being paid two times more than what the monthly subscription to the AI research tool is charging. I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the speed with which that decision to replace a human became apparently obvious.

The numbers from across the Atlantic are worrying. Microsoft last week announced a three percent cut on its workforce, affecting 7,000 employees globally as it seeks to replace software coders with AI. In an oxymoronic twist of fate Gabriela de Queiroz, the Director of AI at Microsoft, was amongst those laid off.

We don’t know what we don’t know about AI. But as it becomes more mainstreamed in the workplace, we will soon have to be trained collectively as business leaders on how this can and will improve productivity and, more importantly, reduce the cost of doing business.

All this while, simultaneously keeping an eye on what our competition is doing and how local employment laws curtail us from implementing staff reductions swiftly.

M-Pesa, which is now ubiquitous as a primary mode of transferring and storing value, would not have been successful without the farsightedness of the Central Bank of Kenya’s leadership back in 2007.

A leadership that was aligned with the uniquely emerging market challenge of financial inclusion and its propensity to grow a nation’s gross domestic product. As a country and as a continent pushing for more intra-Africa trade in light of the global trade geo-politics at play, our regulators and tax lords should sit next to executives in classes across Africa who are learning to navigate the BANI world.

Because the M-Pesa movie and its entire regulatory supporting cast showed us that it is in partnering, rather than in punishing, where economic growth and prosperity can emerge.

The writer is a corporate governance specialist and a former banker
X: @carolmusyoka