Some weeks ago, our able chef, Nina Ngassa shared some great news with us. She signed a deal with Colgate-Pamolive to be the company’s official caterer and she thought we should know. She will provide meals daily for the company’s staff. I liked that she shared this achievement. I thought and I said “Great for you and the company.” I saw it as an opportunity to talk about something that I have been thinking a lot about concerning corporations in Cameroon with regards to corporate culture and something with regards to our culture of information sharing in general -the debate of whether sharing our achievements on social media or just sharing in general is a good or bad thing.
ON CORPORATE CULTURE
Often, corporate culture is implied, not expressly defined, and develops organically over time from the cumulative traits of the people the company hires. A company's culture will be reflected in its dress code, business hours, office setup, employee benefits, turnover, hiring decisions, treatment of clients, client satisfaction and every other aspect of operations. The benefits of a strong corporate culture are both intuitive and supported by social science. According to James L. Heskett, culture “can account for 20-30% of the differential in corporate performance when compared with ‘culturally unremarkable’ competitors.”
One of my recent articles was focused on customer service with the focal point being that many employees in Cameroon do not feel personally invested in the companies they work for. I shared with you how my attempt to make suggestions to one employee about a business operation was met with “that is the company and not me so tell that to THEM.” To that employee she was a completely separate entity from the company and she was not in the place to bring any change to the company. In that article, I seemed to put all the blame on the employees but here I will like to talk also about the role business owners play in creating disgruntled and disengaged employees.
Before being employees in a company, people are individuals that have things to deal with in their own personal lives out of work. Good corporations create a culture where employees feel like work is an extension of home. Good corporations become like family. Most of the world’s most innovative and profitable companies understand that it is hard to separate employees work life from what is happening in their homes and to avoid the homelife interfering with their work, they have integrated the home life into the work life. They have things like day care centers, on campus laundry services, nap rooms, cafeterias, game rooms, health services, counselors etc.
With day care centers, mothers can go back to work earlier after they put to birth. Parents don’t have to go back home early for when the kids get back from school or worry about what the kids are up to while they are still at work. They don’t have to leave work and get stuck in traffic during break hours just to find food and end up coming back late to work. Those companies understand that rest is important for more productive work so employees are allowed to take naps during working hours in a dedicated space. All these little add ons make work less of a place where you can’t wait to leave and go home. Colgate’s little move to provide good and healthy lunch on campus for its employees does a lot to make them feel cared for which they passively return the favor by caring for the company more. It also improves productivity by putting a permanent end to things like late coming from breaks and just the general headaches that come with finding food during the usually short breaks.
A lot more to be said on corporate culture and how to make employees more invested in the company but let us move on to the second cultural thing I want to address in this article.
ON THE CULTURE OF SHARING INFORMATION
I always tell the English speaking people of this country that they need to take advantage of the cultural inclination to share information by English speaking people. If you wanted to learn photography today and you went to YouTube to look for answers, you will find that there is more information available in English than in French. Not only because English is the most spoken language in the world but because the U.S.A is English speaking and it is the champion of open source information sharing. Fun fact - most French PHD candidates publish their research in English first before thinking of translating to French.
In Cameroon, we are groomed to hide important information and good news, we are told, is not to be shared because there will be jealous people out there to get you. When someone gets given a visa to travel abroad, there is no short of people advising him not to tell others. Well, I think timing is everything but we also need to lower that guard.
Any-Ha!
I made one observation about the older generations of Cameroonians. They can tell you everything except how they make their money. You hardly ever see things like 10 success lessons by X, Y, or Z Cameroonian billionaire. When it comes to that aspect, they beat around the bush a lot. I have recently made enemies of friends because I demanded that Jovi debunk claims that were circulating as fact that his recently released album sold 50,000+ copies. They claimed he doesn’t have to show any proof but we have to believe that. I am not surprised for we are in a country where even statistics that should be public information are hidden from the public.
If I wanted to start a clothing store in Tampa Florida, I could literally go and get the records of all registered companies in Tampa Florida that are in the clothing retail business - information that will help me come up with a good business plan and business model. In Cameroon - every startup is playing guess work. We have no data on the size of various industries. Where such information exists, it has been hidden from the public and only the few with the right contacts will be able to lay hands on it. We have not even created a culture of collecting and storing such information hence the rampant inefficiency and constant reinventing of the wheel. I could go on and on but I hope you get the drift.
That is why I want to thank Nina Ngassa for sharing. If you don’t quite understand why that little piece of good news of her achievement which she shared can make all the difference, let’s try with this - I have seen so many people start businesses and stay at the same level because they cannot identify opportunities for growth and expansion. With that information that Nina shared, another budding chef in Bamenda can be inspired to write a proposal and approach other small businesses there to get the companies to make a similar business decision. Combined with the lessons in corporate culture from this article, they can come up with a more convincing pitch. I spend sleepless nights doing write-ups like this one because I believe sharing information is going to be vital to our quest for a better society. This article can be expanded to an entire book with more detail but I hope this in its brevity means something to you now.
Who would have thought Slow Boyz could go corporate?
- Tino Foy