Managing in a new VUCA world
– What we can learn from African companies
All of a sudden some 1.25bn people or 38% of the global workforce are at risk to lose their jobs or to get into any form of furloughs, writes the Economist. No question, the unprecedented global Covid-19 shutdown of economic activities poses new unprecedented challenges for executives, managers, and all other decision-makers.
Whether and how companies will emerge from this downturn will also depend on the preparedness and ability of their managers to cope with Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity, in short VUCA.
To learn from Africa?
As global supply chains are cut and many borders closed, African companies will also be hit very hard by the impacts of this pandemic. However, African companies are much more used to a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous business environment.
That was the reason that together with corporAID, an Austrian NGO, I took the decision to explore this fact in a much deeper way. As most of us are sitting in their home offices, how else could we have done that than with a public webinar? It will actually be our second webinar of a series we call “Business with Africa”.
African entrepreneurs
We are very proud that this time we will connect directly to Lagos, Africa’s biggest city and one of the hotspots of digital innovations. We will talk first to Mr. Peter Bamkole, Professor at the Pan-Atlantic University, who will introduce us to the context.
Then we will talk with Mr. Elo Umeh, founder and CEO of Terragon Group, a leading African data and marketing tech business. We will ask him, how it was possible to set up successfully his tech company in such a VUCA world? His company is now operating in 6 African countries and a leading partner for data-driven marketing.
We will also ask other entrepreneurs on stage, people who do business in African countries. We want to make the discussion as interactive as possible and all out the session we want to explore, what we – Europeans – can learn from African companies.
The webinar will take place on April 15th. More details you find here.
