al bogari Blog
Transforming our business(es)
When I joined al bogari Holdings three and a half years ago, I found myself in the middle of an owner run, semi-structured family business. It was by luck that this was my family business, and that I chose to take on the challenge that it presented. My formal education was quickly thrown out the window as I realised that no textbook could teach you how to integrate yourself within a well established business and then go about changing the business from within.
You may ask why I felt we needed to change. In a nutshell – I felt uncomfortable. While we were established, the business felt staid, it felt like we were doing the same thing that a whole bunch of businesses out there do in the same way. I want the business to be exciting, innovative and to use a cliche – cutting edge. My unspoken goal is to transform the business into something that I felt comfortable with, somewhere where I felt ‘Hey – I love coming here everyday’. I think we’re getting there (slowly!).
The challenges over the last three and a half years have been tough but rewarding once you find a way forward.
The first major challenge was the industry that we found ourselves in – from starting off as a general goods store in 1974, we found ourselves trading physical agricultural commodities. To a large extent, the movement of agricultural commodities around Asia, and the MENA region remains unaffected by the modern supply chain logistics. We may have moved on from camels and horse drawn carts but the truth is that shoulder loading (vs. cranes) and transportation of cargo on an individual’s back remains in place across the region. How do you go about modernising a tough and traditional supply chain? How do you use technology to make things quicker, faster and easier?
Understanding and working within the culture that had been built over the last 36 years. If your business has been driven by competing on price and price alone, how do you introduce branding and structured branding to the mix? How do you add process and structure in lieu of owner centric decision making?
Assessing and understanding our people was another big one. If an individual has been used to ‘taking instructions’ and executing on the basis of those instructions, it is challenging to get them to start thinking independently and acting on the basis of the environment around them at a given time. Can these individuals be re-trained? (If so, at what cost?) Or are the too set in their ways? How would they and the business be affected by bringing in new blood?
I hope that over the upcoming weeks I can discuss some of these challenges in more depth interspersed with other relevant bits and pieces.