Let’s nurture more ‘intrapreneurs’ – Mike Nyinaku
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the BEIGE Group, Mr Mike Nyinaku, has called for general support in nurturing what he terms “intrapreneurship” – the people who work within the organisation – because they are critical in the success of enterprises.
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He said raising a critical mass of intrapreneurs was important since not everybody could employ, but others could take advantage of what entrepreneurs, who he described as “a rare breed of people who take risk”, had created.
“As much as we support entrepreneurship, I like to say we should also support the concept of intrapreneurship because not all of us can employ. But a lot more can take advantage of what they people who risk, have created,” the entrepreneur explained.
Mr Nyinaku lauded the growing number of entrepreneurs in the country, a trend he said when continued for the next decade or two would lead to a major socio-economic transformation of the country, as the citizenry would not depend so much on government because private sector players would have been doing things by themselves.
People – the intrapreneurs
However, Mr Nyinaku insisted that capacity deficit in the human resource at the work place was a major issue that business leaders needed to deal with, worried that more graduates were not productive in the corporate office, but could use the computer so well for social media.
“I’m sure when you glance through the curriculum vitae of anyone from a university, they will tell you they are computer proficient. But they will not be able to put together a simple document in Microsoft Excel, but they are so good at facebooking.
Another challenge of recruiting ‘intrapreneurs’ is the impatience of the youth for apprenticeship.
“In no time, someone thinks he/she is baked and wants to go and ply a trade. So you’re not getting a lot of the youth ready to be patient enough to be groomed and prepared,” she noted.
As businesses grow, delegation of responsibility; decision making, supervision, supervision and so on becomes imminent, but requires people with high integrity. The BEIGE Group CEO believes the integrity was an issue that also needed to be addressed within the Ghanaian business environment.
“When we have a canker of integrity in our people, delegation becomes difficult. Because you realise you’d be spending more time supervising what you delegated than it would have cost you if you did it yourself.
“We need to have a system that is breeding people from school who are responsible, diligent, who are believing that it does not have to be mine for it to work; I must give it my best for the thing to work for all of us,” Mr Nyinaku stressed.
The new phase of BEIGE
The BEIGE Group, although has had its fair share of employee delinquencies, leadership of the group had addressed the challenge innovatively.
According to the CEO, since the human capital was rudimentary they first ensured that after attracting the right calibre, they cultivated them to believe in the vision of the business.
“Essentially, court their integrity and loyalty and that’s a great deal of headache.”
Mr Nyinaku, who started BEIGE Capital, a savings and loans company, when he was only 33 years, said throughout the various stages of the business growth, he had adopted a management approach that was relevant to the situation at the time.
“In the beginning I had a different approach because we were small and I could remember the names of all staff. Now we’re in thousands so then I’ve to lead from afar. Back then, I was leading from the front. And, I’m growing and developing the art of leadership even better myself.”
Technology
With the growth in the business, reaching about 30,000 clients on daily basis, BEIGE Group has deployed state-of-the-art technology to support operations.
Agents and sales teams use palm top device with software that allows them to open accounts and conduct transactions, be they banking, investments or insurance, on the field.
Mr Nyinaku said the BEIGE has also signed on to partner companies such as the Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) to bring services such as Mobile Money and bills payments to its clients.
The BEIGE Group is also considering deploying the Temenous 24 banking software to enhance its operations.
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