My late grandfather once gave me a stubborn goat to take to the trading centre and sell. On the way, it kept pulling back, getting tangled in bushes, and even entered someone’s banana plantation. It took me hours to move a few kilometres. When I got to the market, an older man laughed and asked, “Are you really leading this goat, or just being dragged along?” That question stuck.
Years later, while advising a manufacturing group in Tanzania, I asked the same thing only I replaced “goat” with “business.” The MD wanted us to design a growth strategy. But when I started my usual deep dive into operations, I found a different problem. No proper reporting rhythm. Five different versions of performance data.
A leadership team that hadn’t met in three months. Crisis after crisis. Customer issues unresolved for weeks. People busy. Very busy. But nothing strategic was moving. It was sort of a whirlwind of leadership where everything is important and nothing works.
I looked him in the eye and said, “You don’t have clear strategic direction. You’re just managing a mess.”
Confusing chaos for progress
Many senior executives are not leading companies. They are cleaning up yesterday’s fires, holding endless meetings, and calling it “execution.” But this isn’t leadership. It’s crisis babysitting.
During another project, supporting an agribusiness in Zambia to turnaround their supply chain, we started by reviewing their team structure. What I found was frightening. Ten people reported to one overwhelmed director. Each was running their own version of procurement. No coordination. No feedback loops. They were losing $1.2m annually in inefficiencies. And yet, they were praised for “working hard.” That is not business. That is noise.
“The real enemy of innovation is not the lack of ideas. It is fear of failure. People do not want to associate with failure. ”
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Leading means building predictable systems
Leadership is not about having a title or chairing meetings. It’s about creating clarity. Systems. Accountability. You know you are leading a business not managing a mess when:
a) Everyone knows the top 3 strategic priorities without looking at a PowerPoint.
b) There’s a rhythm weekly, monthly, quarterly where performance is reviewed honestly.
c) Teams fix root causes, not symptoms.
When leading a 2-year transformation initiative at a services company, we began by resetting decision rights. Who approves what? Who is accountable for which metric? Within four months, internal email traffic dropped by 60%, and moving large files for approvals by managers halved. Why? Because people finally had clarity and power to act. No more copying five managers on every decision.
To lead well, face the operational truth
Many CEOs know their house is in disarray, but they hide behind growth targets and branding exercises. Real leadership starts with humility. Sit with your core team. Ask: What are we truly in control of? What do we measure well? What can we predict? If the answer is “not much,” stop everything else. Fix your internal house first.
I gave that same advice to the Tanzanian manufacturer. They paused all expansion plans. For six months, we restructured roles, cleaned up reporting, and redesigned processes. It was painful. But twelve months later, their revenue per employee had doubled. Because now, they were leading a companynot chasing broken pieces.
The RRR Test (Roles, Rhythms, Results)
Want to know if you are leading or just surviving?
a) Roles, Are job descriptions aligned to strategy? Can each person describe their value clearly?
b) Rhythms, Do you have structured meetings with real follow-up, not endless talk shops?
c) Results, Do you review and act on outcomes, not just activities?
Tie the goat, then lead it
From my experience taking that goat to the market, I learned to tie the goat properly with a short rope and lead from the front, the journey became smoother. Business is the same. Tie down your chaos. Shorten the rope of confusion. And take the lead from the front, not the centre of panic.
Until next Tuesday,
Ready to stop managing chaos and start leading with clarity?
If you’re serious about transforming your business from firefighting to future-proofing, don’t walk this journey alone. Visit Summit Consulting Ltd today. Let’s help you diagnose the real issues holding back your growth, design winning systems, and execute strategy with ruthless focus.
Your transformation begins the moment you stop pretending the mess is manageable.
Summit Consulting, Experts in Strategy. Risk. Training
