It is well with my Soul.

Last Night a journalist called me saying that i had been sued by some individuals on criminal grounds. The grounds were that i had tendered forged documents. At the moment there several court cases against me regarding my re-appointment as Principal. In these cases, there are several allegations labelled against me which i would not like to discuss since the case is already being heard. However i know that there is a group of people who vowed just to spoil my name and make  these kinds of allegations. Since these are in court and i trust our courts will go to establish the truth, i can only leave these to the courts to handle. The saying that the truth will set you free is very appropriate. I am however not surprised that those who want me out of the MUBS job can go to this level. They have taken me to IGG, numerous court cases, now a criminal case, you never know what next happens. The truth liberates people and it will liberate me.

Why can’t Ugandans measure up to International Standards?

When foreign companies get contracts to do certain jobs in Uganda and indeed many African countries, there are mixed feelings among many local people. They always ask the question, why can’t we do it ourselves. Don’t we have local companies that can do this? Of course when these international companies undertake such contracts, they repatriate profits from the job and these profits must come from local earnings. If the profits were being taken by a local company, the money would remain in the country. For countries that have something to export like oil for instance, such contracts are not a big problem to the economy but they are for small economies that have very little to export. Road construction is one area where international companies secure such contracts. They bring in engineers and management skills. It is common on our roads to find one “mzungu” on a hot day as the local fellows sweat out on the road. Finally these roads come out well with good quality. This is true for the majority of them. It is also true that once in a while, these roads may come out with poor quality. Guess what the problem is? Usually lack of supervision. Who supervises? Our local engineers. On the Jinja Kampala road, there were some repairs done some time back with an intention of removing sharp bents from the road. The areas that were repaired include Namagunga area, Nagojje. Until recently, these areas that were repaired became the worst spots on the roads. These were done by some local contractor. 

As I write now, Sterling is doing some major repairs on the road and the difference is very visible. The road construction challenge can be replicated in many other areas of economic activity. What is the problem there? We have excellent engineers, excellent managers but we simply do not measure up to the job. It is not surprising that most of the foreign owned companies have foreigners as top executives like Stanbic, Barclays Bank, Hima Factory but even our local owned companies owned by Africans, we usually employ a foreigner in one of the top jobs. The Indian community in Uganda some of whom are identified as Ugandans take Sudhir, the Madhavani Group, Karim among others, they bring Indian experts to manage these organisations. We in the educational institutions are churning out educated people but they do not appear good enough to work in these companies. What is the challenge? Trust? Attention to detail? Work culture? Recently a road in Bugolobi, Bazalabusa road which links Luthuli Avenue with Mbuya road on the side of Bugolobi flats, was repaired. I am not sure what the cost was. The repair included removal of the old tarmac which according to me was excellent and replacing it with a new surface. The process of doing so was very painful because it took some long time to complete. The road maybe approximately half a kilometer. After it was resealed, most likely with the one layer, many of us who use it, waited for the final resealing but it never happened. 

This road had developed some potholes indeed one of them was so huge. I remember seeing a small car getting stuck in a pothole and the pothole grew bigger day by day. What was required was patching the potholes not resealing the holes. Unfortunately after this resealing, the rains came. They caused the damage on the resealed road which we are still waiting for the relevant authorities to address. But given our culture of lack of maintenance, I guess this road will be left to wear away until when we borrow money to resurface it. If we borrowed money to do this job, we have a major challenge in our hands. i imagine this is a city authority road and I hope that my friend Jennifer hears about this

Pedestrians are not important

If you ever walk in Bugolobi which is an area where the residents are supposed to be either wealthy people or those working international or big organisations, you will be surprised how the pedestrians there are treated. You would expect that as an organized place unlike many of our upcoming rich men’s slums as they are called, the roads should have sidewalks to enable pedestrians to walk without fear of being knocked down by a car. Pedestrians in such places should have somewhere on the road side which should be paved. In the developed countries, they have even developed cycle lanes to enable cyclists to have somewhere to ride safely.

What I have noted in Bugolobi is that most of the property owners have encroached on the road reserve and have either put a fence there or a natural hedge. The consequence now is that pedestrians must now walk in the road. It is common in the mornings and in the evening. If you passby Bandari rise and Princess Ann roads to see scared pedestrians hurrying to go to their workplaces in the industrial area not sure whether they will reach safely as the vehicles go past them. Jennifer can you implement the law or appear to implement the law. I know the city council has no resources but ask these wealthy people not to encroach on the road reserve and make sure that there is a sidewalk on these roads.

My students moving them moving from our Bugolobi annex towards bugolobi market, experience the same challenge.

How Knowledge Creates Competitive advantage

LEVERAGING KNOWLEDGE FOR COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

WASWA BALUNYWA, PhD

MAKERERE UNIVERSITY BUSINESS SCHOOL

2001

LEVERAGING KNOWLEDGE FOR COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

The Changing World

Thousands of products have come up to the market place over the last 20 years. Many products have also got multiple uses. The new products, the new processes have led to new patterns of behavior and created new values. This is taking place on a continuous basis. Today reports, events are available live as they happen. The instant availability of information to millions of people contrasts with a situation a few years back where a big report would have been available, probably in only several copies to a few people in a few countries in a period of about 6 months. Things have changed. Change is said to be the only constant. Change is the variation in what exists. Change is the status quo because it is the only thing that is taking place and will take place.

What is taking place in the market place is innovation. Innovation is something new or innovations are something different arising  out of the fact that somebody in the organization perceives an opportunity, collects data about it, turns it into information and then into knowledge and develop a product or service. The data used is both internal and external to the organization. Such information when turned into knowledge can then be used to adopt or change behavior. This is innovation.

This paper proposes that the only sustainable way to create competitive advantage is to leverage knowledge. We argue that people and indeed organizations innovate as a result of the knowledge that they acquire and their ability to apply that knowledge to solve problems. This process of solving problems is innovation.

Competitive advantage

There is debate on what competitiveness is and no agreed definition has come up. There are also attempts to make a distinction between competitiveness and competitive advantage.

Competitive advantage is said to be the unique advantage an organization has over others. The distinct competence, arising from knowledge that one organization has which lacks a certain segment of the market to buy from it (Porter, 1998; Ghemawat, 1986). Competitiveness on the other hand is the ability to sell and survive in the market in a profitable manner. This kind of definition is loaded with meaning. Ability to sell means the company has the capacity to produce, where applicable, a high quality product that is acceptable to consumers and which is functional. It further assumes that having been able to produce the product, you are able to sell it. Selling means the consumer accepts the product quality and characteristics at the price given. The fact that the organization sells continuously means if offers value to the consumer in form of a product or service acceptable to the consumer which is mutually exclusive of existing or competing products. This will entail continuous improvement or new products being delivered to the market to sustain interest. The fact that an organization survives means it has capacity to adopt to change that is taking place in the environment and this through continuous innovation. Economists have all along said that organizations that don’t make profit in the long run die. Competitiveness is reflected in the survival of the organization which is determined by the ability to make profits.

Competitive advantage is therefore going to come from any of those processes or actions that take place in the organization. Because of the availability of information, organizations have access to new technology, to finance, to resources and people. Consequently to a great extent, especially in the developed countries, the ground is level. Companies can compete on a leveled play ground. Competitive advantage can be sourced from any of these factors. Organizations that sustain the advantage are competitive.

Organizations therefore must have competitive advantage if they are to be competitive, match or stay ahead of competition. Competitive advantage is built from the unique strengths or skills an organization may have. Many strategy gurus suggest different sources of competitive advantage (Porter, 1985; Stalk, 1988; Ghemawat, 1986; Balunywa, 1986). The major sources are cost, price, time, value, people, technology and innovation. Competitive advantage through cost is created by organizations using the learning curve to reduce cost. This is achieved through exploiting economies of scale, mass production which gradually relies on volume to reduce cost. Leading strategy guru Porter (1985) actually suggested that low cost was one of the two types of competitive advantage a company could have. Of course there are many others but this serves to highlight the importance of cost in creating the edge.

Building competitive advantage using price is closely related to cost. Organization with good cost structures are able to compete on the basis of price. With lower costs of production, an organization can lower prices. There is a dark side in building competitive advantage through price especially if the industry is in the later stages of the life cycle. It eats into margins and finally reduces a company’s competitive advantage. Competing on price can bankrupt organizations and is not an ideal method of competing. But price needs not necessarily mean low price. The producers of the luxury BMW motor vehicle use price to create competitive advantage. They up the price and create the psychological impression that high price is the unique advantage the product has.

Value based competition is based on giving a specific value to customers. People who travel business and first class on passenger airlines pay for a certain value. They pay for comfort and services and don’t mind the price. Many up-market products tend to be sold on the basis of value perceived by the buyers.

Stalk (1988) argued that time was the cutting edge. The way in which organizations managed their time gave them advantage, the edge over others. Competing on time has spectacular advantages. Time strategy puts you in the market first. It enables you to charge higher prices than others.

Using people as a competitive advantage presents specific advantages. People are unique resources because they are creative, supply talent and drive. It is not common to find two people are alike. Those with specific skills use them to give an organization an edge over others. People are the source of ideas and innovations.

Technology is another source of competitive advantage, when technology is introduced, it has stages it goes through. Only those companies that commercialize technology successfully can exploit the advantage that technology gives. Technology is a form of innovation though not the only one. Technology gives better products, new processes and lower costs of production. Technology has been a prime mover of change. A very important tool in creating competitive advantage. The trouble is, it is easily accessible.

Innovation is probably the only long lasting source of competitive advantage. Innovation orchestrates change. It enables an organization to continually come up with new ideas, products and processes and thus make the organization stay ahead of others.

KNOWLEDGE AND COMPETITIVENESS

Political power comes out of the barrel of a gun. This is a famous and power quotation from the works of Chairman Mao. We can draw analogy about competitiveness from this definition. Economic power or competitiveness comes out of the barrel of knowledge. Knowledge or intellectual property as an asset is what one knows, the lack of which makes somebody unable to do certain things.

The power that comes out of knowing something, knowing how to do something, knowing how to serve customers, where to raise money, how to produce, how to repair, how to move things, gives the possessor of knowledge the ability to outperform those who don’t know. But mere knowledge is not by itself sufficient to create advantage, it must be manipulated.

What is knowledge?

It is difficult to explain what knowledge is in a management sense since this subject is relatively new. Tobin (1998) defines knowledge as applied information. In his explanation of the stages of learning, he says that knowledge is applied information and information is data that has relevance and purpose. He argues that when intuition is added to knowledge, the result is wisdom.

The four stages of learning

Stage 1                     Data + Relevance + Purpose Stage 11                  Information + Application Stage 111              Knowledge + Intuition Stage 1V                       Wisdom

This approach to knowledge starts off with the fact everywhere around us, we have data about many things. We get exposed to it; we see it but never make use of it. When as, Drucker says, you see relevance and purpose to data, it becomes information. Data becomes information to somebody only if it has a purpose. Otherwise the thousands of books, newspapers, reports that do not serve a particular purpose are not information. In a work related environment where information is applied to ones job, it becomes knowledge.

Victor and Boynton (1998) define knowledge from the organizational point of view. They look at knowledge as what members of the organization know and what the organization itself knows.

Monaka (1991) in this classification of type of knowledge brings out two important meanings which are now being widely adopted. This is tacit and explicit knowledge. Monaka suggests that “tacit knowledge is highly personal hard to formalize and therefore difficult to communicate”. It is partly the technical skills one has, somebody’s know how which is difficult to express or pin down. It is formal. This is knowledge inside the individual. Assume two people who grow up together and go to similar schools and acquire similar degrees. Their management of situations is influenced by knowledge they learn as they grow up but the difference in the knowledge they actually have is a result of their tacit knowledge.

Monaka and Boynton (1998) in their practical guide as to how to succeed in the market using knowledge come up with four different types of knowledge, tacit, articulated, practical and architectural knowledge. They define tacit knowledge as has been defined by Monaka.

This is knowledge carried largely in workers heads and emerges from craft work. They argue that if this knowledge can be formalized and passed on to others. It becomes articulated knowledge. Tapping this knowledge is what leads to mass production. The argument here is that in organizations, work is carried out as a result of the knowledge one person has. That person has unique knowledge called tacit knowledge. He/she has knowledge of the craft and does it well. If this knowledge can be replicated so that many other people know it, it leads to mass production. This is the stage of articulated knowledge. There is standardization of processes and products. Victor and Boynton argue further that mass production creates new knowledge, practical knowledge. Practical knowledge is based on the learning that takes place under mass production. It is under this stage that a very important process takes place. That of innovation. When the organization studies the process of mass production and acquires practical knowledge, there are possibilities of enhancing the process through a deep understanding of what takes place and by being able to experiment with new combinations. This creation of new processes or products out of change in practical knowledge creates what Victor and Boynton call architectural knowledge. At this stage, the cycle cans begin again. This stage is one of innovation.

Knowledge and competencies

To be able to perform certain tasks, individuals need competencies. Competencies are based on knowledge and experience. Individuals need different skills including technical, interpersonal and conceptual to enable them perform their tasks.

Competencies should not be static. Dynamism is important for the success of both the individual and the organization. Engineers trained in the 60’s and even 70’s are now obsolete unless if they have update. When technology changes, competencies should be changed. People must update.

Excellence of an individual, wisdom, knowledge accumulation depends on the conceptual skills which are highly dependent on the educational background of the people concerned and the acquired knowledge. Conceptual skill is the ability to think, knowledge explosion takes place when a well educated person who is grounded in a certain subject uses that knowledge in combination with the knowledge he is able to source from the environment come up with new ideas products or processes. This is innovation.

Organizations therefore need to leverage knowledge for competitive advantage. The ability of a person to scan the environment, source data, transform data into information is a process by which itself is intuitious though with training, people can be taught how to do it.

The information will become knowledge only if it is useful. The process of doing this is the creativity process. It is a process where people get immersed into information and get an illumination. The illumination is an idea or product or service or process. The creativity process involves many different ways of coming up with new ideas. It may be through known methods like brain storming, the Gordon technique, association and others. But this is central to the success. The ability to use knowledge to create new products, new markets and new processes is not common.

LEVERAGING KNOWLEDGE

Competitiveness comes out of the barrel of knowledge. It is knowledge that will continuously sustain competitive advantage. Knowledge can either be with an individual in the organization or with the organization itself. It’s this knowledge that can be used to cause change through innovation. It is knowledge that could give rise to new products and services and processes. Leveraging knowledge means applying knowledge to gain competitive advantage. To be able to leverage it, there must be a combination of both individual knowledge and organizational knowledge. For an individual to be able to innovate and cause change, the individual must be creative. And in this context leveraging knowledge involves getting people to be creative.

Conditions for individuals to innovate

The individual must be able to do the following things:

1.      To free their imaginations

Individuals must allow themselves to dream, to romanticize with ideas, to develop a big picture, to let their minds wander. It is through this imagination that ideas are generated and availed in form of knowledge. This enables the individual to use that knowledge to innovate. Of course this is subject to other organizational factors.

2.      Learning how to associate

Knowledge that is acquired and information that is seen or read is what meets to cause the knowledge explosion. This explosion results into new ideas and probably produces, services and or processes. These products and or services can emerge from the individual associating what he sees with what he does. This is learning from others.

3.      Managing the creativity kills

For individuals to be creative, they must overcome the usual creativity killer. These are statements like, “that is not the right answer”, “I am not creative”, “that is not my job”, “follow procedure”, and other killers (Balunywa, 1995)

4.      Willing to learn

Individuals will be able to leverage knowledge for competitive advantage only if they are willing to learn. They are willing to listen. Individuals must be willing to abandon what they know and acquire new knowledge. This is the learning individual. Such an individual has knowledge that enables him to lever for competitive advantage.

Conditions for organizations to innovate

Organizations are made up of individuals and its individuals who get things done. Its individuals who transform data into information, into knowledge. The knowledge of an individual depends on the knowledge acquired through the various means and the knowledge of the organization is in a way a summation of the knowledge of individuals. For organizations therefore to leverage knowledge, the individuals must have the knowledge and must be willing to use it. This can be achieved in the following ways.

1.      Creating new knowledge

Organizations must continuously create new knowledge through acquiring data and transforming that data into information and knowledge. This involves acquiring products, services, from the environment. This knowledge is the explicit knowledge which must be available for users.

2.      Disseminating knowledge

Once knowledge has been acquired by the organization it should be disseminated within the organization. Those with knowledge must be ready and willing to share it. This makes people know and enables them to act with knowledge. This is leveraging knowledge.

3.      Embrace new knowledge quickly

Organizations must embrace all the new knowledge that is pertinent to its activities as quickly as possible. If they don’t, competition will.

4.      Create an enabling environment

Knowledge is learning and people can only learn if the environment to learn exists. Organizations therefore must be able to facilitate learning to be able to leverage knowledge. If people learn, they acquire knowledge and in the process they generate new ideas and products. This way they can keep on top of things.

Refer to the Balunywa Leveraging Knowledge Model (next page)

A KNOWLEDGE BASED COMPANY

Drucker has been instrumental in talking about the knowledge based company. Many other people have come to support his thesis that the organization of the future is a knowledge based one. While Drucker and other people’s views are based on the fact that these organizations are information organizations, they do not really mean knowledge based. The information based organization is one that is based on information technology which is just part of knowledge.

It is a learning organization.

The learning organization is one that is capable of learning and also encourages its people to learn. Senge (1990) called it an organization that continuously expands its capacity to create its future. He described five disciplines which he says enable a company to become a learning organization. These include personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, team learning and systems thinking. The learning organization provides an environment in which people with tacit knowledge avail it to others to make it explicit knowledge. The leadership in such organizations encourages learning through structures, persuasion and sharing vision. It facilitates creation of knowledge and sharing of the knowledge.

Has a flat structure

The knowledge based organization recognizes that knowledge is not anybody’s monopoly and that the output of the organization depends on the input and knowledge of the people who work for it. The hierarchy consequently is no longer important. The reporting structures typical of old organizations with one direction flow of information, is long gone. Organizations must have flat structures to be able to respond to the demands of the market place.

It is IT based

Information is organized data that is intended to serve a particular purpose. Technology has enabled information to be available to organizations in large numbers.

Continuous improvement

Competencies/skills

1.      Human

2.      Technical

3.      Conceptual

Usual

Adopt

Search

Institution

i)                    Ability to associate

ii)                  Ability to think

References

1.      Balunywa Waswa (1997); Managing the Wisdom of Opportunity through Innovation

2.      Drucker, Porter (1998); The coming of the NEW Organization on Knowledge Management, Harvard Business Review.

3.      Ghemwat, Pankaj (1986); Sustainable Advantage, Harvard Business Review.

4.      Nonaka, Ikujiiro (1998); The Knowledge Creating Company on Knowledge Management, Harvard Business Review.

5.      Porter, E. Michael (1990); How Competitive Forces Shape Strategy

6.      Porter, E. Michael (1990); The Competitive advantage of Nations, Free Press

7.      Roos, Johan et al (1997); Intellectual Capital; Navigating the new business landscape, Macmillan Business, London

8.      Stalk, George Jr. (1998); Time, the next source of Competitive Advantage, Harvard Business Review

9.      Tobin, Daniel (1998); the Knowledge enabled organization, American Management Association, New York

10.  Victor, Bart (1998); Invented Here, Harvard Business School Press, Boston.

Local or foreign medical facilities, the patients dilemma

I read your article in the New Vision and it came at a time when I was thinking of how to get this message back to you. You have established probably one of the best hospitals in the country and you know with our African culture because you are a “muzungu” your facilities are expected to be good. I agree with you on the matter Uganda developing its own medical facilities so as not to spend unnecessary and unavailable resources abroad. I guess we are too poor a country to do that. What is the cause? Why do Ugandans send their loved ones abroad? I think there are 3 major reasons; absence of facilities, absence of necessary skills and absence of commitment, poor management and wrong attitude on our part as Ugandans both doctors and patients. I know many people are trying to make a contribution to improve the first two including yourself. 

The biggest challenge is the absence of national goals on health, a strategy to achieve them, absence of resources and the will to do even for the little resources that we have However the third one is a major problem and this is what I want to address in this article. Recently my brother in law had an accident and my sister knowing IHK was one of the best brought him to IHK. He had a double fracture on his leg. Let me fast forward, after 2 months the leg got amputated in India thanks to the third reason in our medical facilities. When my brother in law was admitted in IHK, it took 5 days to take him to the theater for an operation. In the meantime the doctors put a plaster on his leg that had not only frustrated the leg but had an internal bleeding. I guess some veins had burst. Forgive my choice of words. I am not very sure what happened but you are the doctor, you will know. While waiting for the operation, a blood clot moved from the injured part of the leg towards the heart. He was put on oxygen and finally the doctors discovered that he had a blood clot moving in his body. What could have happened you must know very well as a doctor. When he was operated I gather who did the operation not only brought the wrong size of “nails” but left out something possibly screws or whatever it is. I hadn’t paid very much attention because I know they were under very good care. They re-operated him after sometime. He developed other complications and returned to hospital. And a family friend/doctor who was visiting him found that the patient had been neglected and had been told he would be operated after 6 days. That is when we took the decision to take him to India. At the end of it all we have someone without a limb and over 60million shillings in medical bills. 

Thank God he still has a life. All this happened under your watchful eye. Is it possible you have been entirely Ugandalised? You run an institution and don’t pay attention to details? I don’t think that should be the case. If we were mindful about our work as individuals this should not have happened.