I have a piece in CTA Spore on Zenvus. CTA is an international organization with the mission “to advance food security, resilience and inclusive economic growth in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific through innovations in sustainable agriculture”. It sees “smallholder agriculture as a vibrant, modern and sustainable business that creates value for farmers, entrepreneurs, youth and women, and produces affordable, nutritious and healthy food for all.” In Zenvus, our mission is to cure extreme poverty by improving farm yields in Africa.

The test for Africa is that it needs to develop and deepen capabilities to solve region-specific climate changes so as to replenish its soils and have the right inputs to farm, and feed its people. Today’s depleted soils are opportunities for technology companies to solve. Possibly, a quantum computer powered by the most advanced general artificial intelligence can offer roadmaps on how Africa can effectively feed not just its citizens, but the world, since it has the largest area of uncultivated arable land.

When we talk about managing a product, many things are critical right from day one of its launch. Those things include  monitoring its acceptance, performance and also profiling the feedback from the market. Any company that wants to do well must meet those metrics.

Re-pricing, re-branding, re-packaging, quality review, quantity review, etc will come to mind when the product performance is analyzed. The performance will give insights to the next decision to be made on the product. When the necessary decision making tarries, the possibility of losing the market share sets in, and this may become disastrous to the company.

Many had argued in the past on issues regarding Proactive-ness and Reactive-ness. Being proactive is very good but I disagree that it applies to all issues. When it comes to Product Management, I am totally in support of flexibility, especially in a market that has several competitors. 

Reasonable feedback should have quick impacts on the products and services.

Responding or reacting based on the performance of a product or service, and then implementing a change or review is a reactive approach. This, I think, is the best approach to Product Management.

Every business wants to record profits and maintain its share of the market at all times. We can become proactive by planning for the future in a short-term, long-term basis. But do not hesitate to be reactive when your competitors hit the market indices hard, and disrupt your projections.

You can become innovatively reactive to the market demand by giving more than it demands.

For instance, if the market demand is price reduction, you may respond to it with reduction of price, or repackaging to reduce cost, or simply increase the quantity while keeping old price constant. Most FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) players typically reduce quantity while keeping price constant (customers rarely notice that inside the can, the items have dropped from 50 pieces to 45 pieces). Yes, you can repackage with reduced price, covering well your variable cost even when recouping fixed cost is at risk, temporarily. More so, you can increase the quantity and improve the quality without changing the price. The possibilities are many depending on the strategy. The key is making sure that variable cost is covered since that is what drives your capability to have the business going, in the short-term.

We have seen such instances in the past with FMCG companies; yes, companies producing noodles (like Indomie Noodles), cola makers (like  Bigi Cola), and more. It is always better to Change the Market’s Demand than to let the Market’s Demand Change you. That is perception demand strategy.

Finally, companies with good strategic team usually produce strong innovations in Product Management. They usually become the pacesetters for others in their sector. Also, they make it a habit to always innovatively react to market demand by introducing new or re-branded products.

Just as disruptive technologies are raging through industries, markets, and reshaping business processes, products and models, it might not take long before smart governments in Nigeria begin to deploy emerging techs in law enforcement processes. This I must admit, comes with attendant job losses, and of course new sets of jobs could be created too.

Each time I drive through key areas notorious for traffic congestion in Lagos State, Nigeria, often ask myself why we find it difficult to enforce basic traffic laws, even with huge number of traffic officials from various agencies of government scattered across different routes of the State. Then one day, a seemingly petty idea flashed through my mind. What if the Lagos State government concession some parts of traffic monitoring and enforcement roles out to a private firm? That sound crazy, right? I will explain how, think this would work.

My Proposal:

Elements of Traffic Enforcement Roles to be Outsourced

1. Traffic light deployments, maintenance, and monitoring across key routes in the State.
2. Tracking of traffic light breaches by motorists and keeping tab of offenders through deployment of drones and CCTVs.
3. Tracking traffic law breaches (i.e. one-way driving, wrong turning, following wrong lane, packing on main road etc.) by motorists and keeping tab of offenders through deployment of drones and CCTVs.
4. Working with relevant government agencies to ensure that traffic offenders pay fines for traffic law breaches at the point vehicle documents renewal.

The Prospective Concessionaires

I suggest that the process of getting few interested firms should be thrown open and made competitive. I do think more than one firm should be engaged for this project. Amongst other requirements, the selected concessionaire(s) should have:

1. Strong competencies in emerging transportation and traffic management technologies.
2. Financial and technical capacity to deploy and maintain CCTVs and drones across key routes in the State; track and monitor traffic law breaches.

Who Pays The Bill

Ultimately, the traffic law offenders will pay the bill. Periodically, government pay the concessionaires, but that would be recovered from traffic law offenders.

How Will Government Secure Maximum Revenue from Traffic Law Offenders?

I understand that we have a terrible address system in Nigeria. It’s difficult to track people to their places of residences. We don’t even have unique identities for our people. Therefore, it’s difficult to trace traffic offenders to their places of residence. But here is how government can recover fines from offenders:

1. The participating firm(s) use drones or CCTV to capture the offence scene, including the offender’s plate number.
2. They maintain a database for these records and regularly share same with government traffic agencies for enforcement of fines collection.
3. Each time anyone is coming to renew his/her vehicle documents, the relevant agency sifts through the digital records to see that the fellow hasn’t committed traffic offence during past months. If s/he has, the person should be made to pay the relevant fines before s/he could proceed with papers renewal.
4. Traffic agencies should be empowered and made to focus more on ensuring that motorists have genuine documents.

Benefits of this Initiative

1. Motorists will exercise higher discretion while driving, knowing that they are being monitored by drones or CCTV.
2. There will be higher sanity on Lagos roads, with lesser involvement of unscrupulous traffic officials.
3. And yes, lower incidence of bribery and intimidation by traffic officials.
4. It saves government cost of deploying traffic lights and maintenance of same, regularly.

Downside to this Initiative

1. Let’s face it. Some of the officials of Lagos Traffic Management Agencies (LASTMA) might be rendered redundant. Government can redeploy them to other areas of public service.
2. Expectedly, people might fight this initiative. The issue of fines might not be acceptable to the public. The fines should be considerate, commensurate to the related offence, and yet punitive.
3. Since private firms are involved, the quest for profit might create moral hazard on their part such that motorists are preyed into committing traffic offenses.

From my experiences, it is not unusual to wake up one random morning and discover that in one break of dawn all the self-confidence, pride and enthusiasm, one took great joy in building up had just flown out the window, without giving the slightest of signs. You will wonder how the low self-esteem, fear and doubts gushing out of you had crept in.

‘Where are they from?’

As if enough has not happened already, you will also be low on steam and the motivation to keep pushing and working at your business idea.

You recall all the days that have gone by and you are still far away from where you want to be.

If you are among the few who were lucky to launch their business ideas with a deep pocket, chances are that the money hammer you have been wielding tactically on your  obstacles hasn’t begun to yield results on your bottom line at this time.

Your revenue is still a light year away from the projections you made during your planning.

The sales channel you have fashioned, molded and pruned to perfection will now appear in a new light, bearing many loopholes. You didn’t put them, nobody did either.

Everyone else around you is moving. They all seem to be getting far ahead of you, while it seems life has hit your pause button.

The other business ideas you jumped to choose your current business will begin to hold more attraction and make more sense to you.

It is not an isolated experience peculiar to you.   While we pursue success with a straight and clear-cut focus, success itself runs along a winding road, full of bumps with no warning signs; and leaves emotional tantrums and mood swings in its wake.

The life experiences of an entrepreneur come strangely to new entrants with faint hearts.Your key supplier could have stopped taking your calls for the second day running. He is probably attending to bigger clients with bigger cash to spend or grappling with his own eventualities. But the timing could coincide with one of these bad-mood days and reinforce the evidence compelling you to call it quits.

A fresher in a business is always a generalist at first; doing the customer service, delivery, marketing, accounting, handling inventory and doing whatever is necessary to stay afloat. The fatigue and other side effects of these daily grinds and multi-tasks could catch a fresher off guard and put them in off mode. And that is where every step of the way could begin to fall apart and your goals begin to lose their luster.

In summary you are convinced it is time to ditch the unproductive idea and try something else.

This is only a phase in the life of an entrepreneur. Like everything that is in phases, it will pass and make way for the next phase.

Beyond the severe bashing your ego has taken, and the bitter feeling that you are stuck and have wasted your time and money, there is a success waiting for you to take it. That is only if you keep pushing forward.

Waiting sucks more when there is not an end in sight. You might not see immediate results, but as long as you are in the right track every small step and efforts you make counts. Don’t discard them.

Watch your words, even the most silent of them are powerful. How you feel about your situation will be determined by the way you think about it, and the kind of words you speak out about it.

If today you are in this phase, keep the fire burning and don’t give up.  This phase will pass, certainly.