From Six Sigma to TQM (total quality management), the industrial age world pioneered many management systems. But I can tell you that some may not be relevant in your web business.

Yes, I do believe that the concept of TQM and some of the old management systems used in the industrial age empires are not necessarily relevant in the knowledge economy. In the past, you built for absolute quality and perfection. [Case in point, Six Sigma: “set of management techniques intended to improve business processes by greatly reducing the probability that an error or defect will occur.”]

Today, you build for a balance between quality and quantity. Yes, you launch a half-baked web product in the day and wait for comments to fix it in the night. You make a video game in the day and wait for comments to fix it in the night. You make a hardware product (yes voice assistant like Alexa) but the development never finishes because the AI that powers it in the cloud is a continuum. The ways products are engineered are changing.

Largely, the nature of the product distribution means that you can succeed by producing and learning from your customers while on the fly. So, a product can be built within 24 hours and launched with bugs which can be fixed on the go.

While TQM and Six Sigma remain for the industrial age firms, pursuing them in knowledge age companies would slow you down. If Alexa had waited to improve its voice assistant product to the level it is now instead of launching it few years ago, it would not be in the leading position it is now. It came with defects and errors but with the web distribution, it has been fixing those issues. The Six Sigma would not have approved such a product for launch. Yes, Alexa would never be a completed product because the AI would keep evolving.

Always remember this statement from Google engineer as you develop:

To Luke Wroblewski, also a Product Manager, startups must measure the kind of design that works specifically for the task; focus on core features, grow critical engagement and ensure adequate ergonomics.

Wroblewski advised startups to stake a balance between quantity and quality to create a lasting solution.

Yes, you cannot expect to be absolutely perfect. Have some bugs and errors even as you move fast to win your markets. This is not about Six Sigma and TQM; it is about having the capacity to learn what customers want and pivot on the fly. Sure, you can apply Six Sigma and TQM in making sure what you want to accomplish are fine but do not overly be driven by the absolute demand for perfection.

You need quality but it must have a balance. In web business, your recall happens in minutes and can be fixed in seconds. That is different from making turbines and power plants where recalls could destroy a business. So, do not apply management systems designed for such businesses in your firm. Learn how they break things in Facebook, Google, Amazon and Snap and keep moving. You complain, they fix and tomorrow everyone has forgotten.

President Buhari did a good job this week, getting the Council of State to move funding for agriculture from $200 million to $1 billion. Sure, that is not really big, but it is a step in the right direction.

After a six-hour deliberation on the prevailing insecurity in the country, the economy and electoral matters, the Council of State meeting, presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari, yesterday reviewed the funding of agriculture from $200 million to $1 billion to cater for livestock and farmers.

The funds, according to council, would be disbursed through the Anchor Borrower and Commercial Agricultural Crédit Scheme (CACS) to boost the diversification agenda of the current administration and food security, among others.

Now that he has the funding, he needs to develop a better strategy to make sure the real farmers get this money. The National Identification Number (NIN) and Bank Verification Number (BVN) must be incorporated in any strategy the government adopts as it makes the funds available.

This Buhari’s call is coming when the President of the African Development Bank is also pushing for more funding in African agriculture. I do believe that the decade of 2020s would be one where Africa would have the turning point. Yes, we would have the capacity to feed more of our citizens.

According to Adesina, “For too long, Agriculture has been associated with what I call the three Ps – pain, penury, and poverty. The fact though is that agriculture is a huge wealth-creating sector that is primed to unleash new economic opportunities that will lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.”

[…]

The African Development Bank is also pioneering the establishment of Staple Crop Processing Zones(https://goo.gl/P8FvaY) in 10 African countries, that are expected to transform rural economies into zones of economic prosperity and save African economies billions of dollars in much needed foreign reserves.

“We must now turn the rural areas from zones of economic misery to zones of economic prosperity. This requires a total transformation of the agriculture sector. At the core of this must be rapid agricultural industrialization. We must not just focus on primary production but on the development of agricultural value chains,” Adesina added. “That way, Africa will turn from being at the bottom to the top of global value chains.” (AfDB newsletter)

Essentially, if Nigeria could double farm yield, we would reduce poverty by at least 30% since more than 65% of our working people are in agriculture. There is no other sector that holds the future of Nigeria than agriculture. I am very happy that President Buhari tabled that before the Council of State this week. You rarely discuss agriculture in Council of State. He made it happen, and they gave the blessing. Now, he needs to go and execute.

While we are talking of technology funding, the government has made a call that it has $1 billion to invest to seed farmers. It does not have to be in tech to be called capital. Nigeria has capital right now. If you want to farm, join cooperatives to access this funding which typically goes through Bank of Agriculture and cooperatives. Every LGA through the state State Ministry of Agriculture has a cooperative. You must join to tap into the funding.

Today, I received feedback that MSC (Agricultural Economics) students of the University of Ibadan are using the One Oasis Strategy to design new models for agricultural development. Yusuf sent me a solid presentation on how they have analysed the strategy and then integrated it into some core pillars in their MSC Forum programs.

A company’s position in the largely imperfect market is determined by its products which help to remove market frictions. The best product in a firm anchors its survival, just as oasis does in a desert. And every business must discover its oasis, if it hopes to thrive. Discovering the oasis is very important because it would help the company to pursue optimal allocation of the factors of production.

For competitiveness, there is a way a company can allocate the factors of production to make sure it supports the best product (the oasis which anchors the firm). If that is done, effectively, that best product will blossom, and other products in the business will also do well, as they will feed from the best product.

Simply, if you build your investment around that main product, you will find success, because those investments will have a clear internal “customer”, and that reduces market risks. In other words, if your new business investments are geared to support the best product, and the best product is doing well, it implies the risks on the new investments will be easily managed. Provided the best product continues to do well, demand on the new investment is assured (i.e. the customer exists, irrespective of the external market). That is the One Oasis Strategy.

The students extrapolated the work into competitive advantages of firms. The slide notes in parts “Although Prof Ndubuisi Ekekwe did not mention this, I suppose that the supporting node must be a strategic resource to prevent the drying up of the oasis (competitive edge)”. They went ahead to make new cases, focusing on agricultural chain. It is a very impressive work.

Sure, I cannot post the slides since this is possibly going to be part of postgraduate theses.

Meanwhile, I would be publishing the One Oasis Strategy Toolkit and also a Harvard Business Review piece is coming with research works we have done in three Nigerian companies on this.