Hard to scale when trust and competence is lacking...

Happy Christmas everyone! Hope everyone is doing well wherever they are reading this from. First apologies to all those 2nd round applicants who have been trying to contact me to help them on their applications- timing is just not good around now, when I am trying to get a break from all things GSB, not to mention how infrequently I come online (internet connection is very scarce in Tanzania).

One thing I've been doing in the past week is observing and listening to some of the problems the family have had in running businesses here. It seems one of the big issues in trying to scale any business here in Tanzania, which may sound obvious, is of trusting employees and thus to effectively delegate. Or put another way, the lack of educated and competent middle managers to enable any business scale past more than a dozen employees. Its the sad truth when it comes to any high value, people intensive business. What ends up happening is that these professional/ or service orientated firms such as law, engineering end up having to bring in foreign or expatriate talent. The downside of hiring expatriates in Tanzania is that they often cannot thrive in the business or even living environment in Tanzania (power shortages etc...), not to mention fully understand the local markets. Inevitably, what ends up happening is that many CEOs or entrepreneurs are limited to organizations of no more than 20 employees with strict micromanaging and continue to doing basic tasks. Its crazy because when you try to offer any sort of long term strategic advice, these managers just rightly turn away- "I have enough issues just dealing with the day to day running of the business...". I suppose this sort of problem exists in the western world, although when the organization is at a much larger level- the need for such special projects outside the day to day running of the business is obviously met by management consultants.
The big limiting factor in Tanzania for the expansion of small businesses ends up being more of an issue sourcing local competent and trustworthy employees who can grow into middle managers rather than, as some would attest to, lack of available capital or market opportunities.