Discipline in SMEs

Some start-up enterprises become great organisations when they tackle growth and success in the wrong way. Entrepreneurial success is powered by creativity and innovation in troubled waters.  As an enterprise grows and becomes more sophisticated, it starts to trip over its success. Too many new clients, too many new people, products and services.  It is no more fun but a disorganised environment. Lack of planning and systems create a lot of hostility. Problems show up with cash flow and clients. To react to this chaos, somebody need to say enough is enough. The organisation needs a professional management. What was an egalitarian environment is replaced with a hierarchy and a bureaucracy. The professional managers rule and create order out of the chaos. The consequence is that the entrepreneurial spirit is destroyed. Some successful entrepreneurs believe that bureaucracy does not solve problems, but rather manages wrong people and drive away the right people. These entrepreneurs believe that problems are solved in an organisation when the right people are at the right places. For an enterprise to succeed it need discipline - a culture of discipline. Discipline in enterprise development is not a tyrannical disciplinarian type. It is rather a type that encapsulates freedom and responsibility. Freedom for creativity and innovation and responsibility for achieving the goals of the organisation. The right people (being founding members and professional managers) to grow and sustain an enterprise should be self-disciplined people who do not need to be managed but do need to manage the system by engaging in rigorous brain storming, taking disciplined action within the organisational framework.

For Africa to realise her economic growth, African entrepreneurs must be self-disciplined people and develop their enterprises and businesses around self-disciplined African professionals.