Weekend with the CEO

My toughest job as head of cost-cutting committee

cost

Majority of employees seem to think we can save money by reducing the number of expatriates. FILE PHOTO | NMG

The CEO is not pleased with the way the numbers are looking. At the start of the year, we had shared a presentation with him that indicated that our numbers would grow by 10 per cent month on month.

To be honest, I was somewhat stunned when the CEO agreed to the numbers; I mean, how can a business move from a negative eight per cent growth to a positive 10 per cent? I tried to broach the topic with him as I said, “Why can’t we focus on recovery instead of growth?”

He said: “Josphat, sometimes you are so hopelessly naïve. What kind of CEO goes to his board without an audacious goal?” I was tempted to mutter that our goal was foolish and bound to fail but I realised that would not win me friends with the boss.

So, I stayed silent and even helped put together the presentation.

We are now in month four and we are in our LeanIT team meeting.

This meeting came out of the CEO’s recognition that we are “not making money and some things need to change.”

According to him, we need to, “lean out the expenditure and find ways of fixing this.” He put together yet another team to look at the costs initiatives and see what we can do about it. I was rather stunned when I was chosen to head the team.

Initially, I did not want to be part of it but the CEO said “this team had better generate ideas or else board will tell us to reduce headcount.”

Clearly things are serious and if I want to keep my job I need to take part in this team.

One of the things we discussed in our first meeting was how to get broader employee participation in the project.

We invited employees to make suggestions on how we can save money in the company.

To be honest, we have received some interesting ideas but somehow have been downright ridiculous. Some employees (a surprisng majority) seem to think that we can save money by “reducing the number of expatriates.”

This suggestion forced me to sit down with HR and find out the kind of benefits that expatriates receive.

I must say I was flabbergasted when I looked at the scope and amounts that they receive — these people receive criminal amounts of money. When I did the computations, I concluded that our expatriate’s benefits pay for about five local employees.

In one of our meetings, one of the managers asked: “I think this expatriate reduction idea has merit, we should include it.”

Most of the people in the group were agreeable but I felt that I needed to warn the group.

I said: “Good people, you need to recognise that our CEO is an expatriate and he might not take this kindly. He might take it to mean that we want him out of this country.”
I thought the group would see my point of view but what followed shocked me.

They asked: “What kind of Kenyan are you? You want foreigners to earn money and we lose our jobs?” In all fairness, they had a point, but I knew that such a bold move might have political consequences.

Thankfully, someone from Strategy chimed in by proposing “we can find a way out of this. We just need to word it carefully.”

We spent the next two hours going back and forth about the right wording to convey the message that we need to “get rid of a few expatriates.”

We settled on some lofty sounding words, writing that “we need to re-evaluate our local and international talent to save the company money.” I can only hope that this suggestion does not put me in hot soup.