Month: September 2025

Why Regional Marketing Strategy Wins in Eswatini

The most powerful marketing strategy in Eswatini is the one nobody talks about—because it works in silence.

I’ve been studying how brands show up in people’s lives across Eswatini, and there’s a pattern that most marketers completely miss. It’s what I call regional marketing—the black ninja of brand strategy. Silent, often invisible, but devastatingly effective.

When we analyzed the Top Brands Survey conducted by Yati, the numbers revealed something more interesting than just preference rankings. They showed me where preference comes from. And that geographic dimension tells a completely different story about how brands actually win in this country.

The Geography of Trust

Take the telecommunications battle between MTN and Eswatini Mobile. On the surface, MTN’s 54.1% preference looks like straightforward market dominance. But dig deeper, and you discover it’s really a story about geography and what different communities value.

MTN’s strength comes from rural Eswatini, where reliability trumps everything else. When you’re outside Mbabane or Manzini, every bar of network signal matters. People don’t just want connectivity—they need it to work consistently. MTN built that trust over years of being present when others weren’t, of providing service that rural communities could depend on.

Meanwhile, Eswatini Mobile’s 39.5% preference tells a different story. Their strength lies in urban centers, particularly among younger consumers who prioritize data packages, digital innovation, and modern brand positioning. They’re the cool alternative that speaks to aspirational urban lifestyles.

Two brands, same market, completely different value propositions shaped by geographic realities.

The Retail Geography Lesson

The retail sector reveals the same pattern. Bhunu Mall’s 28.3% preference ranking reflects its position as the heartbeat of urban Manzini—convenient, varied, and central to city life. But travel to Shiselweni, and Nhlangano Mall holds its ground not because it’s bigger or flashier, but because it resonates with local community life.

This isn’t about mall size or investment levels. It’s about understanding that shopping behavior changes based on where people live, how they move through their communities, and what role retail plays in their daily lives.

Urban shoppers want convenience and variety in one location. Rural shoppers want familiarity, accessibility, and connection to community rhythms. Different geographies, different shopping logics.

Why Most Marketing Misses This

The problem with marketing in Eswatini is that most campaigns assume a single, uniform consumer. Brands create one message, one positioning, one value proposition and blast it across the country as if geography doesn’t matter.

But Eswatini isn’t uniform. Our rural and urban identities shape everything—how we build trust, how we spend money, what we consider valuable, even how we relate to brands themselves.

As Samkeliso Magagula from our team put it: “Regional patterns in consumer behavior show us that winning nationally requires a layered approach—brands that ignore the rural-urban divide risk missing half the story.”

The Subtlety Advantage

What makes regional marketing so powerful is its subtlety. It’s not about having the loudest TV commercial or the biggest sponsorship deal. It’s about showing up in ways that matter to people in their specific corner of the country.

In some regions, that means emphasizing reliability over innovation. In others, it means highlighting trendiness over tradition. The brands that can balance both—being dependable in rural settings while exciting in urban ones—develop a kind of national strength that’s nearly impossible to replicate.

This approach rewards understanding over volume, insight over investment. A brand that truly grasps how geography shapes consumer behavior can outmaneuver competitors with much larger marketing budgets.

The Strategic Framework

Through analyzing our survey data and observing successful brands across Eswatini, I’ve identified what effective regional marketing actually requires:

Geographic Segmentation Beyond Demographics

Stop thinking rural versus urban is just about income levels or education. It’s about different relationship patterns with brands, different trust-building mechanisms, different definitions of value.

Value Proposition Flexibility

Your core brand promise might remain consistent, but how you communicate that promise needs to shift based on regional priorities. Reliability resonates differently in Hhohho than innovation does in Manzini.

Distribution Strategy Alignment

How and where people access your product or service changes dramatically across regions. Urban convenience requirements differ completely from rural accessibility needs.

Trust-Building Mechanisms

Urban consumers might trust brands based on social proof and trendy positioning. Rural consumers often trust based on long-term reliability and community reputation. Different regions, different trust equations.

The Missed Opportunities

Most brands in Eswatini are leaving money on the table by not thinking regionally. They’re either trying to be everything to everyone (and ending up meaning nothing to anyone) or focusing exclusively on urban markets while ignoring rural potential.

The opportunity lies in developing what I call “regional coherence”—maintaining brand consistency while allowing regional relevance. It’s more complex than single-message marketing, but it’s also more effective.

Beyond Rural-Urban

Regional thinking extends beyond just rural versus urban divisions. Within urban areas, different neighborhoods respond to different approaches. Within rural areas, different communities have distinct preferences and behaviors.

The most successful brands I’ve observed develop almost neighborhood-level understanding of how their value proposition resonates. They think nationally but execute locally, maintaining brand integrity while allowing regional flexibility.

The Implementation Challenge

The biggest challenge with regional marketing isn’t conceptual—it’s operational. It requires:

Multiple campaign variations rather than single national campaigns Regional market research that goes deeper than traditional demographic data
Flexible distribution strategies that work differently across geographic areas Local relationship building that can’t be centralized or automated

This complexity scares many marketers into defaulting to simple, uniform approaches. But that’s exactly why regional marketing becomes a competitive advantage for brands willing to invest in the complexity.

The Black Ninja Advantage

Regional marketing works like a black ninja because it operates below the radar of traditional marketing metrics. You can’t easily measure its impact through simple reach or frequency calculations. Its power lies in relevance, resonance, and relationship-building that happens at the community level.

Brands that master this approach don’t just win market share—they win market trust. And in a small country like Eswatini, where word-of-mouth still drives significant business, trust translates directly into sustainable competitive advantage.

The Future of Brand Building

The brands that will dominate Eswatini’s future aren’t necessarily those with the biggest budgets or the flashiest campaigns. They’re the ones that understand geography shapes everything—from trust patterns to purchasing behavior to brand loyalty.

These brands will invest in understanding not just who their customers are, but where they are and how location influences their relationship with products and services.

They’ll recognize that national brand strength comes from adding up regional brand relevance, not from broadcasting uniform messages and hoping they resonate everywhere.

The Strategic Imperative

For any brand serious about long-term success in Eswatini, regional marketing isn’t optional—it’s essential. The country may be small, but it’s not simple. Our geographic, cultural, and economic diversity requires marketing approaches that respect and leverage that complexity.

The black ninja of marketing doesn’t announce itself with loud campaigns or expensive activations. It builds preference quietly, community by community, region by region, relationship by relationship.

And in the end, that quiet approach often wins the loudest victories.

 

 

Entrepreneurship Is Not Self-Employment: Lessons from 20 Years in the Trenches

For years, we’ve been sold a story: start your own business, be your own boss, achieve financial freedom. It’s a story repeated at workshops, in glossy brochures, and by motivational speakers who make a living selling the dream. But after two decades of building, winning, stumbling, and rebuilding, I can tell you this: what most people call entrepreneurship is not entrepreneurship at all. It’s self-employment. And the two are very different.

The Illusion of Financial Freedom

When people talk about entrepreneurship, they often mean self-employment: opening a small business, freelancing, hustling to pay the bills. That’s valid work, but let’s not confuse it with true entrepreneurship. Self-employment can give you independence, but it often traps you in endless work, thin margins, and constant compliance battles.

In countries like ours, the system makes this worse. Taxes pile up. Access to credit is almost impossible. Compliance costs eat away at your revenue until you’re forced to cut corners. Many SMEs don’t fail because their founders are lazy or incompetent—they fail because the environment punishes them for trying.

Meanwhile, the narrative of “financial freedom” is dangled in front of you like a carrot. But financial freedom doesn’t come from self-employment. If anything, it can chain you tighter.

What Real Entrepreneurship Looks Like

True entrepreneurship is different. It’s not about creating a job for yourself. It’s about building systems, assets, and organizations that can live beyond you. Entrepreneurs don’t just own a business; they design a machine that creates value at scale.

Self-employment says: I work for myself.
Entrepreneurship says: I build something that works even without me.

That difference is massive. The self-employed are limited by their own time and energy. Entrepreneurs multiply their impact through people, processes, and products that grow larger than their personal effort.

One of the books that helped me see this distinction—beyond my own experience—was Robert Kiyosaki’s Cashflow Quadrant. Kiyosaki explains the difference between being an Employee (E), Self-Employed (S), Business Owner (B), and Investor (I). Most of us are stuck in the “S” quadrant—working harder and harder for ourselves—but never crossing into “B,” where systems and people work for you. That framework clarified for me why so many SMEs get trapped and why so few make the leap to true entrepreneurship.

Why the Distinction Matters

I’ve succeeded at times and failed at others. I’ve made money, and I’ve lost more than I thought I could. I’ve seen corporate classmates climb the ladder with stability and security while I wrestled with tenders, compliance, and tax burdens. And through it all, I’ve come to one clear conclusion: the language around entrepreneurship has misled us.

If we keep confusing self-employment with entrepreneurship, we will keep producing more disillusioned founders, trapped in survival mode and wondering why the “freedom” never comes.

We need honesty. We need to separate the two. We need to stop pretending that registering a business is the same as building an enterprise. And we need to build systems in this country that actually allow entrepreneurs to thrive—because when true entrepreneurship wins, society wins.

Three Steps to Move from Self-Employment to Entrepreneurship

If you’ve recognized yourself in the “self-employed” trap, don’t despair. You can start shifting toward true entrepreneurship. It won’t be easy, but it is possible:

1. Build Systems, Not Just Income
Ask yourself: can this business run without me for a month? If the answer is no, then you’re not yet an entrepreneur—you’re self-employed. Start documenting processes, training others, and creating systems that make your business less dependent on you.

2. Leverage People and Partnerships
You can’t scale alone. Entrepreneurs multiply their impact through teams, collaborators, and networks. Hire, delegate, and form partnerships that expand your reach and create new revenue streams beyond your direct labor.

3. Focus on Assets, Not Just Hustle
Assets—brands, intellectual property, technology, distribution networks—are what separate the entrepreneur from the self-employed. Hustle pays the bills, but assets create long-term wealth. Start asking: what am I building today that will still generate value tomorrow, even if I’m not working?

Final Word

If you’re self-employed, don’t be ashamed of it. But know what it is. Don’t let anyone sell you the lie that it guarantees wealth or freedom. And if you’re serious about entrepreneurship, prepare yourself for something much harder, much riskier, but also potentially much more rewarding.

After 20 years, here’s what I know: self-employment feeds you. Entrepreneurship changes the game. And until we stop confusing the two, we’ll keep lying to ourselves.

The Death of Marketing in Eswatini: Why We’re Stuck in Templates

Walk into most boardrooms in Eswatini and you’ll find a marketer with a neat calendar of campaigns: the annual golf day, the December billboard, the Trade Fair stand, the “back-to-school” promo. It’s tidy, predictable, safe. But let’s be honest—this isn’t strategy. It’s habit.

Many of our biggest companies would survive just fine without their marketing departments. They’ve been around for decades, with guaranteed customers and stable markets. The marketer’s contribution is often a matter of repeating what was done last year, with the same suppliers, the same playbook. Businesses do need marketing—desperately—but marketers themselves have bought into the illusion that what they’re doing is enough.

The Comfort of Templates

Too many marketers in Eswatini are scared to rock the boat. To present disruptive, iconic ideas is to risk failure, and failure feels career-limiting in a small corporate circle. So they stick to templates—until someone else tries it first. Then it becomes “safe,” and only then does it get adopted. This is not bravery; it’s bureaucracy masquerading as marketing.

When asked to invest in something new—say, E10,000 on an experiential activation that connects directly with customers—marketers hesitate. But the same marketers won’t blink at signing off hundreds of thousands for a glamorous Trade Fair stand that exists more to win an award than to grow sales. It’s easier to justify the shiny, the traditional, the board-pleasing, than to defend the gritty work of moving markets.

When Disruption Makes People Squirm

I remember a campaign we ran around 2015 or 2016 that showed me exactly what disruption can do.

A colleague of mine had just joined the client company. He was the type of marketer every industry needs more of—restless, disruptive, unwilling to settle for the ordinary. He pulled me aside and said: “Let’s do something they’ll never forget.”

And so we did. We designed a campaign that broke every mold they were used to. It was loud, it was fresh, it cut through the static. People were talking about it in taxis, in offices, in bars. It was marketing that actually moved.

But success came with discomfort. The campaign shook the walls inside that company so much that operations called for internal investigations. Payments to us were frozen. I was summoned to their fraud department, treated not as a partner but as a suspect. A Manager who has been instrumental in enabling the campaign was dragged through the mud as though innovation itself was a crime.

Yati came out clean, of course. There was no fraud, no wrongdoing from our part —just the shockwaves of genuine disruption. Still, the fallout was real: resignations followed. My colleague himself, even though never called for a formal DC,  eventually left the company, disillusioned by how allergic they were to boldness.

That’s the kind of disruption I’m talking about. Marketing that rattles nests, that unsettles people, that forces conversations no one wants to have. And yet, as long as we are clean, as long as our motives are pure, that kind of disruption is not only safe—it’s necessary. Which is exactly why I struggle with local marketers today. Too many prefer the comfort of silence over the chaos of growth.

Operations Over Strategy

This culture has also reduced senior marketers into coordinators. Too often, the marketing manager is the one unpacking branding at an event, arranging chairs, or even taking food to promoters at a mall stall. These are not unimportant tasks, but they are operations. Strategic marketing—the kind that designs growth pathways, unlocks new markets, and creates value for customers—gets crowded out by event logistics and daily firefighting.

Of course, the problem is partly structural. Many companies in Eswatini don’t have full marketing teams. The “marketing department” is often one or two people expected to do everything. But shortage of staff should not become a shield for mediocrity. Strategy does not need a large team; it needs courage, clarity, and conviction.

Why This Matters

The result of template marketing is that businesses are losing opportunities to grow. Marketing has been reduced to a cost center instead of a growth engine. Budgets are cut in areas that matter—data, insights, customer engagement—and diverted to what looks glamorous on a report. Sponsorships worth millions get approved, but subscriptions for real-time consumer data at a fraction of that cost get declined.

The irony is hard to miss: marketers are meant to be the champions of change, but in Eswatini they’ve become custodians of comfort. Instead of leading their organizations into the future, they spend their time defending the past.

A Call to Marketers

This is not written out of bitterness. It is written out of urgency. Eswatini needs marketers who will stop hiding behind templates and logistics, and start fighting for strategy. Who will have the courage to pitch the disruptive idea, even if it risks rejection. Who will insist on data over gut feel, growth over glamour, customer impact over board applause.

Our economy is too small, our challenges too large, for marketing to be treated as rinse-and-repeat. If you call yourself a marketer, ask yourself: are you building growth, or just keeping your chair warm?

The Startup Builder’s Reality: Why Your Job Isn’t What You Think It Is

This article is part of the series “When Dreams Need Builders” – exploring how visionaries and builders must work together to transform ideas into lasting impact.

The biggest shock for corporate professionals joining startups isn’t the long hours or uncertainty—it’s discovering their job description was fiction.

I’ll never forget the conversation. A talented operations manager I’d hired from a large corporation sat in my office at Yati Group, frustrated and confused. “Mfundo,” he said, “I was hired to run operations, but you’re asking me to help with client presentations, fix our invoicing system, and even weigh in on our marketing strategy. What exactly is my job?”

That’s when I realized the fundamental disconnect that kills most visionary-builder partnerships in startups. He thought he was an employee with a defined role. I needed him to be a builder responsible for whatever it takes to make the vision work.

The Great Job Description Lie

Here’s the uncomfortable truth I’ve learned while building Yati Group: every job description in a startup is a lie. Not intentionally, but practically.

When I write “Operations Manager” on a job posting, what I really mean is: “Someone who will build operational systems that don’t exist yet, while also jumping in wherever gaps threaten the vision.” When I hire a “Finance Head,” I’m actually looking for someone who will create financial processes from scratch, negotiate with suppliers, and probably help close client deals when needed.

But most people joining startups come with a corporate mindset. They expect defined roles, clear hierarchies, and the luxury of saying “that’s not my department.” They think they’re joining a smaller version of their last company, not a daily battle to build something from nothing.

Why “That’s Not My Job” Kills Startups

In my experience, the phrase “that’s not my job” is the fastest way to identify someone who doesn’t understand startup building. I’ve heard it countless times:

“I’m in finance, I don’t handle client complaints.” “I run operations, I don’t do business development.” “I manage HR, I don’t deal with supplier issues.”

Each time I hear it, I know we have a problem. Because in a startup, especially in the early days, your job isn’t your title—it’s whatever the vision needs most urgently.

I remember a crisis where our biggest client was threatening to leave because of a service delivery issue. My “HR Manager” stepped up, spent the weekend understanding the client’s business, and personally managed the recovery. She didn’t say “that’s operations’ problem.” She said “that’s our problem, and I’m going to help solve it.”

That’s when I knew she was a builder, not just an employee.

The Startup Builder’s True Hierarchy

Unlike corporate environments where hierarchy is based on titles and departments, startups have a different hierarchy: problems first, ego second.

The most urgent threat to the vision gets attention from whoever can solve it best, regardless of their official role. I’ve seen my finance head jump into client presentations because he understood the numbers better than anyone. I’ve watched my operations manager redesign our marketing approach because she had insights about client experience that our marketing efforts were missing.

This isn’t chaos—it’s survival. When you’re building something from zero, every challenge requires builders who will step up and hold their line, even if that line isn’t on their official job description.

What Startup Building Actually Requires

Based on my experience building Yati Group and watching other African startups succeed or fail, here’s what startup builders actually need to understand:

You’re Not Maintaining—You’re Creating

In a corporate job, you maintain existing systems. In a startup, you’re creating systems that have never existed. Every process, every relationship, every solution is being built from scratch. Your job is to be a creator, not a maintainer.

Every Gap Is Your Responsibility

If there’s a gap that threatens the vision and you can fill it, it becomes your responsibility. The client needs a proposal but business development is swamped? You help write it. The supplier relationship is breaking down but it’s not your department? You help fix it.

Your Success Is Measured by Vision Progress, Not Task Completion

In corporate roles, you’re measured by how well you complete your assigned tasks. In startups, you’re measured by how much you contribute to moving the overall vision forward. Sometimes that means abandoning your to-do list to handle whatever crisis threatens the dream.

You Must Build Systems While Fighting Fires

Perhaps the hardest part of startup building is that you have to create sustainable processes while simultaneously handling immediate crises. You can’t say “let me focus on building systems once things calm down” because in startups, things never calm down until you’ve built the systems that create calm.

The Mindset Shift That Changes Everything

I’ve watched builders succeed and fail at Yati Group, and the difference always comes down to mindset. The ones who thrive make this shift:

From: “I’m here to do my job as defined.” To: “I’m here to build whatever the vision needs.”

From: “That’s not my department.” To: “How can I help solve this?”

From: “I need clear instructions.” To: “I see a problem, let me create a solution.”

From: “I maintain existing processes.” To: “I create new processes that can scale.”

This mindset shift is what separates corporate employees from startup builders. It’s why some people thrive in startups while others feel lost and frustrated.

When Builders Don’t Understand Their Role

I’ve seen what happens when builders don’t understand their true role in a startup. They wait for detailed job descriptions that will never come. They escalate every decision to the visionary instead of taking ownership. They focus on their narrow responsibilities while the vision drowns in the gaps they refuse to fill.

The result is always the same: the visionary becomes trapped in operational quicksand, handling every crisis personally because the builders are standing on the sidelines waiting for permission to help.

The Freedom of True Building

But when builders understand their real role, something magical happens. They stop asking “Is this my job?” and start asking “How can we solve this?” They stop waiting for the perfect role definition and start creating the role the vision needs.

I’ve watched my best builders transform challenges that could have killed Yati Group into systems that made us stronger. Not because it was officially their job, but because they understood that building the vision was everyone’s job.

Sometimes this means pushing through resistance when the vision feels unclear, taking ownership even when the path forward isn’t perfectly defined. The best builders understand that in startups, clarity comes through building, not before it.

The Reality Check for Potential Builders

If you’re considering joining a startup, or if you’re already in one but struggling with the ambiguity, ask yourself these questions:

Are you comfortable with undefined boundaries? If you need clear job descriptions and defined responsibilities to feel secure, startup building might not be for you.

Can you see problems as opportunities? Every gap, every crisis, every “that’s not supposed to be my job” moment is actually an opportunity to become indispensable to the vision.

Do you get energy from creating or from maintaining? If you prefer optimizing existing systems over building new ones, a mature company might be a better fit than a startup.

Can you measure success by collective progress rather than individual recognition? In startups, the vision’s success is everyone’s success, even if your specific contribution doesn’t get highlighted.

The Builder’s Choice in Startups

Here’s what I’ve learned through building Yati Group: startups don’t need employees. They need builders. People who see the vision and say “I’ll help make this real, whatever it takes.”

The most successful builders I’ve worked with understood from day one that their job description was really a starting point, not a boundary. They saw gaps and filled them. They spotted opportunities and seized them. They understood that in a startup, there’s no such thing as “not my job”—there’s only “how can I help build this vision?”

When builders understand this reality, startups become unstoppable. When they don’t, even the most brilliant visions end up in the graveyard of great ideas that never found the builders they needed to survive.

Your Startup Building Reality

If you’re in a startup right now, take a hard look around. What gaps do you see? What problems are threatening the vision that you could help solve? What systems need to be built that you could create?

Your job isn’t what’s written in your offer letter. Your job is whatever the vision needs to move from dream to reality. The question isn’t whether that’s fair or whether it matches your career plans.

The question is: Are you ready to be a builder?

This article is part of a series exploring the critical relationship between visionaries and builders:

When Vision Feels Insensitive: Why Builders Must Push Through the Resistance

This article is part of the series “When Dreams Need Builders” – exploring how visionaries and builders must work together to transform ideas into lasting impact.

The most fragile thing in business isn’t the balance sheet—it’s the vision itself.

It happens in almost every growing business, and I’ve lived through this painful dynamic more times than I care to count. The CEO lays out a bold idea. Builders lean in, raise their hands, offer suggestions. Some ideas are dismissed in seconds, others ignored altogether. Over time, frustration grows. The feeling creeps in: “Why am I here if my ideas don’t matter?”

I’ve been on both sides of this painful dynamic. As a visionary building Yati Group, I’ve watched talented builders grow despondent when their suggestions aren’t immediately embraced. And earlier in my career, working with other visionaries, I felt the sting of having ideas dismissed or seemingly ignored. It’s a silent danger that can kill the very partnership that makes dreams possible.

The Weight of Unwavering Conviction

What I’ve learned through years of both success and failure is this: visionaries often appear insensitive not because we don’t value input, but because our belief in the dream is so strong, we cannot allow it to be compromised into mediocrity.

I remember the early days when I was building our first major client engagement model at Yati. My team had brilliant suggestions—some wanted to add more services, others pushed for faster timelines, some suggested different pricing structures. Each idea had merit. But I found myself saying “no” to most of them, not because they were bad ideas, but because I could see how each compromise would dilute what I believed could be truly transformational.

Looking back, I realize how I must have appeared to my builders: stubborn, maybe even arrogant. But what they couldn’t see was my fear—the terror that one wrong compromise would turn something revolutionary into something ordinary.

The Historical Pattern

I’ve studied how other visionaries navigated this dynamic, and the pattern is consistent:

Steve Jobs was called “unrealistic” and “impossible to work with” because he refused to bend on simplicity and design. When his team begged for keyboards on the iPhone, he insisted on a touchscreen. “Some people say, ‘Give customers what they want.’ But that’s not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they’re going to want before they do.” His builders thought he was being insensitive to market research. History proved he was protecting something precious.

Mark Zuckerberg faced endless pressure to abandon his “naive” vision of connecting the entire world. In 2006, Yahoo offered $1 billion to buy Facebook—a staggering sum for a two-year-old company. The board pushed him to take it. Investors demanded he accept. When he refused, they nearly fired him from his own company. Later, when Yahoo returned with an even bigger offer, he said no again. “In a world that’s changing so quickly, the biggest risk you can take is not taking any risk.” What looked like reckless stubbornness was actually the protection of a fragile belief that would eventually connect billions of people.

Elon Musk was described as “completely out of touch with reality” when he announced reusable rockets. Engineers at SpaceX, NASA, and across the industry said it was impossible. Even his own team brought him “realistic” alternatives. He kept pushing for the impossible. “When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.” Today, SpaceX lands boosters on drone ships in the ocean.

The Builder’s Painful Truth

Here’s what I’ve realized through my own struggles with this dynamic: builders often interpret the protection of vision as personal rejection. But they’re two completely different things.

When I dismiss an idea in a meeting, I’m not dismissing the builder who suggested it. I’m protecting something that feels so fragile, so easily broken, that I cannot risk letting well-intentioned modifications kill it before it has a chance to prove itself.

I’ve had to learn this lesson the hard way. There have been times when I bent the vision to accommodate every good suggestion, only to watch the final result become a watered-down compromise that excited no one. And there have been times when my protection of the vision came across as dismissive of the very people I needed most.

What I Need from My Builders

After years of navigating this tension, here’s what I’ve discovered I need from my builders—and what I suspect every visionary needs:

Own the execution, even when the vision feels stubborn. Your role isn’t to replace the vision, but to find brilliant ways to make it real. Sometimes the most valuable thing you can do is take a “stubborn” vision and figure out how to execute it so well that its wisdom becomes obvious.

Challenge without sabotaging. Please, bring me your perspective boldly. I need your insights, your market knowledge, your operational wisdom. But once we’ve debated and I’ve made a decision, I need you to carry it as though it were your own idea. The vision can only survive if we’re united in building it.

Measure ideas by the vision’s integrity. Sometimes what feels like rejection is actually protection of something bigger. The question isn’t whether your specific suggestion gets implemented—it’s whether the overall vision gets built with excellence.

My Own Learning Journey

I won’t pretend I’ve mastered this balance. I’m still learning how to protect vision while honoring the builders who make it possible. There are days when I look back at dismissed ideas and realize I was protecting something that didn’t actually need protection. And there are other days when I’m grateful I held firm against suggestions that would have compromised something essential.

What I’ve learned is that both sides of this dynamic require maturity:

As a visionary, I’ve had to learn that how I say “no” matters as much as the “no” itself. I need to help my builders understand not just what I’m rejecting, but what I’m protecting and why.

As someone who has also been a builder in other contexts, I’ve learned that my ideas matter even when they’re not immediately implemented. Sometimes the best builders are those who plant seeds through their suggestions, seeds that influence the vision’s evolution even if they don’t change its immediate direction.

The Builder’s Choice

If you’re a builder working with a visionary who seems insensitive to your ideas, you have a choice to make:

You can let despondency creep in, slowly reducing your investment in the vision until you’re just going through the motions.

Or you can recognize that you’re part of something rare—a partnership with someone who believes so deeply in a dream that they’re willing to protect it against all odds, even when it makes them look stubborn or unreasonable.

The question isn’t, “Was my idea used?” The question is, “Am I still building with conviction?”

The Long View of History

Here’s what I’ve observed after two decades in business: history rarely remembers the hundreds of ideas that were suggested, debated, or dismissed in boardrooms. It remembers the few visions that made it through the crucible of development, and the builders who stood by those visions long enough to see them transform the world.

Some of the most successful builders I know are those who learned to find fulfillment not in having their specific ideas implemented, but in seeing the vision they helped build change everything.

The Partnership That Endures

The most powerful partnerships I’ve witnessed are between visionaries and builders who understand this dynamic. The visionary protects the core of the dream with fierce conviction. The builder brings relentless excellence to making that dream real, understanding that their ultimate contribution isn’t any single idea, but the successful realization of something transformational.

This doesn’t mean builders should be silent or passive. The best builders I work with challenge me constantly, force me to think deeper, and often influence the vision in ways they don’t even realize. But they do it with the understanding that we’re partners in protecting something precious, not adversaries fighting over whose ideas win.

The Call for Understanding

If you’re a builder who has felt dismissed or ignored, I want you to know: your ideas matter, your perspective is valuable, and your contribution is essential. The fact that every suggestion isn’t immediately implemented doesn’t diminish your importance to the vision’s success.

And if you’re a visionary reading this, remember that the very builders whose ideas you sometimes must reject are the same people who will determine whether your vision survives its first contact with reality. How we protect our dreams matters as much as what we’re protecting.

The future belongs to partnerships where visionaries can protect fragile dreams and builders can execute them with excellence, where both sides understand that the goal isn’t to win debates but to build something that changes everything.

Because the world doesn’t need more compromised visions. It needs more builders willing to push through the resistance to make uncompromising dreams come true.

The Danger of Visionary-Led Breakthroughs: When Success Becomes a Trap

This article is part of the series “When Dreams Need Builders” – exploring how visionaries and builders must work together to transform ideas into lasting impact.

When every breakthrough depends on one person, success becomes the very thing that kills scale.

After 20 years in business, I’ve learned something that still keeps me up at night: the very skills that help you build a company from nothing can become the chains that prevent it from scaling.

I remember the early days at Yati Group. I was spotting opportunities others missed, solving problems others couldn’t touch, negotiating deals that seemed impossible. Every breakthrough traced back to me stepping into the trenches. My team would celebrate these wins, and honestly, part of me loved being the hero who could fix anything.

But I’ve realized something dangerous was happening. In my eagerness to drive results, I was inadvertently training my builders to watch from the sidelines.

The Visionary’s Dilemma

In my experience, every visionary faces this trap. We see the opportunity faster, we understand the stakes deeper, we feel the urgency more intensely. So we step in. We close the deal, rework the pricing, fix the supplier relationship, resolve the HR dispute. The company moves forward—but only because we couldn’t wait for others to figure it out.

I’ve watched this pattern in my own business and in countless others across Africa. The entrepreneur who built everything personally continues to be the solution to everything. And here’s the uncomfortable truth I’ve had to accept: when this happens, it’s usually not because the visionary can’t let go—it’s because the builders haven’t stepped up to catch what we’re drowning in.

When Builders Watch Instead of Build

Let me be honest about what I’ve observed in my own leadership team over the years. Too often, when a crisis hits or an opportunity appears, I see the same pattern:

My finance head identifies a cash flow problem but waits for me to figure out the solution. My operations manager spots inefficiencies but expects me to redesign the process. My business development lead finds potential clients but wants me to handle the negotiation.

They’re not lazy or incompetent. They’re incredibly talented people. But somewhere along the way, they learned that bringing me problems was their job, and solving problems was mine.

The Weight of Constant Intervention

What builders don’t always see is the cost of this pattern on the visionary. I’ve realized that every time I step in to solve a problem myself, I’m not just helping—I’m also:

Exhausting my strategic capacity: The hours I spend in operational details are hours I’m not thinking about where we should be in five years, what markets we should enter, or what partnerships could transform our trajectory.

Creating dangerous dependencies: When I personally handle every breakthrough, I become the bottleneck. The company can only move as fast as I can make decisions, and that’s a terrifying limitation when you’re trying to scale.

Robbing builders of growth opportunities: Every problem I solve is a chance for one of my builders to develop their capabilities. When I consistently step in, I deprive them of the very experiences that could make them breakthrough-makers in their own right.

Building a fragile organization: If I’m the answer to every challenge, what happens when I’m not available? When I travel, get sick, or simply need to focus on strategy?

What I Need from My Builders

Over the years, I’ve come to understand what I really need from my team—and it’s not more problem identification. It’s builders who can create breakthroughs in their own domains:

In Finance: I need a CFO who doesn’t just track cash flow but builds relationships with suppliers that automatically improve our terms. Someone who creates systems that prevent cash crises rather than just reporting on them.

In Operations: I need an operations head who doesn’t wait for me to spot inefficiencies but systematically improves our processes, builds better workflows, and creates systems that get stronger under pressure.

In Business Development: I need a BD leader who doesn’t just identify opportunities but builds systematic approaches to client acquisition, creates relationships that don’t depend on my personal network, and opens markets I haven’t even considered.

In Human Resources: I need HR leaders who don’t just escalate every culture issue but build systems for team development, conflict resolution, and performance management that create sustainable high performance without my intervention.

The Builder’s Opportunity

Here’s what I’ve realized: when builders step up to create breakthroughs in their domains, they don’t just help the company—they liberate the visionary to do what visionaries do best. They free us to think long-term, spot the next big opportunity, and guide the ship instead of constantly patching holes in the hull.

In my experience, the best builders I’ve worked with understand this dynamic. They see a struggling visionary buried in operational details and think, “How can I take this burden off their shoulders?” They don’t wait for permission to solve problems—they build solutions and present results.

The MTN Lesson

I’ve studied how companies like MTN have scaled across Africa, and here’s what I’ve observed: their Group leadership sets the vision, but the breakthroughs that drive growth happen when local builders take ownership. The MTN Nigeria team doesn’t wait for Johannesburg to solve every market challenge—they build local solutions. The Eswatini operation doesn’t need Group approval to innovate their customer service—they hold their line and improve their domain.

This is what I dream of for Yati Group: builders who carry the vision so completely that when they speak about our strategy, it sounds like they invented it themselves. Not because they’re taking credit, but because they’ve made it their own mission to build it into reality.

The Builder’s Honest Assessment

If you’re a builder reading this, let me ask you some questions from my heart:

When your visionary is drowning in details that should be handled at your level, do you:

  • Wait for them to figure it out and give you instructions?
  • Or do you step in, take ownership, and build the solution yourself?

When challenges arise in your domain, do you:

  • Immediately escalate to get the visionary’s input?
  • Or do you see them as opportunities to develop breakthrough solutions that will impress and relieve your visionary?

When you look at your visionary’s calendar and see them stuck in operational meetings, do you:

  • Think “that’s just how leaders lead”?
  • Or do you think “I need to build systems so they can focus on strategy”?

My Personal Challenge to Builders

After 20 years of building businesses, here’s what I know: I don’t want to be the hero of every story. I want to be the visionary who set the direction, and then watch with pride as my builders create breakthrough after breakthrough in pursuit of that vision.

I want my finance leader to surprise me with creative funding solutions I never would have thought of. I want my operations head to build systems so efficient they make our competitors wonder how we do it. I want my business development team to open markets and secure clients using approaches that go beyond what I could have imagined.

This isn’t about me stepping back—it’s about you stepping up. It’s about builders who see a visionary struggling with the weight of constant intervention and say, “I’ve got this. Let me build the solution so you can focus on the vision.”

The Partnership That Scales

In my experience, the companies that truly scale are those where visionaries and builders form a powerful partnership. The visionary casts the dream, sees the big picture, and sets the direction. But the builders—the builders make it unstoppable by creating breakthrough after breakthrough in their domains.

When this partnership works, magic happens. The visionary isn’t drowning in details but is freed to think strategically. The builders aren’t waiting for instructions but are innovating solutions. The company doesn’t depend on one person’s heroics but becomes a breakthrough-making machine.

This is what I’m building toward at Yati Group. This is what I believe every African business needs to scale. Not visionaries who hoard all the decision-making, and not builders who wait to be told what to do. But partnerships where builders step up to support the vision by taking ownership of making it real.

The Call

So builders, this is my challenge to you: the next time you see your visionary buried in operational details, don’t wait for them to delegate. Step up. Build the solution. Create the breakthrough. Show them that you’re not just there to identify problems—you’re there to build the future they’ve envisioned.

Your visionary needs you to be more than spectators. They need you to be builders who can carry the dream forward, who can create progress in your domains, who can build breakthroughs that free them to do what they do best: envision what comes next.

The future belongs to this partnership. The question is: are you ready to build it?

When the Heart Stops Beating: How Two Builders Saved Google

This article is part of the series “When Dreams Need Builders” – exploring how visionaries and builders must work together to transform ideas into lasting impact.

Every company looks invincible from the outside. From the inside, though, even giants bleed.

In the early 2000s, Google’s heart almost stopped beating. The very thing that made it valuable—its ability to keep search results fresh—broke down completely. The index stopped updating. Users were seeing results weeks, even months out of date. In Silicon Valley terms, this was a death sentence. Rivals like Yahoo were circling. Trust was hemorrhaging.

Yet the world never knew how close Google came to collapse. Why? Because two builders stepped into the void.

The Silent Crisis

Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat weren’t visionaries in the public sense. They weren’t on stage promising to “organize the world’s information” like Larry Page and Sergey Brin. They weren’t pitching investors or gracing magazine covers. They were engineers buried deep in the system’s architecture, the kind of builders who spoke in code commits rather than conference keynotes.

When Google’s indexing system began failing catastrophically, they didn’t wait for executive approval or form committees. They locked themselves in what became known as the “war room,” surrounded by whiteboards covered in system diagrams and failing server logs. What they discovered was terrifying: the problem wasn’t a simple bug fix. Google’s entire indexing infrastructure—the foundation that made search possible—was crumbling under its own success.

The elegant solution that had worked for millions of web pages was choking on billions. Memory corruption was spreading like cancer through the system. Servers were failing faster than they could be replaced. The beautiful algorithms that had launched the company were now its greatest liability.

So Dean and Ghemawat did something that would make most executives break out in cold sweats: they began rewriting massive portions of Google’s core systems from scratch. While the company held its breath and users remained oblivious, these two builders essentially performed open-heart surgery on a patient that couldn’t afford to flatline.

The Rebuild That Changed Everything

What followed were weeks that felt like months. Dean and Ghemawat didn’t just patch the failing systems—they reimagined them entirely. They created MapReduce, a programming model that would later transform how the entire tech industry processes massive datasets. They built the Google File System, designed to expect failure and recover gracefully. They constructed BigTable, a distributed database that could scale to petabytes.

These weren’t just fixes; they were foundations for the next decade of Google’s dominance. While the world saw only a search box that continued to work like magic, these builders were laying the infrastructure that would support YouTube, Gmail, Google Maps, and countless other services that didn’t even exist yet.

The index began breathing again. Search results returned to real-time freshness. Google’s credibility remained intact. But more importantly, the company now had systems built for resilience, not just speed.

The Builder’s Blueprint

That crisis reveals four fundamental truths every leader must understand:

1. The Most Critical Work Happens in Silence

While executives were in meetings and founders were evangelizing the vision, Dean and Ghemawat were in server rooms saving the company. The most vital builders often work in the shadows, protecting the dream when it’s most vulnerable. They don’t need applause—they need trust and autonomy to do what’s necessary.

2. True Builders Don’t Just Fix—They Rebuild

Anyone can apply patches. Real builders recognize when the foundation itself is flawed. Dean and Ghemawat could have implemented quick fixes to buy time, but they understood that sustainable success required rebuilding from the ground up. Sometimes the most courage a builder can show is tearing down what exists to build something better.

3. Crisis Reveals Who Your Real Builders Are

When Google’s systems were failing, dozens of engineers could have stepped up. But it was Dean and Ghemawat who took complete ownership, who saw the crisis as their personal responsibility to solve. Crisis doesn’t create builders—it reveals them.

4. Build for Tomorrow’s Problems, Not Just Today’s

The systems they created didn’t just solve Google’s immediate indexing crisis—they anticipated the challenges of handling exponentially more data, more users, and more complexity. The best builders don’t ask “How do we fix this?” They ask “How do we ensure this never breaks again?”

The African Parallel

This story isn’t just Silicon Valley folklore. Every business—from Johannesburg to Lagos to Nairobi—faces these silent crises. The payment system that processes customer transactions suddenly starts failing. The supply chain that seemed robust begins showing cracks under pressure. The customer service platform that handled hundreds of inquiries now buckles under thousands.

In these moments, companies discover who their true builders are. Are your leaders the type who escalate every crisis upward, or do they lock themselves in the “war room” and rebuild the foundations? Do they patch problems temporarily, or do they create systems that can handle tomorrow’s scale?

The Builder’s Examination

Every leader must honestly assess themselves:

When your company’s core systems start failing, do you:

  • Wait for the visionary to provide direction, or take immediate ownership like Dean and Ghemawat?
  • Apply quick fixes to buy time, or rebuild for lasting resilience?
  • Focus on managing the crisis communication, or dive into solving the actual problem?
  • Build systems that barely handle today’s load, or anticipate tomorrow’s challenges?

If your company’s “heart” stopped beating tomorrow:

  • Would you be the one in the war room rebuilding it?
  • Do you have the technical depth and systems thinking to architect real solutions?
  • Would your team trust you to lead them through the rebuild?
  • Are you building infrastructure for the company you are, or the company you’re becoming?

The Quiet Heroes

Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat never became household names like Google’s founders. They didn’t get movie deals or write bestselling memoirs. But without them, Google might have joined the graveyard of promising startups that couldn’t scale their initial success.

They represent a fundamental truth about lasting success: behind every enduring vision are builders who do the unglamorous work of making it resilient. They write the code that doesn’t break. They design the systems that handle failure gracefully. They rebuild foundations while the world assumes everything is fine.

The Call for African Builders

Every business—whether it’s disrupting fintech in Lagos or revolutionizing agriculture in Kampala—will face its “heart stopping” moment. Systems will fail. Foundations will crack. Trust will wobble.

The future belongs to those who don’t just dream big but build resilient. Who don’t just launch companies but create systems that can survive success. Who don’t wait for someone else to fix what’s broken but roll up their sleeves and rebuild what needs rebuilding.

Because sparks ignite dreams. But only builders keep the heart beating.

Holding the Line in Business: Guarding Your Space Like It’s the Last Defence

This article is part of the series “When Dreams Need Builders” – exploring how visionaries and builders must work together to transform ideas into lasting impact.

Why leaders must protect their own space as though the survival of the vision depends on it.

I’ve watched it happen too many times in my own business and in companies across Africa. The CEO lays out the vision. The team leaves the boardroom energized. Heads nod, notebooks fill with action items. But weeks later, when pressure mounts, something breaks down. A supplier is demanding immediate payment, staff morale dips after a difficult client interaction, a key partnership starts wobbling.

And instead of my managers stepping into the gap, solving the crisis in their domain, they become messengers. They relay the problem back to me like postmasters carrying urgent letters up the chain: “Finance is asking what to do about the supplier… Operations is saying the client is threatening to leave… HR is reporting that the team is frustrated…”

That’s when I realized a painful truth: that is not leadership. That is not building. That is abandoning your post when the vision needs you most.

Each Leader Has a Line to Hold

Over the years at Yati Group, I’ve learned that every GM, every manager, has a defined space: Finance, Operations, HR, Business Development. But I’ve also learned the hard way that these spaces are not mailboxes for collecting problems to send upward. They are frontlines.

What I need from my finance head is someone who treats their role as the last defence against cash flow collapse and supplier relationship breakdown. When a payment crisis hits, I need them to hold that fort—not forward the problem to my desk.

What I need from operations is someone who sees system failures and process breakdowns as their personal battle to win. When pressure threatens to collapse our delivery promises, I need them to stand their ground and adapt—not escalate every operational challenge as if it’s a strategy decision.

What I need from HR is someone who guards our culture and team morale like their life depends on it. When team dynamics start fracturing, I need them to step in and heal the breaks—not simply report the symptoms and wait for my intervention.

I’ve realized that when leaders see themselves as the last defence in their area, something powerful happens. They stop sending problems upward like memos. They solve, they adapt, they stand their ground. They only come to me when the issue truly requires a strategic shift—not for every gust of wind that hits their domain.

A Lesson from Ancient Governance

I couldn’t help thinking of this in biblical terms. During the time of Jesus, Judea was under the governorship of Pontius Pilate. When unrest grew around Jesus’ trial and crucifixion, it was Pilate who had to manage the crisis locally. Meanwhile, the wider Roman Empire, under Emperor Tiberius, carried on with imperial business. Rome didn’t stop to micromanage every disturbance in Judea. It expected its governors to handle their regions, report when necessary, and only escalate matters that threatened the empire itself.

That’s exactly what holding the line looks like in business. Each of my managers is like a governor of their domain. I cannot—and should not—be dragged into every disturbance in their “province.”

The Postmaster Problem I’ve Faced

I’ve experienced this postmaster problem firsthand, and it nearly killed my ability to think strategically. Too many of my builders were acting as postmasters rather than governors. They weren’t making decisions or protecting their space. They were simply relaying: “This department is asking… That team is saying… This client is unhappy…”

Some would disappear from the equation entirely, leaving me to deal directly with their teams on operational issues. I found myself in finance meetings that my CFO should have been handling, in operations discussions that my GM should have been leading, in HR conversations that had no business reaching my desk.

That’s when I realized this was the fastest way to weaken the entire organization—because when I’m forced to manage in the trenches, no one is truly governing the regions. No one is thinking about where we should be heading while we’re all fighting the immediate fires.

Learning from Global Companies

I’ve studied how companies like MTN and Standard Bank operate across Africa, and here’s what I’ve observed: the Group sets the vision and strategy, but the magic happens when local leaders own their space completely.

When the CEO of MTN Eswatini speaks about mobile money innovations, you’d swear the idea was born in Mbabane. When Standard Bank’s country head in Kenya discusses customer service improvements, it sounds like a locally-driven initiative. That’s because these leaders carry the Group’s vision as if it were their own, but more importantly, they defend and build within their territories without calling Johannesburg or London for every decision.

They hold the line in their regions, ensuring the dream survives local pressures while only escalating when they need empire-level direction.

The Questions I Ask My Team

I’ve started asking my managers some tough questions, and I encourage every builder to ask themselves:

• Are you guarding your space like a governor, or just relaying messages like a postmaster? • Do you take ownership of your domain’s challenges, or do you step aside and let me deal with the ground-level issues? • Do you solve and safeguard within your area, or do you escalate everything upward as if it’s all strategic? • If I disappeared for six months, would your region not only survive but thrive under your governance?

What I’ve Learned About Building

The truth I’ve discovered through trial and error is this: I may cast the dream, but my builders decide whether it survives. Every manager has a space to defend. When they truly guard it, own it, and hold their line, the vision becomes unstoppable.

But when they abandon their posts and turn into messengers, the dream drowns in operational quicksand while everyone waits for the visionary to rescue it.

I’m still learning how to build this culture at Yati Group. Some days my managers step up and govern their domains brilliantly. Other days I find myself back in the operational weeds, fighting fires that should never have reached my desk.

But I know this: the companies that will scale in Africa are those where builders understand they’re not just employees—they’re governors of crucial territories in the kingdom of the vision.

Guard your space. Own your domain. Hold the line. The dream depends on it.

The Graveyard of Great Ideas: Why Africa’s Visionaries Need More Than Applause

This article is part of the series “When Dreams Need Builders” – exploring how visionaries and builders must work together to transform ideas into lasting impact.

It’s 11 PM and the entrepreneur is still at the office, hunched over invoices that should have been processed by someone else three levels down. His phone buzzes with a supplier asking about payment terms—something his operations manager could handle. Earlier today, he spent two hours fixing a printer jam because “the boss knows how to sort these things out.”

His team sees him everywhere: in finance meetings, on the factory floor, troubleshooting IT issues, even restocking the kitchen supplies. They admire his work ethic. “Look how hands-on he is,” they whisper with genuine respect. “This man doesn’t ask us to do anything he wouldn’t do himself.”

What they don’t see is the strategy document that’s been sitting on his desk for six months, untouched. The partnership proposal that could triple their market reach, gathering dust. The long-term vision slowly suffocating under a mountain of daily fires that others should be putting out.

We celebrate these entrepreneurs as heroes of hard work. But here’s what we’re really witnessing: we’re watching visionaries bury their own dreams, one operational task at a time. We’re standing in a graveyard of great ideas, killed not by lack of talent or ambition, but by a fundamental misunderstanding of what leadership actually requires.

The Visionary’s Trap I’ve Lived

This scene plays out everywhere—from Silicon Valley boardrooms to African startups. I’ve lived this pattern repeatedly while building Yati Group. The pattern is always the same: brilliant visionaries drowning in operational quicksand while their dreams suffocate.

In my early years, I was a product visionary with revolutionary ideas for transforming how businesses approach strategy and growth, but Yati Group was struggling to scale because I was still thinking like a consultant who had to handle every client personally. I was burning through my energy on operational details while the bigger strategic opportunities remained unexplored.

Everything began to change when I started learning to step back from the operational maze. Not because I had better ideas, but because I began to understand that my job wasn’t to solve every problem—it was to create the conditions where others could build solutions. This shift didn’t start with a new vision—it started when I realized I needed to be liberated from daily firefighting so I could actually lead.

The same pattern appears everywhere in business history. Mark Zuckerberg was a coding genius with revolutionary social networking ideas, but Facebook was hemorrhaging money and struggling to scale because its CEO was still thinking like a programmer. Everything changed when Sheryl Sandberg arrived and liberated him from operational duties to focus on long-term product vision.

Steve Jobs faced a similar trap. Despite being the ultimate product visionary, Apple nearly collapsed under his operational weight. When Tim Cook joined Apple in 1998 as senior vice president of worldwide operations, he transformed Apple’s supply chain from chaos into precision. Cook “was responsible for making sure those dreams could be made and shipped”, turning Jobs’ brilliant visions into products that could actually reach customers at scale.

At Amazon, Jeff Bezos dreamed of “the everything store,” but it was Jeff Wilke who engineered the warehouses, logistics, and systems that made it real. Bezos called Wilke “an incredible teacher to all of us” and said “When you see us taking care of customers, you can thank Jeff for it”. When Wilke joined Amazon in 1999, the company was doing about $2 billion in revenue annually—now it brings in about $1 billion every day.

Even Elon Musk, perhaps the world’s most celebrated visionary, would be lost without Gwynne Shotwell. While Musk dreams of Mars colonies and tweets about rocket explosions, Shotwell “travels the world to reassure crucial business partners that the launch will proceed as planned”. As SpaceX’s President and COO, she’s “responsible for day-to-day operations and managing all customer and strategic relations to support company growth”. She’s often positioned as “the balancing factor for Musk’s appetite for risk”, but she shares his vision completely—she just builds the systems to make it happen.

I’ve learned this uncomfortable truth through my own experience: most visionaries unknowingly sabotage their own dreams by refusing to let go of operational control. And worse, our teams often encourage this self-sabotage by celebrating our “hands-on leadership” instead of building the systems that would set us free. As Jobs himself said: “I’m a tool builder… I want to build really good tools… Then you just stand back and get out of the way, and these things take on a life of their own”. But standing back requires builders you can trust.

The Builder Shortage I’ve Experienced

Here’s the uncomfortable truth I’ve discovered while building Yati Group: Africa has no shortage of visionaries. Our problem is that I’ve been part of creating a culture where everyone wants to be the big idea person, but few want to do the unglamorous work of building.

I’ve learned that building doesn’t look like standing up at conferences giving inspiring speeches. It looks like staying up at night creating business plans, designing processes when the old ones break, and fighting to maintain trust when mistakes threaten reputation. It’s the general manager who refuses to let a plan die because it’s difficult, the operations head who pushes through resistance when complaining would be easier.

In my experience studying successful companies, the most scalable ones understand this distinction. At MTN or Standard Bank, the Group sets the vision, but when local CEOs speak, you’d swear the idea was born in their office. They don’t compete with the vision—they embody it so completely it feels like their own dream. This is what I’m trying to build at Yati Group—builders who hold the line in their domains without waiting for my constant input.

The Execution Gap I’ve Witnessed

I’ve seen it happen too many times in my own business and in companies across Africa: a brilliant strategy gets announced with fanfare, then dies slowly in committee meetings and feasibility studies. Why? Because too many leaders treat themselves as employees waiting for me to break everything down into bite-sized tasks.

What I need are builders who hear a vision once and say, “This is mine now.” They don’t wait for detailed instructions. They translate the dream into action, repeat it until others believe it, and weave it into the culture until it feels inevitable. Sometimes I realize I need builders who can create breakthroughs that free me from the danger of every innovation depending on my personal involvement.

Consider how every workshop and national meeting in Eswatini begins with reference to His Majesty’s vision—first Vision 2022, now the rallying call Nkwe! That’s how visions become reality: they’re spoken, repeated, and carried by many until they become part of the national rhythm. This is what I’m learning to build at Yati Group.

But I’ve also learned that sometimes my vision feels insensitive to my team’s input, not because I don’t value their ideas, but because I’m trying to protect something fragile from being compromised into mediocrity. The best builders understand this tension and push through the resistance to make the vision stronger.

The Four Builder Questions I Ask My Team

Every leader in my organization—whether in a corporate boardroom or around a family fire—must honestly answer these questions I’ve developed through years of learning:

Am I truly building, or just executing tasks? Builders create systems and solve problems. Task-executors wait for detailed instructions. Sometimes I need my team to step in like the builders who saved Google’s heart when it stopped beating, taking complete ownership of critical failures.

Do I own this vision as if it were mine? When you speak about Yati Group’s direction, does it sound like your personal mission, or someone else’s homework assignment?

Am I multiplying the dream or managing it? Builders find ways to scale vision through other people. Managers just oversee existing processes.

When challenges come, do I protect or abandon? The true test of a builder is what happens when the dream gets difficult. Do you hold your line or immediately escalate to me?

Breaking the Graveyard Cycle

The next time someone in your family stands up talking about building the first car named after your surname, pause before you laugh. I’ve learned to ask myself: what if this dreamer had builders around them? People who could operationalize the vision, create a roadmap, and guide them on where to begin?

The missing ingredient isn’t more dreams—it’s more people willing to get their hands dirty making dreams real. We need fewer mockers and more builders. Fewer people competing for the spotlight and more willing to work in the engine room.

At Yati Group, I’m still learning how to build this culture. Some days my managers step up and govern their domains brilliantly. Other days I find myself back in the operational weeds, fighting fires that should never have reached my desk. But I know this: the companies that will scale in Africa are those where builders understand they’re not just employees—they’re governors of crucial territories in the kingdom of the vision.

Because here’s what I’ve learned through years of building: every movement that changed the world started with one person’s crazy idea and a small group of people who decided to make it real. The early Christians took the gospel from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth not because Jesus gave them a detailed business plan, but because the apostles became builders of something bigger than themselves.

The Choice We Face

Africa’s future hangs on a simple choice: will we remain a continent of brilliant dreamers whose ideas die at family gatherings? Or will we become a place where audacious visions find the builders they need to reshape the world?

The graveyard of great ideas is already overcrowded. It’s time we started building monuments to the dreams that lived instead.

I’m still on this journey myself, learning every day how to build Yati Group into something that can scale beyond my personal involvement. The question isn’t whether you have great ideas. The question is: when someone shares their dream with you, will you be the one who helps bury it—or the one who helps build it?

This article is part of a series exploring the critical relationship between visionaries and builders: