Ensuring the longevity of the client’s organization rather than just delivering on a project
By Charles
What a wonderful experience it was working with our client, a business incubator in Burkina Faso. It was an excellent opportunity to understand the importance of fully understanding not only the client’s needs but also the clients’ capabilities and also the importance of developing a real connection and trust with your client.
When my colleague and I started this project, we were focused on helping our client develop a new entrepreneurship curriculum for women entrepreneurs and to help finance the development of a brick and mortar innovation center. However, through our many conversations we realized that our client, who is extremely capable and knowledgeable, was spreading his organization too thin. We conducted many interviews with him and subject matter experts in Africa and in the United States to understand what was truly needed for an incubator such as our client to be successful and to expand.
My colleague and I had to stand resolute with our findings to redirect the scope of our project work to focus more on building out the internal capabilities of the client’s organization as well as their internal and external messaging. From what we saw, our client’s organization was too reactive in fundraising and lacked an internal scope to help direct which funds to take and which projects to take. There were times that our client was confused and pushed back when we told him we were focusing more on internal operations. However, that provided us an excellent opportunity to reframe the situation to him and let him know that we want his organization to be successful in the long term and the only way we envision that happening is with stronger organizational procedures.
Our main recommendations were compiled into a playbook which drew off resources from Bpeace and Higher Educational Institute and other excellent resources who have been doing incredible things in the incubator space.
Our client was impressed by our dedication to ensuring the longevity of his organization rather than just delivering on a project.
I am confident that the framework we provided to them to strengthen their internal systems and communications will help them achieve their goals and will allow them to fund new funding streams.
While I wish I could have gone to Burkina Faso to visit my client and his business incubator it was a delight working with him and his team virtually. He brought us into his operation and introduced him to individuals in the community and even his kids. I will forever be grateful for this experience and I do hope to visit Burkina Faso and the client one day.