I was recently asked if I was satisfied with the project and I was… to a point. The systems and processes of stock management, sales tracking and payment tracking were strong enough to give the business owners confidence to expand, and plans to do so were already in the works. However, the real potential for this small-enterprise was the yet untapped full potential of their staff. Yes, during the project there was a component of computer training and all of our process improvements were co-created with staff who gained experience in analyzing the organization.

Looking at the warehouse stock management process

To tap into the immense wealth of their staff, they had to truly invest in their people. I was lucky. The owners also felt that staff development was the next step and we scheduled a meeting to address this opportunity.

I framed the discussion with the four headings:

1. Vision – what do they see when the look into the future of the company
2. Structure – how will they set up their staff to grow and develop (roles, responsibilities and incentives)
3. Daily interactions – how they work with staff and create an environment that promotes development
4. Underlying values – what are their deep personal beliefs and how does that affect the way they work

The first two were easy.

Vision: We quickly solidified their vision for the company. It was to be able to focus on the big picture strategy to grow the business while staff ran the company.

Structure: Ideas on what roles the business needed were drafted. Staff were also asked to track all their daily tasks for the week since there was no cohesive understanding of the details surrounding everyone’s current role. All were also asked to identify what three things about their job excited them the most to help tailor responsibilities to fit what people would like to do.

However, the last two worried me. I knew from being embedded with staff that incentives and performance metrics didn’t actually motivate them. Many were actually demotivated by their working environment and the last two headings aimed to tackle that.

“Your incentives, aren’t working”, I said, “there’s a disconnect between what they’re measured on and what they feel they can achieve. What really matters is how you interact with your staff”. I saw nods of agreement.

This is where I began to talk about underlying values. How they interacted with staff depends a lot on how they view them. “You should be sure to focus on the positive characteristics and development of your staff. Much like the other technical advisor recommended to focus on the good shops since it’s a tendency for business owners to focus on shops that aren’t doing well, the same tendencies can creep into how you view your people.” They agreed and gave anecdotes reinforcing this fact. The structure and vision are very easy to set up. But being genuinely focused on people’s growth and trying to re-examine deeply held beliefs is more than difficult.

By the end of my placement roles were drafted based on staff input and another EWB staffer who came to assess the project saw indications that management was beginning to focus on the progress and wins that their staff have been making.

Mapping the tasks each staff is responsible for

If they continue to grow and genuinely invest in their people, I believe this small enterprise will go a long way.

It was a quiet day. The roads were deserted and everyone had the day off to vote at the election polls. Only a handful of people were in the office to get some work done. Sitting in the big office in the virtually empty warehouse, I plugged away at the profit and loss numbers trying to make sense of all… and I found out that I wasn’t alone. “Anthony, can you come to our office for a second, we need to talk.” One of the owners asked me.

They had invited a technical advisor who joined us over the last two weeks. He ultimately advised to close down shops and approach established independent shops to be dealers. Just before the conclusion of his time, we were in mildly heated debates trying to sift out the way forward. There were a lot of numbers that were thrown around. Spreadsheets, reports and ideas were overflowing my head. I had to play mental catch up as I split my attention between trying to think about each idea critically while trying to come up with some innovative idea to contribute to the discussion. In the end, we were advised that the way forward was to shut down the shops with the highest losses. We walked away from the discussion with a list.

Now, it was just the two business owners and I sitting in the small office, dazed, confused and exhausted from the last few days. “So, Anthony, we were just going over the numbers again and wanted to see what you thought of them.” I was glad to see that I wasn’t the only one who had growing doubts on the strategy we were convinced to pursue just a few days earlier. “If we shut down those shops, and redistribute the overhead, it just makes other shops go into loss.” “That’s what I was seeing too” I replied.

Detailed analysis revealed that each shop was still independently profitable as long as we removed the overhead costs of operations at headquarters, confirming what we assumed at the beginning of the placement. “I was looking at the analysis this morning, and the main problem is overhead costs. Primarily: wages, transportation, and rent.” After seeing agreement in their eyes, I continued to share my thoughts. “As of now, those costs are fixed and in my opinion underutilized. Do you think we can stand to cut wages, or transportation?” I threw the question out there. Fuel costs are on the way up and vehicles only get older. When thinking about everyone at headquarters, the sales manager, the warehouse manager, the accountant, the administrative staff, and the stock controllers, I couldn’t think of anyone that isn’t vital to the business. In times of trouble, with skyrocketing costs, stiff competition, and political uncertainty, these are the people to invest in, not cut. Feeling the tension that the question put to the room, I eventually got the answer I was looking for. “No, we need everyone. They’re all essential.”

I began to probe what they thought of the second recommendation given: to strike deals with other agricultural shops so they could stock our product while we close our own outlets. “For dealers… they make up about 20% of your business. Is there enough potential dealers to overcome the void created by closing our own outlets?” With little thought and a shared confirming glance, they both said “No. No we can’t. It’s just not possible. Not even with our most ambitious projections.”

All three of us in the room were circling around a strategy that I felt was returning to the forefront. “I feel that with the latest improvements at headquarters, you have the capacity to manage more shops. What happens to the profit margins if we relocate the lower performing shops and open more outlets in underserved areas?” They nodded and waited for another my next question. “You mentioned potentially opening an additional shop in the same city north of here. How long would it take before we see it perform? What’s the potential there?” “It, usually it takes 3 months for a shop to reach its potential and at that location, we should see volumes anywhere up to 50% of the shop already there.” “Can you sustain the initial losses?” After a few keystrokes and clicks by the mouse, the picture was shown to me. “We can do it.”

The air in the room was much lighter than it has been the last few weeks. Slight smiles could be seen on their faces.  “So we’re clear, we’re going to open more outlets, and relocate shops that are underperforming… Good. Thanks Anthony.”

It was now clear that the original strategy to open more shops made more sense than closing them down. It grows the potential to reach more farmers, is in line with of all the work we’ve done so far to build the business’ capacity and, most importantly, takes advantage of the potential in the market.

Now that I’m entering the anchor leg of this placement, I’m again re-energized, excited and pushing forward to see this project through to the finish.

“Rise, rise again, until lambs become lions.”

It was one of those mornings. I was curled up in my undersized bed, head and feet stretching the mosquito net, eyes closed, freezing. The temperature dropped over night and all I had was my tropical sleeping bag. “Why did they have to run the trains so early?” I asked myself, after being woken up by the horns from the train yard one street over.

Right then, my alarm goes off… 5:15am. Patting all over the bed beside me I find it and quickly switch it off. “Man, I really don’t want to get up” are the first words I utter to begin the day. I switch on my headlamp and look up at the net above me brightly illuminated against the faint shine of the metal roof.

The last few weeks can be summed up with one word: “challenging”. After a real, detailed profit and loss analysis was done and the picture at my partner organization looked very grim.

Coming in at the beginning of the project, I knew margins were very tight, and that costs for transportation and the cost to store 50 kg bags of poultry feed were high. There are many brands of poultry feed to choose from and pricing is extremely competitive. The price of raw materials for poultry feed also seemed to be on the increase.

To increase growth of the business my initial assumption was to grow the capacity of the business by implementing systems, improving processes and training their staff how to use tools readily available to them on computers. Even if profit margins were small, increasing management capacity could allow opening more outlets, improve profit, increase employment, and better support poultry farmers. It seemed to be working. The accounting wasn’t yet clamped down but it seemed that increasing volume of sales would be effective and new locations were being sited for future expansion.

Then we crunched the numbers and it was clear that the underlying assumption of my strategy did not survive the latest price increases and drop in sales.

I began to question, could I have prevented this? What was in my circle of influence, my circle of control? Now, many of these people I’ve worked with are at risk of losing their jobs unless we find a way to bring things out of loss.

To know that the job is to make it all work against all these forces can make staying in and sleeping for the week seem really attractive. Then I think of my colleagues who face the same challenges day-to-day. What’s that we all believe in? “Courageously commit”… right…time to get out of bed.

It was early morning and I’ve just gotten into work. The air was still cool from the night, and the sun’s light had yet to break through the office window. That was the setting when I heard some of the most exciting news yet in my project. “Anthony, we’re confident enough now in our internal systems to expand.”

Just two months ago, I first arrived on location and eager to get going and see this project to its completion. “Expand the business, increase services for farmers, increase job opportunities” was part of the list of objectives on loop in my mind. They were held there by the strong understanding that I already had my return flight booked. That trip home was only five months away.

Even though the project was in the same country, this project was in a new location, a new culture and new language. All of which, I had to learn. I haven’t even started and the trip home was already fast approaching.

During the first month I embedded myself in their business and learned as much as I could about their business model, the market, their customers and their operations. I felt that the biggest challenges to expansion were:

1. The difficulty for headquarters to track sales, inventory levels, cash transactions, discounts etc, in all the shops.
2. The large amounts of management’s time required to investigate and sort out the details surrounding transactions at the shop level
3. Inconsistency of shop managers who may fail to report shortages, market changes & trends to headquarters.

These challenges needed to be eliminated as fast as possible to save enough of my placement to observe and assist in the actual expansions. To do so, I opted to place myself with stock control staff and headquarters instead of dividing my efforts amongst the many shops.

Nowadays, everything is indicating that I’m at the halfway point. Half of my anti-malarial pills are gone, the weather is no longer cold but I know it still isn’t the hot season, Junior Fellow volunteers are already preparing to head back to university and Professional Fellows are arriving to take their place.

The last few meetings put my worries about time at ease. The questions were no longer about the processes, nor were they about what’s working and what’s not. In these last meetings there has been a strong trust in stock controllers and their reporting. They’ve been sharing what’s happening out at the shops, backed by detailed reports.

What got me excited were these two points on the agenda:

1. Opening new shops
2. Shop manager promotion & award system

The details of which, I can’t really share here. But, there is an opportunity to move into new locations where we aren’t currently serving farmers and high-performing assistants from other shops will be promoted to manage those new locations. Also, current shop managers have more of a path to follow if they perform. Additional perks, for effective management are now in place for them. The perks and how to get them are a little rough at the moment, but the framework is now in place to shape and refine and support high-performing managers.

Soon the weather will turn hot, and the winds will be coming. EWB staff in Zambia will soon be halved. I’m at the half-way point and excited to see the next phase of the project, the expansion, the promotions and to meet the new hires and the farmers who are served.

Heading home to Kitwe after a long day working at various shops around the Copperbelt

“Hi how are you?”, “I’m fine and you?” I smiled at one of the people who greeted me from beside the charcoal. He gave me a thumbs up and returned to the conversation they were having. I sat on a an open bench near them and waited for the ticket sales to start.

Just then someone crashed out of the ticket office door and stumbled his way towards the benches and realigned them. He was clearly drunk. He shouted in Bemba and interrupted the conversation around the charcoal. After organizing the benches he went back into the ticket office. The conversation beside me resumed. I started to feel chilly and zipped up my wind breaker as high it would go.

A few minutes later he emerged from the office, struggling to keep his balance as he carried out a speaker, and then later a TV set, mumbling and shouting incoherently the entire time. After ungracefully setting up the TV and speaker system he pulled out a chair from the ticket office, sat in it and almost immediately fell asleep. My phone said it was 5am, and the office should have been open by now.

Right then, one of the gentlemen beside me said aloud to no particular audience, “You know, this drunk man … he drinks, stumbles around, yet look at what he’s done. Over night, he cleaned the bus, setup the television, cleaned and organized the station, guards it and sleeps here. Every group I’ve seen will have one of these guys who really work hard, but will be looked down upon by those above him.” In unison with the other people in the station that dark cold morning, I nodded.

Minutes later I saw the bus shine bright, reflecting the headlights of a car the just pulled up beside the ticket office. “Well finally, they’re here… only 30 minutes late” I thought to myself as I saw staff of the bus company get out of the car in uniform.

Without hesitation they tried to wake up the drunk man sleeping in his chair. An aggressive pat on the shoulder followed by some rough shaking only resulted in a few moans from him as he fell into a slump in the chair.

“WEAK SOLDIER!” they shouted at him. They walked into the office shaking their heads at him and whispered amongst themselves.  After paying for my ticket I looked back and caught a glance from the man beside the charcoal. He gave me a smile and nod that said “See, I told you so.” I then picked up my bags now cold from the concrete floor and stepped onto the bus.

The host farmer welcoming other poultry farmers to the workshop on poultry management.

It was sad really. The farmers who arrived were learning the intricacies of poultry farming. How to maintain your flock, diagnose problems, and properly manage production. Some of these farmers were very young, fresh out of school, taking the first steps to generating their own income. Many others could have benefited as much as them, for free, if they’d only knew where to go.

I returned to the office the next day. Everyone was busy at their desks getting an understanding of the day-to-day business. “What are your sales for today?” asked one staff member over the phone, “How much feed do you have left?” asked another. All of this talk took time and all of that time cost the company a lot of money. The monthly bill for one of their phone lines was 3 times my monthly rent.

The main office phone and link between shops and the depot

The Problems

The main communications infrastructure of this business needed to be improved. They, unfruitfully, relied on others to inform customers of any new developments. They also relied on lengthy voice communications to get day-to-day numbers that they use to understand the current state of the business.

Cost
Talking costs money. They were paying a fortune for the amount of time that was being spent on the phone.

Time

The time consumed multiplied fast. It took time from head office, it took time from the shop managers, it took their time away from helping farmers, who now had to wait longer to be served.

Response Time

Some days would require rapid changes in strategy. Day-old-chicks are sold every Friday and they are predetermined to hatch 21 days earlier. The business has to ensure that all the baby chickens have a home, and all customers who prepaid will receive what they paid for. Shop managers in different areas need to rapidly coordinate their sales to ensure that the business as a whole will meet (and not exceed) that number. Calling shops one-by-one made it difficult to coordinate those sales from the main depot since it could take up to 2 hours to contact all the outlets.

Less Time for Customers

With the majority of time of the main lines used in lengthy internal conversations. This did not leave a lot of time on our lines for staff to call our customer farmers and talk to them about their flock or remind them of upcoming training events.

Point-of-Sale Equipment

None of the shops currently have computers on hand, nor internet. Power is also unreliable. However, all shops have access to cell phones and cellular service. (Many were provided with company phones)

Deploying Change

To reduce cost, increase response time and potentially increase our connection to our poultry farmer customers, we deployed a text message based system to communicate between the main depot and the various shops. One computer acts as the central hub of text message communication. It, currently, allows messaging of various groups of contacts and keeps records of any responses.

Initial benefits

• The messaging rate is about 20sec/message. This allows us to reach 9-10 shops in under 4 minutes.
• Cost to communicate with all shops is significantly reduced.
• All incoming information is stored on a central computer in digital form rather than on lose sheets of paper.
• Incoming information can be easily copied from text messages into spreadsheets already in use.
• Shop managers can respond when they have down time, rather than being interrupted for many minutes at any point during the day.

“Anthony, this is really good. Soooo much easier”, Charles said, sitting beside me staring at his computer screen. “Look Anthony, almost all the shops have already sent in their sales numbers”. Later he was calling those who did not respond to his text messages trying to explain to them that sales needs to be texted in to the new number that we’re using as our “server”. I was excited to see that he was already reinforcing the new process without my involvement.

Stack of record sheets where staff used to record numbers that they were told over the phone

This initial step, though rudimentary, is important. We eliminate the big problems in one cost effective move, and set up a system that staff are already working to grow and reinforce, increasing the chance that this system will be sustained in the future. We were successful despite having no training for shop managers indicating that it is appropriate to the skill level of staff. The system launched with this one simple text message: “To all shops, you will now be sending in your sales to this number. We will no longer be calling for them.”

With this infrastructure in place, and the capabilities the system has, we’ll have the ability to grow towards cellphone based digital forms that shop managers can fill out and submit into the depot, have automated responses for farmers requesting the latest prices by text, inform our customers of upcoming poultry management training events we’re hosting and the list goes on.

Simply switching from voice to text opens the doors to many of these possibilities.

Implementing a system to improve communication and awareness of the state of the business… just one more item off the list of key deliverables.

“Anthony…. there is a problem” I barely heard on my phone over the echoes of conversation and people working in the depot. But I knew it was one of the stock controllers out in the field. “What’s the problem?” “The old stock count form is reporting an over of 3,000 kwacha. When I tried the same numbers in your new program, it’s calculating a short of over 4,000,000 kwacha.” All of the commotion in the warehouse immediately disappeared from my conscious.

“Did I miss a formula? Did I remember to update his database with the latest forms? Is there a typo somewhere? I swear I checked the formulas that calculate the cash totals hundreds of times….” I questioned myself. It took a few seconds of looking at all the angles. Could it be a functional error? I doubted it. Could it be the interface? He didn’t mention anything…

“Hey, when you entered the TOTAL cash received from the shop…”
“Yeah?”
“Did you enter ALL the cash you received or did you just enter the part that’s for veterinary and feed sales?”
“Just the cash for vet and feed.”
“Ok, you’re now supposed to enter all the cash, for vet, feed as well as the pre-payments for day-old-chicks.”
“Ah, that must be it.”

The problem wasn’t functional, it wasn’t the code, or the program, or the stock controller. It was a small change in the stock controller process that I wanted to make. A change I forgot to mention to the stock controllers themselves.

A stock controller and shop manager reviewing counts and cash due

If we are going to expand this business, serve more farmers, and employ more staff, the capacity of management first needs to be able to handle the additional business. Giving the company confidence that they can manage their assets by giving stock controllers the ability to effectively manage more shops with less effort was the underlying goal with deploying a new stock control and reporting system.

There were a lot of things that were already in place that made developing a new database for stock control worthwhile:

• Staff was mobile, reducing the feasibility for an off-line system
• Staff are already being trained to use computers and “staff computer training” is on my list of deliverables
• All staff involved in the stock control process have access to their own computers
• The current process already had a computer program component at its core
• Many of the frequent decisions and calculations surrounding stock control are simple and can be automated
• Management was keen evolve their internal processes
• Staff “upstream” desired a reduction in the number of forms they receive
• I was confident we’d be able to develop something within the first few weeks of my placement

Simplified previous-state map of the stock count process

A simplified current-state map of the stock count process

I remember doing one of our initial tests of the new system in Ndola. “You are over by 3,500 kwacha.” “Well, just let me have it then if it’s over” the shop manager said to us. I was still typing in the data in my new database and was wondering where the overage could come. I punched in all the information on all the products including pre-payments for items that weren’t captured before. After hitting enter on the final item, I saw 0, and the box calculating the difference went bright green thanks to some conditional formatting.

“You’re balanced” I said “the extra cash actually belonged to the pre-payments”. “Oh, okay. I’m balanced? I’m getting my free bag of millie meal!” He was excited to be closer to that free bag of pounded maize flower that the shop managers decided they wanted to win if they balanced all their books for the entire month. I congratulated him, said thanks and shook his hand over being balanced without problems and walked out back to the truck.

Being able to better manage and calculate all of the stock, cash and pre-paid vouchers moving in and out of the organization would allow them to reach farther, without increasing overhead. After testing, these databases are now in the hands of stock controllers and they’ve moved completely to the new system.

Time will tell how this impacts their business.

I was pulling out on the gravel road that leads to the main highway outside Kitwe. At my first turn-off I saw women and children walking beside the road. The early morning sunlight just breaking through the thick canopy of the trees made it difficult to see everyone clearly. But I was able to make out their arms fully extended from the shoulder, shaking their open hands up and down at the wrist signaling they wanted a lift.

“Clutch, shift to neutral and brake” I consciously thought to myself, being new to driving a manual diesel vehicle and quickly rolled to a stop beside them. “We are going to the Luanshya turn off” they said. “Aweee-kay” I replied with a smile and thumbs up. In the rear view mirror, I watched as the first group threw the bags from their heads into the back of the pick-up and climbed in. The children pushing themselves up and reaching their feet as far as they could to get over the side walls, almost falling into the trunk shortly afterward.

“Clutch, first gear…” I was thinking to myself until I looked into the rear view mirror again. Squinting, I peered far on the gravel road stretching far behind me, criss-crossed with shadows from the tall trees lining both sides. Silhouettes of children waving away from me was all I saw towards a woman who seemed to be walking as fast as she could towards me. To get a better look I turned to look over my right shoulder… and saw the door frame. “You’re driving on the right side Anthony, look behind over your left shoulder.” I said to myself and turned the other way.

There was the old woman, hunched over by years of working, coming out of the shadows. The women already in the trunk moved around to give space and grabbed the bags that the children were carrying beside her. Stumbling into the back despite being helped by everyone she sat down and I saw a glimpse of relief just before she smiled at everyone else in the back. Two loud knocks on the roof of the cab, and then I began to drive off.

As I released the clutch and stepped on the gas I reached down to the crank on the door and cracked the window a little more open. Laughter and chatter could be heard amongst the sound of rubber tire crushing gravel and the loud whine of the diesel engine. “Oops, need to shift up. Clutch, 3rd gear, gas.”

We were picking up speed on the gravel road, the grass between the two red dirt tracks disappearing faster under the hood. The flashes of sunlight light through the shadows of trees and the clanging of keys against the steering column quickened their rhythms as the road curved eastward. Then, BAM! We broke out of the trees into a pasture and everything in front of me disappeared behind the direct sunlight that now illuminated the thin film of dust that collected on the windshield. After pulling on the arm to the right of the steering wheel and unintentionally signaling a right turn, I flicked on the wipers using the arm on the left side of the wheel and was able to see again through streaks of dirt now smeared across the windshield.

I saw a merger ahead and slowed down looking cautiously through the trees to see if there was a speeding vehicle about to break in front of me. There wasn’t and again I stepped on the gas. “40km/h, 45km/h… 50km/h” the dials read now that I was on the main gravel road. It was wide enough to have two cars side-by-side. Being cold in the morning, I became conscious of the fact that I may be going too fast for those behind me. Glancing at the rear view mirror, I saw that they had tucked the cloths they were wrapped in tighter and were mostly curled more to fight off the cold. The plum of dust grew thicker and higher behind as my speed increased. But the people were all were still smiling though clenched lips and squinted eyes from the dust and looking into the eastern morning sunlight. So far so good.

Continuing on, I was slowly veering the truck to the left and to the right side of the road mindful of being as smooth as possible for those riding in the back. A few times on this route taught me where I need to position myself to avoid the large stones that protruded up from the ground.

Coming up the final hill, we began to see the tops of large cargo trucks speeding past the opening between the tree line ahead of us. We were approaching the main highway. Just before the pavement, I turned off to the side, turned on the hazard signals and parked the truck. Everyone jumped off and the old woman who raced to the truck at the beginning of our journey walked up beside me. Her hunch allowed her to only raise her head slightly above the lower frame of my window. But the size of her smile was unmistakable. She raised her arms high in the air then clasped her hands together in front of her saying “na toe tela, sana” (Literally: I’m thankful, very much). “Aye, em queye. Muyende wino” I shouted back (which, I think means: Sure thing, go well).

I will always remember being out in rural areas, biking or walking those long distances against the wind, against thirst and against those rolling hills. Every time a pick-up truck stopped to lend me a lift, it was a God-send.

That morning, it felt nice to pay the favour forward.

“Lose sight, lose the fight” – Speed and Angels

“Anthony, one of our stock controllers was able to visit and count inventory in three shops the other day. That used to be impossible.” I was told when I arrived back at work after being away at a retreat for a week. Inventory counts used to take a lot of hours.  Quickly, I remembered the initiative that began a few weeks earlier that led to today.

My arms and hands were covered in dust and I was trying not to breathe in too deeply. Beside me was a shelf full of veterinary products that I was in the process of organizing. Piles of other veterinary products were on the floor. In front of me were three staff who came into the store room to see what all the commotion was. They stood there nodding slightly at what they saw. “You know… you should probably use this other shelf to store the veterinary products since we have so many of them and they won’t fit on the shelf you’re using” said one. Another picked up the list of products I printed out and began to help me organize everything.

This was one of the many small initiatives I’ve began to “have a place for everything and have everything in its place”. A simple concept that could help overcome many of the challenges of day-to-day operations they were having. The vast majority of these challenges can be grouped under the problem of visibility.

What stock do we have on hand? What do farmers want and need? Where do they want it and when? Does our cash equal what our receipts say? These are just a few questions that typically required a lot of digging and investigation to figure out. The answers are all key pieces of information that are buried in the knowledge of different staff, books and files.

This shop had shortages and missing stock fairly often. I was pretty sure why.

While visiting shops and shadowing workers at headquarters, I saw mistakes that would occur, mistakes that could require minutes or hours to rectify. This wouldn’t just result in lost time, but it would result in reduced pay or financial penalties for employees and managers if their accounts didn’t balance, and money went missing.  Nobody in this business wants to have money go missing. It hurts everyone, managers, employees, farmers and suppliers.

This was something I thought we could tackle quickly and show value to my partner organization early.

I remember speaking to senior management one day, “You should be able to assess where we are and what’s happening in seconds. One way to move toward that level is make everything visually available.” Later, I was in a room with all of their shop managers and we went through a few ideas on how we were going to organize and standardize our shops: How to make things more visible for themselves, for the stock controllers and more importantly, for farmers. They all decided to organize their vet products alphabetically and in containers so nothing would be misplaced. Also, each container would clearly show the product and price to help our farmers know what the real prices were and protect them from being taken advantage of.

A shop that organized itself after the meeting I ran. Time to count these products seen here takes 1/3 of the time it used to take.

This is one small chip out of the block of challenges that prevent the business from expanding, supporting more farmers and hiring more people. By reducing the headaches and time required to manage their internal cash flow and stock, the hope is that there will be more time for management to focus on expanding, hiring more staff, training and supporting more farmers.

My new office

It was June 1^st and I was on the move. It was the day I was going to meet my new partner organization for the first time. A Canadian friend offered to drive me up to Kitwe, the city I would be calling home for the next 6 months since she was heading in that direction. That morning we jumped into the car she was borrowing, the aptly named “fun mobile” because it made travel an adventure and the other proposed names: “death car” and “death trap” didn’t seem like they captured everything the car could provide.

We cut in and out of Lusaka’s morning traffic as we made our way north. We finally started to gain some speed as we began to move against the incoming northern traffic. It quickly sank in that I’ve never been North of Lusaka. We were still in the city but we were passing shops, stations and neighborhoods I’ve never seen before. Six months of experience in Zambia… and I only know the East and the South.

I caught the last glimpses of the the buildings shrinking away in the side view mirror. Now, large commercial farms were all I saw. This reminded me of my past travels towards Eastern Province with one key difference. These farms didn’t stop appearing. There were villages, yes. But, they were far and few between. It was clear that this trip was shaping up to be different than before. At some stops I couldn’t understand the local language which was now Bemba, instead of the Nyanja I was accustomed to.

As we drove, it was hard to ignore that the road we were using would be better put to use as the proving grounds for future lunar vehicles. We swerved across the entire width of the road avoiding the 4-inch deep potholes that came up quickly. The patchwork of road repairs were indistinguishable at a distance and looked just as menacing. But she kept her foot on the pedal. A few times earlier, letting up on the throttle made our fun mobile lose power all together.

Eventually, after a few roadside stops and conversations we were almost in Kitwe. I was amazed by the divided highway leading into the city. We made a right-turn into a compound and pulled up to the wide open warehouse door. Inside I saw workers moving and loading bags of chicken feed.

We got out of the fun mobile and, before the owners had time to come out and greet us, I went over the key points of our terms of reference. “Responsibilities: analyze and improve current business systems, pilot a franchise business model for expansion.” I reminded myself about my personal goals of increasing access to better quality feed for farmers and increasing opportunities for business ownership and employment.

Closing the door, I glance down and realize that I’m not well dressed. My shirt is half-tucked in and wrinkled from the seatbelt I used to strap myself in extra tight. At my feet are well dusted hiking shoes. “You must be Anthony”, I hear from in front of me. I glance up and see my new counterpart for the first time. Cracking a smile in return, I shoot back “Yes! How are you?” I’ve arrived and began my next few months in Zambia on the Business Development Services team of EWB.