Having spent the past 10 years building what is today one of the largest wholly owned global microfinance organizations with over 30 microfinance institutions around the developing world, I am now looking ahead to exploring new challenges. The past couple of months have been a busy time of internal briefings and handovers where I have had the opportunity to reflect on a few lessons I learned and thought it would be helpful to share these with anyone building an organization of scale.
1. Set a strategy from the top, then execute well
While it sounds obvious, we often jump in to fight fires and execute without having a clear and shared vision with future plans set. This strategy is not just of your direct organization but where you have strong dependencies with a parent, it must be a shared strategy. Decide your goals with all stakeholders, establish a plan of how you are going to get there together and adopt a phased approach so that you create strong foundations.