You have probably witnessed this: A meeting or sometimes a conference is organized and relevant people invited, agenda and time is set. The meeting starts late because the keynote speakers came late with apologies explaining that they had two or three other meetings before this and stuff like that. If it happens once in a while, it could be excused. But our rate seems to point to another thing; that we are organisationally challenged, that is we are disorganised, and I bet you it is costing us money.Football season is back, so let us get sporty. One of my all-time favourite football (soccer if you are American) teams is the Oranjemen: the Dutch team. They are talented and play such beautiful football. Sample this; they have played the most World Cup finals without ever winning the final (they finished second in the 1974, 1978 and 2010 World Cups, losing to West Germany, Argentina and Spain). They won the European Championship in 1988. At the peak of their success in the 1970s, the team was famous for its mastery of Total Football. In August 2011, the team was ranked number 1 in the FIFA World Rankings, thus becoming the second national football team, after Spain, to top the rankings without previously winning a World Cup. The question is why have they never won the World Cup? My simple answer is lack of cohesion (read organisation) in the team.Then come the Azzuri (the Italians). They play much less poetic and flowery football and have fewer star footballers in the team than the Dutch. But the Italians work as a team… are better organised. The result is that the Azzuri have won the FIFA World Cup four times (1934, 1938, 1982, and 2006), trailing only Brazil (with five). Italy’s club sides have won 27 major European trophies, making them the most successful nation in European football. Such is the awesome power of organization.Organisation is a multifaceted word; it refers to the act or process, the state or manner, or just a description (aesthetic) of being organized. It also refers to organic structure or composition. The most common use, however, is to a group of persons organised for some end or work.Organisation must have some striking characteristics: Specialisation and division of work; the management’s role in the process to ensure coordination, orientation towards goals, to achieve the overall goals of the organization; individuals and groups are clustered into departments and their work is coordinated and directed towards organizational goals; differentiated functions where each one has to perform a different task and tasks of one individual; continuity, in which the defined relationship in which people work together does not come to end after completing each task. It is a never ending process.The challenge, both individually and as a country, is to come up with ‘beyond business-as-usual kind of organisation’. Individually and organisationally, we are in a situation where we face a lot of challenges facing us and few resources to meet them. Thus, our response, by necessity, must be ‘unusual’; that is creative and innovative. We must, individually and organisationally get organised! The organisation should thus have a long-term perspective. The football equivalent would be setting up youth team to spot and nurture young talent at imudugudu level. The Brazilians “…have a mass production of players,” says coach Carlos Alberto Parreira. “…When a player is nine, he is already being evolved by a club. At 19, he has already had 10 years’ organised football. That’s why Brazil has so many good players, playing in the first division of Brazil aged 19.”Rwanda, too, has the Junior Wasps success story. It just needs to spread it out…into all other fields, especially in entrepreneurship education. But we only focus on quick wins. Yet the organisation is more likely to gain from unanticipated windfalls (quick wins) in the short-run if it is organised than if it is not, because it is better prepared. Organising for the long-run better prepares you for the short-run bumps and jolts because the long-run is just a series of short-runs, really. “Luck” has a peculiar habit of favouring those who don’t depend on it.We have to rethink our organisation. Structures alone are not enough. With the goal in mind we have to refine the process, improve the state and the manner we do things, so that our actions could be described as well-organised and quite remarkable.Let’s get organized.
