Seun Omotoso is a global business leader with a bias for building robust operational structures as demonstrated in his various forays across the mobility, logistics and supply chain industries.
Armed with a Masters in Finance and Management from the University of Central Lancashire and an MBA from the University of Salford, he has worked at leading start-ups such as auto tech firm, Cars45, mobility and logistics, Gokada.
With over 15 years of expertise in finance management, team building and operations management, he shares his outlook for 2024 and what businesses must do to stay ahead of the curve in the light of global macroeconomic headwinds.
What’s your approach to work and leadership?
My approach to work and leadership has been shaped by the fundamental premise that an empathetic and values-based approach to work is non-negotiable if you are going to get the best out of the people. A quick example comes to mind here.
I recall my time at one of the nation’s leading automotive start-ups and I had been hired to drive growth and profitability for a territory. I came in and inherited a non-performing team, some colleagues had joked that it was the worst performing territory in the whole business across the various countries of operations.
The irony of this situation is that the region had an impressive array of high-end quality mobility assets at its disposal.
So, we set around and tweaked a few things here and there but this was underpinned by an empathy driven approach which believes that before people can deliver their best, they need to be sane mentally, physically and emotionally.
So, provide an atmosphere that is non-toxic, even in a hot-wired, pressure cooker environment, you’ll watch your team bloom.
Connect and tap into those values that drive your team members intrinsically, such that the bonds are very strong and cohesive.
Lead from the front and get your hands dirty alongside the team, provide feedback, be humble and go hard at it.
These are the things that have worked for me. I think as eloquent testimony to this is that in two years at one of my previous employs, I rose from being a territory manager to a GM and Executive Committee member while at Gokada, I was hired as Head of Operations, and in less than 9 months I had been thrust to the front row first as interim CEO to help stabilize the business during a management change and subsequently as COO.
In terms of your career trajectory, what key learnings can we take during moments of transitions?
The key thing during these pivotal moments of transition is adaptability. As a business how agile are you to adapt to things and situations considering that typically things are always in a state of flux. Are you flexible as a business leader and how malleable are you and the organization to be able to seize emerging opportunities without being bogged down by bureaucracy.
To be open to change, you’ve got to have adaptability, flexibility and malleability. If you don’t have any of these skills set, you can’t work in the tech space.
In tech, the tendency of moving in zig-zags is stronger and higher as opposed to traditional firms where there is a semblance of regimentation.
Like we say, we move fast, break things, break them down and find what works, that’s just the MO in a typical tech start-up.
Nothing is ever fully cast in stone and you’d have rapid, quick-fire dynamism if you are looking to work in a tech firm that is under 5 years old.
How would you assess 2023 and the various tech bursts?
Last year, we saw shades of the Darwinian biological theory around survival of the fittest in operations while drawing some inspiration from insights around Abraham Maslow’s economic theory of needs where we see the different hierarchy of needs – food, shelter, clothing, self-actualization and the likes.
And so, when we look at the industry, most startups started the year with so much enthusiasm, everything was booming and all that but we all knew that elections were coming and this would typically from historical precedents take a toll on businesses.
With that sense of uncertainty around the outcomes, a lot of investors decided to take a laid-back approach to see how things would pan out.
Bear in mind that many of the early-stage start-ups are much independent on investor funding for their viability and growth.
Also, these start-ups invest a lot in tech infrastructure which is layered and paid for using foreign exchange. But when you look at what has happened to our currency against the dollar, then the scale of the challenges become magnified. Let’s assume that I had invested in your business with $1000 about 3 years ago when the exchange rate was less than 400 naira to the dollar.
Now, it’s more than 1000 naira to a dollar which means that if you are going to give me back my investment, you’d have to use almost 3 times the value of the naira to offset, which can put your business in a loss position.
Only businesses that are generating dollar equivalent in terms of revenue that are able to withstand all this economic quagmire that we saw in 2023.
Another reason why we saw some bursts can be attributed to poor corporate governance and mismanagement of investor funds – we saw some folks trying to live large in borrowed robes. You can’t live off the business.
Yes, many businesses are thriving but your ability to balance your expenditure, and cut off things that don’t have to do with the business or will move it forward as a founder or CEO is also very essential. Such bad and errant behaviour sends a wrong signal to investors and they then decide to withhold spending until the unit economics are right and proper spending structures are in place.
Where do we go from here?
We see that many Venture Capital funds are beginning to be very finicky and cherry pick the industries they want to play in.
A few years back, it was an all-comers affair and if you’ve got game and a track record or the right people speaking for you, your chances of securing funding was quite high.
However, we are seeing a deliberate focus on thriving segments that have the potential for wider use – health, clean and alternative energy tech, EVs, zero carbon emission and agriculture.
For a lot of players in the traditional spaces where VC funding has always flowed to, there’ll be a lot more due diligence and scrutiny by VCs to determine the viability and propensity for scale.
On the government side, they need to be a lot more focused on their enabler role. And if they want to play in the various spaces as well – fintech, ride-hailing and all, they need to stop being late to the party.
Tech companies are huge employers of labour and their contributions to economic growth is huge, government needs to find a way to continue to support them robustly and ensure that regulatory services are not detrimental to the growth and survival of the business and tech community.
