By BigEyeug Team
BigEyeug team caught up with Ian Ortega, an engineer, business leader, writer, innovator, project manager, the ideas guy, operator, the man who’s always doing it all. He talks about his life in the last two years, what he’s learned and future-casts the country.
BigEyeug Team: Hello Ortega, what have you been about the past two years?
Ortega: Well, think of the past two years as deep exploration for me. It’s been putting legs to all these business theories and frameworks. In a way, I have been sense-making the nuances of doing business in Uganda, and Africa and fusing that with the business school frameworks. I have been up and about, to business schools, to starting businesses, and to deep learning.
BigEyeug Team: What business schools have you been to? Why those schools?
Ortega: I have spent the past two years in the environs of Strathmore University Business School. It’s a transformative experience that I believe everyone should have during their lifetime. I then spent time at the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) in Makati, Philippines and IESE Business School in Barcelona, Spain. Now, if you ask me why those schools? For me they represent a triad of the global world. Strathmore captures the African essence. IESE brings to life what it means to do business in Europe, while AIM echoes the lessons of the ASEAN world. Everyone should keep their eye on ASEAN.
BigEyeug Team: And what is it that someone picks from business schools?
Ortega: As earlier said, it starts with the self. You are going into yourself as a person, as a leader, from how you make decisions. You start to understand that you learn about how to think slow and fast, if I borrow from Kahneman. And then you start to apply this to other things such as strategy, operations management. You are basically learning the art and science of conducting the business orchestra. But you also meet these amazing people, and you gain from an accumulated experience from diverse industries. Imagine being in a room with someone in the Aviation industry, someone who manages an investment fund, another person in Technology or construction. It’s like accumulating an experience of over 1000 years in these two years.
BigEyeug Team: So tell us about strategy. It’s this complicated fancy word.
Ortega: Arrrgh. I love strategy. And right now, I will put it to one thing – possibilities. Strategy is the art of imagining possibilities. There are the other definitions around it. For example how Porter would define it, or Roger Martin or HBS. But to make it simple. It’s all this work you do in imagining what can be possible. You ask, what else? Where else have we not looked? What can we try with what we have? Can we recombine these things? Can this do something else? And what do we have at hand? So in business school, they would say something, it’s to pick a position, and choosing the advantages with which you’re going to hold that position. The real takeaway is that strategy is not a plan, it’s a creative process.
BigEyeug Team: You believe everyone can be a strategist?
Ortega: Certainly so. Everybody is already a strategist. They may be bad strategists, but everyone is a practitioner of strategy. Since we’re all strategists, then we can try to be good at this thing. And I want to show people that strategy is alive and present in every aspect of their life. If you have 100K to take you through a month, you are making trade-offs, you are making integrated choices. That is strategy. If a company has meagre resources but it wants to take on a giant, the thinking that goes into how it will do that, what paths it will take, and why those paths, that’s strategy. You see a lovely person would you love to settle down with, how do you convince them to this fact, that’s strategy.
BigEyeug Team: Some people are beginning to call you some Ugandan Father of Strategy. How do you take that?
Ortega: I am a blank slate when it comes to titles. I learned early on to not get worked up by titles. Because you can get lose in them. At the end of the day, it’s the work to elevate us, the work that we do. And above all, I subscribe to this phrase from the Society of Jesus -Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam, that everything we do is for the greater glory of God. It’s all about his gaze. The titles do not belong to us.
BigEyeug Team: So where do we go from here? Now that you’re back. Are you going back into industry? Will you continue your own ventures? Any clues.
Ortega: I am breathing in the moment. There’s something about presence. Certainly, I am ready for action. I am ready to go back to the ground, to transform organizations, to be part of excellent operations, of Uganda’s industrialization process. But I have discussions in the background, and some announcements will happen soon. I have learned about long-term commitments; you must be sure the next step is about these long-term decisions.
BigEyeug Team: Does this also involve finally showing us your Queen?
Ortega: Huh. Did you people get permission to ask about this personal matters. Let’s take it that I will be making long term commitments to a couple of things, to people, to communities, to places. It’s about the next decade.
BigEyeug Team: Parting shots?
Ortega: We must not give up on our country. We must acquire new ways of thinking about our challenges. We must think in possibilities. That’s the work of our generation, to imagine new paths, and to bet on this country, on its people, to bet on what it can be, what it can become.