Monitoring & Controlling: Inside IHS
Chapter 5:
I resumed IHS Towers on the 7th of Dec 2015 as one of the five newly employed project coordinators — four guys and one lady named Ebele. Ebele, who was the 2nd youngest in the team and a year older than me would end up being a very close friend of mine. The expectations on us were really high; we were going to determine if IHS would be a force to reckon with globally or not. The project was to be implemented by five vendors and I was given the vendor with the lowest number of sites (1200+) for obvious reasons. Mr Alao had a meeting with us — he sold the vision to us and we bought it religiously.
I explained to Mr Alao that I would be preparing for my PMP exam in my first few days and might not hit the ground running. I was so shocked when he told me to take my time and prepare well, I knew at that point that I was blessed with an awesome manager. In few days, I became PMP certified. My imposter syndrome was overcome by a large percentage; I was the least experienced but being the only one in the team with a PMP was a huge boost for me. Serious work began for me and I started implementing everything I had learnt from my PMP study; I started using the terms where applicable in meetings, in my discussions with vendors, and this gave me a huge level of respect with colleagues and with the vendors. I remember explaining the Schedule Performance Index (SPI) to the project director of the vendor in our first meeting, he seemed impressed. He gave me his full support and it translated to also getting from everyone in his organization. This would be pivotal to my success on the project.
However, the journey to the project success was rough. Due to the large scale of the project, a man (Dapo) was brought from Nigeria’s biggest Mobile Network Operator as an Associate Director to support fully on the project. Mr Alao had a dotted reporting line to him while still reporting to Riad. Mr Dapo came in and made everything we had done look like child’s play; he said the average of 100 sites we were doing was not anywhere near good. He was targeting a minimum of 500 sites Integration and commissioning (I&C) monthly. He told us it was not going to be business as usual. The five of us disliked this man with a passion, the target was very unrealistic. Dapo told us to start coming for 7am meetings, he started making us see the reason to leave our seats and go to the vendors’ offices; he pushed us hard to collaborate with the operations department, he pushed us to the maximum capacity! Mr Alao was there to balance things for us — help us with planning, executing, reporting, addressing bottlenecks and so on.
In less than 3 months, we started hitting targets and then later started exceeding targets; the targets were then further taken higher in the next year. We had to hold several war-rooms where we would work from 10am in the morning till 2am / 3am the next morning, and then go to the hotel, then repeat the next day and only go home on Saturday afternoons to resume back on Monday. The vendors ran shifts for this war-room, but the five of us (yes, including Ebele) and Mr Alao were always there; days and nights. Between 2016 and 2017, we consistently won the best team in the organization, we became popular and our names were on everyone’s lips in the organization.
The Hunger
In 2017, something good and very weird happed to me — I became dissatisfied. Yes, dissatisfaction could sometimes be a gift. I wanted more for my growth, my career and also my finances. So I applied for a regional managerial role outside of Lagos, and ended up getting the job ahead of other telecoms veterans that interviewed. However, I rejected the offer because I wasn’t going to get a relocation allowance and I did not feel peace about it. This is very critical for me in making life decisions! Nonetheless, that step I took sent a strong message to everyone that I was very hungry and valuable. When an expat handling an end-to-end logistics complex project for decommissioned assets left the organization, I was asked to handle it alongside the green energy project I was managing. The project was so complex that only few people got it; a certain lady named Victory was one of the few that did. She would later become my closest friend in the entire organization.
I still wanted more, something that would position me for global opportunities, and I decided to do the ASQ Lean Six Sigma Black belt certification. The course would help me understand how to effectively reduce wastes and variations in processes. It was going to take a huge chunk of my annual salary and passing the exam was not guaranteed. In fact, as at then only 20 people had the certification in the entire Nigeria and maybe 40 in the whole of Africa. I studied like my life depended on it; I would bring the big textbook to work and read during breaks and time of the war-rooms, then go back to the hotel at 3am and study before sleeping and after waking up to prepare for work. It was insane, my colleagues believed I was too! There were only 2 batches every year and I was the only one that wrote the exam that batch in the entire country. I was so scared for the result but 2 weeks after, I got the email that I was successful. I was so glad that I Informed everyone that mattered to me including Mr Dapo. Yes, in my quest for more, I had pushed to become his mentee.
Back2back Promotions
In February 2018, I was promoted a level up and got a salary raise, however I was still on the same role. Then few days after, Dapo requested for me from my director to manage the most critical project for operations department at that time. Dapo had become the director of operations and had the mandate to exponentially increase the uptime (availability) of the sites in 6 months. For some weird reasons, he believed I could do it. The plan was that I would handle it for 3 months pending when they get a permanent and well experienced operational project manager, so I joined on the 15th of February 2018. The approach was to use the Pareto 80–20 principle where we will find the 20% that will give 80% benefit; hence decided to work on the hub sites. I decided to use the six sigma approach (DMAIC) for the project, had the kickoff meeting with the regional managers I’d be working with, and got started. After 3 months of sleepless nights and leaving the office at 11pm (sometimes at 1am), the results were evident and we had started exceeding the targets and my name was already on the lips of everyone. Just before the 3 months loan ended, a position was thrown open for “Manager, Operational projects”, of course I applied and then got the role. That level was 2 steps my then current level and that was how I moved 3 steps in less than 6 months.
Few months after, my former boss Mr Alao became the PMO director, and that was the most inspiring thing to me, knowing that he was at the manager level when I was reporting to him in 2015. Another inspiring moment was when a young man named Fene had given his testimony in my church how he moved from being an assistant manager to getting a job at MTN and in about 1 year became a senior manager at another big company. I got to work the next day, and behold, it was Fene I saw. Those two events made me dream big and I started aspiring for same. Few months after, the CAPEX replacement and maintenance project for the green energy solutions was going to be transferred from PMO to Operations. They needed someone who understood Projects and Operations, someone who had leadership qualities, track record of delivering complex projects……and I was that someone. That was how I became a senior manager (Principal Project Specialist) in 1 year.
The Challenge
The most challenging part of the promotion was that I was going to be managing four managers who were my former colleagues at PMO. Two of them were way older than me and were also the project coordinators I entered IHS with. My line manger Hisham thought I might have some difficulty initially with them and was ready to intervene when needed. I did not allow that ever happen! For the first two weeks I would sit with them on the white table, people were wondering what I was up to, since senior managers and above were supposed to sit on brown tables. I wanted to be closer to them, I wanted them to feel comfortable and I made sure I had the difficult conversation of the situation with them — that was my first approach. Another approach was doing the dirty work with them — I worked extremely hard, wanted them to develop that strong work ethic, and I knew Servant leadership was going to do the trick; I had learnt that from my mentor. It was a new unit so we had to build everything from the ground up; it required first creating a box before even thinking outside of it, it required creativity, selling the vision to all parties, ensuring compliance, and driving the work end-to-end. In parallel, I was handling improvement programs across all 17,000+ IHS sites.
Then Covid struck…
You can read the next chapter here >> You can read the last chapter here >> Closing: Lessons Learned.
