6.

Discuss the role of leadership in the mobile telecommunication industry

Leadership in business is the capacity of a company's management to set and achieve challenging
goals, take fast and decisive action when needed, outperform the competition, and inspire others
to perform at the highest level they can. Leadership serves several functions crucial to the
success of an organization. One of the most important functions of a leader is to provide a vision
for the company. The leader explains the vision and what members of the organization must do
to achieve it. Leadership is important for the success of an organization because it provides
guidance, purpose and helps others understand the long-term strategies and goals of a business
In this case study, we can depict two leaders who took diverse strategic decisions to steer their
companies in different ways.
One was Michael Jackson, Safaricom CEO’s, who faced many challenges and made several key
decisions contributing to Safaricom success. He quickly overshadowed his rival’s first movers
advantage. Joseph, focused more on millions of low-income Kenyans, as Safaricom branded
itself as an affordable network. It was a risky decision that took a long time to pay back.
Safaricom experienced many teething problems due to the depleted infrastructure inherited from
Telkom Kenya, which generated network congestion and even the occasional crashing of the
network.
On the other hand, we have Phillippe Vandebroek, CEO Kencell. The company enjoyed the
fruits of first movers in the rapidly growing Kenyan mobile market, which had 40,000
subscribers in 2000. During its launch in September 2000, Kencell announced that out of the
30m Kenyans, it anticipated the market potential for mobile penetration to stand at two-three
million or just 10% of the population. This informed the firm rollout strategy, which focuses on
high-end consumers.
These two leaders had different strategies which either positively or negatively affected their
companies. In Safaricom Ltd case, we can depict that when Michael Joseph decided to focus on
low income earners, it increased their market share tremendously even though the profits were
not forthcoming in the beginning. Michael Joseph also studied trends and patterns of the Kenyan
market and formulated his strategies using the findings. This gave Safaricom a competitive
advantage over Kencell.
Kencell CEO’s strategies of focusing on high end customers did not yield results as expected.
Rival companies capitalized on the mistakes Kencell had which dwindled its customer market
share significantly.

7. Briefly explain the relevancy of Kenyan markets to these titans

Each of these telecom companies have to carefully study the Kenyan market to determine how
they will inhibit customer satisfaction and in the end have a bigger market share.
From the case study it can be depicted that customers in the Kenyan market are price sensitive.
This was successfully studied and implemented well by Michael Joseph when he introduced per
second billing. This strategy yielded a massive inflow of customers from Kencell.
Safaricom in their marketing, advertisement, product development, and branding strategy
incorporated the Kenyan environment which brought the customers closer to the company. It
adopted a Kenyan-centric orientation, cultivating a Kenyan image, utilizing the country’s
beautiful landscape and Swahili language so that Kenyans would identify with the company.
Michael Joseph also took time to learn of trends and patterns of the customers in the Kenyan
Market. As an expatriate CEO, Joseph did not have an easy time understanding Kenyan
consumers’ behavior. The calling habits of Kenyans were unique: for instance, phone traffic was
high from 6:00 to 8:40pm on weeknights, leading to congestion, even though Safaricom offered
cheaper rates over the weekend. Joseph eventually realized that this was caused by Kenyans
making phone calls while stuck in traffic jams. Armed with this discovery, Joseph and his team
was able to tailor Safaricom products to fit the customers’ needs, edging out rivals who were not
able to study the market and adopt with what the customer needed.