Kenya: Dance Africa by Great Minds Nairobi

“Progress is impossible without change and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” – George Bernard Shaw.

Under the theme of DANCE AFRICA, the team of Great Minds Nairobi (powered by MasterPeace and collaborating with MasterPeace Kenya) organized an in-house challenge for the former’s sales & marketing department of BIDCO-AFRICA. The goal was to provoke and spark a change in mindset which would inspire a new generation of leaders with the ability to come up with innovative, sustainable and long-term business solutions. 

This was a suitable program as BIDCO-AFRICA, the prime FMCG firm in East and Central Africa, is undergoing organizational change through inverting the organizational pyramid to have the Customer Response Team at the top as the drivers with the Board being at the bottom as the support.

The challenge took place at BIDCO-AFRICA headquarters offices in Thika over 4 days (1st – 4th August 2019). The department consists of 40 employees who were split into 8 groups of 5 participants, with each group being assigned the task of identifying a pain-point.

Day one

Activities involved personality profiling through a tool called Clarity4D, which generates a detailed analysis of the participant’s personality using colors, each color representing a specific personality trait. Creating Personal Awareness was also on the day’s agenda, and through questions, deeper more intentional and more mindful questions about who one is, what they want and where they are coming from were answered. More so, a sense of belonging, drive and vision was instilled into the participants through story telling sessions in that evening. Participants and the BIDCO-Africa family shared their experiences and encounters, which helped them connect and reconnect with the organization’s soul.

Day two

This day involved the use of CREPESTM, a key tool in bridging the gap between strategy and operations. It was used to carry out the Impact Analysis to identify the root cause of the department’s pain-point and Business Model Canvas (BMC). The BMC is a strategic management and learning start up template that the Great Minds team customized to describe, design, challenge and pivot the department’s business model. 

Day three and four

The second half of the challenge involved ideation and phase 1 & 2 coaching of the participants where the groups ran their ideas by the coaches and in turn got feedback which they then used to refine their ideas, which were presented on the final day of the challenge. 

The challenge was successful with the various groups presenting solutions to the organizing team, coaches and experts, as well as Dr. Vimal Shah, the organization’s chairman. The teams were then given the go-ahead to implement the solutions.

For more information visit the website of Great Minds Nairobi, their Youtube channel, and the website of Bidco Africa.