Walking away from a comfortable role to start over takes courage, but for Faustine Nyangira, senior ICT manager at Pass Trust, taking leaps of faith defined his journey. He shares what it truly takes to build and lead resilient teams.
When Faustine Nyangira handed in his resignation to pursue further education in 2014, he was choosing to walk away from his position as supervisor of over 22 branches and with a good salary to pave way to leadership roles.
“I decided to quit without even a promise that I'll get back and get a job. That was a bold thing for me and I see now that I got a lot of improvement in terms of leadership and technical expertise,” he recalls.
However, his bold decision paid off because he was not only able to secure employment after graduation, he went on to build a respectable career.
Faustine is a polymath and has worked in almost every sector in ICT and gained some expertise before moving on to leadership. While this kind of transition is relatively uncommon, it has provided him with a well-rounded understanding of both the technical and strategic dimensions of ICT.
“It's a bit rare to have expertise in more than three or four domains in ICT. Most people opt to go for one or two but I got a chance to go through all more than four domains,” he says.
A lonely onboarding
His expertise within different domains was one of the things that held him together when faced with one of the hardest moments of his career. In fact, he believes that were it not for his expertise in different fields, that period of his life would have been a nightmare.
“I got employed by an organisation that did not have a proper succession plan. About four guys resigned from their ICT unit and since they didn't have a good succession plan, when one of the key personnel left the organisation nothing would move on,” he recalls.
Unfortunately, the remaining junior staff in the organisation did not know much as almost everything was handled by the senior employees who had left. Despite not having anyone to orient him or show him the ropes, Faustine was also pressed for time as management still expected him to deliver.
Weighed down by the pressure to deliver, Faustine resolved to learn even as he met his daily deliverables and thus started a gruelling nine months before he could finally settle in.
“I worked like crazy. Waking up early in the morning like 5am and going to sleep at 2am was once just part of the normal routine. Long days and short nights became a familiar part of the journey, especially during periods when there was a lot to learn, accomplish, and overcome, " he recalls.
Delegating for better leadership
Fortunately, Faustine views every challenge or mistake as a learning experience and this one was no exception. His first major lesson was an emphasis on succession planning and delegation of duties.
“In the past, I was a head at the organisation and when I left, there was no real impact because of the way I handled my projects and the way I managed the team to make sure that we didn't rely on only one person in organisation,” he says
To Faustine, delegation is not only a blessing for the organisation and for employees but also for those in leadership positions.
“When you are working in any unit, it's not about you getting all the credit. When you handle everything it would be a problem for you because you really don't get time to go on leave. However, when you delegate tasks and manage how they are executed, you'll get time to relax and just have an overview of what's going on, and equip the team with necessary knowledge to make things happen,” he says.
The challenges of a CIO
It is with these lessons that Faustine has built his current team at his current organisation, lessons that he continues to apply everyday.
“I'm the senior ICT manager and we have an ICT officer and a senior ICT officer but most of the time we two have interns who we engage to give them the chance to understand and explore their talents and get experience from our organisation,” he says.
Even with the lessons, Faustine still continues to grapple with different challenges related to his work. For example, like many CIOs, Faustine struggles with the challenge of being expected to deliver with little support and tight budgets.
“You would expect things to run the way you want as per organisation strategy but most of the organisations still treat ICT as a supporting unit. When everything is okay, no one really thinks of the other side when systems are not working. When you're doing a budget you expect to do a lot of issues to improve the systems and everything but still when you present the budget, because it's huge, people might reject it because they see the business or financial aspect of it and the profit that they're going to get, “ he says.
Building a career
Faustine is also candid about the challenges he has faced as he built his career from the ground up.
“When I was starting there was no professionalism so even getting people to acknowledge what you have done was a bit of a nightmare. So you would do a lot but you wouldn't get a promotion. I remember that even after completing my master’s degree and gaining an experience of six plus years, most of the interviews that I was going to internally for managerial positions, ended with me being unsuccessful. The reason was ‘you don't have experience in management,” he recalls.
Even though Faustine has grown to gain expertise in most of the areas, when not spending time with his family, he attends leadership and IT training.
“I believe being a leader this year is different from being a leader of the past five years. Working with Gen Z and colleagues who have different perspectives on how they approach work and respond to situations has challenged me to continuously learn, adapt and upgrade myself. As a leader, it's not just about making things move in terms of technical issues. You also have to make sure things are moving in terms of how you handle people,” he says.
Embracing technology while staying safe
Faustine also keeps abreast of technological developments like AI and cybersecurity and believes that organisations cannot escape both.
“Most of the applications now are exposed to the internet. Teams sometimes work outside company premises which means they are using the internet so cyber security is not a question. You just equip users and ensure the infrastructure is well protected,” he says.
At his current organisation, Faustine and his team have ensured that all their systems are protected internally and that there is constant monitoring. Moreover, they have invested in user awareness to keep their users aware of trends and how they can protect themselves.
The team is also actively engaging users on AI tools available in the market for their use.
“New tools are coming up almost every day. So at least they know how they can be using them and how they can interpret what they get from such tools and make decisions, he says.
The organisation has also integrated AI in their customer service where they use chatbots on their websites that can respond to customer complaints and questions when the team is otherwise engaged.
“Customers need answers when they have questions immediately. If it's maybe um let's say 10 p.m. and you don't have contact centers, customers don’t want to hold their questions until tomorrow.”
