The Falling Empire

It's a beautiful last Thursday of the month and I'm a little anxious because I have a couple of minutes to get myself ready for a finance team meeting taking place in 10minutes' time.

I get up from my desk, grab my diary and a pen for taking down notes, but first I will need a cup of coffee just next door. The office kitchen is beautiful, everything single component of the kitchen is a cut above the best.

Whoever was responsible really paid attention to details from the design, appliances and furniture. I walk towards the coffee machine and select a cappuccino with extra milk. Everything about this company is very impressive, the location for starters is at a very upmarket and the company owns the land and the property on which we are located as Head Office of the company.

I walk towards the glass sliding door to step outside to admire the beautiful view and to take in some fresh air coming from the huge dam, which is 5kms away. As I look around the surrounding business properties around our office, I see two international car dealerships across the road BMW and VW. This is where the who's who come to buy their luxury vehicles and there's many of those around this neighborhood.

As I raise my eyeline just above the horizon of the high office buildings around our office, I can see the dam with boats and jet skiing of the elite Billionaires staying around the neighborhood. The dam is so huge, if you didn't know you'll mistaken it for a coastline because of the upmarket residential houses built around the edge of the dam. My Boss lives in the area and I was once invited to play at our corporate golf event inside their estate with some of our clients and his business associates.

Speaking of which, a black G63 Brabus Mercedes Benz top of the range pulls over the parking, branded with the company name and logo on the driver and passenger doors. It's my Boss the CEO of the company and his wife the CFO.

I quickly grabbed my cup of cappuccino and made my way to the Boardroom.

"Good morning, everyone", said the Boss Lady Yolanda, "Good morning mem", answered the team.

The first thing that caught my attention is the beauty of the Boss lady, top to bottom she is on point and looking exquisite. Starting at the top, I didn't help but to notice the beautiful and glossy black shoulder length straight Peruvian weave she was wearing, which contrast her beautiful light skin. She was wearing a baby blue Luis Vuitton corporate blouse with dark blue tight fit Luis Vuitton jeans, with light purple LV high hills shoes that match her LV handbag. She has a typical average body size of an African woman; I would say she is a size 32 if I was to estimate because my girlfriend is the same body size.

"Thank you all for coming, the reason for this meeting is to make you aware that as the CFO of this company, I am not happy with our Capex and Opex numbers for year-to-date. We are 60% over budget and we are only at the halfway point of our financial year, and I would like to know why?".

Her phone went off with an incoming call.

"Please excuse me", she got up and went outside the Boardroom.

There was complete silence in the Boardroom. I took a big sip on my cup of cappuccino. As I looked around the room, everybody was deep in thoughts digesting what we've just heard and present in the room was, 2 Accountants, 2 Chartered Accountants, payroll, admin and logistics.

As a Financial Analyst for the team, I couldn't stop wondering as to how could something like this be possible because on paper our internal processes look good on paper, and we have just had an external audit by KPMG which is an international audit firm, and we got a clean audit.

The door opened and Boss lady walked in, "Sorry about that", while taking a quick look at her phone one more time as to ensure that the phone call was terminated.

"I want all of you to double check our numbers because I am getting a big heat from Sepp (CEO and husband), asking me about how possible this is because our coal production output has not increased for year-to-date. We both don't understand how are we over budget by such big margins."

She took an all-round look at everyone seated on table.

"I want all of you guys to get on top of things because, we are now looking like we don't know what we are doing"

The door opened, and Sepp picked inside and spoke

"Hello hello everyone", before we could respond he said, "Yolanda, we going to be late".

The Boss lady got up and said, "I have to go, meeting adjourn".

Everybody in the room seemed semi paralyzed, judging by how difficult it was to get up.

The reason why this was hard for everybody in the room was because as the Finance department we have an oversight to the entire value chain of the company.

There is nothing as painful as being part of a losing team, the reason why people in general gravitate away from anybody experiencing hardships in their life, it's because people turn to be close minded about certain things. Remember the saying 'when days are dark friends are few', this is usually true because nobody wants to be part of a losing team.

This is primarily because this time requires one to self-reflect and every time anybody introspects, chances are that people will have to make changes and change is painful, transformation of any kind is not comfortable. This was part of what was ahead of us. There is nothing uncomfortable as looking at the person in the mirror and question that person and ask that person difficult questions and they must be honest.

As I got up to leave the Boardroom, I was overwhelmed by this mental heat wave which I didn't know how I was going to cool it down with. By the door there's this beautiful red small Boardroom fridge, I walked towards it and open the door. It's fully stocked with most soft drinks you can think of, water, iced tea, juice, sodas and I reached out to grab a can of coke.

The Boss lady has done a great job of transferring the heat she was getting from hubby and Big Boss to me. Our office is just 50 meters away, I share an office with the 2 Accountants. A young lady by the name of Patricia 31 years of age. She is a mid-level Accountant with 5 years' working experience after she completed her 3 years' articles.

From our previous conversations, this is her third job of her career. She apparently left her previous company after she noticed that it was starting to experience cashflow challenges. I personally didn't know what to make of that reason because it is the job of an accountant to ensure that the company has a healthy cashflow and that suppliers and employees are paid on time and who gets paid first. In other words, financial risk assessments were her responsibility because he knows the important suppliers that are critical to keep the production line going and when the production line is up and running then there good and services available to sell to customers. She also had an oversight to ensure that customers pay the company on time to ensure that the company has a healthy cashflow.

At the moment I am not suggesting anything, I am merely thinking out loud. She has been with our company for 2 years and is her 3rd year with the company.

The second Accountant is an old man called Mr. Manuel, he is very experienced especially in the coal mining space, his knowledge of the accounting principles pertaining to mining are very good. I would usually hear his advice to Patricia regarding how to implement accounting principles to our day-to-day scenarios.

I am yet to wrap my head around his personality, he is 55 years old. The old man complains about everything, if it's not about being old and how much he can't wait to go to pension, is going to be about how his stay home wife is always overspending when they go shopping, despite the fact that they go once or twice a month since they stay on different provinces during the week because our office is 120 kilometers away from his house and there traffic Jams get insane from 50 kilometers away from his house.

The old man even complain about how his son is seaming to be a looser because he is pursuing a career as a full-time entrepreneur and his son is still living in the apartment, he bought for him when he started tertiary 10 years ago. He always wonders why his son is not like his daughter, who is now doing her second post graduate qualification.

He always tells the story of how incredible his daughter is because after completing her first post-graduate qualification, she bought herself a new vehicle and returned the polo vivo that he bought for her while starting tertiary. Talking of beautiful stories.

I finally got to my desk and opened my can of coke to try and cool my head. I took a sip, it was followed by another sip and in no time, the can was empty as though I was trying to extinguish flames of fire burning inside my belly.

Remember as a Financial Analyst, it is my job to know the source of any number reported on our Financials. It is my job to know what constitutes every single line of every report on our Financials. Numbers don't lie unless they are cooked. The internal dialogues have started, and they were intensifying by the minute.

The more I was asking myself questions, it was like opening the pandora box because too many things were coming to mind. There are more questions I was asking, the wider the scope of my analysis was becoming, amongst the questions which were going through my head were;

Are the numbers correct? 60% over budget was a lot If so, is it a Systems failure or was it the failure of people to ensure that internal processes get followed?

How did this happen?

Who is responsible?

How can this be prevented in the future?

How can we avoid a single point of failure?

Was it deliberate or a mistake?

What were the patterns leading to this?

And, where to from here?

Indeed, a pandora box was opened and there is no going back from here. One of the things on my to-do list was to put a face or person responsible for any possible scenario.

Putting a face to responsibility has a couple of advantages, this will eliminate firstly chasing my own tail and secondly give me areas to zoom in on or people I need to pay more attention into because they could possibly be the weakest links of the system.

Remember any company has multiple departments that form the various elements of the value chain, in our case. We have finance, engineering, logistics, payroll, production and administration.

Finance and payroll are closely linked, finance is responsible for receiving money from customers, pay suppliers and financial reporting.

Payroll ensures employees are paid on time and ensures that the correct employees are paid and paid the correct amounts.

Engineering is responsible for ensuring that all our fleet and machinery are operating to their optimal levels all the time.

Logistics ensures that our coal arrives at our customer's shores on time and that customer's fleet complies to our mining regulations as well as ensuring that loads that are picked up reconcile to the Loads finance is going to invoice to our customers for payment.

Production is responsible for ensuring that we produce enough coal to meet the demand of our clientele.

Finally, the Admin is responsible for the administration of the entire company value chain.

While navigating my internal dialogues, somebody calls my name.

"Victor, Victor", it was Mr. Manuel

"Ntate", I replied, Ntate is a respectful word meaning father in Setswana which is Mr. Manuel's home language

"Are you coming?" he asked

"Where? What is happening?", I enquired

"It's lunch time, they are waiting for us", he said

"OH, yes Ntate, let's go", I got up and locked my laptop screen and followed Mr. Manuel.

When we got to the kitchen there was already a queue, managers who sat downstairs were already dishing up. Usually, Finance is at the front because our office is just next door to the executive's kitchen, and it is opposite the executive's Boardroom.

The food smelled amazing, it's a buffet and I was feeling hungry and drained. It's company culture that on the last Thursday of each month, lunch is served at our head office because all senior site managers come to head office to report on their production figures as well as challenges they might be facing.

So today it was a full house because the company has 5 different sites, 3 are coal mines, 1 is a manganese mine and 1 is a newly acquired coal processing plant. Everybody that is part of decision making for the company was here. Usually on these Thursdays I don't eat breakfast because I know I am going to have a big lunch. I normally dish up and take my food and eat at my desk, so that I can eat while being productive with something even if it was catching up on market updates.

Today was a different day emotionally for me, I opted to stay around like everybody else. I felt like I needed to be around people just to distract my mind because I knew I had to figure out how I was going to start doing a root cause analysis, as though looking at people or being around people will immediately give light and answers to my internal dialogues.

It was my turn to dish up, food looked and smelled amazing or maybe it was hunger speaking. There were 3 varieties of starches, pap or porridge, rice and samp. 3 varieties of meat, beef stew, roasted chicken and braai (barbecue meat) and wors (sausage). Then there were 3 types of salads, creamy spinach, potato salad and green salad. Then finally there were 5 varieties of sodas.

I opted for samp, beef stew, braai wors, creamy spinach and green salad, please don't judge me I needed some serious energy levels and poured myself a glass of stoney ginger beer.

Since I was one of the last people to dish up, most seats were taken but there was a vacant seat next to Sepp's mother, I went to take a seat next to her. Remember it was very common for the Bosses' family to be around the office, our company was more of a family business.

"Sawubona Mama", I greeted, meaning Hello mother

"Yebo ndodana", she replied "Hi son"

She was dressed in a black and white church uniform, with a black hat. As somebody who grew up at church myself, I know that Thursdays are devoted to woman's fellowship. Every black township when you drive around you will see woman dressed up according to the dress code of their Christian denominations on Thursdays.

"How was church ma?", I asked

"It was good my son, there's nothing as

Wonderful as fellowship. The Bible says, I was glad when they said let's go to the House of the Lord", replied the old lady

"Amen", I exclaimed!

"We are praying a lot these days, Sepp's sister visited by a Prophet of God, that she only saw for the first time, and he warned her that we need to pray because things are not going well in the business", said the Bosses' mother

"Aw ma, when was this?", I asked

"Two weeks ago, but the devil is a liar", the old lady affirmed

"You should eat, your food is getting cold, Hmm I really enjoyed the stew, enjoy the food son I have to go and speak to Yolanda before I go"

"Okay, bye ma", I said

I was so dumb struct; I was like a chicken that was poured with cold water. I held my composure and ate my food. What was surprising to observe as I looked around, is that it was business as usual all around from those seated inside the kitchen as well as those seated outside the balcony. People were all smiling and sharing jokes. I was seated outside by the shade on the balcony and 4 of the ladies who attended the meeting with me earlier in the morning were seating together, sharing jokes, laughing and giving each other high fives.

I couldn't help but reflect on what the old lady said, as much as I was feeling down, I felt encouraged that at least there was a private army that was fighting privately. I guess it is true that behind every successful man there's a woman behind. Not only did Sepp have a wife for support but his mother and sister were there also.

It was a paradigm shift for me that business success takes the involvement of one's entire family, genuine love and care.

Suddenly I had this light bulb switching on moment of realizing that protection by itself it's a blessing any blessing impacts household of the one blessed, then it trickle to family members, then to neighbors, then to community, then to the whole town, then to the province, then to the entire country, then to the continental region and eventually to the rest of the globe.

Today we have people working hard at space missions which will change the history of our existence as a human species, simply because one person received a blessing to take the initiative.

"Bye, see you tomorrow ", Patricia said

"Bye, have a great evening", Victor

"Tomorrow is another day, will try again tomorrow ", said Mr Manuel

"Have a great evening Ntate", Victor

A call came through my desk landline, it was from the security guard at the gate

"Ola, your transport is here", thanks I am on my way. I packed my laptop and went home.