The finance leader reflects on leading a painful retrenchment that saved a bank and encourages CFOs to challenge the business as much as they control it.
Deusdedith Mulindwa remembers the day his CEO handed him a stack of management letters. They were all the audit recommendations the external auditor had issued over the years. He had just left KPMG after five years splitting his time across audit, forensic investigation and restructuring consulting.
“The CEO told me, here are all these issues the auditors have been bringing to us to implement. I'm giving you people, I'm ready to give you everything. Can you implement them? I tried my best. I closed most of them. But remember I am working with people across almost more than 150 branches. There are issues somewhere in a branch maybe 2,000 kilometres away from the head office. Also business operations are dynamic. Hence, it is not easy to close everything," he explains.
If Deusdedith returned to audit today, he would be more realistic about what's actually possible when managing a business in terms of controls and business development challenges. When he left the first financial institution, he joined a bank that was drowning in losses and needed a complete restructuring.
"We had to cut almost 50 percent of all staff in that bank and do it diligently to the extent that there is no legal case the bank will face. We did it but also had to make sure the regulator, the central bank, would understand our strategy. We had to have a strategy of doing cost cutting and revamping the business to be accepted by the central bank so that they could give the green light that we could proceed," he reveals.
The retrenchment was executed without legal complications, but Deusdedith had it at the back of his mind that he didn't want to destroy livelihoods. The bank kept a roster of retrenched staff and committed to rehiring from that list as positions opened. Some came back and are still with the bank today. They partnered with fintechs to launch digital loans and collaborated with mobile money services. The shareholders, who had been considering closure, decided to keep investing.
"The way people understood it and took it positively made the bank come back and succeed. It's still running and it's an international bank now. The shareholders were thinking of just closing it. So, if they are still investing now for me it's an achievement because we had to do something to bring it back and now they're still earning money from it," he says.
Second in command
At DTB Tanzania, Deusdedith serves as the right hand to the CEO. If the CEO is unavailable, he takes over. That means managing people and their expectations, managing remuneration and advising on retention of high performers. It also includes reviewing business cases for new products and measuring their performance after deployment.
"The CFO of the past was looked at as the chief accountant, where you are looking at the numbers, but now, you also need to go to the frontline and help people to achieve those numbers. If you look at the real structure of how the organisation operates, at the end of the day, the person who is cornered with many questions about the performance of the business is the CFO. It's not about telling us we need to get a profit of 10 million Kenyan shillings, now we have only seven. People go inside to tell you why," he explains.
The CFO also provides the roadmap for how the institution should perform next year or in the next five years. Deusdedith has found that this requires him to challenge business teams when their projections seem too conservative or unrealistic.
"The CFO is now turning into a centre of all activities going in the bank in terms of bringing business but also from the control perspective. Remember the CFO also is the custodian of all assets of the bank, which means from that perspective, you need to know the risks facing that business. What are the controls which you have put in place to make sure that the assets of the bank or the institution are safe? You need to make sure you can push people to perform because at the end of the day, you can’t just say that the income was supposed to be 200, but now it is 100," he says.
Training without fear
When it comes to his team at DTB, Deusdedith believes the basics must run smoothly. That requires mentoring people to manage their normal activities competently. But he also creates opportunities for them to grow even if that means they eventually leave.
"For me, even when someone leaves the bank, I don't take it negatively. I always tell my people, if you have an interview, let me know. I make sure these guys are confident in whatever they're doing. They don't feel anxiety if they get another opportunity. I make sure the environment is open and that those guys who are below me know that they have to grow," he says.
Some people argue that training employees just makes them more likely to leave. Deusdedith disagrees completely. People leave whether you train them or not. What matters is helping people develop a vision for where they want to be in three or five years. Without that vision, junior staff chase small salary increases without considering whether the new opportunity offers the same learning and growth potential.
He assigns his team varied activities and reviews their work one on one. He makes sure no one stays on the same activity for three, four or five years because that's when people become tired. Everyone needs to keep learning something new.
A disciplined life
A teetotaller who avoids the bar scene, Deusdedith maintains strict personal boundaries. He spends his Sundays entirely at church, from seven in the morning sometimes until seven in the evening. He also preaches and teaches in churches around Dar es Salaam. Recently, he spoke at a women's forum about how entrepreneurs can grow their businesses and maintain discipline with their capital. He sees this as a way to transfer knowledge back to society.
But on Saturdays, Deusdedith indulges the engineering dream he abandoned decades ago at a factory he started that produces roofing sheets.
"I created a life which makes me happy. I don't grade people. I talk to everyone starting from someone doing cleanliness until the CEO. Those guys at the ground have their potential, and they can help you in identifying some issues. People can come to my office anytime. Anyone can chip in, explain anything. My junior staff can come in, and we discuss if they have an issue," he says.
Working in manufacturing refreshes his mind by changing how he thinks. Instead of dwelling on bank loans and financial metrics, Deusdedith thinks about production and meets customers from different sectors. He deliberately chose a path where he could look back at organizations and see the improvements he created and the people he developed.
"I wanted to do something which will make an impact on whatever I'm doing. In those companies where I passed, you can move from a certain point, and the organisation will see that in my absence, what are the fruits? What are the improvements I made to a certain organisation," he says.
