Karakadzai: A true servant leader

Samson Bhuza
Having worked directly under the late Retired Air Commodore Mike Tichafa Karakadzai for seven years, I write this article to say farewell to him by discussing his leadership style which I sum up as ‘‘servant leadership’’.Servant leadership is a fairly new concept in the study and practice of leadership but is fast becoming a subject of expanding interest and popularity in other parts of the world.

The term ‘‘servant leader’’ was first coined, at least in organisational contexts, by Dr Robert Greenleaf in 1970 in his essay “The Servant as Leader”.

In the essay, Greenleaf admits that the idea of the servant as leader came to him out of reading a short story “Journey to the East” by Hermann Hesse in which amongst a band of men on a mythical journey is Leo.

Leo is the central figure and a person of extraordinary presence who accompanies the party as the servant who does their menial chores, but who also sustains them with his spirit and his songs. The journey progresses smoothly until the servant Leo disappears. Without him the group falls apart and the journey is abandoned.

The story teller, one of the party, after some years of wandering finds Leo and takes him into the Order that had sponsored the journey. Then he discovers that Leo, who he had known first as servant, was in fact the titular head and chief sponsor of the Order.

As was portrayed by Leo in the story the servant, leader is servant first. The late Mike Karakadzai was a Servant Leader who listened to his employees.

In illustration of his listening strength, Mike (like Leo) accompanied by a small team of selected managers, for instance, undertook line tours on a railway motor trolley at the beginning and at the end of every year.

During these system wide tours he would, among other things, address and afford employees a chance to discuss pertinent issues with him. I recall during one incident, he endured listening and responding to 68 questions posed by staff.

What made Mike an even more effective listener was his sharp memory. When you have a leader with a very sharp memory for obvious reasons, you get to learn to stick to the truth — nothing but the truth.

Mike was one such leader who did not believe that good ideas were the preserve of management and would therefore give audience to anyone.

Historians will tell of some former general managers of NRZ who would not share an elevator with subordinates (I gather that this still happens in other organisations) while statisticians will be interested in comparing the average annual number of people that accessed the 13th floor during different former NRZ General Managers’ tenures.

When an employee of whatever level met him in an elevator, Mike would not wait to be greeted, he would greet the employee and start a conversation. When being chauffeured Karakadzai would sit in the front seat not at the back like most chauffeured executives do.

By virtue of my office, I was involved in drafting most of the papers, letters, etc for the General Manager’s office and as expected the drafts would sometimes carry views that did not converge with his.

Karakadzai would not reject my views without asking me to come forward to discuss them. When we discussed, he would either accept my ideas (in other words he was capable of being convinced by others) or I would leave his office persuaded that his line of thinking was the right one.

Because of his use of persuasion instead of coercion or instruction, he was a mentor and not a boss to me.  In order to afford equal growth opportunities to his divisional heads to take over leadership of the organisation one day, Karakadzai introduced a rotational acting system.

Through a schedule maintained and administered by his Personal Assistant, the organisation’s five divisional heads superintended over the organisation on a rotational basis whenever Karakadzai was away.

During his tenure the NRZ also introduced a number of measures indicative of his commitment to the growth and welfare of employees and these, among others, included the procurement of staff buses.

Of late, a Management Development Programme run in conjunction with one of the local universities has been introduced.
The programme targets senior supervisors who are precluded from applying for managerial positions due to lack of relevant academic qualifications. It is common knowledge that NRZ is struggling financially.

While certain circles in their wisdom or lack of it prefer to attribute this unfortunate position to poor leadership by Karakadzai, those who are alive to the economic hardships the country has been facing over the last decade or so, will vouch that the challenges NRZ is facing are not peculiar to the entity alone.

When the NRZ started to experience cash flow challenges at the onset of the multi-currency regime in the country, there was consensus within his senior management that the situation called for staggering of salaries’ payment. Mike, however, shocked his senior managers when he suggested that the salaries payment will be done starting with the lowest grades with senior management and of course himself being paid last.

I vividly remember how he responded to the managers’ grumblings, ‘‘Eheka, ndizvo zvinoita kutonga. Kutonga uchi hune ivhu. Iri ndiro ivhu racho’.’

The late Karakadzai believed in collective decision making. He would call his Management Executive team at short notice whenever key decisions had to be made. This, apart from ‘‘growing’’ the followers also inculcated team spirit in them. Mike Karakadzai also introduced ‘‘Monday Briefings Sessions’.’

These sessions were attended by divisional, functional and section heads and he used them to check on progress in the implementation of the organisation’s plans.

The sessions were very unpopular during the first days that they were dubbed ‘‘the GM’s parades’.’
Sooner rather than later, managers began to realise that the meetings, in addition to the specified intention, actually afforded them an opportunity to participate in higher level decision making especially on issues pertaining their functions and also empowered them as they got to know what was happening in other functions of the entity.

The NRZ system is divided into the headquarters and three regions (areas).  Before Mike joined the NRZ, the areas were operating as semi-autonomous only in theory as for instance, the area managers did not have full power over the specialist functional management teams in their respective areas.

The teams viewed the area managers’ supervisory role over them as ceremonial and would get directions from their functional heads at HQ.

Karakadzayi corrected this anomaly and the area managers are now fully empowered, they are now mini GMs as he liked to call them. The same empowerment concept was also extended to stations where Station Masters are now fully in charge of all activities and staff at their stations.

Because of Mike’s conceptual thinking and foresight he easily blended with the two boards (Board of Directors) that were appointed during his tenure.

Needless to observe, the entity operated without a board for a period of about two years and thanks to Mike’s strategic thinking the void was not so apparent.

As a visionary leader, after attentively listening to and thoroughly interrogating a presentation by one of his senior managers advocating for the introduction of the Balanced Scorecard system in the NRZ, Mike quickly embraced the idea and implemented it. Mike would not make emotional decisions or actions and was always ready to provide emotional mending to his followers.

Because of Mike’s stewardship mentality, at the height of economic woes in the country in the 2007/8 period he introduced five new intercity passenger train routes.

This idea was not viewed positively by some of his senior managers but he reasoned to them that the resources NRZ use belonged to the taxpayer and the same taxpayer should derive some direct benefit from them especially under such trying times.

I therefore find it befitting to say rest in eternal peace Mike Tichafa Karakadzai — a strategist par excellence, mentor, emotional healer, steward, freedom fighter and servant leader. I also challenge the NRZ management to advance Mike’s dreams for the organisation and to emulate his leadership style.

Finally, I call upon the country at large, as it emerges out of the doldrums, to join the world in embracing the emerging concept of servant leadership.

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