THE DAVID RUDISHA STRATEGY

THE DAVID RUDISHA STRATEGY

David Lekuta Rudisha is my all-time favorite Kenyan champion. Besides his fabled long strides, he was truly, a paragon of consistency. His elegant style saw him break numerous records, rake in countess medals, and I daresay, earned him some decent bread. His style was simple - He always started strong, and ran all his races at the front of the pack, from start to finish.

So then, you’ve all heard about the legend of David Rudisha, but have you heard about the DR Strategy?

See, at project inception, implementing agencies are awash with funds, they have all the time in the world, but more importantly, the goodwill and support of their donor(s). With all the endorphins flooding their system, it’s not uncommon for implementers to pay fleeting attention to the clock.

Please note, time is not your friend!

Within the blink of an eye, the mid-term evaluation is on your neck like the proverbial yoke. Soon, the donors begin their unsettling murmurs of dissatisfaction and your best talent begin the inevitable exodus for greener pastures.

See the write-up below for further insights and benefits of the strategy:

Optimizing Time – The luxury of time is an alien concept in most donor-funded projects. The DR Strategy prioritizes, optimizes and appropriately budgets for time as a scarce resource that if wasted cannot be recovered.

Creating Momentum – By creating good momentum early in the project, the project leadership instils a sense of urgency for the achievement of project milestones and fosters inspirational team values such a heartwarming sense of achievement, a deep sense of purpose, and some remarkable spillover effects such as a sense of belonging, teamwork and camaraderie.

Delivering Efficiency and Cost Savings – Any building or civil works contractor will tell you that savings in time always translate into cost savings. For some funding mechanisms e.g. grants and cooperative agreements, that may amount to heathy reserves for your organization. PS. We don’t use the term profits in these circles.

Earning the Goodwill of Funders – You should hear your donors’, proudly lauding accolades in the corridors of power -  about how you achieved set targets within budgets and timelines.

Evidence-based – The DR strategy is to project management what Blitzscaling is to commercial ventures. Blitzscaling is what you do when you need to grow really, really quickly, i.e. Increasing the capacity of a system by a large magnitude over a short duration of time. In summary, it is the science and art of rapidly building out an enterprise to serve a large market/population. Google, Netflix, Meta, and I bet, Tesla are Blitzscaling. NB. You really should read the nice book by Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh – That’s the evidence.

Avoiding the curse of the fourth year – Many donor-funded projects are modelled around the typical five-year project cycle. Traditionally, during the fourth year of most 5-year projects, talented personnel will begin the search for the next stable source of income. As it sometimes happens, the exodus of these talented personnel will often coincides with the results of the mid-term evaluation. It is painful to watch project leadership chasing missed targets amid the hemorrhage.