Many youth, especially Kenyans, have jumped onto the entrepreneurship bandwagon, their first step often being creating domain based email addresses for their intended companies.

In a bid to sound more professional or impress potential clients and new friends with flashy business cards, the step a lot of young Kenyan entrepreneurs miss is the most obvious: actually developing and populating their websites.

Every business, regardless of the sector in which it operates, has assignments that must be executed by the Chief Executive Officer.

Mind you, not the founder, owner or manager: exclusively the CEO. This remains true for small businesses in the logistics industry as well.

For small scale logistics companies, however, assuming the duties of a CEO is often more difficult.

In some industries, the duties of the general manager can be assumed by the principal owner with no detriment to the company’s productivity.

For logistics, it is much more strenuous to get the same individual to absorb the functions of the CEO, which are different from management tasks in that the CEO is required to open doors for increased business opportunities as well as serve customers.

The key factor in such scenarios is usually capacity.

Some small supply chain businesses take on the same big man syndrome that many fledgling Kenyan entrepreneurs deal with, seeking to mesmerize potential or existing customers by wearing every leadership hat in the company, akin to flashing a business card boasting a hollow domain name.

A supply chain CEO’s job is to ensure the doors of the business stay open the coming year and those after that, by sustaining a steady stream of revenue-generating business leads.

It requires committing time, energy, and assets to the strategic duties of a CEO.

Here are the three fundamental and focal points of the job of a logistic CEO.

 

Where have we been?

Where are we now?

Where are we going?

 

Take this to the bank or write on a rock … Being a small business CEO is not easy, but it’s also an irreplaceable part of running a business.

Whether in the supply chain industry or chicken farming and everything in between, the role of the CEO remains paramount to the success of a business in these economic times.