Name: Mawurobi Thierry Wilfried Sanou

Title: Supply Chain Manager (Burkina & Niger)

Organisation: American Tower Corporation

Married with 3 children, I am a 38-year-old and man who attaches paramount importance to the development of his family life even with the various social and professional challenges: I am a "family" person with a sense of the collective. Problem solving and result focused resource, I am a bilingual workforce determined, dynamic and self-motivated with organizational capabilities and team working abilities.

Competent in supply chain management field, I am particularly familiar with telecom and extractive industry field. I like professional challenges that I face each time they present themselves to me. This explains my ability to climb the ladder by merit as demonstrated by my course over the last years of my career.

Thank you to the 2,000 leaders who’ve generously done the 7 Questions on Leadership!

I hope Mawurobi's answers will encourage you in your leadership journey. Enjoy!

Cheers,

Jonno White

1. What have you found most challenging as a leader?

"1) Geographical distribution: dealing with colleagues geographically spread between countries with different contexts and challenges is quite to be managed with care. It is then about respecting the culture, beliefs and other realities when interacting.

2) Diverse: supervising several colleagues from different culture and beliefs can bring confusions, and worst frustration if things not done with tact. Also, I have to considerate the disparity in the experience level of each of the reports.

3) Digital: Hybrid working model definitively in place, making physical interactions limited – supervision being done mainly via digital tools despite their vices. It is then crucial to keep the interactions opened in this virtual environment which is quite limitative sometimes in terms of expected results due to the apparent lack of hard control that may occur in some cases. "

2. How did you become a leader? Can you please briefly tell the story?

How did you become a leader? Can you please briefly tell the story? I would say here that my own life story has been a great contribution in this sense. I had to use a few tricks not only to get off the beaten track, but above all to develop a sort of social intelligence, if you can put it that way.

We will here emphasize this notion of social intelligence, in the sense that it constitutes the engine for a capacity for adaptation in a multicultural environment and above all rich in diversity from which we manage to maintain the best relationships with the different stakeholders: both those with vertical and horizontal connections.

Basically, it's a question of attitude: how to behave with your peers, your constituents but also with third parties in order to bring out the best in everyone taken individually but also according to the "group" consideration.

3. How do you structure your work days from waking up to going to sleep?

I would say in my case that it all starts at bedtime the previous day. We take care to always review the points planned for the following day and see if any quick actions/gestures relating to them could already be undertaken in advance. It is clear, particularly in the field of supply chain, that planning is the key, but we must recognize that unforeseen events are part of our daily lives.

And one of the best ways to counter the perverse effects of these lies in the ability to anticipate or take things in hand in advance as much as possible. By chance, nowadays we have multiple technics of risks mitigation in this direction of which the PROMODORO is one of the key tools I am personally adopting.

4. What's a recent leadership lesson you've learned for the first time or been reminded of?

There is always something to be gained from any situation. This is where those most concerned manage to label the waves of the “learn – unlearn” couple.

5. What's one book that has had a profound impact on your leadership so far? Can you please briefly tell the story of how that book impacted your leadership?

The One Minute Manager (Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson). This book is still a reference for me in term of efficient management for giving quick objectives, feedback, and reorientations. It is so helpful in regards with the variability and dynamism of the environment in which I work.

6. If you could only give one piece of advice to a young leader, what would you say to them?

Be loyal to yourself, to your values!

7. What is one meaningful story that comes to mind from your time as a leader, so far?

Among the most memorable of my leadership stories, I would tell you about the following:

A few years ago, now I was performing the role of Purchasing Manager in a manufacturing company. Then came a day when we had to launch one of the biggest projects due to its strategic nature but also challenging mainly because of the innovative side in terms of process.

This involved recruiting an experienced, competent, and solid operator for the exploitation of a new quarry which would be newly introduced as a raw material in our manufacturing process. Under the leadership of a pre-established steering committee, I was responsible for leading the project from the creation of the terms of reference for the call for tenders to the final award decision.

This experience was quite mixed for me, especially since it was not only necessary to work as a team within a multidisciplinary committee for the evaluation of bidders and offers but also to progressively present the progress work on the steering committee to be sure that we were all on the same wavelength.

Let's go directly to the stage which most aroused my spirit of listening, of integrating ideas received from elsewhere but also and above all my ability to convince about my choices: the final decision on choice of partner to be validated by the steering committee.

Indeed, the call for tenders was held over 3 stages at the end of which we ended up retaining the 2 best bidders. It must be said that the offers were equivalent except for a few details, making the choice to go with this or that partner somewhat complex, as any subjective decision had to be ruled out.

I can tell you that initially and at each stage, it was a question of analyzing the results and making a choice, which one to present to the steering committee. No need to specify the challenge that this represented for everyone and particularly for me with regard to the harmonization of ideas, and evaluations following contradictions that I would describe as fruitful.

It was both exciting and at times difficult because it involved adjusting the different viewing angles to direct them towards an optimal point. It was moments like this that I had to summon my critical spirit, which of course had to be combined with my conviction about my choices. We had a team of technicians from different fields, each of whom was concerned about a job well done but whose opinions or perceptions were not necessarily the right ones in absolute terms.

It took us several sessions during which some of us even thought that we were spending our days wasting our time without making any progress. We spent both simple and tense working sessions and, after 3 months, ended up finding the perfect compromise according to which at the end we were delighted to conclude and realized that the somehow conflictual debates on the topic ended up to a well-optimized solution that would participate for year and years to the bottom-line result of the business.