AUTHORS: DEVIN DECIATIS & IVAN LANSBERG
Every family business in Uganda has a story. A beginning in sweat, sacrifice, and a little faith. A father who opened a shop in the 1980s with one bale of sugar. A mother who built a salon from her veranda. A son who took over and turned it into a supermarket chain. The story of enterprise here is never just about money; it’s about continuity, the stubborn determination to hold the line through good times and bad.
That spirit is at
the heart of The Enduring Enterprise
by Devin DeCiantis and Ivan Lansberg — a book that could easily have been
written for Uganda. It explores how family firms in the world’s most turbulent
regions survive and even thrive where others collapse. Their secret? Knowing
what to hold onto, and what to let go.
Balancing Legacy and Change
DeCiantis and
Lansberg argue that enduring businesses are built on adaptive continuity. They never lose sight of who they are, but
they aren’t afraid to reinvent how they do business. The values stay —
integrity, thrift, service but the tools evolve.
Uganda’s
long-standing business families understand this instinctively. The Mukwano Group expanded from soap to
plastics to real estate. Roofings
turned steel into an ecosystem of industries. The lesson? Change what you must,
but never forget what made you. Continuity without adaptability leads to extinction;
adaptability without values leads to chaos.
Trust as Currency
In places where
institutions are fragile and contracts unreliable, trust becomes the real
currency. The book shows how, in frontier economies, relationships are the
scaffolding of survival.
That truth rings
loudly in Uganda. The trusted supplier in Kikuubo, the loyal driver who’s been
with the family for twenty years, the cousin managing the warehouse, they are
all part of the same invisible capital that keeps the business upright when banks
tighten credit or policy shifts overnight.
DeCiantis and
Lansberg call this relational capital.
You can’t list it on a balance sheet, but lose it and you lose everything.
Ugandan entrepreneurs would do well to guard it by honouring their word, paying on time, and
mentoring the next generation of trustworthy partners.
Resilience Beats Efficiency
Western business
schools preach efficiency — cut costs, go lean, automate. But in frontier
economies, the book argues, efficiency can be fatal. Lean systems collapse at
the first shock.
Ugandan
entrepreneurs already know this. The prudent trader in Owino keeps a stash of
emergency stock. The factory owner keeps an old generator in storage. The
family transport business maintains two trucks even when one would do. That
“inefficiency” is actually strategy, what the authors call stabilizing slack.
In a world of
rising uncertainty — climate shocks, currency swings, unpredictable taxes, resilience,
not efficiency, is the true competitive edge.
Governance: From Founders to the Future
What kills most
family businesses isn’t competition. It’s conflict. DeCiantis and Lansberg
point out that the failure to plan for succession is the biggest threat to
continuity. When founders pass without clear governance, families fracture, and
assets scatter.
Uganda has seen
this story too many times — thriving companies that collapse within a year of
the patriarch’s passing. The cure, the book insists, is simple but seldom
practiced: write it down. A family
constitution, clear ownership rules, and a plan for leadership
transitions can save decades of hard work.
Governance
doesn’t kill family spirit; it protects it. It turns inheritance into
stewardship.
The Frontier Mindset
Perhaps the most
inspiring insight from The Enduring
Enterprise is the idea of the frontier
mindset, the ability to turn uncertainty into advantage.
Frontier
businesses, the authors say, grow strong because they operate where nothing is
guaranteed. They learn to improvise, diversify, and adapt.
That mindset is
Uganda’s natural terrain. Whether it’s a family in Lira turning sunflower
farming into an oil brand, or a Kampala trader pivoting from imports to local
manufacturing, success comes from embracing the chaos, not fearing it.
Ugandan
entrepreneurs are already masters of contingency — making payroll when the
power’s off, finding customers when the shilling tumbles. The authors’ advice
is to systematize that agility. Train teams to pivot. Keep backup suppliers.
Build businesses modularly so one part can survive when another fails.
Purpose as a Survival Tool
What keeps family
enterprises going through hardship is not just money, it’s meaning. The authors show how
enduring families tell their story again and again, binding generations through
shared struggle.
In Uganda, that
story is everywhere. The grandmother who sold cassava to pay school fees. The
father who rebuilt after Amin. The son who registered the business formally so
the next generation could inherit it cleanly. These stories are not sentiment;
they are strategy. They create identity, loyalty, and purpose.
Families that
remember their story endure because they know why they began and for whom.
Lessons for Uganda’s Family Enterprises
From DeCiantis
and Lansberg’s global examples come lessons tailored for Uganda’s own economic
frontier:
- Govern early
— don’t wait for crisis to decide who runs what.
- Preserve buffers
— liquidity is resilience; never run too lean.
- Professionalize
— let competence, not birth order, guide leadership.
- Diversify wisely
— stay close to your core but spread your risk.
- Protect your reputation — trust is the most expensive asset to
rebuild.
These may sound
like old wisdom — because they are. But in a world as uncertain as ours, old
wisdom is modern strategy.
