AVODA Blue Module 1
Business Strategy and the Kingdom of God
Strategy comes from stratos, army, and gia, the art of. The art of leading an army. Not a document you write once and file. This is the first module our founders work through in Kampala and Dar es Salaam, and the slides and the workbook are both below.
103 pages of slides, four to a page. Free, in exchange for an email.
Most business plans describe one layer and call it strategy
They describe the business. Its product, its price, its people. Then something the plan never mentioned decides the outcome: a tariff, a currency move, a competitor who was never in the same room.
The economist Gabriel Zucman estimates that sixty percent of the money in Swiss bank accounts belongs to shell corporations. A Ugandan passport opens more than a hundred fewer doors than a Japanese one. Neither fact appears in your business plan, and both price your options before you open on Monday.
This module teaches you to read five layers at once, and to know which weapons belong to which layer.
The five layers
Your business sits at the centre of four environments you do not control. Technicality rises as you move inward. Reach rises as you move outward.
Five questions belong on each layer, and the module makes you answer all five, five times over. Who are you? Where are you? Where are you trying to get to? Who is your ally and who is your enemy now? Who will be your ally and your enemy on the next move?
Twenty-five answers. That is the battlemap. Most founders have five.
What the six sessions cover
Session 1: The Kingdom layer
Why a Christian business is a strategic instrument and not a donation box. Christ as King of all, business as a Gospel tool, and the triple bottom line as the form that takes.
Session 2: Building God’s Kingdom in Africa through business
The unique calling and the unique obstacles. Knowing your own strengths, as the module puts it, with false humility thrown away for once.
Session 3: The macro-environment layer
Passports, diplomatic relations, capital flight, and what holds African Christians back from owning their destiny. The layer your plan never mentions and your banker always does.
Session 4: The industry layer
Where your decisions start moving other players. Direct confrontation, blue ocean expansion and pre-emptive retreat, read against 2 Corinthians 10:3.
Sessions 5 and 6: The strategic group layer
Finding the competitors actually playing your game. Incumbency, price, customer segment, service level, brand, product range and geography as the axes that separate them.
Taught by Jun Shiomitsu
Theological and pastoral training in Japan. Vice President of the Treasury Department at Citibank Japan. MBA from the University of Cambridge. Deutsche Bank in the UK and Switzerland. Founder and President of the African Business Institute.
The slides and the workbook
Two different tools. The slides are what was taught. The workbook is where you do the work on your own business, layer by layer.
The slides: all six sessions
The complete module in one document, 103 pages, four slides to a page in landscape so you can print it and write in the margins. Contents page and bookmarks take you straight to any session.
Complete PDF · 14MB · Landscape A4, sized to print double-sided. This is the same document the current cohort received.
The workbook: a working chapter
A chapter from the AVODA Kingdom Business Workbook Suite, the documents founders build with in class. This is the sample, not the full set.
Sample PDF · Founders accepted into AVODA Blue receive the full physical set. Essentials founders can buy each physical book at UGX 50,000.
We ask for your name and email so we can send you the file. The tick box is optional, and we only email you about programmes if you choose it.
A handout teaches. A cohort changes what you do on Monday.
Business Strategy and the Kingdom of God is the first of eleven modules in AVODA Blue. The programme runs in Kampala and Dar es Salaam twice a year, and the first week of every cohort is free.
Every application is answered. Current cohort dates are on the programme page.