On the Eighth floor of the corner building on Wabera Street sits Dr Julius Kipngetich. Although he has held many high-ranking positions in Kenya’s corporate scene, little is known about him. From his office, with the view of the city and especially the KICC, we sit with him as he delves into his life, why he believes he is a quintessential public servant, his yearning for better governance, looking back into history, why technology, will not replace humans, the importance of family and his deep belief that is the peoples time, especially HR practitioners, to take control of the C-Suite.

Who is Dr. Julius Kipng’etich?

This is sort of a difficult question to ask somebody because a lot of my life has been in the public domain. I am a simple Kenyan who wants everything to work as it was meant to be. I’ve involved myself in many things, especially in public service. I strive to excel in everything I undertake and ensure I pursue my endeavours without leaving any room for regret. Could you share some insights into your background, including your experiences growing up? I was born in Iten, where most of Kenya’s athletes come from. Iten, a fairly small town, is the headquarters of Elgeyo Marakwet County. When we were in primary school, my peers were very athletic, unfortunately, I was not.

One of my childhood memories was the admiration we all had for St. Patrick’s High School. It was not only reputable in academic performance but also in sports. We used to go to Iten town, our local shopping center, to see the ultimate school of our choice. It was the village Harvard. In an interesting turn of events, when we did the class seven exams in 1978, I changed my choice of school. I chose Starehe Boys as my first choice and St. Patrick’s as the second. This was my first serious and impactful decision. Our headmaster had told us, “You have to think beyond your village.” Because you see, St Patrick is a famous school, but within our village. I arrived in Nairobi in 1979 to join Form One in Starehe Boys. I remember in great nostalgia how the city was simply effective. From well-marked roads to reliable garbage collection and efficient public transport services, Nairobi was the place to be. This has not remained the same over the years due to corruption and governance issues.

 Please describe to us your career journey, right from your first job to where you are right now.

In my career life, I’ve held many positions. My first job was at Barclays Bank in 1991, a one-year stint as a management trainee. I was the first MBA to ever enter Barclays. It was interesting because it gave me an insight into how a bank works, and I’ve never forgotten the experience. My salary was Ksh.5,500 and my rent was 1,500 shillings in Buruburu estate. From there, I went to teach at the University. I taught at Strathmore University, United States International University (USIU), and the University of Nairobi, before going into Kenya’s investment promotion (KenInvest), marketing Kenya as an investment destination, then later moved on to work for the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), Equity Bank, Uchumi Supermarkets, and currently working for Jubilee Holdings Limited. Generally, I consider myself a public servant because in all these roles, I have been serving the public. I am a quintessential public servant

Looking back on your experiences, what would you say has been your motivation as a person?

I have an eternal motto. It’s a very coastal thing, a Swahili phrase that says ‘Tenda Wema nenda zako’. Do good, it doesn’t cost you anything. And just move on. There are so many people I meet in the streets; either I taught them, or helped them and I forgot and later someone says, Oh, you did this for me one day. That is my motivation. Do something, do it good, and move on. You don’t have to remind people that you did a good job; you know, you don’t want people to praise you for doing something. The key thing, and I always tell people, is to do the right thing, to do it well and move on.

You recently won the best people-focused CEO award. Away from describing yourself as a public servant, how would you describe the type of leader you are?

For me, I’m a consultative leader. There’s what we call a leadership continuum. A continuum is a range of activities over a certain space. So, it could come from autocratic to democratic. Four leadership styles come out of it, either you are autocratic, benevolent, consultative, or democratic. No leader is purely any of those four. My dominant leadership style is consultative.

There are situations when things are tough, you become stronger; you can be benevolent, or you can be autocratic, but there are situations where you just go to a town hall with your staff and just laugh, letting them make a decision. Also, leadership is situational. When you find yourself in certain situations as a leader, you change your style. The environment in which you are in also changes your style. When I was at KWS, which is a regimented organization, the leadership style was different. Jubilee is a listed company; it’s a civilian company. So, my leadership style has changed. So, leadership is situational, non[1]permanent, and flows; it is fluid.

 Lastly, leadership is not an end. A leader is an influencer who influences people to achieve a goal. So, you have to look at the circumstances on the ground to determine the best way to influence that goal

Over the years, your daily routine has evolved as you assume new roles. What is your current routine, and how does it inform your leadership style?

For me, family comes first. If you’re stable at the family level, you will always be a good employee. A good employee is a product of a good home. And not the other way around. You cannot become a good employee if you are a mess at home. Your daily routine begins at home and ends at home.

 I always reach home between 7:30 pm and 8:00 pm. I inform my family if there is an event that may delay me. I do an average of seven or eight hours of sleep daily, which means I sleep around 10:00 pm. I wake up early to connect with my family. You must be present for your children. A lot of the challenges we are witnessing today are because parents have assumed that children need money. So, you pour money and disappear. Children don’t need money, they need presence.

 Lastly, domestic workers must always be treated as part of your family. You will be shocked that our domestic manager has been with us, since 1996, a testament to the value of fostering genuine relationships and mutual respect at home.

 I believe that a person’s stability at home determines their success at the workplace. You will find that very productive employees are always stable at home.

Share with us the most memorable moment in your career and why it was significant.

I’ve had so many illustrious engagements in the public domain. To me, the one that really struck me was the student welfare at the University of Nairobi. I know many people know me because of KWS, but the one that really struck a chord with me was managing young people. Managing the catering and accommodation services at the University of Nairobi, between 1997 and 2000. I was young, and it was a very difficult job. Nobody ever wanted that job.

When it was suggested to me, that I could do it, I was not certain of my decision to take up that responsibility. It was a very difficult time for the University because it was in a financial crisis and students were unhappy about many things, much of it had to do with welfare activities. So, we engaged in a program of restructuring that culminated in a new strategy called the 1999 document that ushered in what is now called the parallel degree programs. I was in a committee of four people that triggered that, and we created opportunities for Kenyans that would otherwise have gone abroad.

 I am very proud because I was one of those very vocal leaders at the University of Nairobi who ushered in the parallel degree programs. I did advocacy in other universities such as Moi University and Kenyatta University. I remember the Vice Chancellor ,then Professor Geoge Eshiwani, saying that the parallel degree programs would never be started in Kenyatta University yet this program, in my opinion, is actually the most successful in Kenyatta University

Let’s shift gears to Technology and Automation: What is your general understanding of technology and automation and its significance to the way of doing business today?

Technology has been around since creation because human beings need to do things better and faster. This necessitated the need to develop tools. However, the last 200 years have been profound in terms of how technology has evolved. We began with Industrialization 1.0 which was the development of the steam engine and we could do some level of automation. Fast forward to where we are today, and we are now in what we call industrialization 4.0 which was brought about by the maturity of the internet and semiconductor technology that has been developed such that we can process information at incredible speeds, faster than you could ever imagine.

 Automation has taken advantage of these advances in technology. Technology is moving very fast, the speed of computers and their capacity to store information is growing exponentially every day. For example, in the last five years, we have stored more information than has ever been stored in human history. We have been able to create servers capable of storing so much information that it has created a whole new profession called data science. We are not only able to store that information but also mine it and use that data to make decisions. We expect that the level and speed of automation in organizations is going to improve.

That’s why we tell employees that they must adapt and keep upskilling as the workplace continues to change. Companies and employees must work in tandem to invest in the capacity to change.

For example, look at the Internet of Things. The Internet of Things simply involves things talking to each other through the microchips embedded in them. The next Internet of Things will be devices communicating with the human brain. It’s coming within the next few years. Soon, we will discover the frequency needed to communicate with the brain, and once we discover that a device capable of communicating with the brain can be developed, evolution is coming very fast. Processor speeds are another incredible upcoming technology. Nanotechnology is simply smaller things working faster than human beings. These nanotechnologies are small things that can embedded. That brain frequency could be a chip inserted through simple surgery.

Automation is an unstoppable force in the workplace. What we need to do is to build resilience, capacity to adapt, and develop mitigation measures. So, if you have been displaced by automation, your mitigation measure could be savings. Do you have the savings to allow you to transition? Consequently, for us in insurance, we are thinking of ways to restructure pensions in light of technology and automation. Because we don’t have an employee who will work until the age of 60. That time has passed. For this reason, we need to design pension plans that can give people shorter exit periods

How is Artificial Intelligence (AI) reshaping traditional HR management practices?

I think the word that’s most important in Artificial Intelligence is artificial. I don’t see machines in our lifetime reaching humanity’s natural intelligence. We are yet to reach that point of playing God. Therefore, it is important for us to remember it is ‘artificial’ intelligence, and can only mimic human behavior thus has its limits. There is a level of intelligence that human beings possess that machines do not.

Therefore, the workplace will be a blend of the two intelligences. Artificial intelligence will do routine things and natural intelligence to do those things that require creativity. A machine might not be able to achieve the level of creativity of a human being but it can do many of the routine things that humans do. Even in a world of machine learning, machine learning is only for things that have patterns but many things in life have no pattern. That is the natural intelligence space. I would tell employees that we are going into a space of two intelligences blending themselves to deliver a better and faster world

Jubilee Holdings is one of the leading financial institutions in the region. How is your organization leveraging AI to revolutionize its business processes?

 We are already leveraging AI. The first one we rolled out is a claims adjudication system in our health insurance companies. If you go to the hospital today, the hospital does not send us manual paper. All that comes electronically to us and goes through a claims adjudicator that uses artificial intelligence. For now, it is rules-based, but soon, we hope to migrate it to machine learning. We are also growing.

 We are beginning with the rules-based system, and it’s working very well. And it has been able to reject a lot of fraudulent claims and we have seen our fraud cases begin to drop. On average, in Kenya, we receive around 6000 claims per day. These claims now go through the system machine, and we can pick even the smallest recommendation by a doctor. The system will pick the recommendation and forward it to doctors on our side who can scrutinize the original doctor’s diagnosis and treatment plan by the standard. Those that can be explained are approved and those that can’t will be rejected.

 Remember, the policyholder is ours primarily. Our expectation is that we will have claims adjudication in all areas of our business soon. Because the core work of our insurance companies is to pay claims, we want to make accurate claims payouts. We also hope to computerize many other areas of our business where technology can do so. Interestingly, we have not lost an employee we have just had our employees adjust themselves. We have adjusted internally and provided capacity building for our employees to adjust to the changes. We have moved a lot of our employees who have been displaced by technology mainly into sales and business development. So, we are adjusting internally, providing capacity building.

What are some possible challenges Businesses and organizations should expect from AI, and how can they stay ahead of the curve?

In our company town halls, we are very open about the importance of agility. You have to be agile; you can’t just sit there and say “My employer will take care of me” Employers is also going through the same changes. It is your responsibility to prepare yourself. Our company has created an E-learning platform -The Jubilee Digital Academy – to ensure that our employees are ahead of the curve.

 The platform allows you to get an e-certificate, and we can trace that you passed the exam. When you get a certificate, HR monitors and whenever the vacancy arises, the skills inventory machine will go and look for an employee who has done this course that matches it to a vacancy that exists then you get your shortlist of the people to interview internally.

You have a track record of turning around organizations, most notably the Kenya Wildlife Services, you also sit on several boards including the Blue Company Project. From your deep wealth of experience, how can Kenyan businesses ensure profitability while attracting and retaining the right talent and skills?

Organizations and countries are about people. Profit is a by-product of having the right people in the right place, with the right skills, and doing the right things. Most leaders usually say that people are the greatest assets as a cliché. Companies must now move to demonstrate this by showing that they think and are deeply concerned about their staff.

 We are preparing to move to our new headquarters. We have curated a work environment incorporating facilities such as a walking track and gym to enable our staff remain active and energized while at work.

That’s what organizations are about, people. If you treat your employees right, they will treat the customer right and profits will come automatically, I’m proud to say Jubilee is the most profitable insurance company and has a long-track record of profitability.

What is your parting shot to HR practitioners in line with their role of ensuring top employee performance?

My message to HR practitioners is that they are the owners of the C-suite. The CEO of today is a people person. The CEO today is somebody who understands human behavior, human psychology and human motivation. Automation will continue to revolutionalize sectors like finance, marketing, engineering and ICT, however, HR is an area that technology will have a hard time infiltrating.

Therefore, the people who are going to run organizations in the 21st century are people who understand people. I look forward to seeing a lot of HR practitioners occupying the CEO positions. It’s your time. After the Second World War, it was engineers. Then followed by finance people, followed by marketers. Then it wobbled a little; now it’s inevitable.

 It’s the people’s time.