The Expert Who Said No

We had a Big Hairy Audacious Goal. To some, it was daring and inspiring. To others, just naive optimism.

The goal? To be the single point of access for mobile money platforms across Ghana.

By 2014, Nsano needed to scale its technical capabilities. Banks wanted to connect to mobile money. Mobile money operators needed integration partners they could trust. I knew we needed someone with deep mobile money experience to join as our technical co-founder.

I found what seemed like the perfect candidate — let’s call him Kwame (not his real name). He was a software engineer who had worked with MTN and, at the time, was the only person who had successfully integrated with them. His product allowed JHS and SHS students to buy result-checking vouchers via MTN mobile money. Exactly the kind of integration expertise we needed.

I offered Kwame a significant equity stake to come on board as Head of IT and technical co-founder — leading integrations with banks and telcos, and shaping our growth strategy. He asked to meet the technical team and work with them briefly before deciding.

When Kwame met the team, his verdict was blunt: “Hungry and inexperienced,” he said. He told me he’d have to “bend backwards” to work with them. In his view, the team just wasn’t good enough.

At the time, Prudential Bank was one of our clients, and we were building a custom solution for them. Kwame insisted it couldn’t be done within the required timeframe. The more we worked together, the clearer the mismatch became. He was pragmatic and sceptical of every idea I brought forward. If there was no precedent, he defaulted to “no.”

Things came to a head when I shared our vision to get direct connections with all the mobile money operators. His response was swift and absolute: ”There’s no way on earth MTN is going to give you a direct connection. It’s just not going to happen. I don’t see it, and I don’t believe in this vision.”

Eventually, I had to make a call. The cultural and philosophical gap was too wide. We parted ways.

Here's what I learned: experts are not always right.

We did get those direct connections. We built the Prudential Bank’s solution in record time. The same team he dismissed as “inexperienced” pulled it off.

I had programmed my team, young engineers who didn’t know what “impossible” meant, not to look for limits. Kwame, with all his experience and wariness, walked into that culture like an alien.

Sometimes, ignorance really is bliss. Not knowing your limits can drive you to attempt the impossible

This isn’t a knock on expertise. I value experience, but sometimes, experience becomes a prison. What looks impossible to someone who knows all the reasons it won’t work might look very doable to someone who doesn’t know those reasons exist. The difference between breakthrough and breakdown is often just perspective.

What “impossible” thing are you not attempting because someone with experience told you it couldn’t be done?

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