In 2024, AB Entheos celebrated 10 years of operations. The company is the brainchild of Anne Kamau and Barbara Chesire, former colleagues from earlier in their respective careers. Launching and growing AB Entheos was the biggest professional challenge Anne and Barbara have faced. Through this blog series, they explain the challenges they have overcome, their successes and the lessons learned. This is the seventh instalment in their story of 10 lessons in 10 years, or 10-in-10.
By 2021, Anne and Barbara had been in business for at least seven years. Around this time, one word kept emerging in several conversations between the two: trust. It was clear that to continue growing the business into something that could last, they needed to trust others to deliver for them. For both of them, 2021 is when it became clear that their biggest asset was not their vision or strategy: it was the people they employed and that they would go on to employ.
Investing in our team and learning to trust
The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic had prompted Anne and Barbara to rethink the way they worked and who they worked with. Demand for their services meant that expanding their team had become a necessity. Up to this point, all prior growth had been the result of their own hands-on leadership. This was unlikely to be sustainable in the long run. Growing the business required a formal structure, a clear strategy, and – crucially – an investment in building a team.
Change in strategy: Beyond consulting
In the same year, AB Entheos started the shift beyond traditional consulting. This was partly driven by the launch of its ResilientME! game, a consumer education tool based on gamification – not the type of initiative a consulting house would typically pursue. For Anne and Barbara, scaling up was about more than just having bigger ambitions. It was about building the operational backbone needed to support these ambitions. The first step was to bring new people on board and set up new systems.
Hiring in a niche sector such as microinsurance often requires patience. Rather than headhunting seasoned experts, Anne and Barbara decided to look for people who were a little green and keen – to learn. They started by launching a paid internship programme for university graduates. Interns were treated as AB Entheos staff and were involved in all parts of the business: from proposal writing and research, to government meetings and client engagement. Not every intern stayed, but the most committed became a core part of the team and earned offers for full-time positions.
Sometimes, at the end of the six-month internship, we would then take the intern on for a more full-time contract.
We could not hire from any other company because at the time, we could not afford it.
~ Barbara Chesire
“Skills can be trained, but attitude and a hunger for growth cannot be taught.”
The early hiring experiences were not without setbacks and stumbles. For every successful new recruit, there were a few who were just not the right fit. Learning this was an important lesson for Anne and Barbara, as it would be for any business leaders. They also found that knowledge in a technical area did not necessarily mean a high level of skill in a related function: one highly qualified graduate had the actuarial know-how but surprisingly lacked the confidence to make sense of basic tasks.
For Anne and Barbara, it became clear that impressive qualifications are not a substitute for humility or reliability. This was compounded by a particular scenario, where an employee – brought in for their experience – decided to abruptly leave at an important point during a client engagement. Many glittering CVs came their way, often from very qualified individuals. But what Anne and Barbara learned to value above all else was ensuring that their people had the right attitude and were comfortable being resilient. After all, this was the business they were selling.
We started seeing the value in having someone else as backup for you to cover bigger ground than you can on your own.
This was the first step for us to work with someone other than just Barbara and myself.
~ Anne Kamau
Rewarding passion: A success story
Despite these speed bumps in their hiring journey, some of the risks Anne and Barbara took paid off. ResilientME! was prototyped by a master’s graduate from the LSE, who joined as an intern while looking for other jobs. Despite their time at AB Entheos having a shelf-life, this person served as a model hire for some time, having led a vital human-wildlife conflict project too. These achievements contributed to AB Entheos’ success; importantly, they helped the graduate secure a managerial role in the development sector. The satisfaction that both Anne and Barbara feel about nurturing talent to have a real-world impact is evident to this day.
The real lesson: “Letting go and allowing others to step up was daunting, but essential”
The lesson from 2021 is simple and straightforward: structures bring organisation, and strategy provides direction. However, people remain core to meaningful delivery. Investing in the team and learning to trust others does not always feel intuitive for most people – it wasn’t for Anne and Barbara to begin with. However, it is necessary to build a thriving business.
