I wonder what it’s like to work in the Post Office. What set me wondering was fetching a parcel on 12 May, posted in London on 1 November last year. On the one hand I was impressed that it reached me after six and a half months of travel. No one stole it. It wasn’t buried in a storeroom and eventually destroyed. It reached its intended destination. I didn’t realise this was still possible with the SA Post Office. On the other hand, I have often wondered whether senior managers in the Post Office reflect on just how useless the postal service is, and if so, why do they live with it? I know it is a hugely complex operation at a scale most of us have never had to manage, but it puzzles me that the core business of delivering items within a week or so cannot be rectified. I was served perfectly competently at the counter. There was no problem with the clerk’s skill, knowledge or attitude. The processes also seemed quite adequate. She found my parcel without a problem, processed the payment by card, and I was out about three minutes after I entered. It seems to me that the solution isn’t with the people doing the work, but with senior managers’ ability to see beyond the way things are now, to create something new. The same is true from small private businesses to large public entities. It is even true of presidents of countries. If the entity for which I am responsible is not achieving the ends for which it was created, then I am failing. To stop failing I need to take whatever legal and ethical steps will achieve those ends. That is no one else’s job. This may seem obvious, but I have found that it is often not obvious. Problem is, we do not see the most important work that responsible leaders do. This happens out of sight in their heads as they observe, think continually about the future and search for different solutions. So instead of driving, we become passengers in a driverless organisation. That can work for a while, but sooner or later it will leave the road or run out of fuel. Paradoxically, times of crisis can make the challenge of leadership easier, because we can see the threat. The more insidious threat is the slow erosion of capability and loss of direction that happens invisibly during normal times. There is a kind of organisational entropy in which energy and structures gradually dissipate unless they are renewed. The Post Office is just one of many examples. Transnet and Eskom are other high profile examples of organisations that lost little bits of the intricate systems that kept them effective until one day too many were gone and we discovered they were no longer fit for purpose. There are plenty of less prominent examples of small companies that disappeared. Using a clockwork analogy, the mechanism simply wound down. If you are not looking for it, this is not something you notice until the clock stops. So an unrecognised but absolutely essential responsibility of leaders is to understand what their organisation will need in five, twenty or fifty years, and take steps now to acquire it – whether that be people, technology, money, innovations, strategic pivots, or power stations. We also have amazing organisations that give us hope. At the head of organisations like Discovery, Gift of the Givers, Treasury, the courier companies that do deliver our parcels on time, and the restaurant that delivers hot food to your door, are people who never stop looking out for opportunities and threats. The best are preparing now for what will be required even after they have gone. Jonathan Cook is a Counselling Psychologist and Chairman of the African Management Institute. This is a coaching columns for Business Day, published on 16 May 2022 ( https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/columnists/2022-05-16-jonathan-cook-leaders-see-beyond-what-is-to-create-what-might-be/ ). #JonathanCook

At the best of times most of us need prompting to do the things we actually want to do. Most of us need a coach, mentor, engaged boss or patiently honest friend to nudge us to become what we could be at work. But these are not the best of times. True, we have emerged from the dark days of the Covid pandemic, but many of us still carry the scars emotionally. All the psychotherapists I know are booked up months ahead and looking for where to refer more psychological casualties of the past few years. And of course the future continues to hold huge uncertainties. Fuel prices and inflation threaten livelihoods. The shortage of fertilisers created by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threaten agriculture, on which more than half of Africa’s people depend. It brings the spectre of food shortages and starvation. At a time like this owners and managers of businesses need both to help their people perform at their best and to support their mental health and happiness. Executive coaching by a professional person is valuable. I recommend it. But this is not always available to people in small and medium enterprises. Fortunately coaching can also refer to the style in which managers interact with those who report to them. It’s a generative approach to managing that brings out the best in others – which is, after all, what managers should do. The consulting firm Hay/McBer identified six leadership styles displayed by senior managers. They describe two of them as dissonant: Authoritarian and Coercive. They may be needed from time to time, but they damage organisational climate when used too often and are correlated with poorer company financial performance. Four styles are described as resonant: Affiliative, Democratic, Pace-setting and Coaching. They build positive climate and are correlated with better company performance. In his book on emotional intelligence in leadership, Daniel Goleman writes that effective leaders don’t stick to one style only, but draw on most or all of these styles as appropriate. The focus of the coaching style is developing people for the future. I think it can be used even while adopting the other styles – one can be almost brutally demanding if the occasion requires, while still taking time to ensure that the person learns and grows in competence and confidence through the experience. An essential requirement for the success of this tough love blend of demand and acceptance is respect. I grow when you imply that you respect me too much to allow me to get away with less than my best. And I accept correction if I believe you will do whatever it takes to help me become as good as I can be. That includes respecting my own way of doing things rather than assuming that I have to be like you. Derek Keys once described his role as business leader and finance minister as providing a “loving, critical audience” to his staff. At a time of personal pain and business uncertainty, I think owners and managers can contribute hugely both to business success and personal thriving by being a coach to their people. So my next several columns will be a series of coaching letters to a different person each time, mostly people in small to medium-sized companies who have questions about a particular stage on their career journey. They are all real people, although of course I shall omit or change identifying details. I will address both the recipient’s question about making progress in their career, and the manager/owner’s question of how to empower their team to grow and perform optimally. And I’ll provide an address where you can send suggestions or questions of your own. Let’s collaborate in restoring health and dignity to our people at work. Jonathan Cook is a Counselling Psychologist and Chairman of the African Management Institute. This is a coaching columns for Business Day, published on 30 May 2022  ( https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/columnists/2022-05-30-jonathan-cook-times-such-as-these-demand-that-business-leaders-be-coaches/ ). #JonathanCook

This is the second coaching letter in a series offered as part of my regular column. It responds to real questions managers in small or medium enterprises have asked me, and offers ideas to anyone in a similar situation, or to managers wanting to adopt a coaching style. Personal details have been changed. This is what I wrote to a new manager grappling with whether or not management suits her: A promotion is generally welcome news; but not for everyone. A brain surgeon, for example, is highly qualified and earns an excellent salary, but manages no one and probably prefers doing brain surgery to managing a hospital. Progression in a career can mean either promotion or professional advancement, and sensible companies provide for both. Which suits you better? Promotion usually means higher status, more power, more autonomy and better perks. But it also usually means longer hours, more stress, and less opportunity to do the professional work you trained for. According to the organisational psychologist David McClelland, we are all driven by three motivators: Need for Achievement, Need for Power and Need for Affiliation. All three matter, but I think your dominant driver is Need for Achievement. You described it as being inwardly focused – your career decisions are based on doing what you enjoy, find meaningful and do well. So for you a management position is only attractive if it helps you achieve more of what you value. As long as you are treated fairly and your contribution is appreciated in your current role, promotion might even get in the way. People with a high Need for Power thrive on control, competitiveness and status – great qualities for management, provided they are harnessed for the common good. I doubt you would enjoy being a manager in a large, political company, but fortunately your smaller company has less of the political jockeying for position that infects many large companies. You have wonderful people skills, but I don’t think you have too high a Need for Affiliation either. Otherwise the need to be liked could fatally limit your ability to take difficult decisions or give honest feedback, creating stress for yourself and others. But taking independent, risky and maybe confrontational decisions could be stressful for you. You explained very insightfully that a lack of structure can feel overwhelming, because you enjoy clarity about what you are responsible for and what you can let go for others. The higher you climb, the more you will have to create structure both for yourself and others, without stifling the creativity and autonomy of those who thrive on flexibility. In our recent conversation, I was impressed how well you know yourself and your aspirations. You said you don’t aspire to be a CEO. More important to you is to live a life of balance and to impact peoples’ lives positively. So does this promotion match what you value most in yourself? Of course we are not static beings, and up to a point you can choose whether or not management will suit you. A promotion offers a threshold into a new identity as a leader. As we climb in seniority, both our self-image and our public identity subtly change to match our new responsibilities. Learning to lead includes choosing what elements of your identity you want to retain, and what to change. Who do you want to become? Don’t be restricted by your own current picture of yourself, nor by what others value as important. You are highly talented in so many ways and can probably achieve more than you dream possible, both professionally and in leading others. Jonathan Cook, a counselling psychologist, chairs the African Management Institute. This is a coaching columns for Business Day, published on 28 June 2022 ( https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/columnists/2022-06-27-jonathan-cook-does-being-promoted-to-a-management-position-suit-you/ ). If you’d like to read previous columns in this series or ask Jonathan a question please visit http://www.africanmanagers.org/jonathan-cook #JonathanCook

This is the third coaching letter in a series offered as part of my regular column. It responds to real questions managers in small or medium enterprises have asked me, but both company and individual information has been disguised and sometimes blended with others to be relevant to more people. This is addressed to a manager promoted to a more strategic role: This is such an interesting stage in your career. Having managed the biggest team in the company, you have now been given responsibility for a smaller unit, but covering a broader range of responsibilities with more strategic engagement. Using the transitions Charan, Drotter and Noel describe in their book, The Leadership Pipeline, first you moved from managing yourself to managing others. Their next step is managing managers, but in smaller firms this is often combined with taking full responsibility for a function, as you have. I’d like to pick out just two aspects of this transition: adding a strategic perspective and relying on others’ expertise. In a sense managing the sales team was not that different from being a member of the team, except for spending a significant amount of time managing people and dealing with interpersonal dynamics. The role was clearly operational; you and your team were all responsible for the firm’s core products and you knew exactly what each member needed to do and how to do it. As you mentioned when we spoke, it was well within your comfort zone and you found it easy to transfer your knowledge and experience to new members through coaching and mentoring them. Although in your small company you were already part of the senior management team, your horizon was quite limited. You just had to make sure your team delivered results. But now you have to understand how your new portfolio contributes strategically to the success of everyone, and your own success depends on the success of the whole company. Thinking strategically is not just the very important cognitive skill of analysing business cases. Underlying that is an orientation that continually scans what is happening out there, and considers consequences. It looks at the significance of all we see and do. The question you need to master for each activity changes from “Can it be done?” to “Will it contribute to the long-term success of the company as a whole?” The other important aspect of this transition is collaborating with and influencing those who are not your direct reports. I remember noticing that rather than take ideas from colleagues in other teams, you preferred to do it all yourself – something that will no longer work now. In your new role you will have to rely on advice from professionals with more expertise in their subject than you have – even from someone reporting to you. Similarly, the success of your function now depends on responding to the needs of peers across the company. That’s uncomfortable for someone as fiercely self-reliant as you are. Fortunately when we talked, you referred to your “elastic cognitive flexibility”. You will need this, together with the emotional maturity that does not depend on winning to affirm your self-worth. Successful managers need resilient self-concepts. This personal growth can be greatly helped through conversations with a professional coach, or a mentor or empathic boss. The company will thrive if people at your level are thoroughly invested in helping colleagues in other functions succeed too. That way the company succeeds – and incidentally you also gather the experience and insight required for the next step in the leadership pipeline, which will be taking profit-and-loss responsibility for a business unit. This is a coaching columns for Business Day, published on 11 July 2022  ( https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/columnists/2022-07-11-jonathan-cook-moving-from-an-operational-to-a-strategic-role/ ). Jonathan Cook, a counselling psychologist, chairs the African Management Institute. If you’d like to read previous columns in this series or ask Jonathan a question please visit http://www.africanmanagers.org/jonathan-cook #JonathanCook

This is the fourth coaching letter in a series offered as part of my regular column. It responds to real questions managers in small or medium enterprises have asked me. Both company and individual information has been disguised and sometimes blended with others to be relevant to more people. In previous columns I described taking a first management role and then moving into more strategic responsibility for a function. Now we look at taking full profit and loss (P&L) responsibility for a business unit. In a small company this would usually go with being CEO, but in this case the person I am writing to has been given full P&L responsibility to create a new unit within the company. The company has about 100 people. The current focus on wholesale customers will continue, and the new business unit will package smaller amounts and sell directly to consumers. I wrote: Congratulations! Now you get the chance to test yourself against the “bottom line” criterion of business: can you create a sustainable return on investment? Increased autonomy brings great opportunities and some threats. Although your colleagues in the top team are really supportive (a rare gift!), in a sense you are on your own. In creating a whole new market for the company, you will have to gather data, compare alternative strategies and choose one, implement fiercely, stick with the task even when no one is noticing, and justify your existence by increasing cost efficient revenue. Then you should add your legal, social, ethical and environmental responsibilities – as a leader you join all other leaders in influencing society, whether or not you are aware of it. The position brings huge opportunities for growth. You will develop even greater self-reliance. You will need to grow a new network with the most senior members in the industry and beyond, including government. You will develop heightened judgement. The strategic “helicopter” view is wider, longer and deeper and requires noticing things you may not have looked at before. Strategic matters include the competitive landscape; social, cultural, political and economic trends with implications for at least five years into the future; legal requirements in each jurisdiction you work in; and environmental considerations. You cannot rely on anyone else to make things happen, so initiative is important. You will need to devote time to thinking; it’s part of the job. Leadership requires being comfortable with paradoxes and trade-offs. You have to balance short term and long term results. You will need to allocate resources and resolve the competing demands of your team. You will have to be both implacably hard on performance and affirming of people, as your success depends on their commitment and competence. And you will want to build capacity in the team so the unit thrives after you leave. Success also requires leading yourself. You will make mistakes, but as leader you cannot afford to give up or fall apart. What are the possible personal challenges? It can be lonely. Find yourself a good mentor or a few trusted peers to bounce ideas off and to generate energy. People will relate to you differently – as the boss rather than yourself. Being new to the role, you have to balance portraying confidence while learning as fast as you can from everyone around you. There will be times when you feel anxious – “Will I cope? Is this taking me where I want to be in my career? Am I aligned with what is expected of me?” Your success will be partly dependent on factors beyond your control, like market conditions. But this is the opportunity your career has prepared you for. So enjoy it! Jonathan Cook, a counselling psychologist, chairs the African Management Institute. This is a coaching columns for Business Day, published on 25 July 2022 ( https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/columnists/2022-07-25-jonathan-cook-bonuses-and-burdens-of-being-a-boss /). If you’d like to read previous columns in this series or ask Jonathan a question please visit http://www.africanmanagers.org/jonathan-cook #JonathanCook

In this series on coaching managers in SMEs I have moved up the ladder of seniority. This time I look at when to leave as the leader of the company. The person I wrote this to co-founded a successful venture with a staff approaching 100 people located in six countries across Africa. So it is no longer small or a start up and is structured for the next big leap in growth. Some founders stay too long; others leave to soon. Which is he? I wrote: You mentioned that you would need at some point in the future to consider stepping aside to allow someone to bring different skills to the company. You are creative, have ideas, and enjoy initiating new things, but you don’t think you are so good at keeping things going over the years. You don’t resonate with the corporate world and don’t get around to networking at the top level. Nor are you excited by negotiating corporate deals. To become the kind of leader who can guide a larger company would take a lot of learning. That is an interesting challenge and would extend your influence; but is it worth it? Then you need to consider your own physical and cognitive health. You are already past normal retirement age. That in itself is not a problem – even older people have complex jobs like presiding over countries. But both age and length of tenure can dissipate the passion with which you began, and energy percolates from the top to infect the whole company. Do your colleagues need the vitality and fresh vision of a new person? You regard yourself as steward of the vision and values that inspired the founding of the company. Have you built them sufficiently deeply into the DNA of the company that it will survive your leaving? Or is there still more to do? Guiding values last longer than strategy. Strategy must change as circumstances change, but values and the company culture they create provide both the true north that informs strategy and the foundation on which effective performance is built. Possibly the biggest legacy you can leave is a robust, deeply-held company culture built on values to which all staff are committed. Culture is created through symbols, words, stories, actions, consequences, recruitment, training, and continual two-way communication. What people talk about and do habitually should be soaked in the values. Is there a potential successor? Although you could recruit from outside, that is risky. So I think there should be at least one person internally or on the board that you would be happy to hand over to. Don’t leave succession to chance. What about your personal aspirations? What competing commitments do you have that could take the place of this company in your daily life? If you don’t have any, you should begin creating at least one! Renowned management author Peter Drucker suggested that everyone should have a “second career”, in the form of a hobby or involvement in a social cause. He suggests beginning it in mid-career, so it is ready for your retirement or even earlier as a new career. Retirement will leave a big gap in your time, your relationships, and even in practical things like keeping current with the latest technology and vocabulary. For example, would you ever have subscribed to Zoom for family and social events, had you not required it for work? Several of these considerations that can influence the decision to move on require preparation. The time to begin thinking about exit is years before it happens. So whatever your decision now, do begin preparing! Jonathan Cook, a counselling psychologist, chairs the African Management Institute. This is a coaching columns for Business Day, published on 22 August 2022 ( https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/columnists/2022-08-22-jonathan-cook-deciding-when-to-go/ ). If you’d like to read previous columns in this series or ask Jonathan a question please visit http://www.africanmanagers.org/jonathan-cook #JonathanCook

I wonder whether paradoxically getting too involved in your own business could actually damage it. The proverb, “If you want to go fast, walk alone. But if you want to go far, walk together” can be applied to business: If you want to grow fast and exit, and have the energy to carry every detail in your head, do it yourself. But if you want to build a sustainably growing business, you need colleagues committed to the same vision as you. And you need to create space for them to take initiative. My evidence is purely anecdotal, but I have seen leaders work so hard that others slack off or just focus on their own function without thinking about the company as a whole. It is contrary to efficient human nature to worry about things you know someone else is covering. I think I saw this on a country scale on a recent visit to Kigali in Rwanda, where the equivalent proverb could be, “If you want to develop fast, be an autocrat. But if you want to develop a sustainable country, be a democrat.” Kigali has spotlessly clean streets, paving for pedestrians, cycle tracks, and well-tended, irrigated gardens on the roadside and in the median strips. The city surprises visitors from other African countries and encourages them to believe that this sort of civic quality is possible on our continent. So well done to the government, that tends to be quite autocratic. On the other hand, Rwanda is one of the poorest countries in the world, and infrastructure in rural areas lacks the Kigali standard. That’s hardly surprising, given its history. I came across some really bright, energetic and competent people in responsible positions, but again unsurprisingly, it struck me that many ordinary people tend not to speak out or take initiative. So having plucked the low-hanging fruit of development in the form of the beautiful capital city and relatively thin layer of well-educated managers, the next challenge is to empower the mass of people – and by definition that doesn’t happen by exercising power over them. Returning to business, one should offer training, resources and opportunity, but will the people make use of them? Personal initiative has been shown to be at least as important as business knowledge in the success of small businesses. Personal initiative is not something one can force onto people; it comes from within once the barriers are removed. All organisations need direction, energy and resources. Effective autocratic leaders provide direction, but cannot be sure that others share that commitment; they provide energy, but only as far as their direct influence extends; and they provide resources only by their personal ability to attract support. Their effectiveness is limited by their capacity to enforce followership, and it seldom survives long after the leader leaves. Empowering leaders provide direction by coordinating and leading a shared commitment to an agreed goal; they provide energy by example and by removing barriers to enthusiastic participation; and they provide resources by attracting talented people and then getting out of their way. It’s often a slower process, but I think it lasts longer and brings more happiness to the workplace. Jonathan Cook is a Counselling Psychologist and Chairman of the African Management Institute. This is a coaching columns for Business Day, published on 20 September 2022 ( https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/columnists/2022-09-19-jonathan-cook-encourage-initiative-if-you-want-to-go-far-together/ ) #JonathanCook

I ate crickets last month. They came crispy in three flavours at a stand at an agricultural conference in Kigali. I preferred the salt and vinegar flavour, so was given a packet of them to bring home. Not sure my family is as keen to sample the little insects. Food systems and food security are important in Africa just now. With fertilizer supplies disrupted by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, wide spread weather disruptions, fuel price increases and infrastructural challenges, many people are in danger of starving. Even without these challenges, aggravated increasingly by climate change, it is anomalous that Africa with its vast agricultural potential should be a net importer of food, and that maybe a quarter of the population is malnourished. So we need innovation, whether that be in the form of harvesting insect protein, improving the yield of more conventional crops, or finding more efficient routes to better markets. There are indeed many examples emerging of innovative technology solutions (agritech), such as bringing connected devices to farmers to help them analyse their soil and weather conditions and provide just the amount of water and fertilizer their seeds need. The logistical challenge of getting food from field to fork sometimes seems intractable. In many countries half of food is spoiled before it can be consumed. Innovation here may not require technology so much as political sophistication and negotiation – as in considering the entrenched interests of traders who buy the crops of smallholders for low prices, but provide an essential service in the form of credit for the next season’s inputs. Agribusiness deserves to be big in Africa, but so far it is only partly Big Business. The rest is smallholder farming supported by small, and often informal markets, logistics and other support services. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as it allows agriculture still to provide about half the livelihoods in Africa – far ahead of the next biggest employer, which is the services sector. But if African agriculture and agribusiness are to approach the efficiencies enjoyed in more developed countries, we will need innovation at every link in the value chain. It’s an opportunity for entrepreneurs. I have been involved in a senior management programme for leaders in agriculture in government and industry across eight African countries. Participants formed 16 teams of five people each to tackle an actualproblem or opportunity in their country. One I really like is enabling the use of solar pumps to irrigate rice fields in Nigeria. It builds on the initiative of an entrepreneur who rents out solar pumps to small farmers who cannot afford to buy their own. The monthly rental is less than the increased value of yields, or the cost of fuel for pumps that run on diesel. This is a three-way win for the farmer, the entrepreneur and the environment, and most importantly, the idea looks economically sustainable. This is a neat illustration of entrepreneurship in the service of development. What participants in all the projects discovered (an insight each generation seems to need to discover afresh) is that to avoid repeating failed policies they had to leave their offices in the city and talk to the farmers and communities on the ground. The most helpful organ in creating innovative solutions that work has to be the ear. That leads us back to grilling little crickets as snacks. I don’t really think this alone is going to solve Africa’s nutrition problem, but many creative ideas can combine to have a major impact. The field is open for entrepreneurs. Investment in agritech in Africa is increasing, but it is still a small fraction of the billions flowing into fintech. Maybe the smart money should be looking now at agritech as the next big thing. Jonathan Cook is a Counselling Psychologist and Chairman of the African Management Institute. This is a coaching columns for Business Day, published on 3 October 2022 ( https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/columnists/2022-10-03-jonathan-cook-innovation-can-feed-millions-in-africa/ ) #JonathanCook

Everyone in South Africa is angry. This is an opportunity. The unemployed see their lives slipping away. Young people fear joining them. The employed fight about wages as the cost of living rises. Business people seethe about the failure of the basic services we need to run businesses. Everyone is fed up with load shedding and water cuts. And now the Transnet strike threatens our capacity to produce goods and/or access markets. Through no fault of their own, entrepreneurs see their dreams and their savings drain away. And it feels like those who should care just don’t. They seem to care more about selfish intrigues over position than they care about the livelihoods, health and happiness of the desperate millions they purport to serve. No wonder many people have moved beyond anger to blind fury. Anger is good if it motivates us to do something constructive. It is bad if it drives us to be destructive. It is wasted, just giving us ulcers and high blood pressure, if we do nothing but rant. Anger management is good, but tends to focus on reducing our anger and managing its impact on us. A better approach may be to harness anger for constructive action to change the conditions that made us angry. It takes great maturity to respond assertively. Assertiveness seeks a solution by expressing our views clearly and forcefully while listening openly and accurately to what others say. But the natural response is either to submit quietly and go away, or to fight back aggressively. Aggression insists that I am right and they are therefore wrong, and refuses to listen to their perspective. Both aggression and submission merely invite further aggression, making things worse. So one very constructive use of anger is to practise acting assertively. When our civil servants or politicians fail to serve the public, especially when this damages the poor and voiceless, we should be angry enough to act. That may include talking to the officials directly, provided we can do so decently, with basic respect for their humanity. It may include joining with neighbours to complain higher up. Most useful would be to mobilize the neighbourhood to step into the gap. Similarly, when company representatives are dishonest, we have the right, and the duty, to insist on proper service. If we do nothing, exploitation, lying and greed are assumed to be normal. That is what is happening. So let’s all refuse to allow this. Let’s at least make a commitment to a daily letter, phone call or visit to someone to affirm good work or call out the opposite. Most of us want our public life to be honourable and generous, so let’s say so loudly and let’s insist on ethical and generous behaviour in our companies and our social circles. One advantage of weak leadership is that it can generate energy and initiative among the rest of us. Now is such a time. Here is my assertive statement. The job of a leader or manager is to achieve the results you are employed or elected for, even if inconvenient or very costly to you. If you do this, you are a hero. But if you just don’t care and fail to maintain the machines / infrastructure / service you are responsible for, or leave people waiting in queues all day and night, you are a disgrace and possibly a murderer. If you appoint an incompetent or dishonest person to a position because they will support you or pay you, you are a traitor to our country. If you tilt tenders in favour of your family, you are a thief. You are not just bad at your job; you are destroying the country. Fix yourself. This is a coaching columns for Business Day, published on 18 October 2022 ( https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/columnists/2022-10-17-jonathan-cook-what-shall-we-do-with-our-anger/  ). Jonathan Cook, a counselling psychologist, chairs the African Management Institute. If you’d like to read previous columns in this series or ask Jonathan a question please visit http://www.africanmanagers.org/jonathan-cook #JonathanCook

Infrastructure is critical for the success of all business, and in particular small businesses. This seems obvious, so why is infrastructure allowed to deteriorate? Looking after what we’ve got is usually a good deal cheaper than replacing it. A 2021 World Bank report estimated that poor maintenance and mismanagement of infrastructure cost households and firms in low- and middle-income countries at least $390 billion per year. In South Africa electricity provides a highly visible case study in the negative effects of poor maintenance. Neglecting to maintain power stations adequately years ago has cost the country billions in lost opportunities now. Similarly, small holes in the road that could have been repaired easily become big potholes that cost far more to repair, and damage tyres. Leaving storm water drains blocked leads to destructive flooding. Larger businesses may be able to generate their own electricity, use satellites for communication, and in some cases even build road or rail access to markets or suppliers – although all of this reduces their cost competitiveness globally. But small businesses have to rely on what is available. In India, a study of underdeveloped districts found that infrastructure maintenance grants to district authorities improved outcomes for rural microenterprises. Two infrastructural areas stood out for their effect on microenterprise success and employment: electricity and roads. If maintaining existing infrastructure is so obviously important, why is maintenance so often neglected? One reason for letting things deteriorate could be the incentive structure. Building new stuff is recognised, whereas the daily work of maintaining existing resources can pass unnoticed and unrewarded. Another reason is that maintenance budget allocations can be cut or siphoned off without anyone noticing for years. By then it is too late and the guilty party has moved on to destroy bigger things. A third reason may be that the importance of, and methods for, maintaining things can be lost as manager succeeds manager, especially when there is a rapid sequence of changes and new incumbents do not have time to absorb lessons from their predecessor or pass them on the next person. A fourth reason could be simple lack of experience, understanding or skill. These create what is called agency – the belief that you have the freedom, right and ability to act. As a child I was taught how to maintain my bicycle myself, and I expect that taught me later to service my car regularly and have the house roof painted before rust set in. Managers without a sense of agency will wait to be told what to do – the opposite of what is required of managers. Fifthly, one fears one answer may be that politicians and officials focus on who gets to control what, and forget that the purpose of their jobs is to make things work in service of the people. Do they know that their distractions are destroying lives and livelihoods by the thousand? It’s a slow, quiet bleeding to death of the economy, denying people food on the table and dignity in the heart. Politicians and officials who believe that their role is just to drive the vehicle of state in a direction they choose, and not to maintain it, destroy our future and will eventually find themselves without a vehicle worth driving. So alongside important calls for investment in infrastructure, let’s hear more about maintaining what we have. This should be prominent in budgets, in training officials and politicians, in what is reported on and rewarded, and in what the media watch. And each of us can check the sense of agency among our own staff. What goes wrong at a national scale provides a sobering lesson for business owners to ensure that they and their teams take responsibility to maintain capacity for the future. This is a coaching columns for Business Day, published on 1st November 2022 (https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/columnists/2022-10-31-jonathan-cook-maintaining-infrastructure-should-be-higher-on-the-agenda/) Jonathan Cook, a counselling psychologist, chairs the African Management Institute. If you’d like to read previous columns in this series or ask Jonathan a question please visit http://www.africanmanagers.org/jonathan-cook

British psychologist Claudia Hammond has written a book called The Keys to Kindness, in which she documents the many health and happiness benefits of kindness to both the recipient and the giver. She was inspired to write this by watching the many acts of kindness that emerged during the Covid-19 pandemic. Do you remember the paradoxical hopes we had during the depths of lockdown – that things would return to normal quickly, but also that normal would change? We glimpsed a world of quieter, cleaner cities with wild animals strolling through the streets. We enjoyed more family time and discovered new hobbies like the famous banana bread. We reflected on life and death and determined to live our lives in future with greater attention to meaning and especially to relationships. We dreamt of a world where the nations could come together in a shared urgency to overcome a threat to humanity. If we could do this against the coronavirus, why not against climate change, hunger, war and oppression, gender-based violence, child abuse and trafficking? From her research Hammond notes that kindness benefits the recipient, but also brings the giver happiness, health, even longer life and physical strength. And the effect on the giver is longer lasting than on the recipient. It is a healthy thing for everyone to be kind. In one study, when given money and told to spend it either on themselves or others, those who spent it on others turned out to be happier than those who spent it on themselves. There is evidence that older people who volunteer live longer. She defines kindness as doing something with the intention of helping someone else. Kindness can be expressed in small daily acts like smiling at or greeting someone, doing a small favour, bringing someone tea, noticing how others are feeling, including them in the conversation, listening with focused attention, affirming something another has done or said. Of course there are heroic acts of kindness too, but we don’t get to do those every day. Toddlers express kindness, even before they develop “theory of mind”, which is the capacity to understand what another person is thinking or experiencing. There seems to be an instinct for kindness and our brains reward us for it. Why do we hesitate to offer kindness? The biggest reason cited is apparently embarrassment. We don’t want our gesture to be misinterpreted. We need more courage to risk being kind! Kindness goes with confidence. Do you remember doom scrolling through the pandemic? The antidote was to ration exposure to news about infection rates and focus instead on the care shown by medical staff and indeed our neighbours. Similarly, we can take care to attend to positive acts of kindness while rationing our attention to bad news. Seeing kindness stimulates more kindness. So we can increase acts of kindness in others by demonstrating it ourselves. Kindness can spread through an organisation by the influence of a kind leader. Not only do givers and receivers of kindness feel better, but apparently they also report increased job satisfaction. Hammond reports an experiment conducted in Spain in which each week for four weeks, staff planned five acts of kindness for colleagues. Life satisfaction increased for both givers and receivers. A month later, the effects had worn off for the recipients, but continued for the givers. Maybe the job description of those of us who lead organisations should include organising to spread kindness. We could recruit colleagues to join us in spreading random kindness and senseless acts of beauty, as Anne Herbert suggested in her 1993 book. There are web sites with practical ideas for spreading kindness. That would be one way to fulfil our pandemic- inspired commitment to make a better world. This is a coaching columns for Business Day, published on 15th November 2022 ( https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/columnists/2022-11-14-jonathan-cook-spread-a-little-kindness-yes-even-at-work/ ) Jonathan Cook, a counselling psychologist, chairs the African Management Institute. If you’d like to read previous columns in this series or ask Jonathan a question please visit  http://www.africanmanagers.org/jonathan-cook

In my last column for the year, instead of adding to your beach booklist, I thought I would give you a challenge to augment your intelligence. ChatGPT was launched in November as the latest prototype from the artificial intelligence (AI) company OpenAI. It responds to requests in conversational English, allowing even non-techies to use AI. As a temporary research preview it’s free, but unlikely to be free forever. ChatGPT has been taught with information up to 2021, so won’t have recent information, but is amazingly smart and helpful. You can ask it to answer questions on anything, write software for you, or even write you a column. This is still a prototype and not perfect (it can provide very convincing answers that are totally inaccurate), but great for getting to know what the future holds. You might just need to know what is coming to a business near you. As I write this, hordes of astonished journalists are also writing about it, or better still, asking it to write their columns for them. So I hope you aren’t sick of ChatGBT by the time this lands on your breakfast table. But I haven’t seen much about using it in small business, so I gave it this instruction: “Write a 500 word column on how ChatGPT can be used to support small businesses.” It replied very coherently, tempting me to use that as my column while I watched the World Cup. But being conscientious, I asked it to write the column in fewer words. It came up with: “ChatGPT is a language processing tool that can support small businesses in various ways. By integrating ChatGPT into their customer service platform, small businesses can provide quick and accurate responses to customer inquiries, improving satisfaction and reducing response times. ChatGPT can also automate routine tasks and processes, freeing up time for business owners and employees. For example, ChatGPT can automatically respond to common customer questions. Additionally, ChatGPT can provide personalized recommendations to customers based on their data and previous interactions. This can help increase sales and satisfaction. ChatGPT can also be integrated into a small business's marketing and advertising efforts, providing targeted campaigns and personalized messages. Overall, ChatGPT can improve customer service, automate tasks, and drive sales for small businesses.” That’s not bad – human columnists beware! Then I asked it: “Can you write a business plan for a consultancy advising businesses how to use ChatGPT in their businesses?” Its reply was perfectly cogent, but generic. So I replied, “Thanks. Specify that the consultancy includes a psychologist, a strategist, and a data analyst. We want to target fast-growing start-ups in developing economies.” It came back instantaneously with an impressive document with some good ideas. For example, under Market Strategy it wrote: “To reach our target market, we will focus on marketing to fast-growing start-ups in developing economies through a combination of online and offline tactics. We will create a website and social media presence to share information about our services and the benefits of ChatGPT. Additionally, we will attend industry conferences and networking events in these regions to connect with potential clients and build relationships.” One of my sons now uses ChatGPT instead of Google. The other linked it to DALL-E, an associated image generator, and is having fun asking it to write illustrated short stories for his young children in the mode of Dr Seuss. So Google ChatGPT and try it over the break. It requires no expertise and might just write you a business strategy for 2023. I wish you the deepest peace over this season of joy. The economy has been remarkably resilient, despite all the theft and silliness that has been thrown at it. May you too be resilient and thrive in 2023. This is a coaching columns for Business Day, published on 13 December 2022 ( https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/columnists/2022-12-13-jonathan-cook-artificial-intelligence-is-coming-to-small-business-near-you/ ) Jonathan Cook, a counselling psychologist, chairs the African Management Institute. If you’d like to read previous columns in this series or ask Jonathan a question please visit  http://www.africanmanagers.org/jonathan-cook #JonathanCook