As we begin the new year, most of us return from the beach with restored energy and stirring visions of what we can accomplish at work. So what actually would be wonderful to accomplish this year? I don’t know whether organisations filled with empathic people do better on the bottom line than those ruled by envy, cruelty, spite and revenge (although I suspect they do), but they surely contribute far more to human happiness. Is happiness not a great return on investment to put alongside the financial return? Of course, in the year ahead we have to find ways to grow margins, keep costs under control and explore new sources of revenue. That’s our job. But it’s a much better and more enjoyable job when we also grow talent, keep conflict under control and explore new ways to add to human and environmental health and happiness. After all, why should words like joy and happiness not be part of our strategic goals? And why should encouragement, affirmation and forgiveness not form part of our plan? It may not be taught in the textbooks, but leaders transcend theory to promote what is of absolute value. In his 2009 book, Empathic Civilization, Jeremy Rifkin uses the words empathy and entropy to represent the conflict between good and evil that humans have recognised from pre- history. Rifkin uses “entropy” to represent the threatening planetary collapse of ecological and human systems through unsustainable use of energy, weapons of mass destruction, exposure to disease, etc. But he draws on research to suggest that humans are naturally wired for empathy rather than aggression and self-interest. He even suggests that we are entering an Age of Empathy, if as a species we can win the race against the forces of entropy. This is on the global scale. Few of us have the opportunity to impact countries, never mind the destiny of the human species; but all of us can influence our colleagues. Paradoxically we might succeed better if we don’t mention this goal of love too explicitly. When the boss says, “Thou shalt spread love and happiness”, staff will cynically look for the catch and may fake their commitment to the boss’s wishes. They may begin competing with the practised warmth of their smiles, snidely exposing the hypocrisy in their rival’s altruism, instructing their reports how to fake empathy, and adopting all the right vocabulary. The cynical result could be worse than honest meanness. Instead we can simply be the different company we dream of, creating conditions in which empathy can thrive and, when appropriate, finding sincere words with which to encourage others. Is this utopian? Not at all. I have seen it emerge in several companies I have been fortunate to be associated with. Of course it is never perfect, but with persistent, patient emphasis, people begin to relax into a way of being that almost all of us prefer. In his book Human Kind: A Hopeful History, the Dutch historian Rutger Bregman systematically debunks the reports on which many of us base our assumption that human nature is essentially selfish. He argues that, despite the corrupting effect of power, the evidence points to human nature being innately good and decent. He urges us to own our desire to be kind. Even if empathy does not contribute to the bottom line, what a wonderful contribution to make with our lives this new year. And maybe if enough of us quietly spread goodness it may infect the country and make 2023 the watershed when we turned the corner back to being a good country that cares for its people. Let’s assume this is our shared nature. What a wonderful vision with which to infect our own minds and the thoughts of our colleagues this new year. This is a coaching columns for Business Day, published on 17 December 2022 ( https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/columnists/2023-01-17-jonathan-cook-use-2023-to-infect-your-workplace-with-empathy/ ) 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

Few of us are complete leaders. Most of us need at least one other person to complement our strengths and correct our weaknesses; but this complementarity requires trust. Sol Kerzner was a very successful entrepreneur, with Sun City as physical evidence. But I was told he needed someone to come after him as he moved through his company like a whirlwind shaking everyone up. Their job was to restore the shattered egos and damaged souls Kerzner left in his wake. President Mandela made the time to lead us so successfully because he left the daily running of the cabinet and government in the hands of his deputies, De Klerk and Mbeki. They had the management and implementation skills to complement his leadership genius. I wonder how much more effective Mbeki might have been later as president, had he been accompanied by a trusted lieutenant with an instinct for reading the mood of the people and relating comfortably with us. President Ramaphosa has a wonderful talent for listening and incorporating diverse and even contradictory views. He can steer turbulent groups towards consensus around a plan. It’s unusual to have someone with that as his prime ability at the head of a country or organisation, but it could be very effective – if he had a deputy who could ignore other opinions and push through the implementation of that plan with vigour and unrelenting determination. Could Paul Mashatile do that job as deputy president? Well, that introduces a key factor affecting the success of such a two-some – they have to trust each other. That’s not so easy in politics, where the number Two is likely to be eyeing and agitating behind the scenes for Number One’s job. But trust is a far more important factor in both business and political success than just the role it plays in leadership complementarity. Trustworthiness is required for any organisation to achieve its purpose. Just look around you for evidence. In South Africa, we lack electricity and a functioning rail network because people could not be trusted to put their responsibilities above personal gain. Basic services collapse because we can’t trust the officials to use our taxes for what they are intended. Coalitions fail to deliver because politicians focus on positions rather than delivery, stabbing each other in the back at the slightest hint of advantage. Who taught them ethics? Where is their social conscience? The more I learn about management, the more I notice how important trust is. Individuals may be productive while being untrustworthy, but an organisation or a country will not deliver its mandate if it is not led by trustworthy people. Without the assumption that our leaders in business and politics are reasonably trustworthy we stop doing our best for the collective and focus only on what benefits ourselves. Even worse, the assumption gains ground that we are not even expected to give our best for the welfare of all. We could interpret the current national malaise as a breakdown in trust. We no longer trust those in positions of authority, and our falling expectations become a self- fulfilling prophecy. Have we given up? I still believe that the majority of people are basically decent, caring and mostly honest citizens. Where this is affirmed, the quality of service we receive is overwhelmingly wonderful. That should be the norm and we shouldn’t settle for less in ourselves or others. If I had a second shot at my MBA teaching career I would emphasise, even more than I did, the imperative to be trustworthy. The question is not whether or not trust contributes to the bottom line; it’s whether we do all those things required for healthy profitability in a way that creates trust. Because without trustworthiness, the rest is wasted or worse. And it begins with me. This is a coaching columns for Business Day, published on 31 January 2023 ( https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/columnists/2023-01-31-jonathan-cook-without-trust-the-nation-falls-apart/ ) 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

Niger is an interesting country. It is a democracy in a challenging neighbourhood, sharing borders with Libya, Chad, Nigeria, Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Algeria. It is on the list of Heavily Indebted Poor Countries. More than 10 million people in a population of 25 million live in extreme poverty. Despite 80% of its land being in the Sahara desert, its economy is based on subsistence agriculture and the export of raw commodities. Niger is also grappling with an influx of refugees fleeing conflicts in Nigeria and Mali. In this unpromising context, the government of Niger has a national programme to help women, most of whom have no education and are non-literate, to diversify their income-generating activities. Recently the government worked with an interdisciplinary team of scientists to run a large-scale field experiment to test the impact of adding psychosocial interventions to this national cash transfer programme (see the latest issue of VoxDev.org). The programme uses the methodology of BRAC, an impressive nonprofit organisation that began in Bangladesh fifty years ago, and now works around the world, including in seven African countries served from their regional office in Kenya. Beginning with micro-finance, BRAC has developed a wide range of programmes including what they call “ultra-poor graduation”. This is a holistic programme of enterprise training, coaching, healthcare, savings, a capital grant, and small monthly stipend over a limited period. To test the psychosocial intervention, the team offered group-based life skills training to one group of women in addition to the whole ultra-poor graduation, and to another group they offered it instead of the capital grant component. The training took place over seven half-days and aimed to strengthen their aspirations for economic mobility, their self-worth, and key life skills such as goal-setting, leadership, problem-solving, decision-making, and communication. They knew that building women’s personal sense of efficacy and skills without the support of their husbands, local leaders, and other people in their community would have limited impact on changing behaviour and economic outcomes, so they showed the entire village a twenty-minute fictional film that told the story of Amina, a woman overcoming economic and interpersonal challenges to start a new business. Then a social worker facilitated a guided discussion to relate the film to their experiences, values and aspirations. Over 18 months, adding the psychosocial components to the other interventions increased household revenue by approximately 70%. Offering it instead of the capital transfer component of the existing programme led to similar outcomes, but at half the cost of the capital grant. There are several lessons in this. One is the main finding that psychosocial interventions can have a substantial positive effect on the economic and psychological welfare of poor people. I expect the same is true for many less poor people too. When a nation or a company is feeling heavy, it needs lifting emotionally. Helping us feel empowered and encouraged is an intervention in the economy, encouraging small businesses to survive and thrive. Then there is the finding that targeting the whole community boosts the effect on individuals. There are further lessons. One is that governments can do great things when humble enough to work with experts searching for creative new solutions. Another lesson is that we can learn from countries like Bangladesh and Niger, countries we may consider less developed. In South Africa maybe Eskom and our long list of dismal failures will teach us humility and openness to such lessons. No doubt companies that compete globally should learn from developed economies like the USA. But for work with microenterprises run by people who may not be literate or numerate, we need to find lessons elsewhere. Sometimes those lessons come with very sophisticated thinking, and it would be tragic if hubris blinded us to their lessons and leadership. 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

You may have noticed that the costs of going to the doctor, consulting a lawyer and enrolling for an MBA have increased relentlessly over the years compared to prices of things we buy in shops. There is a good economic explanation for this. New technologies bring productivity improvements (i.e. fewer people producing more) to manufacturing, farming, logistics and related activities, bringing prices down, while professional services like medicine, law and education rely on the time of experts. Their opinions take as long to deliver today as they did a hundred years ago. The key ingredient, the time of a doctor, lawyer, or teacher, cannot be condensed. Until now. Might artificial intelligence (AI) be the first technology to bring about a productivity revolution in the professions? To do so, AI will have to process professionals’ expertise to offer the same quality of advice in a shorter time or to more clients over the same time. History suggests that when technology helps fewer people produce more, this may reduce the number of people in the original jobs, but also increase employment in related fields. Take information technology. “Computers” originally referred to people sitting in rows calculating manually. Those jobs disappeared when machines were created that did the job much more quickly and accurately; but that created a huge number of software, hardware and administrative jobs, and it enabled us to do vastly more with the same resources. Might the same happen in services? Just as I expect far fewer accidents when self-drive cars finally take over, so I look forward to more accurate and comprehensive medical diagnoses using an AI app instead of (or better, with) my GP. I will have far greater confidence in the carefully prepared machine with access to the universe of medical knowledge, all the most recent research and my whole medical history, and without any of the biases, foibles and dodgy memory of the human. I might still want my GP to help me frame my questions and interpret the answers, and sometimes I may need a physical examination to feel things my smart watch can’t measure. But give me a machine any day for routine answers! As this will be available online, I expect I shall consult such a facility more often, without the barrier of making an appointment and traveling to see the doctor. And it will be cheaper. And maybe we’ll all spend more time asking how to be healthy than how to cure illnesses. We might need even more doctors to update the AI and help patients use it. Or we may have fewer, more expert doctors, with more technicians to run the machines and more nurses to hold our hands. I can certainly see the number of jobs growing. That’s how AI could improve productivity in one profession. What about education? We have already seen online learning take off, but what AI will offer is about as far from the old computer-based instruction as motorcars are from improved horse carts. Watch this space. What should small professional firms do about this now? Once a way is found to help chatbots stick to verifiable facts rather than making them up, the worlds of information search, knowledge management and learning will be transformed. Keep an eye on what Microsoft (Bing with improved versions of ChatGPT), Alphabet (Google with Bard) and several smart start-ups are creating that might either wonderfully enrich your practice or remove it entirely. Meanwhile, used wisely to supplement your work, with careful fact- checking, the tech can already give you a competitive advantage. It generally takes about twenty years for a new technology to yield substantial productivity improvements, so there is probably no immediate threat. But what opportunities are opening up for the entrepreneurially minded! 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

I am excited by AI, but for a change let’s focus on human intelligence (HI) instead of artificial intelligence (AI). The cognitive-educational psychologist Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences used eight criteria to isolate different intelligences. The criteria include the ability being associated with a particular region in the brain, being measurable, and offering cases of prodigies who excel in that intelligence only. The intelligences include verbal-linguistic and logical-mathematical, both of which we would expect in any IQ test, and that computers are learning to do better than we can. But he also found musical-rhythmic, visual-spatial, and bodily-kinesthetic intelligences, and interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligences – what we now call emotional intelligence. After publishing his book Frames of Mind he added an eighth, naturalistic intelligence – understanding flora and fauna holistically in farming or ecology. And he considered an existential intelligence, that others might call spiritual intelligence. There are several there that are not currently replicable by machines. Of course for business the exciting side of AI is finding new opportunities to increase productivity and even create products and services that don’t yet exist. But how about creating businesses that focus on HI by drawing on what we do so much better than machines? Let’s recognise our strengths as a human species and optimise them. What are the implications for business?  Apart from using AI, monitoring it and learning all we can about it, we should equip ourselves and our teams with the very best of human capacities. Some of the “hard” skills currently in training curricula may become redundant, which gives us the opportunity to improve the so-called “soft” skills (increasingly being referred to as “power” skills) of personal and interpersonal effectiveness, together with strategic awareness and ethical judgement. Coaching, mentoring, and training can all be enhanced by AI, but the best still require human mediation. Creative problem solving and consulting are mostly human activities. Sport, entertainment and the creative arts are ours – Siri can tell a joke, but we don’t want an iPhone to be the stand-up comedian at our next show. Then there are things we can do, but need to do much better for the human species to thrive. Focusing on HI might help. We exercise moral judgement – sometimes. Put us together in large numbers and between us we have very fine judgement, if only we could listen to each other. We have an extraordinary capacity for empathy when others are in extreme danger or discomfort. What is the essence of being human? A Down’s Syndrome child teaches us that it may have nothing to do with the intelligence of machines. We are capable of great love. We have a talent for worship and an appreciation of the arts. We can use tools and machines to extend our abilities, and teams to multiply our wisdom, and so become far greater than we imagined. One fear about AI is that a rogue computer may develop autonomous motivation and decide to enslave or destroy the human species. But the more immediate threat is from humans using AI for nefarious purposes. We don’t know whether or not a rogue machine is a realistic threat to humanity, but we do know human nature well enough to be sure that rogue humans will use it at every opportunity for greed and to grab power. Imagine Donald Trump, Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, not to mention well-resourced businesspeople like Elon Musk, each with access to uncontrolled AI. Never has temptation been so great, nor world leadership seemed so immature. So we should certainly look for ways to defend against a future AI threat, but let’s also focus on positive HI to counter the human threat and build the potential HI has for the human species. 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

A CEO of a mid-sized company recently told me that she had “forgotten” how to carry out her professional functions. I don’t think she has, but when she explained that, “it requires sitting down and thinking about it,” I understood. I expect that when accountants, lawyers, doctors and other professionals spend some years as executives or running companies, they too find that while they love their profession, they just cannot sit still long enough to practise it any more. Time feels like the executive’s scarcest asset, and over a few years the habit of using each moment productively becomes irresistible. Driving is for making phone calls, jogging or walking are for listening to podcasts, meetings offer time to answer emails, and the bathroom is for catching up on news. Sitting down to a few hours of concentrated bean counting seems like an intolerable indulgence. Is that a gain or a loss? It can be either or both, depending on how well the executive reserves time for home and recreation, and for reflecting about the purpose and health of their company. But this change almost inevitably comes with the transition to CEO, a profound step that requires and creates a change in self-image. That new identity brings new attitudes and behaviours. The passage from one state to another, with the accompanying change in the perception of the self, has been labelled a liminal experience, from the Latin for threshold. It happens when we change job, are promoted, have a major change in family status such as marriage or parenthood, lose a loved one, or experience life-threatening illness. Key to understanding liminality is understanding the associated identity change. I used to think that the passage to CEO requires one deep liminal transition, as the self-concept takes on all the attributes of being in charge. But now I realise there is at least one more that comes later. The belief that everything rests on me, and the company cannot afford a moment without my hands on the levers of control, changes again as I stand back and admire the competence and commitment of my team and let them take control. That’s a necessary liminal transition at least for founders who wish to remain as CEO as their companies grow. In his popular book, Atomic Habits, James Clear suggests that the way to change a habit is to change our self-perception. When we change our identity the new behaviours that reflect the new identity can become habitual. “Behavior that is not congruent with the self will not last,” he writes. So changes in leader behaviour only persist if based on a change in identity – from leader as boss, for example, to leader as facilitator or even servant. So if I want to found a company, I first need to practise regarding myself as a founder and CEO, with all the required disciplined and initiating habits. With my new status I am no longer comfortable with Incompatible habits like being passive or lazy. Then as the company grows, I may find my self-image changing again to that of a coach and facilitator, and my controlling, driving behaviours will seem less appropriate. Of course change in circumstances can be destructive too. If our identity and self-worth depend on our achievements or status, as in “wealthy” or “CEO”, then when the business fails or we retire, we may fall apart. We lose ourselves – surely the worst of all losses. A more sustainable underpinning identity is one based on the fundamental values and attributes that make us who we are, such as integrity, compassion, or creativity. This is our foundation through the changing professional identities as our career ebbs and flows. But that’s a topic for another day. 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

It seems that the Covid epidemic is being followed by an epidemic of loneliness. Or rather, lockdowns and the subsequent popularity of working from home have exacerbated an existing trend towards isolation. Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky is quoted as suggesting that loneliness might kill more people than Covid-19. The trend was noticed decades before Covid-19. Political scientist Robert Putnam tracked the decline of social capital in the United States from the 1950s in his book Bowling Alone. He suggested that we are losing opportunities for people to meet and make friends. Many of us will remember childhoods when we were far freer to drop in on friends and family down the road on our own. Cities bring people together in increasing numbers but then drop us into walled enclaves in which we may not know the names of our neighbours. According to the US Surgeon-General’s Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community, the rate of loneliness among young adults has increased every year between 1976 and 2019. This has consequences for physical health too. In a post entitled Health Risks of Social Isolation and Loneliness, the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that social isolation increases the risk of dementia by 50%, heart disease by 29% and stroke by 32%. Those are startling numbers. The CDC estimates that loneliness costs the US economy an estimated $406 billion a year in addition to the estimated Medicare costs of $6.7 billion for isolated older people. The Surgeon-General reports that “recent estimates, based on synthesizing data across 148 studies, with an average of 7.5 years of follow-up, suggest that social connection increases the odds of survival by 50%.” Most of us whose staff disappeared into remote work when lockdowns struck took extensive steps to keep them engaged. We had online games and paired up buddies to call each other. Managers were exhorted to include chatting about non-work interests in their weekly conversations. Then the restrictions eased and we let those unusual steps lapse. Yet people are lonely when physically at work too. Based on his own survey of 2000 global workers, Ryan Jenkins found that lonely workers are less likely to be engaged at work, more likely to miss work due to stress or illness, and more likely to think about leaving their employer. “Loneliness is an unaddressed productivity killer that is incapacitating many teams.” This places an unexpected responsibility on the shoulders of managers. Loneliness affects productivity, and so should be a core concern. What can owners and managers do about loneliness among their people now? The US Surgeon-General’s report makes several recommendations for the workplace, including making social connection a priority for both management and employees, training managers to promote connection, creating a culture that encourages people to connect as people rather than just skilled resources, fostering inclusion and belonging, and implementing policies that protect workers’ boundaries and allow them to nurture relationships outside work. We could even train people in friendship. Sheridan Voysey, the founder of the Friendship Lab in the UK, points out that 51% of us find making new friends difficult: “Busyness, job changes and so many other things get in the way.“ That’s a particular problem if you change jobs, cities, or countries and leave old networks behind. So he has created the Friendship Lab course to teach people how to make friends. Those of us involved with small businesses may be so distracted by the multitude of daily pressures that we don’t notice those in our teams who are withdrawing or have no one to go home to. If you are unaware of this being a problem in your company, try implementing a survey asking members to report on it confidentially. It may surprise 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

It’s hard to know what to write about small businesses when the mood in the country seems so universally negative. I have just returned from three weeks abroad and am struck by how quickly the mood is deteriorating. One does not want to add to the gloom, but it does not seem realistic to write cheerfully about business as usual either. Yet most of us need to continue as best we can with our business despite rolling blackouts, infrastructure collapse, local government collapse, central government malaise, currency collapse, corruption, and now foreign policy threatening further dark clouds on the economic horizon. So today I decided to dust off a story I used in the early days of Covid lockdowns in 2020. As chaplain to the South African Sixth Division in Italy in the Second World War, my father was visiting troops in a forward position. Dug into an isolated observation post ahead of the rest of the army on one side of a valley, they stared over to the other side where their equivalents in the German army were no doubt staring anxiously back. From time to time artillery shells screamed overhead, making them press down even further into the ground. But as they crouched and watched, something extraordinary emerged in the valley below. An Italian peasant farmer hitched up his horse and began ploughing his field! This was the season for planting. He knew that if he did not plant now, his family would not eat when harvest came. So, although caught between two huge and lethal armies, he carried on with the next thing that needed doing. He might seem pathetically vulnerable, surrounded by these mighty armies; yet it was only his steady ploughing and planting that in a few months’ time would provide for the future of his family. Entrepreneurs go into business because we like to control our own destiny. Yet we feel caught now between lethal forces way beyond our control. Like we did when Covid struck, we have to focus our attention on what we can do, finding ways to save our business and preserve our sanity. We dare not allow discouragement about things we cannot control prevent us from acting resiliently in the matters we can control. Resilience is one of the qualities found in successful small business owners. Personally we need to meet the usual requirements for physical and mental health: regular exercise, healthy diet and enough sleep, while maintaining healthy relationships and working on our own optimism. In the business we need ruthless honesty in examining possible scenarios and working out contingencies for each. We were inspired through the pandemic by businesses that responded by doing just this, and surviving and even thriving through new-found direction and discipline. The same prescriptions apply – watch cash flow, cut unnecessary costs, encourage staff, treasure existing customers, and look for new markets. A weak currency at least brings export opportunities for those with something to sell abroad. What may be different this time is that we are not facing a mysterious disease out there, but known economic, political and social failures created by people. Big business is stepping up to help national government fix services such as electricity, and is being urged to insist more assertively that government act honourably in the best interests of the country rather than narrow political interests or personal financial greed. Is there a similar role for small business owners at the local level? This need not be political; there are many dedicated officials who are probably just as fed up with squabbling elected representatives as we are, and who would welcome support on the ground. If nothing else, it would help to preserve our own sanity to be doing something constructive. 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

World Bank economist Jacques Morisset writes that the net rate of entry of new firms in South Africa is about 60% lower than in countries with similar income levels. He says the economy lacks dynamism. Every time I travel through the rest of Africa or overseas, I notice the contrast in the exuberant buzz of little companies. South Africa has been very successful in creating big companies, but we need more lovely family businesses that employ fifty people and provide quality goods and services. The numbers do not support the image of an entrepreneurial nation. It’s not all bad news. The government and private sector have put a huge effort into encouraging the creation of small businesses. Stats SA reported that small businesses generated 22% of total turnover in the formal business sector in 2019 compared to 16% in 2013. That’s still low, but it is good growth. To sustain this growth maybe the soil in which businesses grow needs attention. Morisset suggests two reasons for South Africa’s slow economic development: low public investment in physical and social infrastructure and a loss of “innovative drive” in many businesses. Most readers will recognise the first of these. SA’s public investment has been only 2.9 % of GDP a year over the past two decades, which is about 5 percentage points lower than many countries in East Asia and a fraction of China’s 20%. This is reflected in failing infrastructure – think Eskom and Transnet. But economic reasons don’t explain it all. There’s a deeper malaise, a toxic blend of corruption with a lack of skills and an apparent lack of commitment and initiative that wastes the public investment that does occur. This was illustrated in the shocking news that 81% of grade 4 children are unable to read with understanding. We spend a lot of money on education. It still does not work. That is unforgivable. We have a management problem and a leadership vacuum. But what about the second of Morisset’s levers, the lack of innovative drive in business? Many are looking to the private sector to save the economy. Is he serious? He attributes the drop in labour productivity in all sectors over the past few decades to a lack of competition, in which poor-performing firms are replaced by more productive ones. Again, that macro-perspective does not explain all that is happening. We do have some world-beating businesses with highly innovative ideas (think Discovery, for example) and some exceptional business leaders; but why too few? Clearly for 80% of South Africans apartheid denied exposure to business and opportunities to try it out. It takes special leadership to reverse the subtle effects of deprivation and helplessness when it blankets whole communities and paralyses the mind. Our education system does not encourage enterprise. I recently saw first-hand how Sweden’s school system encourages learners to follow practical and highly valued technical options in high school, with career-related skills they can apply immediately, often in their own businesses. What a tragedy that technical skills are regarded as second-class in SA when we need them so desperately! Then well-meaning officials in government who have never run a business create policies and projects with unintended consequences that kill the small businesses that do exist. Maybe if we supported existing businesses as much as we encourage young people to create new ones, we would create more jobs. It’s hard to overstate the discouragement as entrepreneurs’ dreams are shattered by disasters of human origin, like load shedding, corruption, irrational regulation, and so on. Why bother wasting one’s life savings? Wouldn’t it be great if, instead of just planting more entrepreneurial seeds in hostile soil, we could make the soil fertile? Then the plants would grow by themselves. What an opportunity for leadership. Jonathan Cook, a counselling psychologist, chairman 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

What do you have to do to get a job in a start-up? I was thinking about this in a job readiness workshop at a local church, and hearing how discouraging it is to keep sending CVs to companies that don’t want you. I have recruited for large organisations and my small businesses, and know that small entrepreneurial firms select employees very differently from how big established firms do. Because large organisations receive thousands of applications, they have a process led by HR to sift them and only take seriously the few who meet all the specifications. To do this they create job descriptions and person specifications and convert them into job adverts and screening and interview schedules. The manager with the vacancy may sign off the advert at the beginning, and at the end may be included in the panel to interview the shortlist. This process allows relatively junior staff to sift through the pile of applications by comparing them with the job spec. To avoid bias they apply the spec consistently and mechanically. Those applications that do not meet all the specs are discarded, while the survivors are scored to identify three or four to be interviewed. So to get into an interview, applicants have to ensure that their CV and cover letter are perfect and perfectly consistent with the advertised criteria. That is why some well-qualified, wonderful people never get jobs – amongst the thousands, their CVs are just not as impressive, or miss some point in the specification. Sad. Small start-ups don’t have HR and don’t have policies or processes for recruiting people. That can be awful – the founder meets a smooth talker at a party and hires them on the spot. Or it can be wonderful – the founder picks out the very best from their great network of people who know the industry, pays them whatever is needed to attract them, and the business booms. So for getting into small owner-managed firms, the CV is far less important than meeting the owner. Your network is really important. Hiring people is a big deal for entrepreneurs. On the one hand, they know they need staff to grow, and they need skills and experience that are not in the company. Often they are bored stiff by some parts of running the business and need to return to the things that ignite the passion that led them to start their business. On the other hand, because they generally do not have a pile of cash to pay you, they won’t want you unless you can convince them you will add far more value than you will cost. They may be scared of bringing an outsider into a responsible position, where a careless person could wreck the company through compromising on quality, being rude to customers, treating other staff badly so key personnel leave, not containing costs, stealing intellectual property or simply stealing money. This means if you want a big position in a promising small company, you need an impeccably honest record. You need to demonstrate that you can offer tangible economic value and not destroy the intangible culture of the company. You need to convince the owner that you will do whatever it takes legally to make the business thrive, at whatever personal cost. But you also need to convince the owner that you are not there just for your benefit, to take the expertise and network you gain and start your own business in competition. And it reaps if you like each other. That means that just as entrepreneurs are extraordinary people, so are the senior staff in a small venture. That will make a good topic for a further column. Jonathan Cook, a Counselling Psychologist and Chairman of 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

What makes a business stand out? I took my MacBook in for upgrading recently, choosing ZA Support on the basis of online reviews, which all mentioned excellent communication. When I booked it in online, Elise responded and opened a WhatsApp group of me, her and Courtney who runs the workshop. When I took the Mac in, Courtney himself met me at my car, and from then on I was kept informed throughout the two days, and was able to post questions and requests. What a pleasure. Fixing Apple Macs is not a field in which one can compete much on price – Apple parts cost what they cost and are usually the major item in the repair bill. And while the quality of work clearly counts, it’s not easy to judge this from the outside. That leaves customer service as the area with the most latitude to differentiate oneself. Courtney is the founder, owner and CEO, with forty engineers working on clients’ machines. I asked him where the level of customer communication came from. “As consumers our greatest frustration is not knowing what’s going on, or that someone in there really cares about us,” he explained. “Large companies can lose touch of this and end up treating you as a number, not a customer.” The result of Courtney’s focus on customer care is that ZA Support thrives on repeat business – on average their customers will come back six to eight times over five years. Courtney follows the wise path of surrounding himself with people who are smarter than he. But they must be genuinely committed to the principle of caring for customers. He has learnt to fire fast but hire slowly, as having the right team is the key to quality, service and accountability. He says his worst mistake was micromanaging, so now before hiring someone, he takes great care to document exactly what the person needs to do and how it must be done. Then once he has found the right person, “It’s a marriage, based on trust.” He lets the techies get on with what they are good at and love. “These are people who are better than I am in the role,” he explained. And many of them are introverted, while he loves interacting with people. A few years ago the business was robbed and lost R3 million worth of material, including client equipment containing confidential information. It was an existential crisis, but he survived and moved the business into a secure building with no customer access. Why does he stay in South Africa? “There is a huge opportunity in SA. It is a marathon, but I don’t believe the grass is necessarily greener elsewhere. To succeed here you have to do something meaningful and solve a real problem. To survive in Africa is a true test of yourself. And I like fixing broken things.” Entrepreneurs need unbounded energy to put in whatever it takes. “If you don’t do something that scares you each day you’re not pushing yourself.” Courtney’s burning desire to succeed arises from having nothing. He left home at 17 and was literally homeless for a while before he found a job at an Apple shop. When it closed and he was retrenched, he started ZA Support with R10 at age 19. He has turned the disadvantages of his past into an enabler: “If I could survive my hardship, I can do even more.” This provides some ideas about what makes a business stand out: Find a distinctive competitive advantage, as Courtney did with customer service; push the limits of it beyond what others do; draw on your own deepest well of energy to implement it; and find others willing to share that passion. There’s lots more in Courtney’s and others’ stories. What have you noticed? Jonathan Cook, a Counselling Psychologist and Chairman of 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 an insightful interview, we sit down with Asha Mweru, the Managing Director of AMI Enterprise, to explore the transformative journey of workplace learning in Africa over the past five years. Asha highlights the dynamic shift from traditional classroom-based training to more learner-centric approaches, empowered by technology and digital platforms. AMI’s role in this transformation is prominent, offering cutting-edge learning programs tailored to meet the unique needs of professionals in Africa. Moreover, Asha introduces the concept of “Powerskills” – essential competencies that transcend technical expertise and drive personal and professional growth. She shares her own powerskill – effective communication – and emphasizes resilience as the often-overlooked yet crucial powerskill that enables individuals and organizations to navigate challenges and maintain success amidst a rapidly evolving business landscape. Join us as we delve into the empowering world of workplace learning in Africa and discover the fundamental powerskills that uplift careers and drive success. Let’s dive into the interview with Asha Mweru, whose vision and leadership have been instrumental in shaping the future of professional development across the continent. How has workplace learning in Africa evolved over the past five years? Over the past five years, workplace learning in Africa has experienced a paradigm shift. Organizations have moved away from traditional classroom-based training to embrace more dynamic and learner-centric approaches. With the advent of technology and digital platforms, there is a growing emphasis on e-learning and mobile learning solutions. These advancements have made learning more accessible, personalized, and adaptable to the needs of individual learners. AMI has been a key player in driving this transformation, offering cutting-edge learning programs designed to equip professionals with practical skills to navigate the challenges of the ever-changing business landscape. In your own words, How does AMI contribute to the shift in workplace learning in Africa? AMI has been instrumental in revolutionizing workplace learning across the continent. By curating customized learning journeys and adopting blended learning approaches, AMI ensures that professionals gain hands-on experience and real-life application of the skills they acquire. Through a combination of online and offline interactions, AMI fosters a collaborative and dynamic learning environment that encourages peer learning and practical problem-solving. The programs are designed to align with the unique needs and challenges faced by African businesses and organizations, making AMI a trusted partner for professionals seeking to elevate their careers and drive success in their respective industries. 💡  What is a Powerskill? A powerskill is an essential competency that goes beyond technical expertise and encompasses a range of soft skills and attributes that empower individuals to excel in their roles and drive success. Powerskills are the driving force behind personal and professional growth, enabling individuals to thrive in diverse environments and navigate challenges with confidence. Understanding one’s powerskill involves self-awareness and reflection through self-reflection, seeking feedback, identifying patterns, observing interactions, assessing impact, and aligning with values. Embrace a growth mindset and be open to continuous learning, as your unique powerskill may evolve over time with new experiences and insights. Your powerskill is what sets you apart and empowers you to make a meaningful impact in your personal and professional life. 🌟 What’s your own Powerskill? For me, effective communication is the very foundation of strong leadership—it empowers me to connect with my team and clients on a profound level. Understanding their needs, challenges, and aspirations through empathy has been instrumental in driving positive change and fostering growth within AMI Enterprise. 🔍 The Most Overlooked Powerskill? The most overlooked powerskill, in my view, is “resilience.” Amidst the fast-paced and ever-changing business landscape, resilience empowers individuals and organizations to bounce back from setbacks, adapt to challenges, and keep moving forward. It is the inner strength that enables us to stay focused, determined, and optimistic even in the face of adversity. Embracing resilience as a powerskill can truly make a transformative difference in navigating the ups and downs of both personal and professional journeys. Workplace learning in Africa has undergone a remarkable transformation, embracing dynamic, learner-centric approaches with the aid of technology. AMI Enterprise, led by Asha Mweru, has been at the forefront of this shift, empowering professionals through cutting-edge programs tailored to their unique needs. The concept of “Powerskills” has emerged as a key driver of success, emphasizing essential competencies like effective communication and resilience. As we venture into this empowering journey of continuous learning, AMI Enterprise is ready to be your partner, unlocking the extraordinary growth potential for African companies and individuals alike in the ever-evolving landscape of professional development.