A Colleague’s Achievement and The Historical Normality of Women Leadership

This past week I was asked to give a few words in a small celebration we had to honour a female colleague who had received a promotion to lead a particular sector of our business in South Africa. Significant in particular because in our environment, and noting the historic conditions in South Africa, it is not usual to find African, let alone African women, leading such a sector in financial services. This we were conscious of as we reflected on the transformation journey, and how such achievements give us hope noting the words we find in the song “Inde lendlela…” (“ the route is long…”). And noting her position, and how she represents the hopes of many, we were not just happy with her achievement, but ecstatic.

I indicated that we are being made to see as normal what the world in general and South Africa in particular wanted us to believe is not normal. I indicated that if we spend a little bit of our time thinking of other women who have made similar achievements, and we learn from their journey, we should not be surprised. I thought I should share some examples, some of which surprised my colleagues.

I started by mentioning the name of Dr Thandi Ndlovu, founder of Motheo Construction, a former freedom fighter in our country who went to exile after 1976, joined uMkhonto we Sizwe, studied medicine in Zambia, and after working as a doctor on her return to South Africa, established this company and has become a leader in a male-dominated sector. I mentioned Daphne Mashile-Nkosi, who has single-mindedly overcome all sorts of obstacles, and a painful family loss, to advance a manganese project in our country that is the biggest manganese sinter plant in the world. I noted Indra Nooyi, who has grown from her humble beginnings in Madras (Chennai) in India to become the Chairman and CEO of the world’s second biggest food and beverage company, PepsiCo. I mentioned the name of Kathryn Bigelow, filmmaker who became the first and currently only woman to win an Academy Award  for Best Director. I mentioned the names of Helen Joseph and Lillian Ngoyi, best friends and amongst the four leaders of the historic 1956 Women’s March in South Africa, who gave the best example of character, courage and non-racialism, and are buried in the same grave at the Avalon Cemetery in Soweto.

I also decided to share some names from centuries ago. Like Cleopatra (69-30BC), the last Pharoah of Ptolemaic Egypt, who we read about more for her love affairs with Roman leaders like Julius Ceaser and Marc Anthony, but in fact was also known for her superior intelligence and her work to improve her country and its economy as leader, naval commander, linguist, and medical author. I thought the example of Maria Theresa of Austria (1717-1780), the Hapsburg Empress and only female rule of the Hapsburg dominions, whose 40-year reign over large parts of Europe including Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Bohemia and parts of Italy, saw reforms such as making education mandatory including permitting non-Catholics to attend university, establishing the Royal Academy of Science and Literature in Brussels, promoted commerce and the development of agriculture, and supported scientific research. My historical examples ended with Hatshepsut (1508 – 1458BC), the fifth pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt, regarded as one of the most successful Egyptian rulers, who oversaw major military campaigns unto Nubia, Syria and the Levant, launched major building projects and rebuilt trade networks that had been disrupted during the Hyksos occupation of Egypt.

I reflected how what we were celebrating was a representation of the triumph of the human spirit, the value of resilience and an example of the meaning of commitment. I noted how our colleague had shown success in her previous assignment that gave real credibility to the promotion. But I noted that she was moving to a new territory where her past successes provide the foundation but not necessarily the assurance of future success. And I noted that all of us, knowing what was required in her new assignment, know that she will face numerous and different challenges.

I reflected that we were not really worried as she possesses these beautiful qualities of character, commitment and integrity. In order to emphases our confidence in her being able to meet the enormity of the forthcoming challenges, I decided to borrow from a statement that OR Tambo made in January 1985, addressing a people yearning for freedom at the height of repression by the apartheid state, expressing confidence in the people as they “…not only have the resilience that defies defeat, but also the capacity to rise to the challenge of the hour and move on to the offensive, a people with a glorious future to fight for… an assured and epoch-making victory to win”. I felt those words were an apt description of how we thought about our colleague.

I noted that the progress our colleague had made represents a gradual change in the character of a previous period and the emergence of another. In such a period of change, I highlighted that the key in going in the right direction is that those given a responsibility should be acutely aware of their place in history. I noted that they need to realise that, in the context of a transforming country and society like ours, their achievement is less about them but rather the continued opening up of opportunities for others, and ensure that there is no reversal to a previous epoch. In such people, I highlighted, faith and trust is placed that they will represent the best efforts, the most selfless attitudes, the best leadership, to defeat entrenched behaviours that result in the unacceptable discrimination that women in particular face in the workplace. I noted the words of former Wits historian, Arthur Keppel-Jones, referring to the situation in apartheid South Africa, whose conclusion was that “…the salvation of the country can only lie in the reversal of historic tendencies, a reversal so thorough as to constitute a revolution”. I thus emphasised that my colleague’s appointment in the sector she was asked to leaded was in our case a reversal of existing historical tendencies and we should see it as revolutionary.

I ended by highlighting that our colleague represents the best amongst us. In our world there would be lots of questions about business achievements in the form of new revenues gained et al, but I highlighted that these should be seen as only one part of the human achievement. I noted how in our celebration we know that our colleague’s appointment means to the current generation and the ones that follow, and our wish for more to happen for women.

I challenged my colleague to ensure she takes many along in this journey.

When Things Change, Grab the New Opportunities

This week. Thursday the  I facilitated a mini-workshop with an important product area at work, and we were looking at whether we are doing enough to grab the opportunities that are possible. Before I began my input, I asked my colleagues to reflect on any change that had taken place in my country. Of course, everyone could remember that the previous evening a President resigned, and on the day we met, our Parliament would later be electing a new President.

I then asked my colleagues what are the implications of the changes taking place to the business we were looking at. It was much harder to start. With probing, and allowing all of us to make mistakes, the answers started coming think and fast. One colleague admitted that she had not considered that these changes have anything to do with her business. But when she listened to all the different answers, she could see how her business could be impacted. And the powerful observation she made was that, because she gets so busy with the DOING, she does not do enough of the THINKING and REFLECTION that could make her see what are the implications of things happening around her.

I then moved and asked that people reflect what the changes could mean for themselves as individuals. And in this article that is where I want to place emphasis. We tend to exist in the environment and adopt a posture of people who are recipients of what happens. And it may be possible that we may not always be able to influence what happens. But certainly we have a lot of power to decide on our response to what happens and to the changes around us. But in that little exercise I realised two of the major inhibitors that cause us not to do that.

The first is in that powerful observation that my colleague made. We need to spend time thinking and reflecting on what we see. That requires that we get out of the noise of the present, and observe what we see is happening, rather than always occupying our minds and time with doing. This is because when the changes happen, we end up being surprised because we had not prepared our minds enough for them. Even in the examples I made, because there was a perception that the previous President could never resign, the relevant individuals in that room had not spent time thinking about the implications of the person resigning.

The second inhibitor is that we sometimes see the changes as things that exist in the abstract, and we are not players in them. When they happen, we think all we need to do is continue with what we were doing before. At an individual level, we never ask enough of their meaning for each one of us. Again taking the example of the change to a new President, with a different style and responding to new demands in society, very few of us will say what opportunities does this new environment provide at an individual level. When this President quotes a song that has a phrase “SEND ME”, we never sit and think what new avenues does this open that were closed before. We never ask what new skills will be needed that we may have but never had the chance to use.

I use the above examples merely to illustrate the importance of observing change, and responding to it in a way that ensures that one advances their interest. A critical skill that we need to develop there is something I learn from a marketing professor. He said, in the context of business leaders, it was important for them to have a peripheral vision, and the ability to detect the weak signals that could impact one’s business. Paraphrasing this to that of the individual, and again using the examples we have cited here, it could be argued that long before the actual events, there was a period of six weeks in the country where there were signals that the old would be replaced by the new. Most of us did not know the exact timing, but we certainly knew of the possibility.

Those who have a better head start of responding to this change are those who factored the potential for it, and started thinking about the opportunities that might arise should the changes occur. Of course, if nothing had changed they could still have continued on the path they were on. What is certainly not a good building block is to deny oneself the time to reflect, think and observe what is happening, and then also have a plan to respond to changes that occur.

Otherwise what one gets is nothing but missed opportunities. And I am sure there are many reading this who do not want to belong to that group.

Think, reflect, observe and act on changes around you. Opportunities beckon.