I enjoyed what Stephen Coller had to say about culture.
The recognition that society has to have something that replaces relying on invisible guides for behavioural parameters. An ethic outside of oneself and outside of your neighbourhood gang. A belief in something greater than the chocolate bar of today {or a meat pie if such were to be aspirational}.
South Africa perhaps hoped for ubuntu to serve this need – until segments of the state {and their close friends and family and hangers on and other friends and their advisers and their in-turn immediate family and their sometime colleagues} stole the whole country. And were so beholden to the interests of coal mining so they had to shut down the production of electricity.
But business can be the terrain of not accepting this – the space where a positive growing attitude to economy can be exposed. My bulls and bears for 2019 were
- Capitec a winner for trying to bring a retail sensibility to the banking process [makes the customer believe they actually care].
- Discovery for thinking that being the bully on the block will help you succeed despite a lack of vision [always happy to share why].
- MTN for guts and tenacity [I don’t really believe their hands are clean in the Nigeria deal – but they have stuck to their guns and forged a compromise that isn’t unjustified enrichment of the government, neither is it a free pass for MTN].
- John Lewis. Paula Nickolds. Sharon White. The unfolding saga prompts questions about integrity. Is Paula Nickolds the most honest, most unlucky, or actually the sanest?
- DSTV for idiocy. They are hoping like hell that the growth in Africa subscriptions is going to cross-fund the drastic and increasing fall off in South African subscriptions. I respect them for being a content producer, but they missed the aeroplane in respect of listening to their customers who are now deserting in droves.
- Pick n’ Pay that tried to reinvent themselves and failed. The outcomes were remarkably positive though – tiredmid-market antics that wouldn’t excite a dead ferret but it has turned around their cash flow fortunes. Watching this space.
- Checkers – now that’s how you reinvent a store. Not sure it bodes well for the whole company. need to see who actually runs the place.
- Cloudflare. How smart. If you don’t know what they do – look and see how they take chunks off Microsoft and AWS. Like a small shark with small but very sharp teeth.
I do have to laugh at a number of examples of companies that do to seem to have grasped the link between culture and behaviour though – they think that the culture is the end-goal. They want everybody to be a vocal proselytising acolyte – but they have forgotten that actually they want people to ACT in line with the tenets and standards. They want people to be honest & hard-working, dedicated, smart, co-operative, competitive without being aggressive. Instead they are trying to create a generation of believers that never do anything. hahahahaha
Cretins.
If it were so easy everybody would be doing it. Stop navel gazing, spend half your time looking for free stuff on the internet – but try and actually do something for the rest.
