7 Effective Business Lessons Inspired by Madiba

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“We can in fact change the world and make of it a better place.” (Nelson Mandela)

Rolihlahla Mandela was born into the Madiba clan in Mvezo, Transkei, on 18 July 1918. He was given the name Nelson by a teacher on his first day at school. Affectionately known as Tata, grandfather of the Rainbow Nation, Mandela is best remembered for successfully leading South Africa’s transition from apartheid to a multiracial democracy.

Mandela is the only person honoured by the United Nations with his own international day: Nelson Mandela Day on 18 July each year. On this day people around the world honour Mandela’s contributions and humanitarian work by following the example he set. He donated half of his presidential salary and part of his Nobel prize money to help street children. And he established the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund which continues his legacy by focussing on education, HIV/AIDS and ‘peace and reconciliation’.

Nelson Mandela’s life and words of wisdom provide inspiration that can help you lead your business to greater success.

  1. “Everyone can rise above their circumstances and achieve success if they are dedicated to and passionate about what they do.”Passion and dedication are crucial to successful business: passion drives innovation and creativity, and dedication keeps you going when things get tough.
  2. “Vision without action is just a dream, action without vision just passes the time, vision with action can change the world.”As an entrepreneur or business owner, vision is vital. But it doesn’t count for anything if you and your team don’t take action to make it a reality.
  3. “The mark of great leaders is the ability to understand the context in which they are operating and act accordingly.”
    Today’s business context is more complex, multifaceted, and fast-changing than ever before, requiring agility in both decision making and execution.
  4. “After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.”Entrepreneurship and business ownership inherently entail challenge after challenge, day after day, year after year. Expect and embrace challenges, focussing on finding the opportunities they hold.
  5. “The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”

    We all face many kinds of fears all the time: fear of failure, disappointment, the unknown, even of success. What sets entrepreneurs and business owners apart is that they don’t allow fear to stop them – they are brave enough to try, to step out, to take the risk … despite the fear.

  6. “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”Continuously educate yourself to better manage and grow your business. Also educate and upskill your employees on an ongoing basis: offer mentorships, internships, learnerships and apprenticeships; facilitate capacity building for Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs); and sponsor schools or scholarships in the community or in your industry.
  7. “Overcoming poverty is not a task of charity, it is an act of justice.”

    Even small businesses can make a meaningful contribution, and it makes sense to start in your immediate community. Make an authentic, long-term contribution that will have a lasting impact, by focusing your company’s contribution around your product, service or expertise, and aligning it with your vision.

Hopefully you can apply some of Mandela’s wisdom in your own business. And don’t forget to give 67 minutes of your time on 18 July.

Your Tax Deadlines for June 2024

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  • 07 June – Monthly Pay-As-You-Earn (PAYE) submissions and payments
  • 25 June – Value-Added Tax (VAT) manual submissions and payments
  • 27 June – Excise Duty payments
  • 28 June – Corporate Income Tax (CIT) Provisional Tax payments
  • 28 June – End of the 1st fiscal quarter
  • 28 June – Value-Added Tax (VAT) electronic submissions and payments.

How to Implement Effective Leadership Development in your Business

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“Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.” (John F. Kennedy)

The world of work is changing, rapidly. With more teams made up of diverse people from a wide variety of locations, leadership these days has become less about personal relationships and more about managing across distance and effective organisation. Leaders in this world need skills they had never considered previously, and companies need to train them.

Despite companies spending hundreds of billions of rands in leadership training globally, 63% of millennials feel their leadership were letting them down and only 27% of leaders believe they are equipped to lead hybrid teams.

Here’s what you should be thinking about when implementing leadership development in your organisation.

  1. Analysis and Assessment

    In order to build leadership capacity for the future, the first thing you should do is look at your organisation’s unique values, challenges, and priorities. Are you looking to increase profits, cut costs, improve employee retention or mitigate risks? Remember, your analysis needs to focus not only on what’s happening now, but on the coming changes in your industry and your goals for where you want to be in the future.

    Doing this will then allow you to take a closer look at the skills of your leaders as they currently stand and determine which leadership skills are most lacking.

  2. Research

    The next step is choosing which leadership training organisations to partner with. There is currently no shortage of leadership development resources, speakers and organisations that offer training. The resources you work with should be vetted, relevant, and applicable to learning goals you established in the analysis phase.

    In order to ensure you are getting the best possible course you should evaluate the course material and format and research the course instructors. Who is offering this course? Do they have the requisite experience?

    When it comes to making a difference, instructors with a strong educational foundation and relevant qualifications will always trump the charismatic author with multiple tattoos and a matric. As your accountants, we are able to help you build a training budget, which can help prioritise training and ensure you get the most impact from your spend.

  3. Involve your seniors

    You and your senior leaders understand leadership in the context of the company better than most and as such should play a mentorship role in the development of future leaders. Training engagement has been shown to increase dramatically for attendees when it is their leader who is among the teachers, so don’t be afraid to engage your team as an active part of the process.

    This will also help you too. By taking part you will also be aware of the course content and can more easily spot teachable moments during the day-to-day running of the company, reinforce the lessons in their mentorship sessions and better spot those who are implementing the lessons in their own personal development.

  4. Inform your employees

    Building future leaders is about spotting talent, then using the training to position that talent for future company development. It is no good simply offering training without also informing those who are to attend of the reasons for why the training is happening.

    Attendees need to understand the future company goals and recognise the skills they will need to perfect if they want to be part of the future leadership of the company. This way you’ll give them the motivation to engage with it as thoroughly as possible. Nothing inspires people quite like seeing the personal benefits.

  5. Implement the training

    Training should be simple. Whether you choose to do it all in one go, or over time fitted into a general working life, the courses need to be manageable in terms of time and effort. This means you are going to need to consider each individual attendee as well as your company’s operational needs. The easier you make it for everyone to be involved, at the lowest loss to the company, the more the return on investment will be.
  6. Feedback, evaluation and impact

    Training has no benefit if the lessons of that training are not implemented. It’s important to schedule feedback sessions with attendees to repeatedly follow up on the lessons in the training. Depending on your goals you may even be able to build the training impact into the attendees’ KPIs.

    Some training sessions and companies will even incorporate evaluation and feedback into their sessions so you as a leader can analyse who is performing well in the course and who needs added focus. All of this will help you to adjust future training content and goals and ultimately ensure you get the most long-term impact and leadership growth.