Bonang Mohale Business Leadership

Every leader is a product of their context. We are moulded by our own personal journeys. The stones in my shoes, the scars on my back have defined who I am today. Therefore, when somebody chooses to be an alcoholic's anonymous activist, more often than not, it's because they have experienced it from their mother or their father and they only have two choices - to follow in their footsteps and be alcoholics themselves or to hate liquor with a passion. It is a continuum but, often, it's those distinct polar opposite ends.

My earliest memory of genuine leadership, in a corporate sense, was just two years into democracy, in 1996, when I was the finally accountable person in the room. And if it was to be, then it was up to me. How do I engage, interact, and interface with Ntate Mazambani, who was my drive, who worked for 52 years for Otis and had never been into the MD's office. He walks into that office for the first time and then sits in my executive assistant's office and I'm waiting for him to come in. 15 minutes later, I see it's not going to happen so I shout, "Where are you?" I look through the door - he's taken off his hat, he's standing. Then, I realized immediately what's happening, because it could have been me. I asked him, "Have you been into the MDs office?" He says, "Never. In all 32 years of working for the company." I say, "Come in. Your own son is now the managing director, not of Otis South Africa but of Otis Africa".

At Otis in 1996 - two years into democracy and Mandela had given us reconciliation, the most amazing gift - I said, I'm going to put that into practice that the black people that work at Otis must feel needed and wanted. That Otis belongs to them too, not just to the previous regime and that they are free to speak their mind. That we didn't hire them just for their hymns, but for their ability to think and to reflect. That would have succeeded, if we had 3,827 employees, every single one of them thinking "This is just as much my company as it is Bonang's. If we could have 3,827 MDs, imagine where the company would be? Because all of us are that much better from the collective thought processes, because two minds are always better than one, let alone 3,827.

We have so many managers and yet a death of leadership. Because management is about getting things done through other people and leadership is about being genuinely obsessed with the development of others.

The company is not the product and services that we sell, because those can change. Sony started by making toilets - today it's one of the top five electronic manufacturing companies in the world so the products and services change. It can't be the bricks and mortar, because companies that are badly located can move their headquarters. Shell was in Cape Town for eighty years. We moved them to the Dimension Data Campus in Bryanston - they are still Shell. Therefore, by that definition, that company can only be its people. A company that is poor on people is a dead company, but a company that has good quality people, that has created an ecosystem that is difficult to copy, even if you steal their laptop or their arch lever files, you can't replicate that engagement, that interaction. That is the company, the people.

We are social animals in bone and marrow - we're not meant to be islands. Therefore you have this symbiotic relationship with other human beings that it's only in giving can you get real joy.

Leadership is about creating a thousand people who can do better than you. It's about sending a message, inspiring, motivating. To say, this is like a relay and I've run a good race, I've come this far - can I pass over the baton to you to run even a greater race? 

We'll make progress when we realize that businesses must continue to do well by doing good. That a business is not an island of prosperity in a sea of poverty. That, when a business does well, society generally does well.

I think that's the crux of entrepreneurship. First, it's about finding an unmet need and if you meet that need, you can name your price. The biggest constraint we are told is access to the value chain, not necessarily access to finance, although I think both of them are important. So what entrepreneurs need is access to the value chain of big companies. 

Can we, through our actions, small as they are, touch just one human being in a special and meaningful way to inspire them to greater heights? To always aspire for the greater things so that, through their actions, they can say, "I'm the candle that lit another candle and I have nothing to lose. In fact, I've gained more light". That's the spirit of leadership.