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Ted Black: SA Inc’s critical tasks…Clear as dog’s bollocks

By Ted Black*

‘There’s the beacon … as clear as dog’s bollocks,’ said my skipper, Major John Chandler AFC, a brilliant navigator and yachtsman, as he scanned the horizon through binoculars at dawn. I was a young deck hand and hadn’t heard the term before so it made the moment we made landfall near Aden after two weeks at sea even more memorable.

We had sailed across the Indian Ocean into the Arabian Sea from Colombo – fourth leg of our voyage from Hong Kong to the UK.

Long before the days of satellite GPS, he navigated with sextant, a chronograph synchronised with BBC Greenwich Mean Time signals, British Admiralty charts and almanacs, log line and dead reckoning. Our timing and position was just as he had predicted.

Long distance sailing is a good analogy for running any institution. It requires meticulous planning; the right boat design; good crew; constant maintenance; frequent sightings and calculations to plot position and progress; and an experienced skipper to ensure the boat arrives safely with all hands at the destined port.

This does not resemble the good ship South Africa Inc today.

Maite Nkoana-Mashabane’s interview with Jane Dutton on Al Jazeera, and the ANC’s Gupta findings, brought the term ‘bollocks’ to mind again.

The typographical sign :-  called ‘dog’s bollocks’, was once used to introduce a list. ‘Bollocks’ can mean nonsense. It can also be used as a term of admiration as in ‘top bollocks’ which isn’t apt. Another meaning – to ‘drop a bollock’, to mess things up and bring matters to a standstill – certainly is. We can develop a long list of those.

It’s as if the skipper and crew have lashed the helm, set the sails, and headed down below deck to drink Johnny Walker Blue, play cards, carouse, and let our boat carve a course on the ocean of world and domestic affairs that changes with every wind shift. The frustrated navigator, our beleaguered Finance Minister, has lost most of his hair.

The lack of good management in government is at the heart of everything that’s making South Africa sick – a moribund economy, racial tensions, and an increasingly disenchanted populace. It’s like a loss-making company. As it runs deeper into trouble, the finger pointing and blame games start and relationships are poisoned.

Read also: John Kane-Berman: Government bullying highlights SA frog in kettle syndrome

As Peter Drucker observed many years ago, and it’s still true, government spreads its tentacles everywhere. But is it strong, or only big? Is it fat, flabby and costly, or strong, healthy and dynamic? One thing is clear. There is less and less respect for ours. Amongst our youth, rebellion is on the rise.

People no longer believe the political promises as programmes are bungled one after another. Disillusionment follows high, unmet expectations. So beware … history tells us reform often leads to revolution. We’ve had the reform, but what next?

People believe governments can produce and deliver a great many things for nothing. Is a ‘National Health Service’ going to be ‘free’? Somebody has to pay for hospitals, doctors, nurses, equipment and its maintenance. And everyone expects that ‘somebody’ to be ‘somebody else’. The trouble is there are never enough ‘rich’ somebody else’s to carry the burden.

Governments everywhere promise a lot but rarely accomplish much. The best we can expect is mediocre competence. We do have pockets of that, but in many areas there is no performance at all, only big costs.

Our government now seems to verge on being ‘ungovernable’. Each ministry or department is led by its own narrow vision and thirst for power and spoils rather than a national policy…the President’s homestead, cars for his wives, van Rooyen’s hotel bills, Joemat-Petterson’s selling off Strategic Fuel fund reserves…the list goes on.

Bureaucracy and ‘red tape’ are there to account for every cent spent and ensure that public funds are properly managed. However, these very costly controls aren’t working. Our resources aren’t focused and concentrated on what’s critical for the nation.

Mediocrity in the civil service we can live with but not ‘politics’ – the cause of the sickness. The civil service is filled and run in the main by ‘politicians’, not effective, independent managers. The result is collapse into a mutual looting society
. A lot of the red tape, like enforcing BEE laws and rules, exacerbates it.

Read also: Anthea Jeffery: Ratcheting up the BEE rules, yet again

As this continues, it leads to greater resentment and the risk of a government organised against its own people. As we have seen in Africa, but also the rest of the world, that can lead to tyranny.

It can be changed but has to start at the top with the right team and a big mind shift. The first thing to face up to is that governments, like corporate head offices, aren’t ‘doers’. They don’t make resources productive.

The purpose of government and corporate offices is to make fundamental, effective decisions that focus the energies of the ‘doers’ towards the right political ends. In business, corporate offices add value by concentrating on direction and finance. They discard all the ‘doing’ to independent, self-directing, operating management teams. Their rôle is to be ‘water carriers’ – to ‘release’ and support, not ‘control’ the value creating efforts of people on the front line.

As Drucker also said, ineffective managers focus on the past. That’s the second shift to be made. Correcting the problems caused by yesterday’s decisions prevents damage at best. Effective managers focus on opportunity. It gets results. In a business, results come from customers outside a firm. There are only costs inside it.

So the next shift is to drop the political dogma and move from ‘problem’ – blaming and redressing the ‘apartheid’ past and doing it mainly with wealth redistribution – to ‘opportunity’ or wealth creation. To make, not take money. Doing that means recognising the value of business activity. How do we build South Africa Inc into a country where it’s easy to do business? That’s the economic and strategic marketing task.

Most socialist intellectuals and regimes hate business and its ‘wicked’ profit motive. However, businesses are organs of change and innovation. Governments aren’t. They are institutions that mainly exist to prevent and slow it down. It’s their fundamental weakness.

What can be of more value to society – customers, employees, suppliers, shareholders, and the community at large – than a business with high cash productivity from selling needed products and services in an ethical way and then ploughing cash profits back into more opportunities?

Business has two strengths where governments are weak. It operates in a market and depends on it for capital. It has to abandon activities that don’t make money or it disappears. Society is happy to let that happen. Governments on the other hand, find it hard to abandon anything they start. When they fail, they double up budgets and staff – more cost, no results.

Read also: Cyril: SA Govt, businesses, labour starting to pull together. Hope springs.

It takes us to the second strength business has. It faces a profitability performance test. As Drucker again put it so well, it is the capitalist’s rôle to be disposable. He takes the risk of losses and going bankrupt. This creates an institution that adapts to change from the start and constantly proves its right to exist.

The strongest case for the private sector is not making a ‘profit’ but risking a ‘loss’. That’s why it has the best ‘management’ and why government should be collaborating with it to make it easy to do business in South Africa and with the rest of the world. That way government will be stronger and able to achieve its key tasks.

So what are the two most important tasks of all?

It’s as clear as dog’s bollocks. They are to make the poor productive and grow a new generation of management to make it happen.

Marketing driven businesses today ask: ‘What is the value of a life-time customer?

A better question for South Africa Inc to ask is: ‘What is the life-time cost of one unemployed youth?’ How many millions of Rand could that be do you think … direct and indirect ones?

Today, we have a short-term ‘crisis’ in avoiding a downgrade. To tackle it, we should first take a life-time view of our citizens. What changes in our approach would that mean? Take education for instance? We need ‘clever’ brains to start working on these questions. We have them and don’t need many to kick-start change.

In Drucker’s terms, top management are those people who believe in contribution and taking responsibility for results – no matter what level in the organisation.

If people with moral power, position power and performance power in the ANC had the courage to hang together and take the steps needed to put those kind of people in place, they would send a signal that would do more than anything else to stimulate the right action and rebuild confidence in South Africa Inc.

Dare we hold our breath?

Ted Black runs workshops, and coaches and mentors using the ROAM model to pinpoint opportunities for measurable, bottom-line, team-driven projects. He is also a freelance writer with several books published. Contact him attblack@astrovoice.co.za.

* For more in-depth business news, visit biznews.com or simply sign up for the daily newsletter.

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