YIP, News24.com columnist David Moseley got me good with his rebuttal my "women in the workplace" piece from last week.
In fact many of David's fans described his column as his "best ever."
Not sharing David's wit, charm or phenomenal prowess with women - which is surely only rivalled by Enrique Iglesias (or do I mean Kevin Federline?) - I decided to coin a new phrase I believe is fit for the English canon. From now on, to impart 'a Moseley' is to deliver a riposte of such stunning poignancy and wit, that the unlucky recipient has only a dumb, gaping expression for response.
You've got to admit: "You got a Moseley" has a nice ring to it.
Newly armed with the latest in put-down hardware, therefore, I would like to deliver my first Moseley to trade and industry minister Rob Davies who has been touting small business support for South Africans from Italy.
In a recent article minister Davies spoke about a trade partnership with Italy claiming it would boost South African entrepreneurs and skills, particularly in the small business sector.
There are two problems with this.
The first is that Italy is a part of the so-called 'PIGS', a moniker to describe the underperforming economies of Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain. But South Africa is also a net importer of goods from Italy in 2008, as far as I remember. I can't see how that exactly is going to boost the local economy?
There was also some talk about small business owners going to Italy to receive training to assist them in running their businesses.
While I'm for international skills transfer, we don't need to be shipping our small business owners over to Italy for mentoring and training - with all due respect to the minister.
Instead, we need the Italians putting their Euros into our business accounts and buying goods from our small businesses. We also need them booking expensive tours to South Africa and consuming vast quantities of our wine and other manufactured products.
South Africa already has a bundle of talented business mentors and small business experts. Surely there is very little the Italians can seriously offer to our small business sector beyond making direct investments into our businesses and some historical business expertise, such as jewellery manufacture or granite mining?
Locally, pretty much every major financial services player is falling over itself to convince small business they have a team of mentors and business coaches who will assist in running their businesses.
So, 'Yes Minister', if you seriously believe that small business will be boosted in South Africa by signing agreements with Italy to train our entrepreneurs then please accept your Moseley with due grace.
Before I sign off for this week, I thought I would leave you with an interesting thought that had been posted on my blog earlier this week on the subject of mentorship.
A member of Coaches and Mentors South Africa (Comensa) pointed out that genuine mentoring used to be part of many corporate's development plans. In terms of this, juniors were mentored by their seniors and line managers.
He argued that fast-tracking skills, and the transformation agenda, had ripped these management structures apart. This, in turn, meant there was a need for mentors or coaches from outside business as fast-tracking was not the best solution for developing skills, at any level.
It could definitely make for an interesting debate.
- Fin24.com