Business prides itself on being able to take a long-term view. We would do well to apply the same competencies to dealing with transformation. Here are some suggestions.
- The problem of finding black suppliers would be hugely alleviated if we were committed to enterprise development. This provides an opportunity for businesses to create, mentor and sustain their own suppliers. It creates space to develop true black businesses.
- Skills development creates an opportunity for ”growing our own timber” instead of the perennial lament that ”we can’t find black talent”. We should banish this notion.
The depressing irony is that numerous instruments — including the empowerment codes, the financial sector charter and economic growth programme Asgisa — would have been unnecessary had we followed the prescriptions and spirit of the Skills Development Act. While we celebrate these interventions, they also suggest that we in business have not kept our side of the bargain. If we had planned for the long term, we would be reaping the fruits of good training plans.
- Though ownership issues are often clouded by concerns of affordability and ridiculously long ”lock-in” clauses, the fact is that people are more committed to businesses they have a stake in. We must commit to finding affordable funding mechanisms instead of resting on our laurels and churning out statistics showing how badly BEE is doing.
- Black business owners should be engines of transformation instead of merely accepting the strategic and management status quo at their newly acquired companies.
Environment
These are the planning imperatives, but business leaders should also create environments that take anti- discriminatory stances and actions.
Sometimes non-executive directors ask whether there is still racism or sexism in a business and get the chorused response that it does not exist. Usually this means that nothing overt or blatant happens but then, out of such meetings, black people (including executives) complain about the disempowering culture in the business.
If we are part of the executive that creates the culture, then we are in office and not in authority. Our presence ”cons” people into believing that change is happening.
The onus to change lies with black executives and other progressive groups to find the balance between effectiveness and empowerment. They need not and should not be mutually exclusive.
A few years ago some comrades-in-business were arguing that their performance should be judged on the same basis as that of their white counterparts. Our ambitions should be loftier than that.