Looking back & going forward (2013-02-21)

February 20, 2015  3498  3498   

I and the CGF team extend our gratitude in your continued support through the 10 years of our existence.

May I also thank all our sponsors Aon SA, ContinuitySA, Grant Thornton and CQS, including all the people who rallied behind CGF to make this occasion special.

A special word of thanks to our host, Mr Mark Kelly who made it possible for CGF to make use of the Johannesburg Country Club, being such a fabulous venue.

Thank you also to all CGF’s employees and consultants for your tireless efforts to making CGF what it is today.  To our honorary and corporate patrons, clients, strategic alliance partners, and the ProudlySA Campaign, our most sincere gratitude is owed to you.

As I commence my presentation, perhaps a quick roadmap is needed to explain how Paul and my presentations have been prepared; essentially I will be providing a more macro-approach to the world of governance and risk, ‘looking from the outside in’ and sketching a scenario which may beg some questions to your organisation’s future, general strategic thinking and direction.

Interestingly, many a board member may think he’s on top of matters only to discover that someone has changed the rules of the game.  Most often, and more so in our rapidly evolving and highly technical business world, the rules are being changed daily. So, the question is; ‘just how prepared are we really’ as leaders to anticipate future change and are we practicing a more agile way of coping with the new thinking and its challenges?

Paul’s presentation will give you a practitioner’s broader understanding of ‘looking from the inside out’, and you will get a fair measure of more practical matters to consider as he unpacks some of the issues that cause dysfunction in boardrooms and mis-aligned governance structures which have the ability to seriously damage, or even cause an organisation to collapse.

So I trust that between our two presentations, you will get a good perspective of the two approaches, each integral to the other and critical that they are aligned with the strategy and success of a business.  The fundamental underpin of the organisation’s sustainability remains grounded in sound governance policies and practices.

Our own journey within CGF has had its own tribulations and successes as we look back on these incredible years of learning more about what good and poor governance entails.  As we have learned so much about our own business, and shared many a lesson with our clients through the years, we realize how much there is still to learn as we look forward to the future challenges that will define our own existence as a company and its sustainability.  Indeed, these lessons can be shared with our clients so that we need not “re-invent the wheel” as the saying goes.

It is on this note that one realizes in life that to excel in business, it’s not necessarily about how hard one works to achieve the goal, but rather about how smart one is about achieving the goals at hand.  And so, at the outset may I suggest -- in real business terms -- that some business leaders are ‘smarter’ than others, and through their mental agility and stealth strategies, they perform better than others.
That said, let’s also agree that most of us are all in business to make money -- and hopefully lots of it -- so that we can claim the end prize.  Whilst this statement may appear somewhat direct, it remains true for many, even though we don’t want to admit it.  Now that we have been bold enough to concede this truth, from a governance perspective it’s not important how much money was made, but more importantly how the money was made and how it is being spent that matters.  In other words, we need to know that the money was made legally and according to ethical standards and such where appropriate portions of this money is used to build and strengthen business and social communities so that the entire supply chain – at global and local levels – remain sustainable.

These are some of the principles contained in King III and no doubt contained within many business journals and MBA programmes worldwide.

So, its about money at the end of the day; it’s about appropriate risk taking, it’s about know how far to push or pull back, it’s about judgement calls, ethics, morality and ‘humanness’ – these are the factors that we contend with in business each day.  Some of us are more evolved (or business savvy) to deal with these parameters, others less so and averse to risk taking.

Notwithstanding the  levels of our experience, we are all on a journey where realistically speaking there may be no real beginning and no real end and these ‘truths of business’ have become more vague in recent years with the advent of e-business, cloud computing and so forth.

Our many types of boundaries – be these at geographic levels, societal levels, cultural, business or legal levels have become so blurred, that it’s becoming increasingly difficult as leaders to survive in business terms, let alone thrive!

Perhaps this is then the right juncture to ask whether or not South Africa has clearly understood the difficulty and challenges of these boundaries, and whether its strategy could withstand the test and scrutiny of its citizens, South Africa’s stakeholders, regarding the soundness of its strategy and plan.

Attached Files

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