I’ve been lucky enough to attend one event where Vusi Thembekwayo was the guest speaker. Fortuitously, I had just moved to the Mother City to head up Flow Cape Town and as Flow’s representative I was invited to the glitzy Cape Town Tourism AGM held at the Tsogo Sun. That was in October last year.
I was then – and still am – as green as grass in the management seat, and hungry for any advice that would help me understand how to position and grow Flow Cape Town into a lean, mean, delivery machine.
I haven’t had another opportunity to hear Vusi speak. But once was enough. After listening to his swift advice for players in the digital communications space, he fast became my “mantra guy”.
Not that he passed on some secret Sanskrit quote that would free my karma and liberate my soul, but at that AGM he dispensed nuggets of pure gold guidance in the form of simple business rules that I have mused over ever since.
I have thought, and rethought, about his insistence that businesses in an ever-changing digital environment need to be more like yachts and less like ocean liners in order to survive.
Build a yacht to service customers: fast, efficient, agile. Thanks @VusiThembekwayo #CTTAGM @FlowComms @RoyBarford23 @FlowEastAfrica
— Kate Rau (@gr8thek8) October 29, 2014
I have tried to understand this small insight since the day I heard it. And I’ve been thinking about what it means for businesses like Flow, which play in the online environment and strive for growth, profitability and fame (well, almost).
But let’s rewind a bit.
Who is this Vusi Thembekwayo? On Twitter (follow him here) he describes himself as a global business speaker, private equity CEO and dragon with a deep love affair with Africa.
On his blog he presents himself as “a business speaker who empowers his audience with research findings, models and tools that they can immediately apply in their business to achieve leapfrog results”.
Not yet 30, fact is Vusi is the youngest Johannesburg Stock Exchange director in South Africa. He has made Entrepreneur of the Year finals twice, and Emerging Enterprise of the Year finals once. He speaks on a professional network, tours the globe and was labelled “a f*ckin’ great speaker” by Sir Bob Geldhof. It’s safe to say that Vusi’s an overachiever.
Get a good look at him on Instagram:
Vusi’s game-changers
I’ve collated a few golden guidelines from Vusi’s talks over the past few months. These “Thembekwayoisms” should keep every business owner and/or manager up at night, thinking,
1. Aim to be the best, not the biggest
At last year’s E-Tourism Africa Summit, which kicked off in Cape Town in September and was dedicated to digital advances in the tourism space, Vusi spoke about doing business in Africa. His advice for anyone entering new territory (physically and digitally) is to aim to be the best – not the biggest. So often businesses have a myopic focus on growth, which can leave quality of work as a side dish. By staying focused on being the best, you stay true to what it is you are best at – and while you might not grow, you begin to own the space you play in.
2. Be brave
This is one of my favourites, and is a true reflection of how Vusi has tackled challenges and growth in his life and career. For a business to be brave it needs to be bold. It needs to be willing. And it needs to have courage. How do businesses embody these virtues? Is it in their management, their structure? Something worth thinking about ...
3. Being inconsistently good is worse than being consistently bad
Take some time to think about that – Vusi phrased that rule in that way on purpose. What happens when you’re served a terrible meal in a five-star restaurant? You cause a stink. You expect better. And yet when you get an off pie from the garage, you half expect it. As a business, being consistently good is not an option – it's a must.
4. Results are not about intent, they are about action
Most, if not all, digital agencies want to create astounding work that surfs the trend wave and becomes a talked-about activation online – work that changes what is do-able “out there”. But what are we doing to harness that? Where are we looking for innovation, and more importantly – how are we creating it ourselves?
5. Build a yacht to service customers
Almost four months after I heard this, I’m still thinking about its relevance. The idea is that you don’t charter an ocean liner with hundreds of departments to help build a product that fits your client’s needs, you build a lean yacht – something that can change course quickly, something that won’t cost as much to run, something that can predict waves of change before they happen. Instead of keeping people pigeonholed into static positions, let them move and adjust according to the client’s needs, and according to the environment. This is business agility – and in the face of competition, this is what will help bolster your survival.
Advice for leaders
Vusi has some superb insights into how leaders can navigate the waters of change in ways that don’t make the yacht sink – or the people jump overboard.
Watch his video below.
