Interested in taking over the world?

A new South African business book, Going Global: Insights from South Africa’s Top Companies, recently launched, is going to become a South African business classic.

Like Jim Collins’s famous book about great American businesses, Built to Last (which was followed by the even better-known, though not quite as good, Good to Great), Going Global looks at some of South Africa’s top companies – MTN, SABMiller, Standard Bank, Anglo American and the like – and the ways they’ve expanded their businesses beyond South Africa’s borders.

Compiled by MokyMakura in association with the Gordon Institute of Business Science and published by MME Media, Going Global is less a textbook than a collection of entertaining stories about the organic nature of South African businesses’ growth into overseas markets over time. The book is made up of 13 chapters, each of which focuses on a chosen company. A handy “cheat sheet”, entitled “Top 10 Tips for Global Success”, ends each chapter. Top tips include “Be humble” (Standard Bank), “Don’t be afraid to try something new” (Imperial Holdings), “Aim high” (Sappi) and “Be true to who you are” (Anglo American).

Makura, of MME Media, says: “I believe that stories are the most effective way of communicating messages, and the stories in Going Global deliver a very definite message about South African corporates.They are very dynamic, globally competitive and can be benchmarked against the very best in the world. Going Global tells the story of how South Africans have confidently taken their brands and their way of doing business to the rest of the world, and done it with the type of confidence usually reserved for Westerners!”

Flow’s very own Colin Ford, who is the manager of our writing and journalism team, penned the chapter on Hollard, which tells how a R20-billion business grew from a single underwriting licence, awarded to the late Robert Enthoven, a respectable insurance broker, in 1980. Today Hollard has operations in 10 countries across four continents, employs 1 200 staff and manages almost seven million policies.

Shoot, aim, apologise

But far from being a stiff and formal corporate, many Hollardites over the years have seen themselves as, well, cowboys. “Shoot, aim, apologise” (in other words do stuff, then figure out what you are doing and say sorry afterwards if you need to) has long been the company’s unofficial motto. One of the most entertaining tales in the chapter, for example, is about how Hollard ended up starting its first business outside of South Africa in Pakistan in 1998, after a tennis match. You’ll have to read the book to find out more…

Colin worked on the chapter on and off for several months, and was the perfect person for the job, not least because he has spent much of his career in corporate communications and writing about insurance –  including a stint at Hollard as head of internal communications from 2002 to 2007, and several more years with it as a consultant and freelancer.

Says Colin, “I loved working on the Hollard chapter of Going Global. It was a nice, meaty piece of work that allowed me to dig around in the group’s international engine room and get to the bottom of what really makes it tick. It was also good to spend time with the people behind the brand –  some of whom I used to work with when I was still at Hollard and others whom I met for the first time while researching the piece.

“Of course, there’s also the thrill of seeing your name in print and the smell of a brand new book. These little pleasures never diminish.”

Says Michelle Davadoss, Hollard’s marketing director, “We’re delighted to be part of the Going Global book launch. The chapter we submitted for the book is the end result of a great collaboration between Hollard and Flow Communications.

“The book studies the trials, tribulations and ultimately successes of some of the most iconic South African companies that have built formidable international operations. It reveals interesting insights, each unique to the companies profiled in the book. We’re sure readers will find it thought-provoking and that it will resonate with academics, entrepreneurs and people interested in inspirational business stories.”

Interested in taking over the world? Go get Going Global, available on Kalahari or at a book store near you.