A team of analysts at Nedbank Group (Nedbank) had generated a solution to an important client-centered issue, but the solution was not welcomed by the operations team. A business executive at Nedbank created an opportunity for the creative design team and operations team to collaborate. A solution was successfully implemented in 2019 and the executive and analysts’ team leader were summoned to present their ideas at a business banking executive committee meeting to demonstrate how their initiatives supported the bank’s strategic direction. Would the executive committee agree to invest capital in new ways of work to move the bank forward on its digital strategy?
In 2018, the owner of a Sasol Limited (Sasol) fuel retail franchise in Pretoria, South Africa, was facing the challenge of how to continue growing her business by retaining her existing customers and offering the products and services they expected. A woman entrepreneur in a male-dominated industry, the franchisee had worked her way up the corporate ladder in the financial services industry and, after being retrenched from her position at a bank, had purchased a fuelling station. She now wanted to gather information on her customers’ needs in order to make an informed decision about how to scale the service offerings at her site to increase revenue, but she was unsure as to how to go about gathering this information. Various brands in the service station industry had seen decreased customer visits, and in this competitive environment, it was important to increase her efforts in building loyalty among her service station’s customers.
In January 2019, one of the founding members and current board members of Londvolota, a South African trust formed by General Electric South Africa (GESA) in 2015, faced a challenge. Londvolota needed to improve the establishment and growth of entrepreneurial South African businesses as part of GESA’s development of local suppliers, which aimed to enable the best of these businesses to supply the global GE network. The initiative represented a major contribution to supporting the South African economy; however, the board was considering updating its criteria for selecting the businesses for development. How should the organization adjust its criteria to avoid failures and increase the initiative’s success rate?
In May 2019, the head of Organizational Development and Talent for Comair Limited (Comair), was contemplating the dilemma of stimulating higher buy-in for team coaching—a program in formal leadership development emphasizing collaboration and shared responsibility. The long-standing chief executive officer (CEO) had just resigned. He had focused over the last few years on enabling a leadership style of collaboration where departmental silos would be removed and management structures would evolve to reflect a new way of working along functional rather than departmental lines. The head wondered how she could promote team coaching to a new CEO, and specifically, how she could help stimulate more interest and buy-in for team coaching. What could be done to help the teams that had undergone team coaching to sustain the newly learned behaviours, especially when the pressure was high?
In mid-2019, the chief regions and markets officer of the Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty SE (AGCS) insurance company was wondering how to grow the company’s innovation culture, and how to manage resistance from other areas of the business. AGCS was part of Allianz SE, a European multinational financial services company whose core businesses were insurance and asset management. Recent changes in the global landscape had been driven by technological advancements, and market leaders would need to consider using new methods and innovation. AGCS had set up a new corporate incubator to accelerate digital innovation. However, the digital innovation incubator's journey was not without challenges and learning curve issues, especially during its initial stages. Within 18 months, the new corporate incubator was fully entrenched within AGCS. The next steps involved finding the right key stakeholders and strategic thrust to help it thrive.
In September 2019, the founder of Carmién Tea, based in South Africa’s Western Cape province, faced a dilemma. Her company, founded in 1998, was a producer and supplier rooibos tea, which was unique to the mountainous area north of Cape Town. After a new South African government was elected in 1994, the deregulation of the agricultural industry enabled the founder to start a rooibos export company. This political environment and the founder's entrepreneurial orientation shaped both the firm’s origins and its early internationalization. As 98 per cent of the company’s sales were being exported and 84 per cent were still sold as bulk, the founder needed to determine whether the company had the resources and capabilities to ensure that the Carmién Tea brand and its value-added sales would grow in an increasingly competitive international environment. Where should she begin?
In late 2018, a female entrepreneur, the founder and chief executive officer of Candi&Co, South Africa’s first ethnic hair salon franchise faced a dilemma. After launching in 2014, Candi&Co had quickly expanded to five locations. The founder’s priority was to continue to grow the business; however, she had been approached about selling her business to South Africa’s Long4Life investment group, which was acquiring the Sorbet Group’s companies, including Candi&Co. The entrepreneur had set out to change the way consumers felt about their hair, to offer a service they did not believe they deserved, to professionalize an industry, to empower stylists, and to grow the industry in a sustainable manner. Would selling to Long4Life allow her vision to materialize faster than she could do it on her own? Or would she need to break away from the Sorbet Group and continue building her vision alone?
On October 25, 2018, in Johannesburg, South Africa, Dr. Jonathan Broomberg (CEO Discovery Health) and Dr. Craig Nossel (Head of Vitality Wellness) consider their dilemma of how to make Vitality Move more attractive to the lower-income market and increase the programme’s uptake. Vitality Move is a wellness programme for the lower-income market, launched in 2017. It has a low membership uptake by the KeyCare benefit scheme members. The two leaders are faced with a challenge to devise ways to strategically target the lower-income group to improve employee productivity, decrease the burden of non-communicable diseases and influence positive lifestyle decisions. The case features the initiatives undertaken towards creating shared value.
On June 30, 2018, the founders of Mkhiwa Trust, Johannesburg, South Africa, considered their dilemma of deepening their impact in South Africa, using education as a key vehicle to bring about systemic change. The case highlights the evolution of their mutual support throughout their careers. The tragic death of their young son had far-reaching implications for the couple and their business interests, their career aspirations and the focus of many of their future business and philanthropic initiatives. It also defined a number of choices taken by the couple since then. The story of these individual leaders, who support each other in their businesses, illustrates the power of a couple as servant leaders.
Patrice Motsepe, the son of a small business owner, grew up in Apartheid era South Africa. He founded Ubuntu-Botho Investments (UBI) in an attempt to provide historically disadvantaged South Africans with access to the financial sector. In 2003, UBI entered into a partnership with Suid-Afrikaanse Nasionale Lewens Assuransie Maatskappij (Sanlam). Through the diversification of UBI’s and Sanlam’s business models and with a dual focus on economic and social value creation, the inclusion of a large base of black South Africans in the economy was facilitated. Now, in 2018, Motsepe was on the brink of sealing another historic deal with Sanlam. However, how should this second Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) deal be approached by both Motsepe’s UBI and Sanlam, taking into account the extended shared value framework developed for BEE transactions?
Karabo Morule is the managing director of Old Mutual Ltd. Personal Finance in South Africa. In June 26, 2018, she is leading a team through the company’s process of organizational change. The dilemma she faces is how to retain the heritage of a shared values-based culture, while also modernizing and strengthening it to express a new customer-led approach with the focal point in Africa. Old Mutual Ltd. is the largest financial services provider in Africa, and it is attempting to retain certain aspects of its culture, such as its core values of respect, integrity, and accountability, while changing other aspects of its culture to include being a champion of the customer, the power of diversity and inclusion, and trust, all amidst the major transition of its primary listing on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange as a Pan-African organization. The case documents the organizational change process, demonstrating culture and women in leadership as critical levers of a successful change process.
On January 8, 2017, Ronald Huggins, plant manager at AEL Mining Services Limited (AEL), needed to come up with innovative ways to keep his employees motivated. This need was driven by the downward trend of the local mining market. In 2011 and 2012, AEL had rolled out a major retrenchment, leaving employees with low morale and motivation, which in turn had affected performance levels. It became apparent that plant performance needed to ramp up. This was particularly important given the company’s strategic plans to expand internationally and focus 80 per cent of its business, rather than the current 20 per cent, on the international mining market.
On May 27, 2018, Maryanne Trollope, the Learning and Development (L&D) manager for Anglo American South Africa, was considering her dilemma of handing over her brainchild to her successor. The Building Leaders and Shaping Talent (BLAST) program was a flagship talent management program for young graduates in South Africa, and she wanted to ensure a smooth transition for her successor and to ensure that the BLASTers (BLAST recruits) developed relationships with her replacement. Trollope was meeting with one BLASTer, who had been on an international BLAST placement in London, England. She had to decide when to introduce this recruit to the individual taking over the program and what information and insight she should recommend the recruit share with her colleague. What were the critical success factors of the talent management program, and how could Trollope ensure sustained success and a smooth handover process?
AWARD-WINNING CASE - African Business Cases Category, 2019 European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD) Case Writing Competition. In 2014, an entrepreneur in Cape Town, South Africa, started SweepSouth with her husband. Their mission was to enable dignified home cleaning work for the most vulnerable blue-collar workers, and they offered several services to empower them. When the company struggled to meet the demand for domestic services over the December holiday period, the founders realized the extent of the market’s need to connect domestic workers with potential clients. Given the entrepreneur’s business acumen and her husband’s skills and experience in software development, they created a digital platform that was often labelled the Uber of domestic services. SweepSouth employed 40 staff members and had 8,000 contractors (referred to as “SweepStars”) on the company’s platform. In 2018, the two founders wanted to scale up the business for greater social impact and had to choose among expanding the business to other African countries, expanding the service offering to office spaces, or remaining focused on serving the home and adding new services such as gardening and plumbing.
On September 30, 2017, the general manager (GM) of Uber Technologies Inc. (Uber) for sub-Saharan Africa, arrived in Nairobi, Kenya, and paid for his Uber service with cash. This functionality of the Uber app represented a new business model for Uber. The GM had to convince global management of the business case for offering cash payment options in Africa; he did so by conducting experiments and showing data that indicated rider numbers had tripled with adoption of the cash payment option. Uber’s driver-partners were concerned about safety when they transported passengers who paid by cash, both because credit card payments offered Uber rider identification and because the driver-partners were concerned about driving around with large amounts of cash. In spite of their concerns, the rationale for introducing a cash payment option was relevant, and it had to be considered carefully in the context of African locations with high crime rates. The GM considered various initiatives for utilizing data from their technology platform to safeguard their riders and drivers. They needed to address local needs in Africa while adhering to global Uber standards.