A recommended book on corporate leadership is A CEO Only Does Three Things by Trey Taylor. Taylor argues that a CEO should only concern himself with Culture, People and Numbers. If any item in his/her diary does not have a direct impact on these three things, it is a distraction that should be delegated to someone else.
Dr. Chris van der Merwe tells me his father died when he was three and so he grew up with only a mother and one sister. He had a wonderful childhood in Goodwood Western Cape despite what he describes as abject poverty. His mother really believed in him and inspired a lot of confidence in his ability to make something great out of himself.
On the road to becoming manager of finance business operations at Invicta Holdings, Odet Hayes went through many teachable moments at Edcon. The highlight of her time at the clothing retailer was working on the Edcon private equity deal when the company was delisted and taken over by Bain Capital LLC in 2007.
You’ve likely encountered the term CSR frequently, especially since the early 90s. No, I’m not referring to CSIR, the scientific research body headquartered in Pretoria; I mean Corporate Social Responsibility. Occasionally, ‘responsibility’ is replaced with ‘investment,’ transforming the acronym into ‘CSI.’ Both terms are often confused with their newer counterpart, ESG, denoting Environmental, Social, and Governance.
I think the mistake people make is thinking that if you plan it out on paper that it will all work out. They think you just need to allocate this person to be the leader of this and that person to be the leader of that. In reality, you are introducing one group of individuals to another group of individuals and they each have their own views which are unlikely to be the same. With a professional services firm, an additional complexity is that they are owner managed businesses.