Sustanability was the watchword at a series of Think!Fest talks entitled Leadership for Sustainablity, hosted by Rhodes Investec Business School.
Sustanability was the watchword at a series of Think!Fest talks entitled Leadership for Sustainablity, hosted by Rhodes Investec Business School.
First up was Dale Hefer, who talked about the goals and challenges that South African marketing firms face, with specific reference to her own experiences when she started up her own marketing company, The Chillibush Group of Companies in 1998.
Hefer is the author of a book called From Witblits to Vuvuzelas: Marketing in the new South Africa. In referring to the difficulties that marketing firms face, she stressed that budget cuts and the shortage of skills are just a few of the difficulties that marketing firms face in South Africa.
In looking at the marketing sphere during the 2010 Fifa World Cup, she thinks the effects have been overrated. “Marketers have put most of their campaigns on hold, which has therefore dried up business for agencies.
A few big companies have benefitted from the World Cup, but its mainly the big agencies, so the lesser ones have been marginalised.”
She talked about how marketing firms often overlook well-established business concepts like overcoming competition and wise budgeting, which then would ultimately be their downfall, all the while giving practical examples by playing advertisements during her power point presentation.
One of her key points is that marketing in South African has become more theory driven, which then detracts from its effectiveness.
Kevin Coats is the co-founder of Tomorrow Today, a consulting company that focusses on the new world of work which encompasses keynote presentations, workshops and provision of resources to help clients understand key trends that are shaping the world.
His talk centered on changes in the leadership world and how sustainable leadership helps sectors of leadership change with the trends around them.
He believes that the changing world is linked with the changing workplace, which has a knock-on effect on the changing workforces.
Coats also talked about how experience in the industry can be detrimental for leadership, which he terms as “using old solutions for new problems.”
Mikhail Peppas, from the Cycles of Social Justice in Durban commented on how sustainable leadership can be applied in schools, where he sees teaching at schools as chalk and blackboard teaching.
“Technology is important, but where is the human element going to be? The human element must be integrated into technology,” adds Peppas.
In dealing with sustainable organisations, Judge Mervyn King, a former Supreme Court judge and a director in several Johannesburg Stock Exchange listed companies, talked about how sustainable marketing, sustainable leadership and sustainable organisations are interlinked, and how all three spheres have room for innovative thinking.
He outlined three parallel crises: financial, climate change and ecosytem/ natural resource crises, which affects how organisations are run and accepted by people around the world.
He also spoke about how communicated stakeholder relationships (CSR) are important to sustainable organisations, and how annual reports should be made clear to stakeholders.
He finished off with four key points of sustainable organisations which are to: Change Mindsets, Business as Unusual, Making More with Less and integrated reports including stakeholder relationships.
