Here now & tomorrow v3

HERE, NOW & TOMORROWBonisile Makubalo

www.bonisilemakubalo.blogspot.com

Agenda• South African Context:

• Constitutional aspirations• Our societal values• Poverty• Inequality• What is your role?

• Some Questions on Leadership• Know thy Self• Summary• Questions



CALLIBRATIONMy views:

• Can and should be challenged• The inverse often has merit• Positives and Negatives are acknowledged• I don’t hold dogmatic views• Feel free to criticise – I don’t hold intellectual

property to wisdom

My Request from you:

• Open mind• Critical assessment

CONSTITUTIONAL ASPIRATIONS


Section 198(a) of the Constitution provides for a South Africa where its people, “as individuals and as a nation shall live as equals, in peace and harmony, free from fear and want and being able to seek a better life.”

OUR SOCIETAL VALUES


Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act provides for:“The transition to a democratic society, united in its diversity, marked by human relations that are caring and compassionate, and guided by the principles of equality, fairness, equity, social progress, justice, human dignity and freedom.”

POVERTY


The state’s own report, Towards A Fifteen Year Review, while pointing to a “six to seven” percentage reduction in income poverty amongst African people, acknowledges that African people continue to account for a “disproportionate share of poverty.” According to the report, while African people made 77% of the population in 1995 and 79% in 2005,” they accounted for in both years “93% of those living on less than R322 a month.” This trend cannot be left to continue if we are to achieve our constitutional aspirations.

INEQUALITY


A more worrying development is the increasing gap between the rich and the poor over the last 16 years. According to the state’s Towards A Fifteen Year Review report, “national income inequality as measured by the Gini coefficient increased from 0.64 to 0.69 between 1995 and 2005 and continued to do so from 2006 to 2007.”

The income inequality and other forms of inequalities in South Africa are still manifest. In the context of our history and the current global food and financial crises, these challenges constitute a serious threat to social cohesion and stability of the country and inform, to some extent, many of our current political, economic and social challenges.

Role of Business in General


Business Power:

On the power of corporate entities and their influence in society, Joel Bakan, in his book, ‘The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power’, observed: “Over the last 150 years the corporation has risen from relative obscurity to become the world’s dominant economic institution. Today, corporations govern our lives. They determine what we eat, what we watch, what we wear, where we work, and what we do. We are inescapably surrounded by their culture, iconography, and ideology. And, like the church and the monarchy in other times, they posture as infallible and omnipotent, glorifying themselves in imposing buildings and elaborate displays. Increasingly, corporations dictate the decisions of their supposed overseers in government and control domains of society once firmly embedded within the public sphere.”

Role of Institutions of Higher Learning


Challenges:

• Transformation

• Viable Funding

• Producing skills needed by the economy

• Producing graduates with soul

• Managing change

• Leading social discourse

• Courage for intellectual independence

Intellectual AbsenceAnother important issue on the curriculum is the broad challenge to have innovative methods to expand the intellectual horizons and critical faculties of our students. For example most of our social, economic and management sciences are dominated if not enslaved by a single idea that the market is the answer to all of our societal and developmental problems. Yet this idea has just been cruelly exposed by the current global economic crisis, such that it is an idea that in itself is in crisis. One does not get a sense that these matters are being critically examined in our academic institutions and public discourse.

By Minister of Higher Educationwww.bonisilemakubalo.blogspot.com

What is YOUR role?


In any society, ours included, citizens either play a positive or negative role. While some citizens uphold the law, promote positive values of the society and advance its interests; some citizens break the law, ravage other citizens and plunder their resources.

What role do you play??

Questions on Leadership


• Who of you are leaders?• What makes you a leader?• What do leaders do?• Would you be elected leader if your

subordinates/friends could vote?• How do you define leadership?


Conventional Leadership

Leaders in business lead AND manage.

There is no sharp distinction between

leadership and management.

They occupy positions of authority.

Leadership is a formal role.

They make strategic decisions.

They are good at managing people.

They have emotional intelligence.

They sell the tickets for a new journey AND

take the group to the destination.

Leadership Reinvented

Leadership = promoting new directions.

Management = getting things done.

All employees can promote new directions.

Leadership can be shown bottom-up or

sideways to people who don't report to you.

Leadership has nothing to do with managing

people - that's management.

Leaders don't make decisions. The ACT of

leadership is one of pure informal influence.

Leaders sell the tickets for the journey,

Managers drive the bus to the destination.

What is Leadership in the 21st Century?

Challenges facing Leadership1. Family, peers and societal pressure to succeed ahead of our talents and

skills.2. The market pressure to perform ahead of business realities.3. Different ethical norms when dealing with people from different cultures or

countries.4. Short term perspective – Quest for instant gratification.5. Success itself.6. The worst is greed.7. Abundance of bad role models.


KNOW THY SELF

By Plato

If there’s no enemy inside, the enemy outside can do us NO HARM

African Proverb

Success or Failure is always an inside job

John Maxwell

What do YOU stand for?


• When did you last take stock of where you are and where you are going?

• How clear are you about your strengths and weaknesses?

• Do you have a strategy for your life?• Have you defined success for you?

• You are Totally responsible for your LIFE !• Are you in Total CONTROL of your life??• Have YOU made a choice to be here?• If you have, are YOU achieving your OBJECTIVES?

Know Thy Self

SummaryWe must show that intellect, application, diligence, creativity, innovation, service, judgement, integrity and just plain hard work will succeed long after the dishonest opportunists have been forgotten.

We must protect our reputation with strong character and sound judgement and we must nurture it in the knowledge that we cannot talk our way out of a situation we have behaved our way into.

We must accept that we cannot apply one set of ethics for our family, a second for the office and a third on the golf course.

We have to accept that there’s an expiry date on blaming others for your actions.

You have to claim and take full charge of your life. What is there to loose?

Your future will only be limited by the choices you make

WHAT WILL MATTER.By Michael Josephson

Ready or not, some day it will all come to an end,There will be no more sunrises, no minutes, hours or days.All the things you collected, whether treasured or forgotten, will pass to someone else.Your wealth, fame and temporal power will shrivel to irrelevance.It will not matter what you owned or what you were owed.Your grudges, resentments, frustrations and jealousies, will finally disappear.So too, your hopes, ambitions, plans and to-do lists will expire.The wins and losses that once seemed so important will fade away.It won’t matter where you come from or what side of the tracks you lived on at the end.It won’t matter whether you were beautiful or brilliant.Even your gender and skin colour will be irrelevant.

So what will matter? How will the value of your days be measured?

WHAT WILL MATTER.By Michael Josephson

What will matter is not what you bought but what you built,not what you got but what you gave,What will matter is not your success but your significance,What will matter is not what you learned but what you taught,What will matter is every act of integrity, compassion ,courage or sacrifice that enriched, empowered or encouraged others to emulate your example.

What will matter is not your competence but your character.What will matter is not how many people you knew,but how many people will feel a lasting loss when you are gone.What will matter is not your memories but the memories of those who loved you.What will matter is how you will be remembered, by whom and for what.

Living a life that matters doesn’t happen by accident.It’s not a matter of circumstance but choice.Choose to live a life that matters

Live each day as though it was your last, cause one day it will probably be true!

Thank You