Ontrafel.
This Afrikaans word means ‘unravel’ and the way it feels in your mouth when you say it encompasses the way many of us feel in 2023. Familiar yet strange, slightly uncomfortable.
Whether it is geopolitics, economies or the social fabric of society, there is a great sense that things in the world are disintegrating. It is definitely not business as usual. However, where most people only see the unravelling, I see opportunity — especially around the neverending innovation that has become part of our everyday lives.
For entrepreneurs, there are many unintended consequences of innovation, both positive and negative. And it’s this negative aspect — the idea of what could go wrong — that entrepreneurs must remember. The American writer and visual artist William S. Burroughs said: “The best way to keep something bad from happening is to see it ahead of time… and you can’t see it if you refuse to face the possibility”. In the context of business and entrepreneurship in the 21st century, this cannot be emphasised enough. This is why it is imperative that, no matter at which stage of your entrepreneurial journey you are, you must prepare for the future.
Why?
As with the introduction of any innovation, you can expect society and how it operates to change. Social change — which Southern New Hampshire University defines as ‘changes in human interactions and relationships that transform cultural and social institutions’ — is extremely complex. The true impact of social change on brands and businesses is often underestimated and can lead to unforeseen derailment. Therefore, if your small business or brand has a purpose it is committed to, you will be better able to connect with customers, build trust and drive long-term success.
With the expansion or growth of a business, new problems will emerge that will require different solutions to those used previously. This includes the reciprocity or interplay between the business’s core products or services and its consumers’ future needs. Entrepreneurs and small business owners, especially, have limited engagement with the future, which is understandable as many are simply trying to keep the ship going. Yet it is imperative that they look to the future and continuously recalibrate for change as was made clear during the COVID-19 pandemic, from which two major concepts emerged. Firstly, some businesses embraced a more human-centric approach — they empowered employees and suppliers with experiences that helped drive customer outcomes instead of investing only in the customer’s perception of a brand. At technology, digital transformation and consulting company Capgemini, for example, the business prioritised employee feedback to help understand what’s best for employees. This created a positive brand image that had knock-on effects on talent attraction, employee retention and customer perception. Secondly, many businesses also began adjusting their processes to meet the velocity of change that occurred with the introduction of concepts such as working from home and innovations such as the contactless economy. An example of this is the surge of mobile money wallets across Africa during the pandemic, which surpassed the half-billion mark. Unlike businesses that remained within the confines of what they know, i.e., preferring their comfort zones or, what we call, maintaining a ‘feasibility preference’, businesses that adopted these concepts experienced positive results, specifically for their bottom line.
However, financial success is just one aspect of being an entrepreneur. Many business owners seek to make a meaningful impact, one where their business becomes their legacy. In Flux Trends’ studies of the new workforce, which is composed of Generation Z (Gen Z), the demographic cohort succeeding Millennials, employees and consumers alike place importance on the purpose and impact of what a brand or business does, fuelling the concept of generational responsibility, which refers to how businesses have an obligation to consider the impact of their actions on both current and future generations.
This brings us back to the opportunities — the disruptor trends — presented by the challenges occurring during the ‘unravelling’.
How can entrepreneurs harness these to keep going in an era of continual disruption, ensuring they take generational responsibility while building their legacy?
During the pandemic, there was an acceleration of innovations. This often occurs during histories where there is a ‘global moment’ of humanity being thrown into disarray. When this occurs, people have an impetus to do things differently — and this, for me, is that window of opportunity.
A great case study is that of Delivery Ka Speed, a local delivery service outside Hammanskraal, a township 30 kilometres north of Pretoria’s central business district. Delivery Ka Speed is the brainchild of a Gen Zer, Godiragetse Mogajane, who saw a gap in the market: providing delivery of fast foods within townships and informal settlements. What’s most striking about this example is that deliveries are made on electric carts, demonstrating how, even in times of crises, a young entrepreneur also prioritises sustainability while providing a much-needed service. On a global scale, Uber partnered with public transportation apps in certain countries to help people finish a journey on a secondary mode of transport if Uber was not the fastest option, such as when there is a big traffic jam and it would be quicker to take a train. While this may seem like a terrible business idea because essentially, Uber is giving someone else (in this case, the public transport) a slice of the pie, my take is that you’re still getting a slice and finding a solution for the consumer. In the minds of consumers, the brand has their best interests at heart and so the consumer then repays the brand with loyalty. For entrepreneurs, undertaking what is known as an Integrated Service Pivot, where they analyse their business offerings and undertake research to stretch beyond those boundaries, just as Uber did, provides that opportunity to redefine their processes or models and secure the future of their business.
Psychologists are often quoted as saying that it takes 21 days to instil a new behaviour so what types of behavioural change have occurred over 24 months of lockdowns where employees have been working remotely? It’s obvious that everyone has reassessed their lives and what is important to them. More specifically, unlike previous generations who prized hustle culture, promotions and moving up the corporate ladder, the younger workforce is questioning the ‘infinite growth’ that businesses present to them as aspirational. And the question that business owners and entrepreneurs, and perhaps even consumers, need to ask themselves is, ‘When is it enough?’ This feeds directly into another opportunity — and also a massive learning curve for many corporates — resulting from the pandemic: a change in management styles.
Pre-pandemic, middle management, or functional management, were viewed as timekeepers. To use stereotypical language, these managers displayed very masculine traits such as competitiveness, being driven, cracking the whip and finishing everything. Post-pandemic, a more feminine style of management has emerged. This type of leadership is about empathy, mentoring and understanding and assisting employees to scale their career portfolio as opposed to moving up their career trajectory. Often, this management style also embraces upward feedback, or feedback from the employee to the manager, which can be extremely beneficial to both employees and the business. Additionally, managers would do well to embrace the concept of performance and learning zones, where the learning zone can be likened to the training of a high-performance athlete who spends 95% of their time training while the athlete’s performance zone, where they achieve great things such as winning a gold medal at the Olympics, only comprises 5% of their time. In comparison, businesspeople tend to spend almost 100% of their time in the performance zone, keeping their heads down and trying to keep the business going when in reality, they should be allowing themselves and their employees more time in the learning zone. By finding and nurturing the best thinkers within a team and allowing them to do deep work where they focus on tasks instead of being interrupted constantly, managers can achieve a results-only work environment (ROWE), which prioritises outcomes over time spent doing tasks — or, in simpler terms, giving employees the freedom to work whenever and wherever they want as long as they meet their business objectives.
Over and above management styles, business owners and entrepreneurs reaching retirement age should consider a ‘rewirement’ instead of retirement. Felix Global defines rewirement as the next “phase of life that combines continued work, leisure and personal growth”. American gerontologist and psychologist Ken Dychtwald explains that because humans in the 21st century live much longer than humans who lived during any other period of history, we now experience a third age that occurs from age 60 through 90, with your first and second ages being your development years from zero to 30 and your professional life, including finding a partner and building a family, from age 30 to 60. So where many people retired in their sixties, now they have two or more decades of life left where they can continue to find purpose, whether that is in their personal or professional lives.
Given all these new concepts that have arisen from the ‘Great Unravelling’ we are currently experiencing, here are three questions to contemplate as you forge ahead with your business pursuits:
- Are you guilty of a feasibility preference in your business?
- What are your performance zone and learning zone ratios? Do you even think about that?
- What is your pledge to start your rewirement process and think about your business differently?
Dion Chang is a trend analyst and founder of Flux Trends, a consultancy that specialises in translating global trends into business strategy, where his passion lies in assisting companies to embrace change and embedding a culture of innovation into corporate operating systems. With a 20-year tenure in media, he continues to write for City Press and Acumen, the C-suite business quarterly for GIBS business school. Dion also lectures and has conducted Foresight and Innovation Implementation modules for executives and senior management at business schools including GIBS, UCT’s Graduate School of Business and Duke CE. He sits on the advisory board of the Centre on African Philanthropy and Social Investment at Wits, has published three books and has devised and hosted three trend conferences.
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This article is based on the keynote speech presented by Flux Trends founder Dion Chang at the Motse Collective Impact Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Gathering 2023, hosted by Allan & Gill Gray Philanthropy South Africa in partnership with the African Institute for Entrepreneurship and the Hasso Plattner d-school Afrika at the University of Cape Town. The inaugural two-day gathering provided a space for ecosystem builders, policymakers and entrepreneurs to collectively reflect on the state of entrepreneurship and the actions required to enable an equitable society in South Africa.
Sources:
MCI EE Gathering 2023 Plenary Day 1 (video)
MCI EE Gathering 2023 Keynote transcript (rough)
Southern New Hampshire University: What is Social Change and Why Should We Care?
Business.com: Do Results-Only Workplaces Really Work?
Felix Global: From Retirement to Rewirement: The Ultimate Guide to a Purpose-Driven Life
