Category: From the MD’s Desk

Looking back at life, most people will be able to identify definitive (often pivotal) moments that changed their life. Some were positive moments, while inevitably, some were negative moments, but with a positive impact over time.

In this brief post, I will share four of the most profound lessons I learned in my adult life. They shaped me, they formed me, and they challenged me. The four lessons all come from mentors. Interestingly these are people whom I have never met. I have listened to them but mostly read their books.  It makes me think about another lesson I learned: “You will be the same person from five years now, except for the people you meet and the books you read”. Or, stated differently: “Leaders are readers”.

The first lesson: “If you change, everything will change for you”. These words of wisdom came to me when I was fresh out of Business School—full of dreams and ambition, ready to change the world but with a business on the verge of failure. It just did not make sense: how can I fail? On that day, when I heard those words, I realised that change needed to come from within. I could not change the world, only myself. And on that day I started my journey of focussing on what I can change. I read philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, leadership, biographies of both failures and successes, and much more. And over the years, it prepared me for the next lesson.

The second lesson: “Work harder on yourself than on your job”. It emphasized that one needs balance. One needs to make sure that as an employee/employer, I needed not only to be excellent at my job, but also excellent at myself. This insight paved the way for my continued journey of reading and engaging with people and learning from them.

The third lesson: “Luck is something you attract by the person you become”. This was further validation of the above lessons. We are seldom lucky. One can rarely attribute success to only luck. I learned that by developing my own skills and talents, I was becoming more “attractive” to the world out there. When the opportunity came knocking at my door, and the door opened, it saw a much more attractive prospect which invariably led to success.

The fourth lesson: “First education, then philosophy, then attitude”. All the above came together in this fourth lesson I learned. Success always starts with education. Not just formal education, but self-education too. We must start there. For, only if we learn and explore, can we formalize our own philosophy about life, work, relationships, success, etc. Once we have crafted our own life philosophy, we culture a unique attitude to life. In my case, an attitude of gratitude and positive expectation. If you mix these around, starting with attitude, you land up with an idiot with an attitude.

Enjoy the journey!

Article written by Dr Tienie Stander

I am not sure if it’s only me, but lately, I feel that I am suffering from Covid-small-talk-burnout (let’s call it CSTB, yet another acronym!). Almost, without exception, it seems that any interaction, with anybody, being work, friends or family-related, starts with the latest “news” on Covid. Inevitably, when you join a virtual meeting and there are a few minutes’ before all the attendees join, the discussion will be Covid. When colleagues “meet” up again after some time of absence, the meeting starts with Covid. When meeting with friends for lunch or dinner, Covid always seems to creep into the discussion. We compare notes; it almost becomes an Olympic game about who has the most extreme news.

I am not in any way questioning the severity of the pandemic. I do have big concerns about the impact on society at a micro and macro level. I get it. It is a huge tragedy. It is newsworthy. It is important.

However, my call-out today is this: let’s stop placing Covid at the center stage of our daily informal discussions. Let’s remember that there are so many other good things to talk about. Let’s get some balance back in our lives when it comes to the things, we “small-talk”. Let’s resist CSTB. Rather talk about the relief brought by the recent rain, the full moon of last night, the amazing sunrise last week, your child’s first step or words, your colleague’s great accomplishment. Ask questions to your audience, be genuinely interested in them and their world, family, achievements, and challenges. Tell a joke of a funny story that happened to you or someone you know.

An attitude of gratitude and positive expectation goes a long way to turn negatives into positives. When we make this a habit, our brain’s neuroplasticity creates pathways that leads to repetitive behavior. The old saying “Whether you say you can or you can’t, you’re right”, holds true. In this context, seeing is not really believing.  Believing is seeing. What we believe is what we see (also called our biases). When we believe we can, we usually can.

I argue that we all can make a choice to focus on a balanced “small-talk” agenda and decide not to be captured by Covid in all our activities. But, in the final analysis, whether you say you can do this, or cannot do it, you’re right.

Article written by Dr Tienie Stander

By this time, reading this short article, I assume you know our company, VI Research, where we operate and what we do. However, do you really know us? Do you know the softer side of the company construct and what we stand for and what we aspire to? As a young man, I was exposed to the Johari Window concept by a friend. It is a framework created by two psychologists to better understand and manage our self-relationship and relationships with each other. It argues that the more you know yourself and the more you allow others to know about you, the better the relationship (that is, opening the Johari Window). From the MD’s Desk is Kumen Chetty’s brainchild and is an attempt to allow us to open that window on VI Research: to allow you to see more about us. It is an attempt to showcase the softer side of the company and to leave the strategy and commercials behind for a while. Kumen suggested that we share something about the company, monthly and that we thereby open the VI Research Johari window to those who are curious to know us better and ultimately foster even greater relationships. Accordingly, this is the first of these monthly short articles.

“From the MD’s Desk” is NOT about the MD, or his personal brand or a brag session. It is about the company we love to work for and the values that drive us. Therefore, the vision of “From the MD’s Desk” is to communicate the actualization of the values we aspire for in VI Research. Actualization in this context means how we make these values real, tangible, and part of our day-to-day operations. Our monthly posts will therefore circulate around practical ways in which we live our professional lives. In this way it will become an exposition of the value-centered company clients are dealing with.

To begin with, I, therefore, want to start opening the window to our DNA. I want to talk about or vision and purpose and values. Our slogan “Let our work and actions benefit humanity” as well as the five values that guide us, is a collective of our personal aspirations and values. That is what makes us cohesive and is part of what makes us get up in the morning to do our job. Our values revolve around passion: Passion for people; passion for integrity; passion for robust science, quality and innovation; and passion for a sustainable future through a new world company.

Allow me to focus on the last one today, namely our passion for a sustainable future through a new world company. Over the years we have been grappling with what a new world company looks like; how do we move towards that envisioned future; how do we balance these aspirations with commercial realities, and in these deliberations, we came up with a rough framework of what a new world company looks like.

The first pillar of this framework is that an employee (we prefer team member) should be viewed as a total being. Team members are partly employees, but as much; they have families, friends, social structures, challenges and life as it happens. As a new world company, we aspire to view team members as such, a complete ecosystem of which work is only one part.

The second pillar revolves around the work environment and how we might create the best, most conducive work environment, and obviously, working from home seemed to be the optimal work environment for the team. When Covid reared its head in 2020, we were already far along this road and had discussions of how to operationalize this. We now have a flexible hybrid model working from home, but access to office space as and when needed or preferred by team members.

The third pillar revolved around shared values. We believe that a new world company will be driven more by purpose than profit. We believe that to have a shared purpose, we need to ensure that we share the same core values. Therefore, in recruiting talent, the number one criterium will be to assess the value system of new candidates.

The fourth pillar is the active endorsement and adoption of the digital transformation that is happening now and is bound to escalate as we move deeper and deeper in the 4^th Industrial revolution. This principle goes hand in hand with a new world company and we, therefore, need to be at the forefront of digital innovation and creativity, both internally and for our clients. A new world company needs to disrupt the status quo.

Let me end off with a quote by Gandhi:

“Your beliefs become your thoughts,
Your thoughts become your words,
Your words become your actions,
Your actions become your habits,
Your habits become your values,
Your values become your destiny.”

Article written by Dr Tienie Stander