Ryland Fisher
(This is a part of my notes for a webinar on “The New Normal - the essence of adaptability”, hosted by Resolve And Change Systems (RACS) yesterday. I responded to inputs by media owner Ingrid Jones and RACS staffer Amaan Phiri)
I want to thank RACS, in particular the CEO Craig Arendse, for giving me this opportunity to share my views with you. I believe in thinking out of the box and sometimes my ideas can make some people feel uncomfortable, especially when it goes against what is considered conventional wisdom.
For instance, I believe that we should not talk about normal, whether it is the old normal or the new normal. The reason for this is that what we considered normal was never sustainable and was built on a societal model that is seriously in need of review.
What Covid-19 has done is to expose the absurdity of what we considered normal.
Normal means huge inequalities between rich and poor – the biggest Gini coefficient in the world;
Normal means one of the highest unemployment rates in the world;
Normal means rampant poverty, much higher than in most countries in the world;
Normal means that, at the same time as our extreme poverty, we have a small percentage of our population owning and controlling most of the economic wealth in our country.
Our normal is premised on a set of power relations that determine much of what happens in society. These power relations are based on economic power, race, gender, sexual preference and other ways in which we allow ourselves to be divided. They find expression in things like racism, economic exclusion and gender-based violence. They also find expression in our obsession with material things. So, we think we must drive the best cars, live in the best houses in the best neighbourhoods and send our children to private schools. If we fail to do this, the assumption is that we have failed. This means that the majority of people in our country have failed, because the majority are poor and vulnerable and do not have material possessions to show off.
So, I prefer to talk about a new reality and, through the Covid-19 pandemic caused by the coronavirus, we have been presented with a beautiful opportunity – as both Ingrid and Amaan said – to define what we want as a new reality.
We should start operating now in the way that is different, that challenges the societal norms and that speaks to the kind of country and, indeed, world that we want to live in. We should all want to live in a society that is more equitable and in which things like racism, sexism and other inequalities – and the violence that often accompany them – are a thing of the past. We should want to live in a society based on mutual respect for everyone, irrespective of their status in life.
In defining this new reality, we should start off by defining ourselves. Who are we? How do we describe ourselves? How do others describe us? What do we want to do with the remaining years of our lives? What kind of legacy do we want to leave behind?
When you explore these questions, you can do it in different ways. One method that I often use on myself is to do a personal SWOT analysis. I try to identify my strength and weaknesses, and identify the possibly opportunities and threats. In this way, I am able to identify my weaknesses and see whether I am able to turn them into strengths.
Part of redefining ourselves – whether it is personally or for a company or organization – is to understand the environment that we are operating in and to understand the possibilities that exist. Sometimes, like Ingrid said, you should explore the things that you are passionate about but never pursued for whatever reason. You might find that you are good at it and are able to turn it into a remuneration possibility.
I like the part that Amaan said about the past informing the future, or words to that effect. Over the past few months, I have drawn on my experiences in life, in the media industry where I have spent 40 years and in the struggle against apartheid which informed much of who and what I have become.
When Ingrid spoke about how we used to do things in organisations, it brought back so many great memories.
In the early 1980s, I worked at an anti-apartheid community newspaper that was owned by organisations such as trade unions, civic and ratepayers associations, churches, sports organisations, youth groups and the like. Most of our decisions had to be taken in consultation with representatives of all these organisations. We had a lot of meetings, but surprisingly, we also got a lot done. We learnt that consultation, if done properly, does not have to slow you down.
I learnt most of my management skills during my time at Grassroots.
Years later, just after we became a democracy, when I became editor of a major mainstream newspaper, I realised that I would have to transform the paper – not only in terms of demographics, but in terms of how we worked and how we were perceived by the public.
I held a workshop with my staff where I tried to look at the strengths and weaknesses of everybody and asked them what they would like to do and where they saw themselves in future. I started with myself and said that if the consensus was that the best role for me was to sweep the office floors, then that was what I was prepared to do.
It was a difficult conversation because it went against the fearful culture that was predominant in our parent company at the time. This was a handover of a previous era, apartheid, which was based on keeping people in subjugation through instilling them with fear.
One of the things that I learnt early on in my management career is that it is never a good idea to think that you, as the leader, have all the answers. Even though you might have certain preferred outcomes, you need to be able to take your staff with you. Sometimes this involves making compromises. You need to value the collective input of your staff.
About 10 or 15 years ago, I wrote a book called Race and I conducted many workshops with companies and advised some CEOs about how to transform their companies. The first thing I would do was to tell them that transformation is more than replacing a certain skin colour with another. It is much more than a numbers exercise. It is much more than ticking boxes. Transformation is an uncomfortable process that should test all of us in terms of our beliefs and our values. But ultimately, transformation is about accepting the value of everyone who works for you and treating them with respect.
This lesson has been hammered home to us again and again during this pandemic. The virus does not know colour, class or gender. It doesn’t care how many cars you have or how fancy your house is.
Over the past few months, we have seen the importance of people we thought were not important. They have shown us that they can be more important than the CEOs and government ministers, at different times during the pandemic. I am not only talking about frontline workers such as health workers, but also cleaners, security workers, farm workers and shop workers, and others who we easily dismiss as being unskilled.
We need to go beyond saying that we appreciate their roles. We need to find tangible ways of paying them more and listening with greater appreciation to their voices.
Many of us have also had to revisit the way we view the most vulnerable in our society, especially people such as the homeless. Because of the huge economic impact of the pandemic, those in the middle class have begun to realise that there is vey little standing between themselves and being homeless.
One of the other things that has been exposed by the pandemic is the archaic management style of many of our leaders in organisations. Many leaders do not trust their workers and need to micro-manage them. Because of corona, managers and leaders have had to learn to trust their workers more, because they were not able to micro-manage them as in the past.
What the pandemic has shown is that work should not be about the hours you put in, but about your output. We have seen in many industries that output does not depend on where you work or when you work. We need to embrace technology, but we also need to embrace certain realities or life, such as that many women have been victimized in the past because they tried to balance their careers and looking after their children.
But we are all different. Some of us are morning people. Some of us like to work late at night. Working from home over the past few months have shown why it is important to be outcomes-based as opposed to worrying about working hours and when people take tea breaks.
Working from home has become the new reality for many of us. In many instances, this has not led to a reduction in productivity. It has in fact led to an increase in productivity. Many people have learnt how to balance doing their work while looking after children and, in most cases, this has led to greater contentment among many workers.
The pandemic has forced us to embrace what many people glibly call the fourth industrial revolution, with many of them not understanding what it means.
The fourth industrial revolution means embracing technology as a part of our lives and not being threatened by it.
Our new reality also involves helping people who are more vulnerable than us in whatever way possible. I am involved in a couple of feeding schemes and, I am glad to say, that in at least one of these schemes, we have started to develop food gardens which could lead to more sustainability for the people involved.
I have personally also reviewed my own service providers and, for instance, I now get all my fruit and veg from a small supplier in Mitchells Plain, who deliver to my home. The quality has been good and the service excellent.
One of my life mottos is “no problems, no challenges, only opportunities” and I have approached the pandemic in this manner, as I do most things in life. The pandemic has come at a huge cost, from both a health an economic perspective,. But we need to stop seeing the pandemic as a problem and as a challenge. Instead, we need to find ways of identifying the opportunities presented by the pandemic, not in an opportunistic way like some of the corrupt comrades, but in ways that can improve the lives of all of those around us.
We were completely unprepared for what hit us this year, and we all had to respond in ways that we have never anticipated. But we have responded, some of us better than others.
We have seen that government can deliver when we are in a crisis and maybe government needs to operate all the time like they are in a crisis, so that we can undo the legacy of apartheid and colonialism soon and not make excuses about why we did not do it in another 26 years of democracy.
But we have also seen that criminals and looters are prepared to exploit any situation, even a pandemic, to loot their pockets and we should be vigilant against this. This is an unfortunate reality in South Africa which will only be dealt with decisively once more people go to prison for corruption and robbing the state, which is effectively robbing the people of South Africa who pay taxes to maintain the state.
From a corporate perspective, we need to revisit how we value everyone who works for us because they are our most important stakeholders. A contended workforce inevitably leads to greater productivity which in turn can lead to greater profits.
From a personal perspective, we need to find ways of identifying the best person that we can be. We need to embrace the changes that the pandemic has forced on us and use it in our favour.
If we are able to learn from this pandemic and improve the world, our country and our community, then 2020 might not have been that bad at all.
