In his wonderful book, “How will you measure your life,” the late Prof Clay Christensen goes into some detail on how important a role managers play. He reminds us that the way a manager behaves not only affects their direct reports at the office, but because they take their moods home, entire families.
BizNews community member Sizwe Belu takes it further, building on recent suggestions on how to help tackle SA’s unemployment problem: “What everyone takes for granted is that there is leadership to coordinate (even something as simple as) skills development in the government. I am a leader in the private sector. The truth is that even with shrinking private sector (you would have expected that companies can pick the best from all the retrenched leaders) the quality of leadership (in the private sector) is poor. If that is the case in the private sector, how much more in government?”
And here’s one from the group which I regard as the true heroes of any country – the entrepreneurs. Detlev Börner wrote:
“Firstly, thank you for your daily news and insights, my first port of call with my coffee in the morning. I have also attended many of your talks and dragged my children along to learn and hopefully take over the reins of the family business. We are now into the fourth generation, with my daughter joining our admin department last year.
We, like Anthony Krijger, must be one of many small business that should be recognised for our contributions and not face new irrational hurdles in an attempt to rectify, which is no longer the inequalities of the past, but the mess the ANC has got us into.
Our motto is, we employ on attitude – the rest we can teach and we have 40 employs with an average of 10 years’ service in the company.
The latest hurdle we now have to cross is that mines now require certified proof that our product is locally produced.
Which magically, has resulted in a new department at the SABS.
So now we have to add additional cost to our already expensive products, so that we can “compete” against cheap imported products. The DTI should be footing the bill.
But, we are going to continue sailing in to the storm and hopefully get through before the leaks are too big. A ship can only withstand a limited amount of battering before it eventually sinks or looks for a foreign harbour.
Maybe, our esteemed politicians believe that new businesses will take our place. Unfortunately we don’t have the skills to do this, if we did I would employ them immediately.”
Ending with Covid, Glen Griffiths asks a question that has been baffling me. Having been infected with Covid three weeks after being vaccinated, and having a number of friends and family members going through the same experience, it’s clear the vaccines do not prevent Covid. And that also means they don’t prevent vaccinated people who get infected (like I was) passing on the virus to others. Yet judging from emails I’ve received, many of our community members appear to be under the impression that vaccines are a guaranteed shield against actually getting the virus – much less getting sick or passing it on. Here’s Glen’s letter:
“I have to make two comments unfortunately relating to the virus and the vaccine – I could well labelled a conspiracy theorist but I am just using my God given matter to ask questions….
- Your mail mentioned South Africans may now visit France and as long as they are vaccinated they don’t have to quarantine – why don’t they have to quarantine if there are numerous reports of people who have been vaccinated testing positive for Covid after their vaccination? It doesn’t add up.
- In Port Elizabeth on Sunday a DA councillor Andy Jordan passed away from Covid – very sad as he was a very respected member of the community who did massive positive work, a great loss. What makes me wonder and ask why??? On Facebook pages where people were expressing their sadness at his loss among the comments were some mentioning their horror and surprise because he had been vaccinated, I also noted annotations from Facebook in these profiles where people were talking about this had been filtered out? I can only ask why? Also on the news in Herald Live and News24 what I found very odd was either no reporting of his death or it was reported he died of Covid but absolutely no mention that he had been vaccinated? I have a brain and I like to think I am intelligent and I can only say why???
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