BEE Partner, South Africa Economy Watch

The strength of a country and/or a business organisation, and therefore the strength of its strategy, is created by its human capital. At the heart of strategic thinking lies the purpose of preserving the environment: at the macro-level, preservation of the economy, whilst, at the micro-level, preservation of the industry participants. Few firms think about this. Individual agendas focus on maximising profits and, in neo-liberal market economics, maximising shareholder value at the expense of social values. Yet contributing towards industry and economic preservation benefits a nation in the long term and gives it economic strength, as well as the wherewithal for competing on the global stage.

Training

Before an organisation formulates a strategy, or even introduces the strategic process into its infrastructure, it has to be ready to receive both the strategy and the process. The same is true for a country. A nation and its people have to be ready for strategy, as they Will be the ones who will have to implement it. In other words, the correct internal environment needs to exist before strategy has any chance of succeeding. An important aspect of preparation is having a well-educated population, or, at the very least, the infrastructure to educate the people. Writing in the Korea Times, Shin Chui-ho, an elementary school teacher, says insightfully: ‘Whether a nation collapses or prospers depends on the quality of its education and the competence and passion of its teachers.”‘ It is interesting to note that, against global trends and thinking, the South African government actually created an education crisis by retrenching thousands of qualified teachers and closing down many teacher- training colleges. This has resulted in a chronic shortage of properly qualified teachers, a problem compounded by the fact that countries such as the UK are successfully recruiting many of our teachers to help fuel its own human capital development, which can then be used against us in the global arena.

A good example of the education crisis facing South Africa lies in the field of mathematics and science. According to Ann Bernstein, executive director of the Centre for Development and Enterprise, `The maths and science education system is failing to deliver enough school leavers equipped with higher-grade maths and science to meet the needs of the education system, let alone the needs of the economy.’” This has been borne out by the results of a 2004 study conducted by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement. Out of 50 countries tested for Grade 8-level mathematics and science proficiency, South Africa came last.

Essentially, the model suggests that a collaborative process should exist between national government and industry in terms of producing the right quality of human capital, a process that needs to involve all major stakeholders, particularly teachers at all levels in the country. Given that South African industry spearheads the country’s business endeavours in the global arena, it makes sense for them to work with government to produce the right calibr_{e o}f human capital, which can then be developed into a national asset. Government and industry need to create the right conditions, which will prevent South African human capital from bein_gpoached by other countries.

Discipline

Strategy is rendered redundant if the country or company does not look after its people. In today’s competitive environment, both need every single person in the organisation or country to implement strategy by doing what they do best. This will never happen if people are not happy working in that environment, or if the organisation’s management or the country’s government does not look after its people. A company that is only interested in money at the expense of its employees will not implement strategy, never mind formulate an effective one. A country that tries to formulate and implement a national strategy without having a high sense of discipline in its society may never reach its true potential.

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