Does international evidence suggest who the best empowerment partner might be? The answer is that the present employees of the company are in many cases the best bet. After all, from CEO down to the gatekeeper, they run the company every working day. Read the rest of this entry »
The issue of BEE ownership in a business is the dimension most often equated with empowerment because of the way empowerment was viewed in the late 1990s. We equated equality with equity, which, while it has a basis, cannot be the only aspect of transformation. The second reason ownership has such a high profile is that it is the criterion most explored from a preferential procurement perspective, meaning preferential procurement scoring is based solely on ownership for most charters and for the First Code (if you are outside a charter). Read the rest of this entry »
Most business people have a gut feel for what the client wants, which is built up over years of running the business and interacting with clients. However, it is more difficult to distil this sense into three simple, short descriptions of what your client values in your business. But, once done successfully, these descriptions can be immensely powerful in communicating the essence of the business to all stakeholders. Read the rest of this entry »
The current BEE Act, the First Code of Good Practice and the BEE strategy document, all released in 2003, are the cornerstones of government’s plan to give impetus to broad-based empowerment by 2014. This legislation has direct bearing on the current BEE requirements for your business, and as a consequence needs to be studied in some detail. Read the rest of this entry »
One of the biggest problems with BEE initiatives is that they become one person’s responsibility, and one person cannot change an organisation. Read the rest of this entry »
Becoming an empowered company is not good enough. Soon all your competitors will have achieved similar status. Your company will need to do better than that. Whoever has undertaken the transformation process in the best way will be the winners, not those who have merely transformed. The key lies in transforming your business to become black empowered while simultaneously creating a sustainable competitive advantage. Read the rest of this entry »
