Now is the time to stand up for SA

The economic crisis is our problem to solve

TWO successive quarters of negative economic growth indicate that South Africa has slipped into recession. This is cause for grave concern as we are banking on economic growth to address many of the country’s issues.

But I hope that this time we reconsider the manner in which we normally react to economic crises.

Let us shy away from the typical dejection and finger-pointing mode when responding to economic shocks. Instead, we should be open to taking ownership of the current reality as it is and start figuring out what we need to do to change things around. This requires collective action. It requires multidimensional stakeholders coming together to achieve that which is bigger than themselves.

However, let us also not make the mistake of believing that collective action means scheduling a summit or conference to discuss, debate and align. This can waste a lot of time and often leads to excellent resolutions being signed off and beautifully designed reports being created, without any one person or organisation taking responsibility for achieving actionable outcomes.

When these gatherings end, people forget how bored they were and leave feeling proud of themselves for having contributed their thoughts and dedicated their time, even though not much will follow from it.

This is similar to people expressing their opinions on social media about issues that concern them — as soon as they get enough likes, they feel fulfilled and move on, even though they have not taken any action to address those issues. This is mere lip service. When we take active, collective steps to address the country’s most pertinent issues, it cannot be lip service. We need to understand that collective action can succeed only if the role-players involved are already taking action as individuals and not waiting for the collective before anything can be done.

Collective groups of stakeholders stand to learn a lot from each other if everyone comes to the party with a list of interventions they are working on.

There is no need to wait until we all agree on the way forward before taking remedial action.

That can be a complete waste of time, especially since it can take months, if not years, to agree on how to proceed in a manner that best serves the interests of everyone involved. Multidisciplinary stakeholders will always have conflicting agendas.

Nevertheless, when working towards the same goal, we must understand that the desire for consensus should not be the excuse we use for not taking action. After all, we are all working towards achieving the same outcome. We all want the country to revive its economic growth levels and achieve prosperity.

How many times have labour, business, the government and the community clashed when they tried to collaborate? Years later, they are still trying to find efficient ways to collaborate, and it all remains pending in discussion mode. Imagine if each stakeholder chose to take action in the interim. We would be more likely to see tangible results, however small, long before the collaborations are finalised.

Collective collaboration models work well when the individuals involved make an effort to play their part, not when they wait for everyone to work in sync — it never happens.

In organisations, most of us have seen what happens when multidisciplinary teams attempt to work together on the same thing — quite soon, people become disengaged because of unnecessary complexity, and then no one does anything because they thought someone else was taking care of it.

We need to start living in a world where successful collaboration rests on individuals taking responsibility for their actions and outcomes. Where the collaboration model benefits from the lessons learnt by the individuals. The collective does not always need to start with a clean sheet.

It will be a challenge for individuals to get used to taking action on their own, especially because we would often rather have a leader somewhere out there who dishes out the orders and is thus responsible for the outcomes.

That era needs to end. We are all leaders in our own right, and we remain responsible for the country we live in. In the same manner in which we confidently lead our own lives and careers, we should start having the confidence to lead the nation through the individual actions we take to solve the challenges that cripple our economy.

We might get it wrong, but if we do, at least we learnt something. Once we consolidate the lessons learnt among multiple stakeholders, we will soon discover that the nation is sitting on a gold mine of insights.

We remain responsible for the country we live in

Sikhakhane is a global speaker and business strategist on leadership, entrepreneurship and doing business in Africa, with an MBA from Stanford University