A driven techie and a keen gardener

Avid off-roader and businessman Johan de Villiers shares the five key words that help him win in his tech company, while the Mount Nelson’s garden designer tells her life story. By Patricia McCracken.

My 5 key words: Johan de Villiers

For most tech entrepreneurs, adrenalin highs such as piloting your own helicopter, overlanding through Africa or summiting the highest mountains on each of the world’s seven continents are an escape. But Johan de Villiers, CEO of Cape Town’s First Technology, saw how this married with his business philosophy. Overlanding Through the Boardroom (Rockhopper Books,

R375) is part lively travelogue, part punchy business handbook. Five things that drive him:

1. Innovation: I was born in Pretoria, raised in Stellenbosch but spent a considerable time in the US as my father was a professor at UCLA. I think some of the Silicon Valley vibe rubbed off on me while attending school there, and the University of Stellenbosch’s emphasis on innovation reinforced this.

2. Mindset: Having a competitive mindset allows me to make high-quality decisions at high velocity. I decide with about 70% of available information on hand to get first-mover advantage rather than wait for 100% and

lose a potentially lucrative opportunity. Equally, if the decision turns out poorly, don’t be afraid to ‘fail fast’. 3. Off-road thinking:

Through my love for offroading and motorcycles, I’ve met a number of farmers who also love racing. From them, I realised our IT company could encourage farmers to embrace innovative technologies, and now fruit farmers and exporters have streamlined their operations, saved on costs and compete better globally.

4. Map-reading: Relying entirely on GPS and mobile phones leaves you completely lost if they pack up. Being able to read a map and use a compass are essential explorer skills, and part of being aware and prepared.

5. Dream farm: On my bucket list is a beautiful game farm, somewhere remote in Botswana. Farming’s one of the most challenging careers anyone can choose; most of our farmers are great problem solvers.

Shirley, The Life of a Botanical Adventurer by Shirley Sherwood with Ivan Fallon (Unicorn, R500)

Sherwood looks back on nine decades fully lived. Developing an early interest in both gardening and wild plants from her mother, a botanical artist, she secured a rare place for a female scientist at Oxford University. After studying botany, she moved into biochemistry.

Her happy but tragic first marriage was followed by a marriage to buccaneering American businessman Jim Sherwood. Together they built up a chain of exclusive hotels and revived the Orient Express trains. One of those hotels was Cape Town’s Mount Nelson. She vividly describes how she personally tackled redesigning the gardens. It would have been interesting to hear more about her ‘botanical adventurer’ side. She’s a global patron of botanical art, from Kirstenbosch to the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, where she’s endowed a gallery.

The Art of Belonging by Eleanor Ray (Piatkus, R390)

Amelia’s ideal partnership with husband Tom seems to be imploding and she’s facing her worst nightmare – that she might be “all career and no time for her daughter”, like her mother Grace, once a high-flying engineer. When Tom moves on, Amelia has to move herself and daughter Charlotte in with Grace for a while, in scenes that are fraught with 21st-century generational angst as well as pure family grief.

Then Grace’s secret talent for miniature railways is revealed, at first amusing and later literally sanity-saving for one of the new young people in her life. Being back together in the family home also means that the silence around the death of Grace’s son, Amelia’s little brother, gradually defrosts, but doesn’t give way to an instant spring of reconciliation. Insightful and gently but probingly explored, this compassionate novel is thought provoking.