Diverse teams are a winning business recipe
We in SA can choose partners from African, European or Asian descent
THE first couple of months of this year were marred by racial tensions that threatened to divide parts of our society — from inappropriate social media comments that went viral to unrest on university campuses.
These divisions within our society are the outcome of decades of post-apartheid issues that were left unresolved. They also stem from the fact that to this day our young people grow up separated by race or social class in their everyday lives and these divides continue on to our institutions of higher learning, even though students from different backgrounds are in the same lecture rooms during the day.
We are expected to work together in harmony, as if we did not spend our whole existence living in silos.
The first time I ever sat in the same classroom with someone who was not black was when I started lectures at the University of Cape Town. A culture shock of note — watered down by the fact that everyone ended up socialising and living with those who looked like them or fitted best with their social class.
This was also the place where I hired my first white employee, for a small business I was running at the time, incorrectly viewing this as some sort of achievement given the inferiority mentality I had from my upbringing.
As a society, we need to accept that for as long as we continue to grow up leading segregated lives, so too will we continue facing challenges in relation to studying and working together in harmony. Our businesses reflect the products of this background.
BEE is one of the main policies aimed at increasing diversity within our businesses because, even though the job market is open to all, the opportunities for advancement of people from less-represented backgrounds are still too few.
What many overlook is that there are financial benefits to building businesses with diverse individuals. Proven benefits include enhanced team creativity and adaptability because more varied solutions and ideas emerge from diverse teams. Diverse teams are also better at dealing with conflict, since everyone gets accustomed to the presence of varying opinions.
These work environments enhance the personal growth of the individuals involved.
The diversity is as beneficial to early-stage ventures as it is to established corporations, but is much easier to incorporate in the early stages.
The world is warming to the benefits of having more women in business, and soon we should similarly accept the benefits that come from incorporating other kinds of diversity.
There are some challenges that come with increased diversity, but none are significant enough to discourage us from even trying.
I encourage all of us to start building businesses that are led by diverse teams from the early stages of incorporation. Not just because it will allow the businesses of tomorrow to reflect the diversity of this nation, but because it allows our businesses to tap into the benefits of DEALING WITH CONFLICT: Students from the University of Pretoria gather outside the main university entrance to pray for a solution to the ongoing standoff on race and language issues on campus having such a diverse range of individuals easily accessible in one country.
We have the privilege of being able to choose business partners from African, European and Asian descent. We also have people who come from different economic circumstances living in quite close proximity to each other; in less than half an hour of driving, you may pass some of the richest and the poorest neighbourhoods we have.
We also have more official languages than most other countries — which means that for any new business opportunity, there are 11 ways that diverse teams can interpret it.
There are countries in the world where people do not have the option to interact with people from backgrounds that are different to theirs. For example, try diversifying your founding team in China, where more than 90% of its 1.3 billion people descend from one ethnic group. We have so much more diversity within our 50-million-plus population than the majority of countries globally.
When establishing our businesses, we must lean into diversity and embrace it in our founding teams. In the words of Stephen Covey, “Strength lies in differences, not in similarities”.
We must think twice before we partner with someone who is very similar to us but is unlikely to bring different experiences and perspectives. Only then can we be truly certain that we are making the most of the diversity that this country has to offer.
Let us accept and celebrate our diversity and reap the results — we all know this economy needs to see behaviours that will lead to good financial results.
In the words of Stephen Covey, ‘strength lies in differences, not in similarities’
Sikhakhane advises and funds African entrepreneurs. She is an international retailer, writer and motivational speaker, with an honours degree in business science from the University of Cape Town and an MBA from Stanford University Comment on this: write to letters@businesstimes.co.za or SMS us at 33971 www.sundaytimes.co.za