IMFO & PwC Partnership for the Women Leadership Seminar in the Public Sector March 2015, Summerstrand Hotel Port Elizabeth

Transcription

1 IMFO & PwC Partnership for the Women Leadership Seminar in the Public Sector March 2015, Summerstrand Hotel Port Elizabeth Amplifying the voice of leadership beyond equity Path of excellence Speech Programme Director Distinguished guest All protocol observed Good morning ladies and gentlemen As introduced, I m Nana Madikane (Partner at PwC based in Johannesburg). I m the member of the South Market Area Executive Committee. Transformation & Diversity and Inclusion Leader. I m also the Oh by the way I thought let me mention this, I m considering freelancing as an actor in my spare time, I m really honored to be her today, thank you to the organizers for inviting me. I d like to share a bit about PwC and our Commitment to Gender Mainstreaming. A few years ago, our Global Chairman, Mr Dennis Nally, decided to include Diversity & Inclusion to our firm s strategic priorities.a A Global Diversity & Inclusion was appointed to drive the D&I strategy, supported by D&I leaders in the different territories and countries. For us this demonstrates leadership commitment and the right tone at the top remember that without leadership commitment gender mainstreaming will just be a pipe dream At PwC we are now seeing a mindset shift - our leader are starting to understand the business case for Gender Mainstreaming, and acknowledge that in these uncertain times,

2 characterized by rapid changes challenges and the disruptions brought by the global Mega trends - diversity of views, skills and competencies is key to the success of businesses going forward. In addition, to demonstrate our commitment, the global and local leadership teams have approved measurement index which will measure our progress on diversity and inclusion and strengthen accountability. As the South African firm, we continue to make progress in driving the gender mainstreaming agenda. The chairman of our SMA board is an African female, The EMA Regional Senior Partner is an African Female, We have three female Senior Partners leading the firms in Ruanda, Kenya and Zambia. Our Board has just above 25% female representation and the executive committee 20% female representaion. Over 50% of our staff complement is female, and we continue to improve our female percentage of partner admits every year (average above 30% for the past 2-3 years). As a firm locally and globally we are also supportive of a number of initiatives that seek to contribute gender mainstreaming agenda; we are the main sponsors of the gender mainstreaming awards, and we have signed up as one of the founding members of the 30% club, a global initiate that is driving for 30% representation of females on boards and executive management structures. You might be aware that PwC has over a number of years published an annual Global CEO survey, which captures what s on the mind of the top CEO s globally and in the country. For the first time this year the CEO survey had a whole chapter dedicated to diversity and inclusion. 64% of the CEO s surveyed indicated that they have Diversity and Inclusion strategies adopted, and 13% of the balance indicated that they will be developing D&I strategies soon. Talent diversity and inclusiveness are no longer seen as soft issue, but rather as crucial competitive capabilities.

3 Of the CEOs whose companies have a formal diversity and inclusiveness strategy, 85% think it s improved their bottom line. Over 70% of these CEO s believe that diverse teams: attracts talent, enhances business performance and innovate more. We ve also released a report on a Female Millennial study, two days ago (females born between 1980 and 1995). The results are fascinating. They show that female millennials are more highly educated, have higher levels of career ambitions (so aim to reach top positions) and higher levels of career confidence ( are confident about reaching senior levels in their careers). I think this is positive..shows that we are moving in the right direction and the pipeline is developing. The focus should be on managing and maintaining this pipeline, and making sure that we have clear retentions strategies to reduce attrition. Please go to our website to download a copy. I ve been asked to speak about the path of excellence. Like all other speakers I also jumped on the googling wagon: I googled what excellence means: Excellence is a talent or quality which is unusually good and so surpasses ordinary standards. It is also used as a standard of performance as measured e.g. through economic indicators. Excellence is a continuously moving target that can be pursued through actions of integrity, being frontrunner in terms of products / services provided that are reliable and safe for the intended users, meeting all obligations and continuously learning and improving in all spheres to pursue the moving target. I d like to make this real and personal. so please allow me to draw from my personal story that you ve just seen on the video I know that my story in not unique, most Africans have similar stories to tell, But for me this story is about my path of excellence. It s a continuous reminder of how striving for excellence got me through challenging life situation to get to where I am today. As mentioned on the video, my father instilled the value of excellence in us at a very young age..

4 He made us believe that we can be the best of ourselves, and can always push ourselves to do even better. I remember when we were in primary school, no matter how good our report cards were, he would ask us why we missed the other 10%. We were quite young at that point and did not understand why nothing was good enough for him, but now as adults we realise that He planted a powerful seed in us, a belief in our abilities and the drive to always do better. Excellence and authenticity go together.it produces other qualities such as courage, resilience, determination and drive to reaching your potential. As you heard on the video, we lost our dad when I was 12, and that belief that I can do better and giving the best of me in everything that I do, carried me through difficult life situations and challenges. I received a few questions yesterday on how I made it as a partner at one of the big 4 auditing firms. My answer to that is striving for excellence and confidence in my abilities. I remember when I started university, I was discouraged by my peers I will not make it through BCom mainstream as most black people don t. My attitude then was if one person made it, I ll be the second one. Same thing happened when I did my post graduate degree. Most black people did not even attempt to do post grad at UCT, but I told myself that I ll make it. And I did..it was not easy though. I must say that at this point my confidence was on the high. I entered the work sphere with the same attitude, striving for excellence continued to push myself at PwC, gave more than 100% effort in everything that I did, and went through ranks quite quickly. But at that stage my technical abilities carried me. (I ll come back to the point, why technical abilities will not carry you through the leadership process). I quickly want to touch on the confidence - we must not make a mistake of confusing excellence with perfection. Excellence means doing the best you can and taking risks, which means you can fail, learn and grow from the failure and do better next time. To be excellent you need to have the capacity to learn and acquire further skils. Our biggest issue as females, we think excellence is synonymous to perfection, so we bit ourselves up when we fail and then we get scared to take risks. We limit our own selves by believing that we are not good enough because we are not perfect.

5 I m sure you are aware of women who were appointed in senior positions, who doubted their abilities and looked for every reason why they are not adequately qualified for the role, why they are not ready. Our male counterparts on the other hand will go for it even when they have only 50% of the competencies required, and they are always ready to take the risk. As women we generally want perfection, we over analyse why we got the promotion pointing out why we don t deserve it because we don t know 100% of a subject matter. We don t want to take risks. How many times have you set in a meeting and felt that you did not deserve to be there as you are not an expert in the topic being discussed. kept quite throughout the meeting because you were scared of asking something stupid. This in turn hinders us from achieving our potential. We recently ran another programme called Aspire to Lead targeted young females as universities and those that just started work. This year s theme was Building confidence and we asked the question What would you do if you were not afraid. We had a webcast with two successful writers (Katty Kay and Claire Shipman, who wrote the book The confidence code. They shared their stories on how they realised that they needed to build their confidence in their leadership journeys and how they went about this. All of them effectively said they forced themselves to take more risks. If you can, get a copy of their book. I would advise you to buy a book with a t I believe that excellence and confidence are the two qualities that can play a significant role in the gender mainstreaming agenda. I m one of those who believe that believe that gender mainstreaming should be viewed a business issue and not a gender diversity issue (i.e a female pity party). Businesses are starting to understanding that gender mainstreaming addresses the need for diverse skills, competencies and diverse views on boards, which are key to the success of businesses in these rapidly changing times. What does this mean for us as female leaders: 1) continuously develop yourself challenge yourself to grow and step out of your comfort zone. 2) re-invent yourself by acquiring relevant skills. As an example technology is currently taking over the world and disrupting businesses in certain industries, so if you don t re-invent yourself by acquiring

6 technology relevant skills you ll be limiting yourself in terms of future opportunities. Infrastructural projects is another one. 3) Innovation is key to the success of organisations in this rapidly changing environment therefore you need to continuously try new ways of doing things and be adaptable to change. One of the speakers yesterday mentioned the challenge of a shrinking fiscas resulting in shrinking local government budgets.we therefore cannot carry on with business as usual innovation is key in order to do more with less. 4) We need to be able to articulate our business proposition. As Ms Zondi alluded, you cannot divorce yourself from the mandate or strategic objectives of your organisation your value proposition is how you are contributing and helping the organisation achieve its mandate or strategic objectives. When you get to certain levels in climbing the leader, your technical skills are no longer recognised as something that differentiates you from others. 5) We need to be proactive (we need to put our hands up), takes risk and have confidence in ourselves. I also want to touch on your responsibility as leaders in local government - Various speakers yesterday touched on the role of local government to drive government s mandate and priorities. Striving for excellence in our service delivery and enforcing accountability are key to achieving these goals. This starts with us In striving for excellence, you can influence your teams to do the same, in turn they can influence others around them, and the circle excellence grows.a number of people driving to reach their potential grows, thereby building a nation motivated to do better and hopefully this result to a nation that strives to be the change they want to be. Remember that as leaders we are influencers: Our success is therefore measured by how much of a positive impact have we had on others. Our country has so much potential, so can be the force that drives change in our county. In closing: The theme of the conference is Amplifying the voice of leadership beyond equity As Mr Sidwell Mofokeng alluded women need to speak up and make their voices heard they should be in the fore front in driving for gender transformation.

7 Executive Mayor Kekane said we must stop checking out as women let s be confident in our abilities let s continue to develop ourselves and let s go for it (take risks) As the late Mahatma Ghandi once said Be the change you want to see in the world We can be the change we want to see in our country.