Sigmund Freud suggested that the two cornerstones of our humanness are to love and to work. That about sums up the source of human health and resilience. Babies deprived of maternal love fail to thrive physically and can actually die. Older children and adults may live but die internally and interpersonally without love as essential support for humanness. It is intriguing to think of work as a source of mental health on a par with love. We treat work as an economic variable, but underestimate its contribution to mental health and thriving, despite the corrosive effect of long-term unemployment being well documented. Apart from putting food on the table, work is associated with health (one study found unemployed people died a year sooner than the employed) and dignity. Maybe alongside Gross Domestic Product, we should measure General Dignity Provision. Too many people are suffering from hunger, but I suspect even more are perishing from the daily assaults on their dignity from being unable to support themselves and make a contribution to society. A drop of 7% in the country’s GDP is worrying in an abstract kind of way, but millions of people like those we meet every day falling into de-humanising despair is terrifying. With dignity goes social cohesion. Findings on unemployment and crime are mixed, but crime probably increases with unemployment among those who are most marginal in society. We know that the longer one is unemployed, the more difficult it is to return to the workforce. Large-scale unemployment threatens the social health of the nation. The long-term social impact of joblessness means that just as Melinda Gates said last year that no one is safe from COVID-19 until everyone is safe, so none of us is immune from the effects of the joblessness pandemic until work is available to all. The biggest source of employment across Africa is small and microbusinesses, but one of the pernicious effects of the pandemic is that these have been the most vulnerable. What has been the impact of Covid-19 on small businesses? In May last year, 87% of firms across Africa we were working with, in AMI said they feared for their survival. In fact, the failure rate may have been lower than feared. Amongst firms we work with, over 80% may have survived till now. Of course, we would expect more of our participants to survive than others, as they have had the benefit of training specifically aimed at surviving and thriving through the pandemic. And the statistics can be misleading – some have downscaled, surviving in name only with just the founder as sole “employee”, living on savings and waiting for customers to return. So my sense is that across the continent there are many thousands of these businesses shrunk to the very edge of survival. Can they make it? If we are nearing the end of the pandemic, these shrunken businesses can revive like bulbs in spring, and rehire their previous employees. We have seen that begin to happen. But if the pandemic remains a threat for the rest of the year and into next year, as is expected in many African countries, many of these bulbs will die in the ground and those jobs will be lost forever. Surely keeping small companies open until conditions improve must be an even better strategy for job creation than trying to encourage people to begin new businesses. They have relationships and knowledge and proved their viability before the pandemic struck. They cannot be blamed for this external threat. Clearly, there is a role for government and large agencies in this, but let’s all continue as we began last year with supporting our local small businesses. This week’s challenge: Can I save someone’s job? Jonathan Cook is a counselling psychologist and chairman of the African Management Institute. He is also the host of AMI’s weekly  Rise  reflection series focused on supporting you in your business and your personal wellness. This article was  originally published on BusinessLive on 15 March 2021 and is republished with permission. #JonathanCook #Rise #StaffColumn #Thrive

There were hours where I would look at the door to my shop and no one would walk in. I’d look at my phone and it just wouldn’t ring. While I waited, I’d refresh my browser looking for an email with a client order. You tell yourself, it’s quiet, this is the perfect time to work on my marketing strategy, get my taxes in order and finally fix that shelf that has been wobbly for months. Your heart is just not in it though. You feel powerless. What I remember most about those days, and how I think many business owners feel right now, is how lonely it was. How you felt that nobody else could possibly be facing the same issues and that the passers-by in the street felt pity for you. Now, a few years later, I am in a completely different career. I am one of those passers-by. I look into a shop or a bar and am surprised by how empty it is. But I don’t take pity, because what I know now, is that feeling powerless is not the place to start solving your problem. There is one simple solution to taking control of the situation, open doors for yourself. At the African Management Institute (AMI) our focus is to help ambitious businesses and business owners across Africa to thrive. In the best of times and the worst of times. We help those that are looking to grow and even those trying to survive in the face of the greatest market challenges.  Most importantly, right now we’re working to help you as you work to save your business. What AMI knows, and what we put into practice every day with our clients, is the principle of immediate applied learning and adaptation. We’re not talking about thick, difficult to read textbooks. In usual circumstances, there’s little time for that. Right now, time is of the essence. Traditionally, our programmes offer action-oriented, short courses that blend in person facilitated learning with online experiences and tools to help participants apply these strategies immediately for their business. In a COVID-19 world, we’ve temporarily adjusted our blended approach, pausing our in-person part and moving to fully-virtual engagements and interactions. Though different than our usual approach, we know this will help get you through the current economic downturn. These are tools that help you take control of your business, make cost and revenue forecasts, open your eyes to new revenue streams and show you where you can cut costs (or should delay payment). Across the continent, there are millions of small business owners who are very understandably worried. This is a time to survive. But in a storm, if you stand in the rain, you’ll most likely get really wet, and worst, possibly drown. It’s time to get out of the rain, it’s time to take shelter, it’s time to take control of your situation and take action to open doors for yourself. That’s how you can avoid the COVID-19 small business slump. Here are some actions that you can start to take with AMI at no cost: Sign up for one of our free Business Survival Bootcamps Learn more about our Survive to Thrive programme for African small and medium-sized businesses Learn more about all the other resources we’re providing businesses during this time Regardless of whether or not you engage in AMI’s programmes, we hope that you find a way to keep your business going and that the doors of opportunity start to open again soon. And if they don’t open on their own, we hope you’ll find a way to go unlock some doors of opportunity for yourself. Written during Covid-19 by Diederik Wokke AMI’s former Rwanda Country Manager and an experienced entrepreneur in the food and beverage industry.

For countless businesses in Africa, the coronavirus crisis means revenue has evaporated, product supply is stuttering, and cash reserves are dwindling. Will they make payroll next month? Will they even be able to operate? It’s hard to imagine life for entrepreneurs right now in Africa, where, even under normal circumstances, they must navigate political risk, weak consumer markets and unreliable supply chains – problems that would confound even their most battle-tested western counterparts. At the  African Management Institute (AMI), we found in a recent survey of entrepreneurs on our popular ‘COVID-19 Business Survival Bootcamps’ that 87% of business owners are worried about surviving the current crisis, while 67% say business has been hit hard since the introduction of social distancing, lockdowns, and curfews on the continent. Of course, times are tough for SMEs all over the world. But few African governments can extend the stimulus packages, tax breaks, and SME loan programmes that richer countries are offering. And many local entrepreneurs lack the tools, exposure, and education to navigate the crisis. There is broad consensus – at least in the entrepreneur support ecosystem – that SMEs are the engines of job creation for the continent’s economies. But what needs to happen to avoid massive business failure and subsequent job losses? What support do African SMEs really need? And what do they actually want? AMI has been running ‘ COVID-19 Business Survival Bootcamps ’ almost daily since late March, attracting over 1,600 registrations from business owners in 17 countries. We’ve pulled together survey data from almost 100 participants, as well as qualitative information from participants, to reveal five areas where African SMEs urgently need – and want – help. Admittedly our sample size is still small, but given the dearth of data out there, we believe it could be useful for funders, policymakers, and others trying to determine how to respond to this urgent need. As background, respondents came from 17 countries, but are concentrated in Kenya and Nigeria, followed by South Africa, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and Ghana. 53% have revenues of between $10k and $500k, with more toward the lower end of that bracket, and the average number of employees was 10. We did not collect data in this survey on length of time in business, but typically, AMI works with entrepreneurs who have been in business several years, rather than pure start-ups. Businesses were from a range of sectors. 1. Money No surprise here, Africa’s small businesses urgently need liquidity. More than 75% of entrepreneurs we surveyed believe a loan would help their chances of survival. But what type of money do they need, and how much? Not as much as you might think. Our data shows that 51% of those who want a loan need less than $50k, and 81% need less than $200,000. The median loan size needed is $42k. On average, these businesses employee 10 employees each. That’s not a bad price for job retention. Clearly more answers are needed around what terms business owners would be willing and able to accept, and it’s likely that only a fraction of those that want loans would qualify for them. But there is a clear and urgent need for short-term financing to avoid a catastrophic wave of business collapses, and job losses. The need is here. Funders, please step forward. 2. Cash is king: Support with scenario mapping & cash-flow management Cash is king, more than ever. 55% of the entrepreneurs on our bootcamps who are worried about survival cite cash-flow as their top concern. It’s always the first topic raised during our break-out discussion groups. Most business owners know how much cash they have, but aren’t sure how long it will last, and don’t have the tools or know-how to figure it out. Even owners of fairly substantial businesses often have a rudimentary understanding of cash-flow forecasting and financial management. For many, running a detailed cash-flow forecast is a light bulb moment that prompts them to take the tough but necessary – and urgent – steps to cut costs. By listening to what other business owners are doing, they identify creative ways to cut costs and improve liquidity. One entrepreneur sold non-essential equipment, others re-negotiated supplier terms, while another managed to successfully negotiate down her tax bill! We’ve developed some simple but robust tools to help entrepreneurs map out scenarios and forecast cash-flow, which can be downloaded from our online learning community or mobile app and immediately used in the business. 3. I’m struggling… where do I turn for help? For many entrepreneurs, this is their first time leading in a global financial crisis, let alone a pandemic. ‘Unprecedented’ is an over-used word, but it’s the only one that works. Entrepreneurs are feeling the weight of responsibility – not just for livelihoods, but for the health and wellbeing of staff, customers, and contractors. Bad decisions cost jobs and even lives. Many entrepreneurs on our bootcamps comment on how helpful it is just to connect with others facing similar challenges. We were fascinated to read about  Technoserve data showing that entrepreneurs during social-political upheaval in Chile in the past 2 years seemed to benefit from an in-house psychologist. After years of embedding ‘soft’ skills and leadership into our business programmes, this resonated strongly. That’s why AMI has enlisted our resident psychologist and leadership guru – also AMI’s co-founder and Chairman Jonathan Cook – to experiment with a  free daily guided meditation practice for our entrepreneurs. Rise already has 150 registrations, just a few days after launch. 4. What about my people? Leading in a crisis Business owners care deeply about their teams. While many are being forced to consider furloughs and lay-offs, just as many are working hard to protect staff, and want to know how to keep them safe at work, and motivated if working from home. In a quick poll we run at the start of each bootcamp, ‘My people’ is usually the second priority listed, after cash. Right after lockdowns began, my inbox was flooded with emails offering up ‘WFH’ (work from home) tips. But most focus on superficial advice, not the deep work of leading through crisis – decisive action, clear communication, ruthless prioritisation, empathy, compassion, clear thinking, then more communication. This crisis requires a new kind of leadership, whether you’re a venture-funded pay-as-you-go solar with a staff of 800, or a bootstrapped Nyama Choma joint with 10 serving staff. Most African entrepreneurs have never read Steven Covey, let alone had the luxury of a leadership retreat, or sessions with a business coach. So at AMI we’re working urgently on a ‘leading in crisis’ bootcamp, targeting entrepreneurs, but open to all. 5. Could there be a silver lining? What if…? Finally, we know that entrepreneurs need hope. Not empty quotes about positive thinking. But practical tools to help them imagine, plan, and test new opportunities. They need to hear what others are doing. They need exposure to different ways of doing business – whether that’s a whole new competitive strategy, or simply a ‘how to’ guide for shifting their business delivery online. Perhaps the most exciting – and encouraging – discovery from our data mining exercise, is that almost half of the comments captured from our bootcamp ‘break-out’ discussion groups focus on creating opportunities, rather than on dealing with problems. That’s an incredible statistic, given the context. Even in the face of the toughest financial crisis in a generation, Africa’s entrepreneurs are resilient. They are alive. They are hustling. They will thrive, but first they need to survive. Let’s ensure they get the tools and the short-term finance needed to get them through this. If you’re an entrepreneur and would like to join a FREE bootcamp, sign up here . Rebecca Harrison is AMI’s co-founder and CEO.

Lifelong learning, blended learning, just-in-time learning, just-for-you learning… Confused? Read on… As we near the end of the first quarter, we’d like to share 5 insights around learning trends we’re seeing among our clients across Africa. This is based on data, experience and feedback from working with over 15,000 individuals and dozens of organisations across the continent. Then over the next few weeks, we’ll share a series of posts about future trends that we expect to emerge during 2018 and beyond. Watch this space… 1. Companies and individuals are getting comfortable with online & blended learning. The past 12 months has marked a clear shift in how many African companies are thinking about technology and learning. AMI’s been offering online and blended learning for several years. But for the first few years, many companies were resistant. We had to work hard to explain to our clients why traditional training workshops alone just don’t work (read more about why in our report ‘Training Talent’). But recently, we’ve noticed a real difference. Companies like  Nestle ,  KLM, SC Johnson  and  GroFin  are tired of isolated training workshops and are seeking out a blended approach. They want programmes that include a web/mobile learning element, and support employees as they apply their new skills back on the job. Some companies, like Copia and Unga in Kenya, are even experimenting with online-only solutions for distributed workforces. We think online and blended is a great opportunity for a more practical approach to learning that’s embedded in real work, and are thrilled to see the tech-enabled learning that really makes a difference take off. Get in touch to explore how tech-enabled learning could work for you. 2. People trump everything – particularly in fast-growing companies People are typically your biggest asset and your biggest challenge. That’s even more true for fast-growing companies. It’s no surprise that our most popular programme by far remains our  Management Development Programme.  MDP is a 4-6 month practical learning journey for middle managers, supervisors and team leaders that focuses on core people management skills. Our MDP is particularly popular with companies growing rapidly, like  Qualihealth in South Africa ,  Pay-Go  and  Copia  in Kenya. These companies often need to quickly promote within to support growth and have many first-time managers who quickly need to learn how to get the best out of their team. We expect this trend to continue into 2018, particularly as the Kenyan and South African economies start to pick up and companies look at ways to differentiate themselves through excellent teams.  What these managers typically need most are soft skills – what we call personal habits.  This reflects our survey of Kenya’s HR professionals in 2016, which showed that 21st-century work-readiness skills and management ability are more important than technical and functional skills. Many of our clients admit to previously prioritising technical and functional skills but have realised in recent years the need to shift their focus to the personal habits of their employees in order to unlock productivity within their teams. 3. Senior managers and leaders want to learn to manage change Several of our recent programmes for senior managers and leaders have focused on change management or leading transformation. This has been driven by tough political and economic climates in some countries, rapidly evolving markets and the prevalence of high-growth companies in our client portfolio. Our ‘Action Learning Project’ approach allows managers on our  Leadership Development Programme  to work in teams on a problem or opportunity, that is often related to change within the organisation. Clients often cite the ALP as one of their most powerful learning experiences. 4. Setting Goals for Success Our most popular single course in the last 12 months by people and programmes using it has been our ‘Setting goals for Success’ course. This course is designed to guide individuals through the goal-setting process and most importantly in creating effective plans to implement and achieve goals. We have seen that setting realistic training objectives may be the most critical, yet the most overlooked phase of the entire learning and development cycle. Most training programmes head straight to facilitating classes, causing a tendency to rush through formulating realistic learning goals and objectives. Our course provides participants with practical tools to help set and track their goals throughout the programme and their careers. By the end of the course, individuals are able to use a series of tools to help set and monitor goals for personal and professional life, or for their businesses. 5. Just-in-time learning We started to sow the seeds of ‘just-in-time learning’ in 2017 and are seeing it take off this year. In line with  global trends , the smartest companies are moving away from one-off training events to having learning on tap anytime, anywhere and allowing it to be driven by the individual employee. It’s bottom up, instead of top down. It’s flexible, adaptive, personalised. And most importantly, it allows employees to learn what they want, when they need it, instead of forcing everyone to take the same workshop at a time that suits the company, often at great expense and with little impact. We’ve been watching this trend for a while, but like point one above, last year we really saw it take hold in our markets over the last year. Many of our clients completed one of our management programmes and then wanted more. Participants asked if they could continue to access our online content and coaching tools, many asked us to help them make learning part of the day-to-day culture, through skill-share sessions, group learning activities, or simply an online company learning academy. We’re thrilled to see this trend emerge because we think it’s where real impact will happen. It’s also much more efficient for companies that want to get the most out of limited training budget.  Get in touch  if you’d like to learn more about introducing ‘just-in-time’ learning at your organisation. We’d love to explore with you.

During the ANDE Annual Conference 2022: Resilient Entrepreneurship held in September 2022,  AMI’s partnerships and gender lead Patricia Maina gave a data-focused “micro-talk” titled “Balancing the Scales: Is There a Post Pandemic Boost for Women SGBs?”. Looking at the trends and the findings from our 2021 Impact Report , we review the five things female leaders and owners of MSMEs who participated in AMI’s business growth programmes did differently, that might set them apart. African female-led businesses were some of the hardest hit during the pandemic. According to the International Finance Corporation, female-led MSMEs reported over 50% of revenue loss during the pandemic . More than a quarter were forced to shut down their businesses, another half were forced to adjust their business models while 90% faced revenue losses.  However, there is hope, as female entrepreneurs repeatedly show through their resilience and readiness to embrace change, especially across Africa. At least that’s what data coming back from women-owned businesses participating in AMI’s business growth programmes is telling us; female-led businesses are not only doing things differently having survived the pandemic, they are thriving. Here are the five things that stand out to us in our data and what female business owners told us, that explain how and why female-led MSMEs in Africa are doing things differently and as a result moving the needle in their small businesses: 1. Upskilling is a priority for Africa’s female entrepreneurs Linda Grace Rugema, Little Smiles, Rwanda African Female entrepreneurs are taking the initiative to learn new skills that benefit their businesses post-pandemic. In 2021, 45 % of the participants in AMI’s business growth programmes were women. For Rwandan entrepreneur Linda Grace Rugama, taking part in AMI’s Business Survival Bootcamp has helped her improve the financial management of her children’s apparel business Little Smiles. “I wanted to find better ways of managing my business so that I could stay in. The training was resourceful, it came at a time when I really needed it. I was able to access the practical tools including the sales report tool, the stock keeping tool, purchase and expenses tool, that enabled me to manage and organise my business better.” Through skills learned at the boot camp, Linda was able to better steer her team by sharing the knowledge she had learnt on the course. 2. Women hire more women AMI has been committed to creating partnerships and programmes that align with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) including SDG 5: Gender Equality.  In 2021, partnering with Value for Women (VfW), AMI took a representative sample of the more than 1,000 businesses that had completed our flagship Grow Your Business (GYB) programme and analysed their financial performance and job creation metrics. The research shows that female-led MSMEs, created more total jobs for women, compared to male-led businesses in 2021. Additionally, women entrepreneurs created more jobs than male entrepreneurs, despite women entrepreneurs making up less than half of the representative sample. Significantly, female-led businesses create more jobs for women, with 72% of women entrepreneurs reporting a female employee headcount of more than 50%, compared to 42% of male entrepreneurs reporting a majority female headcount. This data indicates that female-owned businesses could represent the biggest and most overlooked opportunity for job creation for women in a post-covid world.  3. Training and supporting their employees is top of mind Patie Botha, Founder, Patie M Apparel Female-led MSMEs don’t just think about the leader of the business, they are likely to offer training to employees as a way to only better their skills but also encourage them to become self-reliant. Patie Botha, who took part in AMI’s financial management training, is one such entrepreneur.  Her business Patie M Designs, sells swimwear and lingerie for young upwardly mobile women and bespoke designs for men and children. In addition to running a profitable business, Botha offers training to young people in her community including pregnant teenage girls who face limited opportunities for education and employment. Once trained, these young girls either stay on and work in their business or leave to start their own.  Through the AMI programme, Botha has learnt to support her employees when it comes to creative problem-solving. “Before I gave an employee a task and the moment they encountered a problem, I’d solve it for them and end up doing the work. But the AMI programme taught me to support them in finding solutions. That way, my do-it-all tendency was overcome, for the good of my business,” says Botha.  In addition, she has learned how to delegate and use financial tools to keep track of her expenses. 4. Learning and knowing how to pivot helps women-owned businesses stay agile Wamaitha Karanja,- Founder and Lead Associate at Kernel Associates Female-led MSME’s continue to find ways to stay in business by embracing change and discovering new avenues for revenue. For Kernel Associates founder Wamaitha Karanja, taking part in AMI’s Survive to Thrive programme, enabled her to find new revenue streams that helped keep her human resources company in business. “We were kept afloat by a business line we’d not fully dedicated resources and time to. I was surprised by what a shift in mindset towards my business could do,”  says Wamaitha. She credits her success to the risk management, cash flow and strategic planning skills she learned during the program. “The AMI four action template is one among the many tools that I will carry everywhere I go. It’s through this template that I was able to identify what to eliminate, reduce, raise and create. Eventually, we survived! And to our surprise, we managed to pay off a few debts and increase our associates’ stipends.” For Karanja, what she had formerly relied on as her main revenue stream now contributes just 25% of the total revenue, the shift in mindset and business is what helped her stay afloat. 5. Teamwork makes the dream work Petronilla Maria Nzomo, Founder, Peca Catering Services When it comes to communication, female-led businesses tend to discard the top-down approach and lean into a more collaborative leadership style. By meeting their employees where they are, female-led businesses are able to better steer their teams and build trust. This rings true for entrepreneur Petronilla Nzomo who used the skills learned in AMI’s Survive to Thrive program to entrust her team with more responsibilities. “When I started my business, I was doing everything myself, from marketing, shopping and cooking, but now I have learnt to delegate. About 90% of what I was doing I have delegated and now I focus on the 10%, “ says Nzomo. Her catering company which was borne out of a love for cooking now also trains unemployed youth in cooking and baking as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Despite women-led businesses creating more jobs, they still face challenges and grow at a slower rate than those of their male counterparts. It’s clear there is a need for support that is data-driven and tailored to their unique needs. Business Development Services (BDS) support programmes such as those offered by AMI are helping to meet this need.  AMI has worked with VfW to better understand what aspects of the programme are essential to women and incorporated that into the programme design. We are also improving our value proposition for women entrepreneurs by continually analyzing our data to ensure we are responsive to their needs. And, last but not least, we’re amplifying the stories of women entrepreneurs who are building thriving businesses and creating opportunities for more women across the continent. If you would like to learn more about AMI’s impact and data from our programmes in 2021 download our 2021 AMI Impact Report: Skills to power growth and impact. For more information on AMI’s impact work supporting women entrepreneurs, please connect with Patricia Maina , partnerships and gender lead for AMI Impact.

When trauma strikes, people fall on a continuum between despairing helplessness and resilient energy. Times are tough in the country now. The news seems relentlessly depressing. Intense anger and impotence grow because so many of the problems currently closing businesses and killing jobs could have been avoided. The government seems to be unable or unwilling to get anything constructive done. In these times, what can those of us responsible for businesses learn from resilient people? Resilience begins in the mind. Renowned psychologist Martin Seligman explains that resilient people have an optimistic explanatory style. They interpret setbacks as temporary, local, and changeable (“It’s going away quickly; it’s just this one situation, and I can do something about it”). Leaders have to discipline their own thoughts to avoid sinking into a doom loop focused on all that is wrong. Our disillusion with people, the country and the future is a normal response and should be acknowledged. But once that’s done, it does not help to dwell on the bad stuff. If resilience begins in the mind, it continues in our conversations with others. We cope better and help our staff cope better if we steer the conversation away from circles of despair. This should not be irritatingly naive optimism, just a realistic acceptance that things are indeed tough, but that we will get through. And keep a few good news stories up your sleeve. The reality that influences us is created by what we pay attention to. Thirdly, resilience grows from taking constructive actions. We should be angry and we should express it, but in a way that provides energy for action, rather than draining us. What struck me while listening to a radio talk show recently is that anger seems to be slipping into despondency in some circles. That’s worse. “There is nothing we can do,” seemed to be the refrain. But there is always something we can do. And there are two reasons to do something specific and practical to make the situation better – even if just symbolically. The first reason is that doing something constructive helps our own psychological survival. A major contributor to negative stress is a sense of being helpless, of not being able to take control of what happens in our lives. Taking the first step to address a problem increases our sense of personal agency and adds to our resilience. And if we can act alongside others, that contributes another key element of coping – like-minded company. The other reason for doing something constructive is of course to make a difference. Private citizens or companies are fixing potholes, cleaning up streets and maintaining public gardens, creating jobs, refusing to allow representatives and officials get away with poor service. Imagine if all of us wrote a message or camped at the office of someone in authority to demand they do better. We could begin to influence the national conversation to support the assumption that the goal of public service is a healthy and productive public, not a license to loot. In doing this we should express our message in a way that models what we want to see – direct honesty with respect, understanding, and the highest ethical standards of responsibility. Finally, resilience comes from having a purpose in life and belonging to something bigger than ourselves. As Nietzsche said, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” Don’t let disillusion rob you of your life mission or the source of your faith in the future. When things get tough, that is precisely when this faith proves its value. The future will be created by those who have the faith and the courage to take action. Jonathan Cook, a counselling psychologist, chairs the African Management Institute. If you’d like to read previous columns in this series or ask Jonathan a question please visit  http://www.africanmanagers.org/jonathan-cook #JonathanCook

Networking is an increasingly important skill not only for career professionals but also for entrepreneurs who are thinking of starting or growing their businesses.  People are the most important asset of any business. They determine how you sell, where you sell, and who you sell to. For your business to grow and succeed, you need to be in contact with the right people. However, the people part of any business is more than the employees and customers. It also includes your supplies, distributors, social networks, and even your competitors.  In an episode of #AfricaThriveLive , CEO & Co-founder of Enda Sportswear, Navalayo Osembo-Ombati said “ Your networks are everything. In the darkest moments of the business, people have stepped up to help us in ways we can’t describe and they didn’t have to do it.” If starting or growing a business in 2022 is part of your goals, begin by building or strengthening your networking skills and watch your business Thrive! Benefits of Networking Whether you’re a professional building your career, or an entrepreneur working hard at a business idea, you can benefit greatly from networking. Here’s how:  1.Increase Your Knowledge By initiating and maintaining contact with different people, you create the opportunity for knowledge and idea-sharing through discussion and feedback. You not only get different perspectives on ideas and opportunities but also get direct learning from those with experience. Leveraging this knowledge can help grow your business tremendously. One way to do this is by attending conferences, events or entrepreneur training programmes like those offered here at The African Management Institute. These provide simple and effective opportunities to connect with like-minded individuals. 2. Connections The more people you meet, the more your social and professional networks grow. Additionally, you also open doors to their network as well. Making yourself and your business memorable with your connections increases the chances of them referring their contacts to you when the need arises. The key to remember is that networking requires both parties to be involved. Think of ways that you can add value to everyone you meet, and the chances of them referring your business, offering partnership or requesting your product or service increases.   3. Raising Your Profile People like to work or associate themselves with businesses that they can trust. Regularly attending relevant events increases the awareness of your business and makes you easily memorable. By placing yourself in the right place at the right time, and providing useful information or support, you can build your business’ reputation of being knowledgeable and reliable. If you’re already a business owner, creating an enjoyable and memorable customer experience is a great way to raise your profile. Customers are more likely to recommend your products or services to their networks when they are thoroughly satisfied. If you’re not yet a business owner, think of how your current skills could be useful to the people you network with. Add value to them and they will be more likely to buy into your offerings once you set up a business.  With over 1 billion people, Africa alone provides a great networking opportunity. If you’re looking for customers, mentors or a place to network in 2022,  AMI’s Thrive community is a great place to start.

Mental health problems at work are infectious. Of course they are not physically infectious, but depression, anxiety, and stress-related disorders spread between and within organisational boundaries through social contagion. This is the finding of three Danish researchers, Kensbock, Alkærsig and Lomberg, writing in the Administrative Science Quarterly. They found an epidemic-like distribution of mental disorders occurred through employee mobility. “Employees leaving unhealthy organizations act as “carriers” of these disorders regardless of whether they themselves have received a formal diagnosis of a mental disorder. The effect is especially pronounced if the newcomer holds a managerial position.” A related epidemic that spreads in a similar way is toxicity. We have probably all witnessed contagion happening within firms if we allow the influence of toxic people to spread. Toxic managers are particularly hazardous to the health of a company. They poison the atmosphere by bullying, disrespecting people, playing political games, undermining others, and blocking colleagues’ initiative and progression. It’s hard to pin down, but wherever they go trust drops and nastiness grows. When this happens our best people leave for healthier environments, and those who remain find themselves inexorably pulled down until they begin showing symptoms of nastiness too. When toxicity rules, mental health problems escalate. People become depressed, paranoid and anxious. The tragedy is that toxicity seems to be the norm in so many organisations, so those entering them assume naturally that this is the way managers should behave. Demands for exaggerated status and demonstrations of respect (“Call me madam”) mean underlings dare not speak truth to power. They put their heads down and do the very minimum lest any initiative attract an attack. They are disempowered and have to leave or become a pitiful mini-me of the boss. Those who own and run their own companies have an opportunity to counter both mentalillness and toxicity by the integrity and respect shown in their actions and words. This is not just a good thing to do, but an essential part of building the healthy company culture in which people thrive and do their best work – for the benefit of the customer, the owner and themselves. I have just completed a series of columns here featuring coaching of people at different levels in a company. I began it on 31 May this year with an introductory piece that suggested that times like these require a coaching approach, not just from professional coaches, but from line managers and business owners. We owe it to ourselves, to our teams, and to society in general to lead in a way that affirms the human dignity and potential of each person – even or especially those we disagree with, dislike, or differ from. It is easy to respect those we admire; the real test of character is to treat those we do not admire with the respect due to them as human beings, regardless of how little we believe they may have earned it. To meet disrespect with more disrespect is to continue the rise of toxicity in an arms race of nastiness. This does not at all mean allowing people to get away with poor performance; it means “speaking the truth in love”. Toxic people must change or go. Organisational culture is not a soft topic or nice-to-have. The “way we do things” deeply influences how people behave in the company, and therefore how customers or clients are treated; and this influences the kind of society we all live in. The wise leader will look out for early symptoms of toxicity and nip them in the bud, both by demonstrating deep respect for everyone and by making respect for each other a performance requirement for each person in the company. Jonathan Cook is a Counselling Psychologist and Chairman of the African Management Institute. This is a coaching columns for Business Day, published on 5 September 2022 ( https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/columnists/2022-09-05-jonathan-cook-requiring-respect-at-work-counters-toxicity-and-builds-health/ ). #JonathanCook

Variety is a happy feature of humanity. We need both fresh-thinking creatives to push the limits and rule-bound compliance officers to curb them. Every positive opportunity comes with a risk of abuse; but without the risk, there would be no opportunity. If no one was ever found to have broken the law, we could argue that compliance and caution had taken over too far. There would be no space even for honest initiatives, for fear of falling foul of some regulation. Unfortunately there is an uncomfortable, if slight, overlap between creativity and deviance. So if we legislate too heavily against deviance, we may unintentionally stifle positive creativity too. We need to fight fraud without inhibiting initiative. Obviously we want zero fraud and zero corruption. I tell new members of my company that genuine mistakes are part of the training budget, but integrity is the one value I do not hesitate to fire people for breaking. Dishonesty and stealing break trust, which breaks the culture of working together and destroys the company. So zero tolerance for lying, stealing and bribing. But please, keep pushing the limits of innovation. Successful entrepreneurs are generally moderate risk takers – too much risk carries too high a chance of failure; but zero risk means zero business. Similarly, banks aim for a low credit loss ratio (the proportion of loans not recovered), not zero. Zero defaults would imply that the bank withholds loans from too many good clients for fear of falling victim to a few bad ones. A restaurant should never, ever risk serving food that has spoiled and could poison patrons, so complying with health and safety regulations is not negotiable. But it would be a poor restaurant that made compliance its primary purpose. To borrow terms from the competency literature, compliance is a threshold competence (a competence needed to enter the game), whereas cooking and serving delicious food attractively is a differentiating competence (a competence that makes your restaurant better than others). The understandable instinct of a manager is to respond to every problem with a new policy, procedure or regulation to prevent it happening again. But too much of that stifles the differentiating competencies, like the company that tried to stop staff abusing telephone time by installing a cumbersome system that cost more than the savings on the phone bill, and at the same time irritated everyone, discouraged staff from reaching clients, and quite possibly sent the most creative employees to the competition. Similarly, in nations, we need a competent bureaucracy to enforce threshold competencies for national success, such as ensuring contracts can be enforced, people pay taxes, and people are treated fairly regardless of their wealth, status or political connections. But for differentiating competence we need also to create a fertile ecosystem of opportunities and support that encourages enterprising people to take initiative. If a few then stray into illegal practices, hit them hard with the existing law, but avoid creating more unnecessary regulations that discourage everyone from trying legal things. Sometimes the frustration doesn’t arise from too many regulations, but their uncaring application. If I can’t get my goods across the border, have to wait months for the license I need, or receive no response from officials meant to help me, then not only is my immediate business damaged, but I give up and take my enterprising spirit to another country. And if a bank declines my loan application on a technicality rather than substantive reasons, the economy suffers through my reduced enterprise. At the beginning of this column I called for zero tolerance for fraud and corruption. Alongside that we should offer warm encouragement for honest initiative. We should spend at least as much time encouraging excellence and innovation as requiring compliance. This is a coaching columns for Business Day, published on 28 November 2022 ( https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/columnists/2022-11-28-jonathan-cook-requiring-too-much-compliance-can-damage-a-business/ ) Jonathan Cook, a counselling psychologist, chairs the African Management Institute. If you’d like to read previous columns in this series or ask Jonathan a question please visit  http://www.africanmanagers.org/jonathan-cook #JonathanCook

In a very sad story from England, a head teacher in Reading took her own life after a report from Ofsted (the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills) downgraded her primary school from outstanding to inadequate. A teacher who had been mentored by the late head teacher was quoted as saying, “She didn’t just care and dedicate herself to her school and her pupils, she was also a huge support for schools in the Reading area and beyond. . . She was absolutely brilliant.” How is it possible that someone apparently so dedicated and effective should be destroyed by the very process designed to identify excellence? A petition calling for Ofsted inspections to be halted gathered more than 150 000 signatures. That’s not a solution either – many of us dearly wish schools here would be subject to strict inspections with the results made public. Our children need better schooling! Sadly this so captures what happens in many companies. As responsible managers we implement rules and regulations to curb what goes wrong and encourage what we want to go right. After a while we forget the reason for the rules and begin to implement them blindly. Managers tick boxes and people become irritated, resentful, demotivated, leading to others agitating to do away with all monitoring of performance. According to a media report I read about the incident, Ofsted found a “welcoming and vibrant school”, where staff-pupil relationships were “warm and supportive”, and bullying was rare. But it also highlighted failings in training, record-keeping and checks on staff. The school only has to fail in one dimension to be rated as inadequate. Oh dear. If your child attended a school that is warm, supportive and vibrant and without bullying, would you mind too much if it had some deficiencies in formal training, record-keeping and checks? If that report is true, what a dreadful way to miss the point of an inspection. That’s the problem when systems take over, which is almost inevitable unless leadership insists on focusing on what is truly important – and remembers that our people are human, not robots. The reason why human beings just do not seem to respond well to rules and regulations is that the rules imply a lack of trust in the people they seek to control. We are not robots and we do aspire to dignity and self-regulation. This does not only apply in companies. When parents rebuke their children with a negative voice and maybe further restrictions, the atmosphere becomes heavy with distrust and resentment. The last thing anyone wants to do is behave with consideration and responsibility. Similarly, when government’s natural response to anything that needs changing is to introduce more laws or regulations, even when existing laws and regulations are clearly not working, citizens take pleasure in circumventing the rules. Instead of resorting again to what hasn’t worked we should find something that does work, like inspiring leadership, genuine listening, and generous resourcing to do the right thing. If only we could all trust each other! Here is a great paradox. Companies, nations and families that function best are based on trust and affirmation of each other. Look around you for very clear evidence of that. At our best, rules and regulations fade into irrelevance. But we know we are not always at our best, so we also need laws with strict enforcement. Managers, parents and ministers have to face this paradox daily. Ideally they would treat everyone with unbounded trust and joyful affirmation, while being absolutely consistent in implementing the rules whenever they are broken – as few rules as are absolutely necessary – and providing the encouragement and resources to be amazing. That’s the challenge of managing. Jonathan Cook, a counselling psychologist, chairs the African Management Institute. If you’d like to read previous columns in this series or ask Jonathan a question please visit  http://www.africanmanagers.org/jonathan-cook

This column was written on National Women’s Day for men who are not sexist, because we still have so much to learn. I believe Women’s Day has a message for men who run businesses. In a TED talk Susan Colantuono explains how well-meaning mentors can unwittingly help maintain the status quo. The mentors she spoke to emphasised personal and relational matters when mentoring women, like becoming more assertive and confident, developing a personal brand, working with other people and self-promotion. All good stuff. But when they mentored men, they talked about the importance of business, strategic and financial acumen. And that is what gets middle managers noticed for the C-suite. The other stuff is taken for granted. So unwittingly the mentors prepared women for middle management and men for the top. The best intentions can backfire when we treat people differently. How are you grooming people for promotion in your business? It is understandable that many women dismiss the idea of a National Women’s Day as merely window dressing, when we all say the right things for a day and then continue as before. But I am grateful that we have this reminder of how scarily easy it is not to notice the extra barriers facing women in business, as elsewhere. So in that sense the day exists for men more than women. Similarly the Black Lives Matter movement tells us that it is not enough to be colour-blind; the existing playing field is uneven in ways those of us who are not black just do not notice, because people like us built it and we are deeply familiar with its contours. The field needs changing in ways others need to explain to us. So what can we do? The first and biggest step is to listen. This means listening beneath the words and watching eye contact and body language to discover who is regarded as in the conversation and who is being subliminally excluded. And it means suspending our logical response until we have felt the passion. While we all have feelings of inadequacy, rage and impotence in the face of power we cannot control, I think it is almost an insult to say, “Yes, there are times when I feel like that too,” when as a man I hear a woman explaining her frustration. Those who grew up in the dominant worldview only partly understand until we really hear. The second is to acknowledge that implicit bias is present in everyone. You can confirm this for yourself with the online Implicit Associations Test. We imbibe it from childhood and it infects how we perceive others and ourselves. We can’t be blamed for unconscious bias, but we can be blamed for ignoring it. Instead of denying it we need to limit its effects by creating policies, for example, that prevent unconscious bias in recruiting and developing staff. Thirdly we can talk about our own biases. Men are not easily convinced of their bias when they are probably unaware of it. When we respond a little defensively to the current epidemic of gender-based violence with, “Not all men are violent! There are good men too (like me)”, we miss the opportunity to say that until we change the biased system in our heads, in our businesses and in society, women will continue to suffer violence, however virtuous we may be as individuals. So the fourth action is to join others in taking prejudice seriously and changing the way society works. This is both the right thing to do ethically, and also economically sound both at the macro-level of society and the micro-level of our own companies. We need the talents, energy and leadership of 100% of our people to thrive. Jonathan Cook is a psychologist and chairman and co-founder of the African Management Institute. This article was originally published on BusinessLive on 10 August, 2020 and is republished with permission.

One day when I was a child a tortoise crawled into our garden. A hole had been drilled into its shell, so my father explained that this must be someone’s pet tortoise. He tied string through the hole and attached the other end to a stake he knocked into the middle of the lawn. For three days our new pet grazed inside the circle, held back by the string. Then we felt sorry for the tortoise, missing its family, so dad untied the string. BUT for the rest of the day we were astonished that the tortoise remained within the circle! It did not know it was free. The next morning it was gone, so presumably during the night it had put a foot outside the circle and discovered to its surprise that it was free. Many of our staff go through life like that tortoise, with imaginary strings holding them back in the form of out-of-date beliefs about themselves. These imagined strings are thought-habits – assumptions that determine how we interpret the world around us and our own abilities.   For example, many people believe that they are no good at numbers and their minds freeze when faced with a spreadsheet. This often arises through poor quality teaching of mathematics and may have nothing to do with their natural ability or potential. Many are held back by a sense of low self-esteem. At the moment some of us may believe that we cannot cope with crises, and that the continuing threats facing us in Covid-19 are so catastrophic we cannot face the present or plan for the future. In this third column in a series on the mental health of entrepreneurs, I suggest that business leaders can grow resilience in themselves and their teams by encouraging thought-habits that open opportunities where others may be seeing only endings. The psychologist Martin Seligman found that we develop “learned helplessness” when our beliefs about our problems are characterised by three P’s: Problems are permanent (we think our problems will last for ever), pervasive (they affect everything in our lives), and personal (they are our own fault rather than a consequence of the situation we find ourselves in). Learned helplessness is associated with less success, worse health and general discouragement. Covid-19 has gone on longer than most expected. Some of us fear that it is permanent and the familiar life we treasured will never return. It is easy to believe that it is pervasive, affecting work, home and recreation. And while it is clearly not our fault, we may punish ourselves with the thought that our personal response to it is weak and ineffective. The antidote to learned helplessness is to see our problems as temporary, specific and situational. Do you remember how terrifying HIV/Aids was? Twenty years ago it was killing about half a million South Africans every year . It is still with us, with about seven million people HIV+, but we have learnt to manage it and it no longer terrifies us. The Covid-19 crisis should absolutely not be underestimated, but it will pass in one way or another. This problem is temporary. Part of coping with the pandemic is to talk about it in words that create a constructive set of thought-habits. Losing the old “normal” means we might be able to create better elements in the new normal. We may be forced out of a rut into opportunities we would otherwise have missed. We can learn new skills and new ways of coping that make us stronger. The good news about habits, including thought-habits, is that they can be changed! The team can be helped to pay attention to their resources and opportunities rather than their deficits. Much of leadership happens in the mind. Jonathan Cook is a counselling psychologist and chairman of the African Management Institute. He  is also the host of AMI’s weekly Rise  reflection series focused on supporting you in your business and your personal wellness. This article was  originally published on BusinessLive on 16 November, 2020 and is republished with permission. #JonathanCook #Rise #StaffColumn #Thrive