GET TO KNOW
What do you think will
be the hot technology
talking point of 2020?
everyone has to report to a single point in
a business. I like distributed leadership. I
am really not a fan of the ‘boss’ mentality
and prefer frameworks over structures and
prefer to empower people to think outside
of the box. Frameworks allow people to think
whereas structures keep people penned in.
What is your style as a team leader?
I like to hire people who are better than me
in terms of the job role they need to do. I am
not selling or doing marketing, I am here to
run the business and so I want to have the
experts in place that are known for their skill
sets and more importantly for their attitude.
Skills I can train but attitude I can’t, I always
look at the attitude and heart of the person
first and then skills.
I don’t always read a resume; I prefer to get
to know someone in their first interview (I
usually conduct three interviews) and get to
understand the fabric of the person. It might
sound strange but I very seldom hire on ‘skills’,
because we can get qualifications for people
later, successful businesses are built on people
with the right attitude and the right heart.
There is so much new
innovation happening
around us. Who would have
thought that flying taxis
would be a thing? It’s already
a big thing in Melbourne and
they hope to have flying taxis
by 2020. Phones are changing
all the time and so is the
market share between all the
phone providers which is definitely something
to watch.
Google is emerging as a massive data player,
against the likes of AWS and Microsoft, so
Google’s Cloud Play is definitely something
to watch as that is going to change the
landscape again.
What are your personal interests and
where do you like to spend most of
your time after work?
I love sport and used to play semi-
professional rugby, but now I am a couch
rugby player. I enjoy cycling and participated
in the London to Paris and 94.7 Cycle
Challenge in 2018. Being in Africa and being
based in South Africa is brilliant as I love
spending time in nature, and I get to see a
lot of wildlife.
Skiing is also a passion of mine, as well as
scuba diving, so I will be doing more of that
in 2020. I also enjoy cooking cuisines from
around the world and it allows me to be
creative, so I cook as much as possible.
“
THE DIFFERENT
COUNTRIES
ACROSS SUB-
SAHARAN AFRICA
HAVE DIFFERENT
ECONOMIES,
BUSINESS
DYNAMICS
AND EVEN
BUSINESS FLOW.
How do you cope with stress and
demands of your career?
My first thing is that you can only worry about
the things you can control – if I can’t control
it, I can’t worry about it. That takes away the
majority of known stress from people because
if you have no influence or control over a
situation you shouldn’t be stressing about
it. I am also a great believer in a philosophy
of ‘action-in-inaction’ where you take the
knowledge you have accumulated over the
years and use it as a mechanism to self-reflect
on certain things. It gives you the ability to
forecast some of the things you know will
happen in time, and then it gears yourself to
respond accordingly. There really is no point
in stressing over the things you can’t control.
What gives you great job satisfaction?
A happy place. An environment that breeds
job satisfaction and where people can be
happy. When I have these things in place the
numbers happen. Sure, you can do numbers
with unhappy people, you can drive metrics
and drive people hard to maximise profit
and cut costs. But then you will see staff
turnover increase, your business will get a
bad reputation in the industry and no one
will want to work for you. I prefer to start
with the positive footing first. Yes, this might
slow growth initially, but it is the Trend Micro
way – we are here for the long haul and we
want to have the right people, right culture,
right brand, right image and the right name
and do the right thing in business. n
72
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