Yolisa Tshabalala and her business partner Mponeng Seshea founded Imizizi, a people management and consulting organisation, together in 2017. After working for firms both big and small, they noticed that there was no human element when it came to taking care of the consultants themselves. As “contractors”, they didn’t ever quite feel like they belonged – at their clients or their headquarters. The pair saw a gap, wanting to humanise the consulting industry and bring back the heart. They now have over 500 consultants who help other businesses find the right people and processes. Yolisa was generous enough to share her wisdom on leadership, culture and strategy with us.
A lot of organisations are realising that you can’t separate the culture element anymore. Your company culture impacts how people perform, whether people are attracted to your organisation or not, how efficient your organisation is, and whether people will actually enjoy and want to work there or not.
One of the most common trends is where values and culture are on paper but not necessarily lived. Values should be the guiding force of behaviour and performance. Leadership will complain that their people aren’t aligning to the company values, but without understanding that it all starts with them. You can’t point fingers. When you’re a leader, people look up to you. You have to start by living the values to change the behaviours.
One strategy we’re passionate about is that we don’t want to walk away and leave the organisation with a culture document, but rather want to find practical ways of embedding the culture within the organisation, whether it’s ceremonies, the language used or how meetings are conducted.
The strategy that you start with is not the strategy that will take you into the future, especially when you’re scaling. If you don’t pivot quickly enough, you might even limit the company’s growth. It’s very important to be aware of the stage that your business is in, the environment, and the available opportunities, so that you’re constantly checking if your strategy still makes sense, what you need to change, and how you need to update it.
Owners must ask themselves what version of themselves is required at each phase. The version of Yolisa that started the business is not the version of Yolisa that’s required now to scale the business. When you have that awareness, it propels you to “upgrade”. The business can be limited by the owner, which is the biggest risk. I see that all around, especially with small to medium-sized businesses.
Capabilities and qualifications are very important, but perhaps the simpler part. It’s very easy to ask, “What does the business need? Should I be doing my MBA or should I be learning more about the industry?” But there’s an internal transformation that can be neglected. You need to be whole as an individual, emotionally, spiritually and physically, because the business is heavily reliant on you as a leader to take it to the next level. So you have to be filling that cup and making sure that you can deal with the adversity. That’s another thing we don’t speak about enough: the adversity that business owners face.
Earlier on, there were certain things that Mponeng and I thought weren’t important because we were focused on running, running, running, but it’s so important to take mini-breaks where you go and reflect. Taking care of your mental health, finding balance and stability for your family home. If you break down, it will affect the business one way or another.
I only know what I know, but there are many others who’ve walked the path. There are people who know better, right? So I got a coach; other people get counsellors or go to therapy as well. A lot of small and medium-sized businesses don’t want to invest in things that seem peripheral or “soft”, but assessments and coaching can help to discover personality types, where each person thrives, how they work as a team, and how they work as an individual. And then a coach helps to bring direction to the business and can act as a sounding board, as a non-biased voice.
The beautiful thing about Mponeng and myself is that we are two different people; we’re almost opposites of each other. So it would be a mistake for us to want to duplicate effort and do the same things.
What’s important is to be aware and to understand each other, the strengths that you have, and be very intentional about using each other’s strengths where they fit. For example, I’m good at operations, but Mponeng thrives on networking. I’ve seen other partners fail because people step on each other’s toes. Everyone wants to shine in the same spaces and it becomes a battle. But when you understand each other in that way, then the boat moves smoother, and quicker as well.
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