Avocado Vision Essay

It has been two decades since Jules Newton had a vision, an Avocado vision. From humble beginnings, the core focus of the business was training. In essence, empowering people to develop their full potential. Avocado Vision has stood the test of time. As it has evolved, it has enthusiastically embraced the principles of Transformation. In 2015, Jules sold Avocado Vision to BTS, an international market leader in supporting organisations with their Leadership, Strategic Alignment, Business Acumen and Sales challenges. Avo now has the benefit of BTSs international best practice and resources as they meaningfully continue to participate in a Transforming South Africa.

Jerking Knees hinder Transformation
Fikile Mbalula touched sporting South Africa

But they struggle with the task of influence: not having line execution power in a business can lead to all the right things being said and done, but no real change happening at the heart of the business. It is this, I believe, which sits at the core of the challenge in the slow pace of corporate Transformation: it has not at all been considered a business imperative, but rather something which sits ‘out there’, that needs engaging with only at ‘scorecard time’. And, to be fair, it’s tough trying to compete on an international playing field as a South African company: the falling Rand, threatening junk status, loss of confidence in our Government to drive a strong economy, labour challenges, unemployment, poverty, and the dire skills gap because of our crippled education system all stack up against us. These are already very expensive obstacles to overcome in the competitive race where, actually, no-one cares internationally that it’s hard to be us. It’s basically the world of ‘compete or die’. So, prioritising additional resource spends on Transformation activities within companies can be a challenging thing to do where quarterly returns determine market value and drive business

It is for this reason, I believe it is an inevitable necessity to put ‘Transformational Leadership’ on the list of leadership capabilities in every organisation in South Africa. It’s Leadership that will help us tackle and solve this issue. It is effective Leadership at every level within an organisation which will help us to effectively drive Transformation.
In conclusion, South Africa, teetering on the brink of chaos in many areas needs leadership to be the place where we step up and be counted. We must engage with this challenge once and for all, personally, and in our capacity as business leaders with influence in our specific organisations. We need to build a society where we don’t just accept inequalities that are here because we’ve band-aided some gaps with some knee jerk responses to quota requirements. We must be able to say we have engaged our best brains and created solutions that are sustainable and workable. This is the legacy our current business leaders can leave our country with. If, we, choose to really