by Natasha Singh-Ally, Founder: Business Ecology
The skill associated with entrepreneurship may be rattled off with ease at business school, but only on turning away from the slide presentations do we conceive of the intensity and nuances of its facets. It is probably why some argue it cannot be taught in a classroom setting and should be supplemented with real life experience.
It is a classic prerequisite of entrepreneurship that a completely new solution be devised for a problem at hand. Stanford University decades ago conveyed that entrepreneurship is characterized by finding a ‘suboptimal equilibrium’ and introducing new products and services that takes away the pain from a generally accepted state of inconvenience. The seminal example being - it was acceptable historically to rely on software programs and servers manned only by IT experts to provide information at great cost, time and frustration, before the personal computer put processing capability within popular reach. Enter Microsoft and our anatomical digits dance across keyboards relegating postage and penmanship and we take up our place as humans on the internet of things amid other data transferring devices. We have come to accept for our ‘optimal equilibrium’ similar technology titans like Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google. Their inventors leap ahead of what formal education systems can produce or keep up with, commanding colossal returns for specialised knowledge, streaking ahead of the average CEO.
For the rest of us who have varied versions of business interests on the scale from dabbling in trade to fully fledged listed corporations and the lifestyle businesses in-between, I return to the basics of business management as the rhetoric from which to build and extrapolate. Entrepreneurship should include the recurring tenets of novelty, vision, risk appetite and resources to instigate value and beget profit.
As the daughter of a business owner, I grew up understanding at the supper table what the daily exertions of plumbing the market for returns meant. My father was a speculative builder amid other ventures, with no formal education beyond secondary school, let alone a course in entrepreneurship to steer him. He did not exemplify the entrepreneur who disrupts and leads change in the industry. Instead he joined the existing clutch of small builders in the Western Cape self-employed and forging ahead. An admirable exploit at the time if the slow transformation in the construction industry is anything to go by. He had the vision to identify emerging opportunities viz. the impending government regulations, extending housing subsidies to teachers and nurses, making possible home ownership. Granted, he represented a uniquely abled group of South Africans who could not only afford a home but break into the market as a builder.
He definitely was accustomed to taking risk and facing uncertainty and had the scars to show for it when he lost his own home in a bust cycle. Barely a few years into starting his business, South Africa experienced a severe economic contraction from 1976 -1977, the worst post the war. He hit rock bottom, was mostly unemployed away from the building industry and traded chickens and denim jeans to survive. A year later he started up again with a loan from a benefactor and continued to build one quality home after another until retirement. A strong and long streak no doubt, and far from living hand to mouth. His offering was novel, providing a quality ready-to-move-in home and he maintained his edge above competitors unreliably promising to build customized homes of trusted quality.
He co-ordinated resources by ploughing back profits as far as possible to secure his financial position. To ensure sustainability he set off losses caused by theft, labour days, inclement weather and price escalations with strict cost management, pitching in as an artisan, gaining the trust of hardware owners for credit terms and nudging along the administrative drag for transfer of properties.
These fundamentals of business management hold true for me today in property development even though the complexities scale with project size. I can’t help but wonder what he would have done with the help of a financial backer to expand into the boom years of urbanisation.
It is not a matter of course for entrepreneurs to receive loans as a start-up and less so for a struggling business. Incongruously lenders prefer a track record, credit worthiness and business viability while investors expect quick strong returns on a bankable venture. This is not likely for an entrepreneur or first time mover about to step into the unchartered with an innovative idea. In some respects it reminds me of the microlending model introduced by Nobel Prize winner Muhammed Yunus. Village traders in Bangladesh have the chance to earn a living and buy stock with the Grameen Bank issuing small loans without collateral, relying instead on valid community references. Peer pressure and women ownership in particular are regarded as a means to lower the risk of defaults.
The availability of money may seem like a counterintuitive prospect with our economy on a crawl to revive. At a point when grants and loans at lower interest rates are forthcoming as a stimulus it may be well worth our while to remember the time is ripe to introduce and accelerate novel proposals. These may be viewed with less circumspection when can lean on a portfolio of good judgement and scrupulousness.
The next normal is waiting for us to grab onto in our country and set ablaze solutions that are yet untested and undiscovered but ready for uptake and industry upheaval. It may emerge from renewable energy, airline management, municipal compliance, alternative housing, co-operative labour models, generics in health care, warehousing and logistics for e-commerce or emerging social entrepreneurship in a millennial economy.
Whether we are trying to organise a zoom call, arrange for the opening of schools or launch a rocket, the payload only arrives if the set intentions are followed by the determination to gain the know-how, make the effort to rise above complications and propel ourselves into what the situation demands.
Natasha Singh-Ally is a consummate thought leader, transformation specialist and founder of her established management consultancy, Apex Advisory Services. She delivers the full spectrum of professional services to re-engineer business processes, introduce technology and manage change within complex ICT programmes.
Natasha excelled in business as an Executive and Director of a property development and facilities management company, featured at the start-up in 2011 and remains active to ensure its current sustainability. She holds an LLB, a post graduate degree in Psychology through Unisa and is a Master in Business Administration (Finance) from the Durham University in the UK. Her certificates from the Harvard Extension School include Leading Change and Social Justice.
She is currently attuned to designing strategic solutions to promote social entrepreneurship and development practice and has recently launched, Business Ecology an entity for youth development and impact investing. EMAIL | LINKEDIN
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Investing years of diary entries and your daily energetic imprint in business takes a special kind of dedication and calling, and anyone with the intention to go towards that pull and stay the course can do it.