IOP LENS
The IOP Lens is a SIOPSA podcast that brings together practitioners, leaders, and scholars in Industrial and Organisational Psychology to explore the issues shaping the future of work. Our aim is to make IOP thinking accessible, relevant, and impactful for both practitioners and decision-makers. Each episode contributes to SIOPSA’s broader professional dialogue.
IOP LENS
S1E4: The Collaboration Mandate: Co-Designing the Future of Work ft. Themba Chakela
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The Collaboration Mandate: Co-Designing the Future of Work – IOP, HR & Leadership | The IOP Lens
In this episode of The IOP Lens, Dr Sane Ngidi is joined by Themba Chakela for a forward-looking conversation on collaboration in shaping the future of work.
Framed as The Collaboration Mandate, the discussion explores how Industrial and Organisational Psychologists, HR professionals, and leaders must work together to co-design workplaces that are adaptive, human-centred, and sustainable. Themba shares insights on breaking silos, aligning purpose, and building integrated approaches to organisational effectiveness.
This episode highlights the power of partnership in shaping the next chapter of work.
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Hi there. Welcome to the IOP lens, where we explore the stories behind industrial and organizational psychology. This is about real stories, real journeys, and the moments that shape who we are as a profession. My name is Dr. Saneengiti. I'm the president of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology of South Africa. The topic today is really focused around the collaboration mandate between IOP, HR, and leadership. As we think around how we co-design the future, it's clear technology alone won't do what is needed. There is a mandate for us as a triad to make this effective, efficient, and humane. Today we have in studio with us the amazing Temba Chakela. Now let me read you a little bit about Temba. Temba Chakela is a future forward people strategist and transformation architect. He leads large-scale change by aligning purpose, culture, tech, and performance. Blending cultural alchemy, people propulsion, and digital dexterity. He helps organizations unlock capability, shift mindsets, and drive impact. Bringing energy, you will definitely get the energy, clarity and edge to every boardroom, team, and stage. Those words were chosen deliberately, and you will know why as we get to know Timba. So it is an absolute pleasure to welcome Timba with us today. Timba, welcome. Thank you for having me. Thank you so much for joining us. I was really excited that you said yes because your energy, I've seen you speak, you just really, you are, you're the guy who pushes the boundaries. And so it is such a pleasure to have you here today. Um, to get us started, we'd like to know a little bit about who Temba is, right? Because no one career journey is the same. So tell us a little bit about your career journey.
SPEAKER_04Sure. So Temba Chikela, um born Sweden and raised in Lesotho, studied high school, primary school in Lesotho, but did adversity um in Cape Town. Um I shared with you the story as to my extended um stay there. Um and that really worked out. But it was um in second year um psycho clinical psychology that somebody said you need another nine years of this. I'm like, okay, I've got three years, what can I double major in? And somebody said um this is industrial psychology. I'm like, ah, it has psychology in it, let me jump in. But what it started um for me was a journey of understanding the human condition in business. So I'm not a revenue and margin guy. I don't look at business primarily through uh a revenue lens, I look at it through the the people experience, um, which makes it quite surprising that I my first job was in retail um in in macro, but they took a chance on me. And in 2003, they did a really big ERP implementation. Um they did the first retail one of its kind, and like we do with new tech um with our kids, they threw the young grads at it. Um so we had a bunch of graduates that did this implementation at the grassroots, um, and the bug stuck. Some people went into project management, other ones went tech. I was one going, well, this technology needs to have somebody pressing the buttons. That's somebody pressing the buttons, should probably be excited about the buttons that they're pressing and maybe even understand why they're pressing the buttons in the context of business. Um, and that's the journey I've been on through change management, um, doing both um organizational effectiveness and HR. And today I try to share my expertise with people that are willing to listen and have cool problems to tackle.
SPEAKER_00You've got like this um lovely mix in your career where you've got the IOP lens, but you've got the tech lens as well. Yeah. Tell me a little bit more around that.
SPEAKER_04Sure. Um, if it's not stamped on my forehead, I'm an out and out, I'm an out and out tech geek. Um uh and and I I I blame my pops. Um so he was a lecturer at the National University of Lesotho and the the professors were issued computers first. Um he I don't know if he asked for permission, but he brought his computer home. So at the age of 11, 12, um my brother was nine, ten. We got access to a computer. Um, and you know, just like all the famous stories of people starting stuff in their garage because of access, we started doing things on a computer at that age in Lesotho, which was quite rare, and the tech bug just hit. Um I think he lives vicariously through our excitement around the technology. So um I've worked largely in technology businesses. Um, and if I'm not in a technology business, I'm in a business that has technology in it, and that's where I spend a lot of my time. Um, and that balance, I think, for me has always been about the enabling capability that tech has. So for me, tech is a hammer used by professionals to do some really, really cool stuff. Um, never tech for tech's sake.
SPEAKER_00Our upcoming conference in July, the theme is human plus AI, designing positive organizations. And one of the core streams around that is the triad. So that this relationship between IOP, um, HR, and leadership or business leadership. Looking at that triad, you definitely are the right guy for us to be having this conversation with. Um, why do you think that triad is important in the space of technology and designing the future?
SPEAKER_04Uh I I think the triad, as it's depicted as a triad, is probably part of the problem. Um I'm a Venn diagram guy. Go for it. Um and and and if we continue to look at these things in isolation with one-way or two-way um relationships, we we lose some of the magic source. The magic happens in the single overlaps and the triple overlaps. But we also have to accept that there are some things that industrial psychology will do on its own without HR or tech. And look, the lot you know, the next time you want an HR person to do deep code is probably the time you're gonna burn out or frustrate a pure HR person. So I think the the overlaps is where the magic happens, and that 5 to 10% piece where everything overlaps is where the the real value sits. Um and we struggle, I think, to look at these things systemically, systematically has been mastered, but a systemic view of this thing of if I drop a pebble in the IOP pond, which ripples hit tech, which ripples hit HR? And that's where we know the balance that we're trying to find is so the three disciplines are important, but probably less important than their relationship to each other.
SPEAKER_00Unpack that a bit more.
SPEAKER_04So being a being a purist, um, and and I think if you look at the the the standard arc of mastery, you you you do deep dive and deep focus into mastering your craft, but you reach that upper echelon when you look at your craft in relation to other crafts that have been mastered. So when you have, I call them apex predators, so the tyrannosaurus rexes of the world interacting from an IOP, uh a tech perspective, and an HR perspective, that's where you get magic. If you don't have that kind of awareness and engagement, you're gonna get these industrialized um false silos because none of these disciplines exist in a vacuum.
SPEAKER_00Where do we start though?
SPEAKER_04What's that movie, Everywhere All at Once? Um and it's about really leaning in. So you guys are uh looking at doing that at your conference. Yeah. Like it could be an IOP conference, and there's more than just an IOP conference, and there's more than enough ground to cover. But you've invited sort of discussions that sit on the on the fringe of your relationships with other disciplines, and you're creating the room for that. So I think that that's where we have to start. We have to be curious and lean in.
SPEAKER_00Do you think that there's a full understanding within corporates of the role of IOPs?
SPEAKER_04No. But that is mirrored by the understanding that IOPs have of what CFOs, COOs, and CEOs do. Yeah. Um, so that those spaces remain exceedingly mysterious to each other. Um, I speak to my my HR colleagues all the time that if you want XCO to understand you, you can't speak HR knees. You need to speak CFO knees, COO knees, and CEO knees and translate the value and the impact that your area or discipline has in their terms. Um, the the the deep HR conversation or the industrial psychology conversation can happen between peers, but if we're gonna have impact on business, we need to deal with it in in business terms. Not shirking away from the the purity of our discipline. I mean it's uh it's a hardcore science, but if you make that thing feel like magic, you know, you when you've had somebody, somebody was saying that Albert Einstein explaining um his theory of relativity to grade four is a thing of beauty because he can explain it at that level and the kids get it. Um now, if you can do that with deep IOP expertise to an audience that finds that maybe less exciting than we do, let's let's submit that we're probably the ones that get most excited about what we do. But when you can have somebody else understand that at the very least you're important, you have an impact, and you add value to the org, then you're on sides.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think just even as you say that, sometimes it can feel like describing IO psychology is very complex. So, in that example that you give, and like in its simplest form, what does it look like? Um, is such a good example. Um, and then also, how do we get to stop breaking these silos um that you're speaking of?
SPEAKER_04So so in my long, long, long, long, long lost youth, um, I used to gate crash meetings at the office.
SPEAKER_00Like I'd walk past um why do I think you might still do that today?
SPEAKER_04But but but now they now now they can't kick me out, right? But uh we had these glass windows, and I'd walk past a meeting, and if it looked like there were cool people in that meeting and had like cool stuff on the whiteboard, I'd walk in. One of three things would happen. Either I'd be asked to leave, like Chucky, this isn't an HR meeting, go HR somewhere else. Or they'd say, Look, Temba, just come in but sit down and keep quiet and listen. Or the third one, which often happened was you end up a participant and contributing, and somebody at the end of the meeting goes, Yes, sir, like we having a people lens in this discussion was really, really helpful. So I think I think we have to do a lot more of that in the nicest, most diplomatic way possible. Like push in and and and own space because there's value to be had, it's just maybe misunderstood right now.
SPEAKER_00I think there's also an intersection there in terms of what you said earlier on, around like, does the organization perceive and experience and see your value? Because if they do, then it won't be there's a section in the agenda that's HR or there's an HR meeting. Every meeting will involve you, well, to some extent, because you're bringing that lens to the business and the decisions, etc., that are being made. Yeah, so I think that's a critical one. How are you seeing AI play out? I mean, you're you're also on the on the edge of being more deeply in a tech organization, but yeah, how are you seeing AI play out?
SPEAKER_04Look, this thing changes every week, right? Um HRistically, you know, you wake up every Monday and somebody's laid off thousands of people, right? And then there's a bit of doom and and and and gloom around it. Um personally, uh I've outsourced maybe some of the more how do I put this? Some of the things that I'm less enthusiastic about doing. Um, like a job spec. Um, I used to sit down and do this thing in quite a bit of detail and used to take me time. Now, because I've worked with Mutusi, that's the name of my AI, for ages, on doing job specs, I can literally talk in the car on my way home and say, look, in five minutes when I get home, please mail me your version of that job spec. And it's 80% right because we've worked together for so long. And it's leading practice stuff that I can very, very quickly pick up on if there's something out of whack, and I'm fixing those things as opposed to doing a job spec in Microsoft Word from scratch. So there is that advantage. Um as a sense checker, um, large language models are useful. And sometimes I will tell it to DHR an email for me. Like, how do I get this across in plain English so I don't lose my my audience because I sometimes write quite lengthy emails. Um, it criticizes me all the time. So that's the the surface level stuff, but the the agentic piece, I mean, imagine building AI into your disciplinary or labor relations process, um, using it to shortcut or get to actionable results on labor negotiations at at scale. Those are things that are that are unexplored. Um I think the the psychology piece of both our disciplines and and um the OpenAI CEO has just gone on on the news and said, don't use this thing as your psychologist. Yes. For two reasons. The conversations aren't privileged. And number two, this thing only knows what's in the public domain. Psychologists aren't known for putting their files and resources in the public domain because they're privileged. Um, so when um you have a young boy talking about how he doesn't want to live any longer, and the AI edifies him as opposed to pulling him back from the edge, and then the consequences are quite final, is is a is a problem. So I think there's that fine human balance that we we need to protect and guard quite quite jealously, and we can't do it in the courts, we have to do it in practice.
SPEAKER_00It takes us to the ethical and governance implications of using AI effectively.
SPEAKER_04It's it's tough. Um what is it they say about guns, right? Guns don't kill people, people with guns will kill people. Um, and and history is littered with great tools that are used and abused. Um you know, there's a dark side and a light side to to most of these things. And I think AI will go as our moral and ethical fiber goes. And if you just drive for 30 minutes on the roads of Joburg in peak hour, you begin to see that these things are fraying at the edges. It just takes one car to pull into the emergency lane for 20 cars to pull into the emergency lane. And the same sort of applies to AI. It takes one person to use it maliciously or in the wrong way for other people who want to use it that way to take notes. So we have to hold ourselves, I think, to a higher ethical and moral standard because the further away it gets from us, the more diluted it becomes. And maybe diluted is the wrong word, less informed. Um it's a it's a big challenge. Um, because we're also not sitting in the center of the AI conversation as we should.
SPEAKER_00I want to take you back to Mutusi.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00How did it start? Is it a he?
SPEAKER_04Uh it's it's an it, right? It's an it. So so means helper, right? Um and and after working with this thing for for quite some time, um, it figured out that you know I'm half Musoto, half Swedish, and I speak English. Um, so it'll deal with me, it'll say things like Hemanna, or I'll type something in, it'll go Hebatung, or it'll answer in Swedish, and I'm going, no, this is this is for business. But um it started as a any relationship does, like curiosity and feeling it out, and then getting, you know, doing doing courses on it. Um somebody said today that you know um AI prompting is dead, long live AI prompting. And I think the the message there is that if you haven't done AI prompting, you're probably going to struggle um because you don't understand how these models think. But it's also not enough anymore to just know how to prompt. You need to be able to to structure and and integrate AI into your ways of working. The the co-pilot release um a couple of weeks ago. I'm allowed to mention brands like that. Yeah. Okay. Um, where they released co-work. And for the first time, you're seeing things like you can ask Mutusi to basically clean up, do spring cleaning on your laptop, um, sort folders and do things that is not just a question, right? So you're not using it like Google anymore, you're using it to do work and create create efficiencies.
SPEAKER_00I think you also said something like in working together for some time, yeah. Mutusi kind of learned your nuances, and I think that's an important piece, right? Because the technology itself isn't just about the technology, your lens to it, your flavor to it is important for it to be useful.
SPEAKER_04And and and that's and and and and that's a very, very good point, Sonia. Um, because I I collect vinyl, I've bought CDs all my life. I'm the guy that reads the liner notes and production credits, and who wrote that song that that person sang. And if you go into the guts of your AI, there's you know, into the I'm I'm I go straight into the settings and look at what I can play around with in there. And there's some things you can do in all these models to tailor it to your purposes and your needs. And not a lot of people take the time to go into the settings. They'll go into the chat box and immediately start typing in. And then when you speak to an executive who's taken, who's written his strategy in half an hour by taking 10 years of company documents and figures and pushing them into a large language model, but the free version. And you show him that now, if I was your competitor, I could just type in, please give me 10 years worth of your company's um financials, and because it's on there, it's available. Hopefully the competition won't go and look for it there. Um, like nobody I think that the logic goes nobody would ever do that, but that's the kind of stuff that we're doing. Um, so it's important to build those protections into the tool and and get involved a little bit at the back end. You know, you we all drive cars. I think all of us know how to jump start one and change a tire at the very, very least, or where the fuse box is, um, the very, very least. Or like my um my wife says, Oh, you can look pretty enough for somebody who knows so that they can help you, which is which is also a skill. Um, but being hands-on is absolutely crucial. But we're used to being hands-on. We you know, IOP professionals are hands-on, HR professionals are hands-on. We just need to get hands-on with this tool that is unfamiliar right now. But I think in the next three or four years, we'll be going, but how did we do this without AI?
SPEAKER_00I'm with your wife on the car front.
SPEAKER_04She knows how to change the tower.
SPEAKER_00Oh my goodness. It's in another episode. Um, those stories that you speak about were very much like the horror stories that we heard at the beginning of AI, like somebody leaked a company's salaries, and that was the end of them. Do you know what I mean? And and yeah, we've evolved, but we should continue to evolve. And I like what you said there around getting into the details so that you've really understand the power of what you're using. There's a trust factor to this, right? So, how do we how do we build the trust around AI and people practices within organizations?
SPEAKER_04It it's it's hard, right? So my my My I went to a cybersecurity team. In fact, I looked after a cybersecurity team as an HR professional for a while. Yeah, it's a deep dark world. Some of these guys wrote everything on paper, didn't engage online. But the one learning I took out there is your security posture, assume that your deepest, darkest secrets are on a billboard on the M1. Like that's like if you if you haven't been hacked, you've probably been hacked. And somebody's just waiting for the right time to deploy that stuff. But um trust is trust in the human being, not so much the the technology. And once you trust your ability to use a tool, the stuff you can build is quite powerful. Like just taking those very same payroll numbers or payroll details and putting it into uh trusted LLM. Within two seconds, this thing will pick up gender pay discrepancies. Um, it can go, hold on, this person has been on the same salary for the last six years. Why is that? Um this person and this person look like they're the same person. Is this a ghost employee? So you can't it's it's quite powerful. Um I'm not an Excel guy. You can probably tell by by the beard, but um you can now write in English into Excel to say things like you highlight a data set, and then you say, I want to do color-conditioned pivot tables, and you write that in English, no more complicated formulas with dollar sign lockdowns, and it'll it'll do that stuff for you. So now you're speaking to Excel, it's become conversational, whereas before it used to be the preserve of complicated formulas. So data is becoming more accessible.
SPEAKER_00If we think around the healthy, psychologically safe environment that partners with AI, what would that look like?
SPEAKER_04Look, I mean, we we have to be clear. We can't have robotic expectations of human beings. Like just doesn't work. So when when you implement AI solutions, um spend triple the time it takes to switch it on, speaking to the people who it's going to be switched on for and switched on with. Because this thing doesn't stop. Um it can't it'll continue to churn out work as long as you churn out work. So there's gonna be some disciplines around saying, okay, guys, it's five o'clock. This thing isn't gonna stop, but you must go home now. And maybe here's a four or five clever prompts that will keep it busy overnight so that you can be hyper-effective when you arrive at 8 01 tomorrow morning. But right now it's five o'clock. Human beings log off, go home.
SPEAKER_00Lovely that you've stepped into that space, right? Because we already saw that during COVID, people working from home, remote work, people are working longer and longer and longer. So the tech enables, but to your point, there is more opportunity for burnout, working longer, et cetera, et cetera.
SPEAKER_04I mean the the the hidden consequences, right? So I I found that during COVID, I listened to less 60% less music than I did before the pandemic. Why? Because I used to play my music in the car going to work and coming back. Now I'm in a house cooped up with people that might not appreciate the same music that I do, and music just doesn't sound the same on your AirPods. Um so there were there was that forced work-life integration piece. Um and closing your laptop doesn't feel as cathartic as closing your laptop, getting into your car, listening to whatever's happening on the radio and decompressing before you step in the house. Now you close your laptop and you're supposed to be out of work mode into playtime with kids mode, and it's and it's tough. So how do you I guess intentionally on the one side, and maybe artificially, if you're if you're if you're if you're firing your bullets at it, but how do we become more intentional about our work-life integration? Because I think the days of work-life balance are gone. Yeah, that equation will that math will never math. So, how do you make sure that you are giving to the side of the equation that needs the most at the right time? So when I'm in work mode, sitting at my desk in my lounge at home, how do I signal to our vice president of house operations that vacuuming next to me isn't a good idea? I signal that by putting my big headphones on because then she can see I'm in a meeting and she'll prioritize other work. And when I'm done with my meeting, I will show the same respect and take my headphones off and maybe go take the next call from another room so that we're not working against each other. Just need to make sure that that's not the room where my wife is working from home because then I'm interfering with her meetings. Or say too sitting on the PlayStation is not taking up all the bandwidth in the house in the mornings, but from 4:30 on, he he can't. So work-life balance, maybe not. Um, intentional work-life integration is probably where we should be looking for for gains.
SPEAKER_00There's so much in there. Like there is so much in there because sometimes it feels like let me just quickly open my laptop and do something, and that doesn't matter whether that's after hours on a weekend and it's never quickly do something. Or sometimes it can feel like it can be an escape, right? It can be an escape of what's happening at home to work, and that in itself can be another way of coping. And then I think there's this element around boundaries, right? How do you set healthy boundaries? Um, also, how do you set those boundaries with your manager as well? It becomes a very difficult thing for personal boundaries and work boundaries.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and again, um what is it? Um bold boundaries are probably not the future anymore. You have to have clear boundaries with some flex. So I'm clear that where my availability sits between sort of half past eight and half past five in the morning. I mean, in the in in the in the day, that on on during the week.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_04That's work. Anything that happens outside, any work that happens outside of those hours is a negotiation with um you know with myself in terms of priority and urgency. Um and also looking at what I'm supposed to be doing with other people I'm responsible to. So at 5.01, if it's NBA 2K time versus Babalo and a work haul comes in, if Babalo doesn't feel like playing NBA 2K that day, I will take that call. But if we are in the middle of a game and I'm losing, I will loop back to you in the morning. Um, if it's an issue that nobody will die if we don't resolve. Um and over time those become understood, I think. But it might also be, again, you know, may maybe I'm just where I am at my in my career and I can manage that stuff. I don't know how easy it would be for a 23-year-old at the beginning of their career to set those kind of boundaries. But if they do, kudos to them because it will set them up for a far healthier career than I've had.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I think that's a fair statement because often um certainly when we work with emerging IOPs who are going into the world of work, doing their internships, some of the things that come up is they've got the technical knowledge from school, but from university, but having the having those those um other capabilities around networking, building relationships, making sure that you are visible, managing boundaries is needed. So I think at at the organizational level, but even potentially at the master's or student level, how are we teaching those capabilities? Because those are important.
SPEAKER_04I don't have an answer, but I have my answer. I think the best thing that happened to me after getting, you know, getting an undergrad, a postgrad diploma, and an honors was my first job was booking in trucks and goods receiving at Macro as part of the graduate program. And for a good two and a half years, my degrees didn't matter. But I learned a hell of a lot around the world of work, forging relationships, how things work out here where nobody gives two shakes of a rabbit's tail about how many degrees you have. They care about what you are able to do and how do you positively influence the mission. Um, that was a that was a great start. Um and in my third year of work, then the stuff that I'd learnt at Varsity started kicking in, and it created such a rapid separation between me and maybe somebody that hadn't done that kind of academic work before, that um I think I I might have risen a little quicker. Um risen is the wrong word, but gotten ahead a little quicker just because I had that foundation. But in the beginning, um booking in trucks, making sure that you form good relationships with the truck drivers, so that when you hit the ramp and you are promoted to a scanning gun, um, the relationships you formed over there means that they pack the goods in such a way that you can scan it quickly, which means that you get promoted to sitting behind a computer and capturing stock. And because you have some computer knowledge, you can do that really, really quickly and you move through the ranks. But there is no substitute for the life lessons. And I I think retail, and I'm hugely biased, I think retail forces you into that. This is what the real world is like, and maybe helps you a little bit with that lens. So I was forced to be present, I had to interact with people I would never have interacted with on my on my own, and learned how to be successful with people from all walks of life in that business. And I think it's those life skills that our parents used to call paying dues. But if they'd framed it differently, we might not have minded starting in a Mr. Price home folding t-shirts. Because it's not about folding t-shirts, it's about repetition and grit and resilience and doing 500 t-shirts, and then a customer comes and asks you a question, and you still um you still have your client client-facing mode on. And that just cuts across.
SPEAKER_00You've lived many lives, Timba. But yeah, really holding on to that, like building that grit and also the diversity in the experience and starting from the grassroots and being able to understand, uh, it that helps build your your knowledge on how to navigate relationships, but also how things work so that when you're on the other side, you know how they work.
SPEAKER_04And and in fairness, I think the kids, um, as I affectionately call anybody younger than me, um, figure this stuff out a lot quicker than we do. So I think the mistake maybe our parents' generation did was that it was going to take us as long to learn these lessons as they did. It's not true. Um these kids learn extremely quickly. Um, I had my 13-year-old talking to his 19-year-old brother about the Epstein files yesterday. I'm like, my boy, why are you like I said to my wife, like, why sit we talking about the Epstein files? And Pawalu, who's the older brother, goes, What are the Epstein files? He goes, It's these parties that people went to our. But again, at 13, I was probably perfecting my slingshot technique and trying to figure out how to get up to mischief outside. So we have a different caliber of thought coming through, and I think they are built for the future more than we are.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they have different access to information, they're living a different life. Yeah. Um, from a leadership perspective, what does it mean to lead in organizations today and into the future where it's not just dealing with humans? What does leadership mean when it's not just the human element that you're managing?
SPEAKER_04So it's a hard one, right? I was actually speaking to a good friend of mine this morning, and he was we're talking about this whole leadership thing about how everybody wants to be a leader. Um, last week I saw a really cool picture of a well-groomed lion, right? With fluffy mane. And it says, everybody wants to be a lion. And then the next picture was uh pride of lions, gory heads inside the guts of the wildebeest that they had just taken down. And then it said, until it's time to do some lion stuff. So it's it's the same with leadership. We aspire to this thing, but when you get there, it's it's it's it's quite hard. And if you haven't been through the unheralded hero of the management level, like planning, organizing, control, and being successful through others' efforts in addition to yours, sets you up for leadership. Um, when you hit true leadership, it's more around how do you think, behave, and act that's often modeled. Um and and and the kids will humble you. Um I I sat in on a on a demo once, and the the kids wanted me just uh an adult eye over what they'd put together, and I gave them feedback, and I was the chief people officer for that organization at the time. And they're like, okay, thanks, Brati. Um I think we'll go get some executive input on this now. So I'm like, but I'm an executive. Like, no, no, not you, Tamba. We'll want a real one, like the COO or the CEO. Um, but the one thing that they always spoke about quite loudly was how accessible I am and willing to share, even though I'm not a developer, a technical architect, or business analyst. So how you lead, I guess, depends on who you're leading. And instead of thinking about what your leadership style is, you you better be able to morph um into what's needed by the people who you have the honor of leading. And that's that's often a challenge. We come in with our fixed leadership principles and how things might must be done. Sometimes those things don't match the people we're looking to lead or the industry we're looking to lead in. So if you were, you know, nose turned up IOP professionals, right? Um you would probably there would probably be a clearer impression of value and scarcity, but your job would be a lot harder because IOP is an integrated function. And without other things to IOP, IOP is, you know, pretty much would be an island that serves no purpose. But it's when you're amplifying and enabling business objectives using your your expert knowledge, that's when the value comes out.
SPEAKER_00I think also just in that example, leadership is already nuanced to start off with, right? Because you are trying to get the best out of people, at there, get them to be their most effective to produce results, to achieve goals, et cetera. But now it's in a a place where you're working with multiple generations, they're not all in front of you. There's remote works, they might be working in different geographies, and leadership isn't this thing that I don't know, the leadership of today doesn't feel like something you can read in a textbook and kind of understand what's required.
SPEAKER_04It's hard, right? And and and all those, all those different um parameters you have to work with. Um you you have to be quite fluid. So, how do you stay relevant to your entire customer base? So I use my kids, and it's not illegal because I'm not paying them, so it's not child labor, but I use them to keep me in touch with the music that's hot right now. So I learned about Jersey, um, Jersey House last week from my 13-year-old because he'd made his own ring tone. I was like, that sounds good. Why did it? Well, Dad, don't you know about Jersey House? So now I can pull up on kids his age going, oh, what are you listening? You're listening to some Jersey House and automatically um closer to the kids' area and not sitting with that reserve table for the for the aunties and uncles at at the bride anymore. And how do you do that with leadership? So, how do I, you know, make sure that I'm trying to touch base with leaders that that lead in all sorts of on all sorts of contexts? Um I I I love my people people, um but we often talk about the same thing. I'm interested in hearing what the executive position furthest removed from my function thinks about what we do and how we can possibly help them do better, because that increases the the brand equity of this these mysterious people with acronyms like IOP and HR, chain OCM, like all of those things are quite detached. But when you say, okay, we're just gonna help you with your communication and stakeholder engagement, like, oh, that sounds simple enough. Like, yep, that's change management.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um, it feels like, and this has kind of been like a theme throughout the conversation, that there's like this mindset mindset shift that's required from like building in parallel or doing these things to real co-creation. And what does that look like? Yeah.
SPEAKER_04So and a very, very good point. Um, it would be dangerous for me to start pretending that I'm an industrial psychologist. I speak it relatively fluent. I could probably do a really uh I could do an uh a moderately good job on on uh an industrial psychology assignment. What I need to be comfortable with is I'm an expert at something else, and I know Dr. Sang could do this thing a whole lot better than me. And you would understand that your gift space is industrial psychology. You probably could do a really good job at tech integration and change management if you applied yourself. But if a client deserved your industrial psychology level impact, then you'd probably go, I know somebody that can do this a lot better. And I've spent maybe the last year and a half. My son says, like, Dad, I collect Pokemon, you collect skills. Like, what do you mean? He goes, No, I've I've heard you talking to people, and sometimes a client will say, Can you come in and do this, this, and the third? And you can do four things. But the fifth one, you'll say, Um, oh, Michael Ledwaba can do that a lot better than me. Let me see if I can't put you directly in contact. But if you want it at 60%, I can do it. But if you want it at 120%, I'll get um him to call you. Um and we could work together and collaborate. So I think there's uh this appreciation for the fact that we we we are masters of many areas, um, but probably experts in in one or two. And saying I know somebody and I I can't do that as well as they do, probably works out better for you in the long run. It definitely helps helps um potential clients or the people with the problems that you're looking at. It's like a dentist could probably do really great GP work. Um, but I want a really great GP. Like I want to go to my GP and not have them put anything in my mouth anyway. Take my temperature.
SPEAKER_00For IOPs who are listening to this and um thinking about co-designing, co-creating the future and what their role is, what would you say they should be focusing on?
SPEAKER_04Find the problem, the solution is in there. Um and and again, in the last sort of one and a half years since I've been out of a chief people role, um I have yet to see a people challenge that scares me to the point where I don't want to wrestle with it properly. Um, and I think it's because I'm relatively confident in my capabilities and I understand my gaps well enough to go, that's a gap, but I know a guy or a girl who can who can who can help me out. So I would say look, look, look at as many problems as you can and see if you can't tease out even a 20% part of the solution and find ways to backfill the other 80%. But early on, it's about dealing with as many problems as you can. So I spoke about that first um retail implementation. This was 2003. Like ERP was not something that was broadly understood. And in a retail business, they were like, but why are we putting in technology? We're sick, like we're selling lots of stock. Um but we learned everything from how to capture Coca Cola into the system, and just the fact that when you do coke, you have to create a case, you have to create a Bottle and you have to create the liquid because the liquid will be drunk, but at the stores we can receive bottles and crates back, but we can't receive them with liquid in, they have to be empty. Um, and that just changed the way we started thinking about retail and stock and and and how you you you you you do all sorts of components. Um that kind of thinking has stuck with me to this day. I'll look at a problem and try and make my own personal pokeyball out of it. Um and then when you get the poke ball, how do you then create sushi with that deconstructed thing and put it back to that and take it apart? And and I think IOPs are, especially at the beginning, um, are able to cover a great swath of issues. So I'd say get get stuck in and find problems that don't look like IOP problems. Like I keep saying, like I I I I see revenue and market prices dropping. I'm going, I'm sure there's a people thing in there. Like this revenue isn't dropping on its own on its own. Um, there's a human condition that could either prop it back up or make it make it less less volatile.
SPEAKER_00In the spirit of what could go wrong? What pitfalls should we be avoiding?
SPEAKER_04None of them. Like embrace the pitfalls fully. Dive right in. Dive is for suckers, like tuck in and cannonball. Um, but make sure that you understand the ripples and the splash patterns. Um so and and and and I guess the more senior, I don't want to say old, um, professionals have a duty to create safe havens for experimentation for the people that are coming behind them. So, you know, always be spectacular, um, spectacular and success, and spectacular and failure. Lessons accrue from both. Um, and actually, hubris doesn't accrue from failure. Um, it creates humility and and humbleness if you accept your role in that failure and you know prevent repeats. But I would say cannonball in we live in a space that's in ascendance, this AI conversation, this tech conversation doesn't dim the light of the people conversation. In fact, AI and and and and and the tech guys are gonna face real challenges around RAM and electricity. I don't know if you saw last week they're talking about data centers in space because we're running out of electricity on the planet. Guys, like the stuff we do doesn't require electricity, doesn't require any more RAM than what we have between our heads, and the impact is as powerful.
SPEAKER_00My key takeaways always be spectacular. Um tell us a personal career story, Temba. Something for you that stands out that's a moment of collaboration, purpose, shared growth.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, so if uh there's few things more addictive than an enterprise-wide system go life. Um so the the the week leading up to you know implementing a system you've spent when we worked on on big implementations, um took a year to get there. Now you're a week, like all the doing is done. Like everybody's absolutely ready. Um your tech stream, people stream, process stream, and data stream are like fully aligned, and you're just looking at getting this thing across across the line. Um the collaboration there, like you you're sitting there as a change management guy in the code, going taking instructions from Uvusi who couldn't make it into the office because of traffic, and you're you're typing code, and Ntalka is out there doing a stakeholder engagement session with the executives, whereas at the beginning of the project he was so shy he couldn't string two words together in front of an audience. Um, and then the inevitable chaos that comes with the go live and the active support you have to do and the way those teams interact, though though, those memories are always precious because the culmination of very focused, disciplined work across those streams, and then it comes to a head, and then you unlock the value, and then you support a business through it, and then when you leave, the businesses are vastly different to to to what to what you found. I think that's the one. Um on a on a personal level, um there was a time when I was struggling with the small stuff, and I got into the office one morning to get the stuff out of the way. And my CEO at the time was one of the these old school guys, first in, last out type CEOs. Um I I don't know if there's many built like that still. And he rocks up at the office and he goes, Chucky, what are you doing here? And I'm like, Well, why don't you come in and help me understand what the best way to sort the small stuff out from the big stuff? And he begins to draw on the whiteboard, and then I'm like listening, and then he stops and he goes, Temba, how's Judy? I'm like, Judy's fine. And he goes, How are the kids? And I go, the kids are fine. And then he erases everything on the whiteboard and goes, Temba, if your home front is fine, there's nothing this business can throw at you that you can't fix on your own.
SPEAKER_00I love that. That's so real, really. Like what the real focus should be.
SPEAKER_04All before seven o'clock in the morning, right? Um before after coffee. I hadn't had coffee yet. Um because these things were just bothering me. And then I realized that yo, what what he's telling me in my 20s is that sort of like make sure your your core is strong before you start trying to do push-ups and leg extensions.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I mean, even your story that you you told of the um systems implementation, it took me right back in my career. It was like palpable, right? Around like what real impact looks like and feels like. And then again to that story around the question on your wife and at home about what really matters, right?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, we we um I I did a consulting proposal um to a big mining company. And um final stage is you present to XCO. So I'm sitting, you know, sweating for ready for this presentation, and in walks one of these guys that I'd lived through like three implementations with. And all he looks at he says, looks looks at me and goes, and he's now the CIO of this mining house. And he goes, honk honk beep beep. And I I just cracked up because every time this guy tried to step into my change management lane on a project, I'd go honk honk beep beep, indicating pull over into your lane. This is my space. Um, and the the the time between this ex co presentation and that project was seven years. So but he still honk honk beep beep me.
SPEAKER_00That's such a beautiful example of how we can be serious people doing serious things, but can hold humor at the same time.
SPEAKER_04Look, we weren't always friends, like it was tough. I mean, he was a deep techie and I'm a deep people. Um so we we butted heads um a lot of the time. I mean, he's like, why can't you train people in two days? I can deliver code like quicker than that. I'm like, well, you deliver code into a stupid system. I'm training intelligent people. Uh so but we we were we worked it out over that project, and he was the guy that let me into the back door of the system because he couldn't come in. But there was a change management person on the ground, and he could maybe do some code.
SPEAKER_01Maybe maybe with some spectacularly fun way of spectacularly, that's our word.
SPEAKER_00Oh, it's about we ask each guest to leave us with a parting thought, a quote, something. Um, what's your final word for us?
SPEAKER_04So, can I do two? You're more than welcome. Um, so I I do a checking management Monday thing every week, and today's post was around slow motion is better than no motion. Um and my favorite quote of all time is from Yoda and Star Wars: do or do not. There is no try. Like you're either doing it or you aren't. Like trying is for suckers. Um, because if you're trying, you're not really doing your best.
SPEAKER_01It's so funny. I heard that quote this weekend. And so the fact that you're the second person to say it to me in the space of like three days. Ancestors are saying, like, what are the chances? What are the chances?
SPEAKER_04Whatever you're putting off, can you just go do it?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, okay. Messaged, received, taken, understood.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much, Temba. Um, thank you for your insights, thank you for your knowledge. Um, I've heard you speak on several occasions, and so when you were coming to join us, I knew you were the right guy for the topic and love the lens that you've really brought into understanding the business, into really the not just the human capital lens, but really understanding technology. And there's something for us to take away as IOPs around how we we not just guide the other side or inform the other side or support the other side, but we dive in and get dirty and we understand it and we take the risk and the opportunities that that presents. So yeah, I leave with things to ponder about. And thank you for bringing your personal side, sharing your personal stories. Um, and we look forward to continuing this journey with you.
SPEAKER_04No, it's gonna be a fun ride.
SPEAKER_00Awesome. Thank you for joining us. Uh, if you're interested in finding out more, check out our website, www.subsa.co.za. We look forward to seeing you at our conference in July, focused on human plus AI designing positive organizations. And see you in our next episode. Like, subscribe, follow. I'm Dr. Sanangiti, an industrial psychologist and president of the Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychology of South Africa. Bye.