Thabo Mbeki, cited in:

This tells all of us that this person whose working day will not be governed by the hours he is contracted to work, but by the quality of the product he will have produced by the end of that working day.

Although I kept myself busy, I still couldn’t shake off the feeling that I didn’t fit, that I was being avoided instead of embraced. Once I’d finished a project, my next wasn’t always waiting for me, despite the fact that Afrox was forging ahead, investing in healthcare and supplying oxygen to hospital groups, and trying to stay ahead of competitors such as Air Liquide and Air Products.

Expectations were high, my performance low. I knew the subject, but somehow couldn’t articulate my ideas coherently. Delegates didn’t hold back when it came to criticism and told me afterwards that my strategy was unclear, my content muddled and that I had given them no clear direction. It would have been so easy for me to have run my presentation by Louis in the days before I gave it - but I hadn’t wanted to subject myself to negative feedback. So I’d blundered on. I felt that I’d blown it and feared being sent back home.

We don’t need carrots and sticks to incentivise people. We need those with a deep understanding of our values - that is what guides us. And if we’ve got people who are not living the values, they might have to work elsewhere.

I asked, “If you could pick one trait that would predict how someone would turn out, what would it be?”

“That’s easy,” he said. “How willing they are to change their mind about what they think they know.”

The most valuable people, he continued, weren’t the ones with the best initial ideas, but the ones with the ability to quickly change their minds. They were focused on outcome over ego. By contrast, he said, the people most likely to fail were those obsessed with minute details that supported their point of view.