Daily Maverick 168 weekly newspaper.
One of the most common mistakes I see entrepreneurs make as their businesses begin to grow is confusing the concept of delegation with the concept of abdication.
Delegation is the managed transference of responsibility of a job, task, project or target to another person in the organisation. Abdication, on the other hand, is the view that when you assign something to someone else, from here on out it is their problem. Abdications rarely feature a handover or expectation. They often come with an attitude of: now it’s your problem, so I can get back to whizzing around, shooting from the hip and dealing with all the urgent – but often not so important – things I need to get done.
First published in the Daily Maverick 168 weekly newspaper.
Just when it seemed South Africa would finally get new spectrum licensed for the first time in 15 years at a month-end auction, a legal spanner has brought it to a halt.
As I’ve tried to explain before, the issues are as clear as mud. Telkom, the third-largest operator, complained that the auction rules would favour the two biggest players, Vodacom and MTN, so it sued the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) last year.
Earlier this year, MTN also sued the regulator, concerned that the auction would deny it access to the crucial 3.5GHz range – some of which Telkom already has access to.
Daily Maverick 168 weekly newspaper.
The Nasdaq, the main US index for tech stocks, is now in correction territory, dropping 10.51% from its high in mid-February. Is this a harbinger of more pain to come for the tech darlings?
Tesla, the manufacturer of electric cars, is perhaps the poster child of this slump. While it was last year’s best-performing stock on the S&P 500, according to Bloomberg the stock has plunged 35% and lost about $308-billion in market value in the past two months alone. Investors might, at this point, do well to remember the adage that even great businesses at the wrong price will be poor investments.
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Daily Maverick 168 weekly newspaper.
For organisations that are not used to inventing and delivering new products and services, we can take inspiration from the serial winners at the game of innovation. And there are few better exponents than Amazon. Students of innovation have recorded more than 25 significant innovations by the company in its first 20 years and collecting 2,200 patents in 2020 alone. Clearly, its frameworks and cultural practices offer many lessons for those aspiring to remain relevant in today’s world.
In their book Working Backwards, Colin Bryar and Bill Carr, two former generals in the Amazon empire, recount the principles that helped make it the $386-billion annual revenue behemoth that it is today. For innovative culture to exist within the entire organisation, the vision, mission and values need to be crystal clear – something CEO Jeff Bezos goes to great lengths to cover in shareholder letters, published leadership principles and his own actions. Innov