By the Lionesses of Africa Operations Dept

“If knowledge is power, knowing what you don’t know is wisdom.”, so wrote Adam Grant, the renowned professor of psychology at Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in his new book, “Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know,”. One of the basic frustrations he has is that: Too many people in the world listen to opinions that make them feel good, instead of ideas that make them think harder.

There is absolutely no doubt that we have all fallen into that trap at one time or another (if not many times), but what if we questioned not just the essential moral and ethical assumptions we have, but business ones too. As we know (yet always forget), adverts on the internet are weighted heavily by our viewing. But so is information and news stories as we are drawn by certain algorithms towards that which aligns with what we have previously viewed, thereby continuing to confirm our own thinking. We want to be right and it’s great to be right, and the internet kindly confirms this by finding more information each time we hit the search button, pushing yet more self confirming information and stories towards us that continue to confirm this, and so the circle continues…  

Isn’t life easy! 

But quite simply we should be ashamed. Why work so hard if we throw it away through little thought. We owe it to our business, our employees, our customers and shareholders to always be thinking and to push the boundaries of our thinking.

What we are seeing and believing via our ‘online’ lives is what is called ‘confirmation bias’ being played out on our laptops. As Paul Simon wrote in his song the Boxer:

“We hear what we want to hear and disregard the rest…”

If we only receive information that confirms with our current viewing, then our thoughts will be pushed into a loop and constantly confirmed by what we read. It has been said that those that believed the election in the USA was rigged were only following what they had been told and shown every time they logged on… In such loops one’s own fears feed themselves. Scary!

In the book by the Harvard Lecturer, Vikram Mansharamani, called: ‘Think For Yourself: Restoring Common Sense in an Age of Experts and Artificial Intelligence’, Prof Mansharamani believes that we have all been relying far too much on experts, to such an extent that we have forgotten the art of thinking for ourselves. 

He suggests taking a moment to ‘zoom out’ (as he calls it), to focus by stepping back and thereby recognize the level of information and detail required to perform your task, job or run your business. We at the Lioness Operations Den are great believers in reading around our business, to even read away from our business (we all have to relax somehow!), and agree with the Prof on this. A CEO cannot have the time to drill down into every minute detail (“Is that screw in straight?”), made even more complex if that detail is just hidden or ignored by ‘fluff’ or ‘noise’ from the internet. 

Yet is that true even during wartime? And make no mistake, Covid has brought wartime volatility instantly into our lives…and it is still with us. Covid didn’t finish with an announcement that Vaccines had been found. We are still in a war-time with huge volatility and sudden changes to our lives and much more to come.

We were hit by this the other evening as we read a book by Hamish McKensie on Elon Musk called ‘Insane Mode’ (a button on the dash of the Tesla Model S that gives you acceleration like a Ferrari – now taken further and called ‘Ludicrous’) that here was a leader who seemed to be constantly thinking outside the box and pushing the boundaries both in what he expects and tries, but also in the time he assumes or expects projects to take. He is a maverick, and love him or hate him, he is pushing the boundaries of business whilst also becoming through his businesses the world’s richest person with a net worth at around $185bn – all whilst never conforming to any stereotypical leader found in management books!

How is this possible? No management book? Seriously?

Perhaps we should be asking – are business books written in the comfort of the last few decades prior to 2020 really what is required now, when all our assumptions have been thrown on their heads?

Long term readers of our blogs will know we are huge fans of a16z, the massive PE firm set up by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. Ben Horowitz wrote a brilliant book called: ‘The Hard Thing about Hard Things’. As he says: “While many people talk about how great it is to start a business, very few are honest about how difficult it is to run one.” Amen to that! In this he looked at leaders such as Steve Jobs (who returned to Apple as interim CEO with the company only months from bankruptcy) and Elon Musk, calling them ‘wartime leaders’. With all our assumptions having been thrown out of the window with Covid, there is no doubt we are in the midst of a war. Can ‘traditional’ leaders handle this. Why was Churchill a brilliant wartime leader, but voted out during peacetime? One would have thought the British public would have given him the benefit of the doubt – but no.

So what do we expect to see in a wartime leader and how is running a company during a war different from when the sun is out, suppliers pick up their phones and all our assumptions are there, fresh and ready for another day each morning as we wake… Most importantly – what can we learn from these leaders to allow us to survive (and perhaps thrive) until the bird song returns and spring arrives?

According to Ben Horowitz these are some of the main differences:

By Angelique Adcock & Dr Alison Hofer 

Yes, let’s talk about YOU. The minute you were born, your life in this world began and things and people around you changed to accommodate and support you. As you grew up and started taking responsibility for yourself you started to recognize who you are and what drives you and what makes you happy. 

This knowledge about yourself helps you to know what choices to make in order to create your own life success. If you pay close attention you will notice when a choice option makes sense for you intellectually, financially and emotionally – and your decision to take action is rooted in a positive, progressive, energized “Yes!” YOU are thus creating your life by choices you make; this includes everything around it, including your business. 

The practice of being creative, seeing potential in ideas, and finding constructive ways to take an idea forward is at the heart of every exciting new business venture. Likewise, your new creative projects or decisions for home and heart need that kind of “Yes lets” vision. You cannot start a new business without knowing who you are; what you want; believing in your idea; seeing its potential, taking risks to activate the idea and having the vision of success to keep you motivated. To quote Elon Musk, “A company is a group organized to create a product or service, and it is only as good as its people and how excited they are about creating.” 

Interestingly a great example of seeing the explosive effect of using these simple words: “Yes Lets” is seen in the hilarious and energized example of Improvised Theatre. This is where the actors are placed into random situations with given criteria and must instantly use a free flow of creative ideas to bring a scene to life. Think of the TV show: “Whose line is it anyway?” There are rules for each game that underpin the structure of the scene. And in the “Yes Lets” game, the task of each actor is to take any random idea that is put forward and respond to it with an unhesitating “Yes!”. They then need to find a way to use something in that idea to keep the overall scene flowing forward. 

One is not allowed to ‘block’ the flow of the scene by saying “No” to anything the other actors offer. 

For example: The scene is a few actors in a workshop where everyone is building an imaginary machine. Another actor comes along and says “Here, I brought a keyboard. Let’s put it in”. It is natural for those actors who are imaginatively building, let’s say: a car, to respond with “No that won’t work, we want a car and a piano does not fit into my picture”. However, in this game, “blocking’ forward flow of action is not allowed as the actors would be stopping any progress of the scene by saying “No”. Instead they must say “Yes lets” and find a creative way to take the car construction forward using a keyboard, resulting a totally new direction for the story. The actors need to add on to the ‘crazy’ new idea by saying “Yes lets, and...”. That “and” means that the idea is absorbed and will be integrated. 

The interesting thing about this process is that it forced actors to allow a story to be built in totally original, unexpected directions, and because there is a lack of resistance, new ‘out of the box’ solutions are found to what could have been an impossible problem: keyboards do not traditionally belong on top of a car. But what if there was a car in the world that could have musicians and instruments attached and could drive around bringing us music. Or your hooter could be a jingle of new notes for different situations, instead of the one old “Beep”. Imagine if a taxi’s hoot when wanting to ask people on the curb “Do you need a ride?” sounded different to “You are about to crash into me: STOP!”. It might result in us South Africans not having heart failure ten times on the drive into work. Crazy? Maybe – but think how many creative new inventions are seen as ‘nuts’ at their first introduction. Think: light bulbs, umbrellas, personal computers, taxis and vaccines. The list is long. 

Now, let’s think about this application to business – there are structures and rules that guide how we operate. The challenge for the actor on stage, or for the business person at the helm of his or her venture, is to build creatively and intelligently so that the business moves forward towards greater success. 

How many cases do you know of where someone, perhaps you yourself, brought a wild idea to the table, only to have it blocked, and the idea went to die. Years later, you still think “I KNOW that could have worked”, if they had only had the vision I had for it. 

This brings us back to thinking about YOU at the centre of your work and life. Remaining open and taking a moment to consider all the potential results of a new idea, may provide answers to problems that seem unsolvable. The great gift of the creative people in our world, or in your business, is that they have the ability to think differently, and to find solutions to problems by thinking outside of those straight lines. Conflict resolution can be managed better when we find that the key to a solution often lies inside the problem. You just need to look at it differently and think of possibilities. 

Saying “Yes lets, and…” is not always possible, we understand that. But engaging, even briefly, with new ideas that will help you move toward a success that you are after, is possible. And yes, let us look again towards our own brilliant solution finder Elon Musk who said, ” The first step is to establish that something is possible, then probability will occur”.

Tell us a little about your team

We are a team of 5 people with everyone very clear on what role they play. There is a lot of teamwork and friendship, with a deep commitment to see the events turn out well.

Share a little about your entrepreneurial journey. And, do you come from an entrepreneurial background?

I stumbled into entrepreneurship after becoming a mum. I was previously employed mainly in the tourism and travel industry. The resource I mainly started with was the idea and I developed it from there. For instance, while building our social media presence, initially I thought the best approach would be to start off with a mums group. It was both a good and not so good idea – as a result, it turned into something else, I later on thought it would be better to have an online page, speak as a brand, and also engage with mums and parents. After a year or so, we transitioned to the page and later on developed the website. The website is pretty much a portal on everything of interest to mum and baby in Kenya. Secondly, getting the initial capital was not easy – getting corporate partners on board was also not very easy at the beginning. Nor was getting mums to attend the events. Eventually I learnt how to make the idea sustain itself, by creating relationships with corporates, with the mums, and by exploring the digital space. We grew event attendance through consistency and creating vibrant event themes – also by nurturing relationships with mums. Today, they also recommend us to their mum-friends and come with them for the next one. 

Over time, some of some of the achievements and recognitions that I have been honored to receive include:
• Country Winner 2015, CEO Magazine Africa Most Influential Women in Business and Government
• Finalist CFC Stanbic Bank Rising Star Awards 2015, Entrepreneur Category
• Business Daily, Top 40 Under 40 Women Finalist 2014
• Top 5 Women under 40 in Business, Up Magazine, Kenya 2013
• Finalist, CEOs Magazine Africa Most Influential Women in Business and Government, 2014 SME Category
• Finalist, CEOs Magazine Africa Most Influential Women in Business and Government, 2013 SME Category

Being an entrepreneur has been more a case of learning on the job and working on continuous self improvement, and also being mentored by others.

Impact Partner Content – Absa

Everyone loves to take a vacation during the year, but often when the time comes to stop work and take a trip, funds can be in short supply. In South Africa, entrepreneur Millicent Motsoeri, co-founder of Heita Ngamla Holidays, has created a vehicle for customers to pre-pay for their vacations over time, making them more accessible to everyone. 

Heita Ngamla Holidays is one of the 117 companies showcased at the Absa Lionesses Xpo. Lioness Weekender spoke to founder Millicent Motsoeri about her entrepreneurial journey to date and her ambitions for the future. 

What does your company do?

Heita Ngamla Holidays is a vehicle for members to prepay for their vacations. Members accumulate funds via debit order then book a holiday package of their choosing at the time convenient to them, unlike our competitors in timeshare schemes which are dominant in the market. At the point when the member wishes to travel, there is a top-up option when the funds are short. Heita Ngamla Holidays members are guaranteed a hassle free, easily adaptable booking system, with customized packages just the way each client wants.

What inspired you to start your company?

Heita Ngamla Holidays was created for working class people to ensure their participation in quality vacations. We started the travel club in 2008 when we discovered that people love to travel, however they were often faced with difficulties when the time came for them to take leave from work and go on that dream holiday. When annual leave time comes, they have no funds set aside for holidays. Credit misuse and credit card safety are a big headache in the South African economy often with long term adverse consequences. Bookings are a hassle even when one manages to book. So there is no certainty that they will get fair value for the money that they pay.

Why should anyone use your service or product?

The most preferred purchase method for vacations in South Africa and beyond is via instalments. Our clients enjoy the benefit of destinations of their own choice, the flexibility of time or season of their own choosing, as well as no restrictions on the  numbers of those they travel with. Clients choose what their package consists of, for example, they might require a hired car only, or accommodation only, or a full package that may include flights, cruises etc. Heita Ngamla Holidays is a preferred partner of choice because we pay our suppliers up front, in full, before the arrival of our clients. This reinforces peace of mind and credible transactions. Heita Ngamla Holidays engages in continuous relationship management and preferable rates negotiations with industry suppliers, thus ensuring preferred status for our clients.

Tell us a little about your team

Millicent Motsoeri: Operations Manager. Millicent is one of the founding members of Heita Ngamla Holidays. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Administration and has over 20 years’ experience in administrative work for a number of companies and has various certificates in different subjects.

Benny Motsoeri: Business Development. Manager Benny is one of the founding members of Heita Ngamla Holidays. He has 15 years’ experience in the travel industry across a wide variety of disciplines. Prior to starting Heita Ngamla Holidays, Benny worked as a Sales Consultant for a number of companies.

Lillian Mashilwane: Administrator. Lillian joined Heita Ngamla Holidays in August 2014 and she is responsible for the company’s financial administration and customer services functions. She is currently studying Bookkeeping.

Norman Molefe: Sales Manager. Norman has been with the company since its inception. His role is to recruit members and organize trips. Prior to joining Heita Ngamla Holidays, he worked at Pick n Pay for over 30 years.

Share a little about your entrepreneurial journey. And do you come from an entrepreneurial background?

I was introduced to the life of business as a university student. I worked part-time promoting Fast Moving Consumer Goods in supermarkets. I also did a stint at Dial-A-Student passing out flyers at busy traffic intersections. My work life began with employment as a business administrator which was really fulfilling for what I studied to do, but that was short lived. I had discovered that I am people-centered and I love working with people. This self-discovery led me to network marketing. The networking thrill soon became a passion to create innovative solutions for solving everyday problems. I co-founded Dial-A-Helper in which we trained carefully screened domestic helpers which we subsequently placed and managed for our clients.

What are your future plans and aspirations for your company?

To be the preferred tourism business in Southern Africa and beyond. To give all South Africans an opportunity to experience tourism products without paying an arm and a leg.

What gives you the most satisfaction being an entrepreneur?

The ability to write my own cheque, doing what I enjoy.

What’s the biggest piece of advice you can give to other women looking to start-up?

At times things will seem and feel as if the more you move 100 steps forward, time and pressure take you a thousand steps back, because in your eyes your peers are progressing to greater heights and you are not. Remember your dream is big and it won’t take a day to build, hence you must persevere and be patient. You are a winner (Bekezela).

To find out more about Heita Ngamla Holidays, contact Millicent Motsoeri via email: millicent@ngamla.co.za or visit the company website and social media pages:

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