There are many experiences that have shaped me and made me the person that I am today. I was fortunate to serve as an officer in the Royal Navy for almost 9 years). What I learnt from that experience, among other things, was to never underestimate the need and the value of mature leadership.

Leadership is not about sitting in an ivory tower, telling everyone what to do. It’s about being a source of direction and inspiration. For many of us, the recession re-emphasised this principle. It’s easy to lead complacently when the going is good, but when we’re faced with tough times we realise how important a strong leader is – at every level of the organisation.

Richard Branson has always been somebody whom I have greatly admired – mostly because I share his philosophy surrounding his employees. He once made a statement regarding the success of Virgin: “We firstly give top priorities to the interests of our staff, then our customers, third to our shareholders. This is not only a reflection of the importance of our people; it is also the most positive way of fitting together these three priorities.”
I realised this once again when my team and I sat down to draft a SWOT analysis. One of the “weaknesses” in the organisation that came as a surprise was...well, me. Customers had become so used to coming to me with all their queries that it was working to the detriment of our organisation. In short, it had become the Rick Show.

I’m glad that we’re changing that. Not only because I hope to leave a legacy – an organisation that can exist with or without me – but because there should never be just one pivotal person in the organisation. There should be many. Every single person, in my mind, should feel and act as if they are the heart of the company.

At the recent AIGS Progress Africa Conference, Kevin Gaskell (who has had the privilege of being the CEO of top UK companies like BMW and Porsche) shared his story about giving an employee the opportunity to take the reins. As his company car, Kevin had a top of the range stretch 7 series BMW, complete with chauffeur . Over time, Kevin got to know John, his chauffeur, quite well and discovered that he was dyslexic. He had difficulty reading and writing, but was incredibly logical and well-organised. He would arrive at appointments on the minute. He would plan for contingencies. He would even take time to wash the car after a long journey before pulling into a client’s parking lot. It was clear that John had an amazing talent for planning.

One morning, Kevin explained to John a task he had been given, involving the launch of two premium cars to over 400 VIPs within one morning. The VIPs – which included the press, partners, buyers, directors – were to have a breakfast at BMW cooked by a celebrity chef, followed by a viewing in the show trading centre. He had to admit that he had no idea of how to pull off this event, being that the trading centre was over 2km away, the route from the BMW offices was entirely uncovered, and that weather forecast for the launch day was for rain! Kevin was envisioning soaking wet and miserable VIPs battling their way across to the trading centre in the pouring rain. But John simply listened and said, “Leave it to me.”

I can’t say what prompted Kevin to hand the most important event of his career over to a virtually illiterate chauffeur, but he did.

“It was a thing of beauty,” Kevin said. “One week later, I came out and there were 200 of our staff members standing outside. John had organised a dress rehearsal. There were six security guards standing at each of the six doors, dressed in suits, with MI5 ear pieces. I looked around the corner and spotted a row of stretch 7 series BMWs. At that point, John gave the signal...the first four cars pulled up and the security guards escorted four people inside with a branded umbrella held over their heads. When they left, the next car pulled up. And the next, and the next...John had organised 24 stretch 7 series BMWs. To this day, I don’t know where he got them. But within 15 minutes, all 200 people had seen the cars. He pulled it off. The staff stood on the balconies of the building and cheered. It was brilliant, profound.”

That is the culture of enthusiasm and ownership I want to adopt in my company. I don’t want my employees to think of their roles as set, I want to employ their creativity and potential. Being a leader does not mean that you have to do everything yourself. Trust your staff – let them be leaders in their fields. I encourage everyone at AIGS to “live the brand”, acting as company advocates and ultimately impacting positively on corporate profitability.

I believe that the difference between companies who continuously succeed and those who flounder can be traced back to a level of personal responsibility held by the staff. If your employees feel like they matter, changes in strategy can be successful, inspiring more motivation, and more success. At the end of the day, the A-Z experience of working with your employees to bring the best out of them, could be your strongest competitive advantage.
You’d be surprised at what one person can do. The torch relay for the London Olympics is a good example. As the precursor to the biggest sporting event in the world, this torch has to go through the hands of 8000 carriers, across 1000 cities, in just 70 days. It is being broadcast live, to millions of people. Can you imagine the logistics involved? The investment? Yet that relay is organised by just one person.

It’s incredible. Perhaps even more incredible considering that that one person who is in charge was once a just humble chauffeur, working for BMW.

What it is, why you should use it, and how to get ready

I recently had the pleasure of hosting a business forum at the AIGS Progress Africa Conference where we asked the question: what is the cloud? Suffices to say, we had a diverse range of answers and questions flying back and forth.
Cloud computing involves the delivery of computing and storage as a service to a community, essentially entrusting services with a user's data, software and computation over a network. The most common examples that the public would interact with includes services like Dropbox or Gmail, but there are more complex services such as renting servers (known as "Infrastructure as a Service" or IaaS) or application software and databases ("Software as a Service"). Essentially, this allows for economies of scale and access to improved services, particularly for small business owners.

The broken promise of the cloud

As "moving to the cloud" became a widely accepted and promoted marketing phrase, many CEOs and business owners have been caught up in the hype of adopting cloud services, and been disappointed. Chantel Lindeman, an analyst for Frost and Sullivan, pointed out 5 ways that the cloud is not living up to its promise.

• Cost

Firstly, the perception exists that using a cloud platform will instantly reduce costs, whereas the reality is that this is not always the case. Some companies find themselves running two systems: one on-site for core applications and one off-site with non-critical data.

• Ease of use

The implementation of cloud is not as easy as portrayed and requires a good support structure of the company implementing the system.

• Reliability and performance

This is a key issue in South Africa as our connectivity is not forthcoming and leaving information on the cloud is potentially hazardous to the redundancy of a company.

• Control and trust

There is a major trust issue with cloud implementation and this is where private clouds have managed to ease the concerns of companies looking to implement a cloud solution

• Security risk perception

There is a perception that information on the cloud is not necessarily protected as well as if it was on-site for companies to manage directly.
However, that's not to say that using cloud computing is flawed or should be avoided. In fact, if the cloud is used correctly, it can revolutionise a business.

South Africa and the cloud

Frost and Sullivan has revealed that there has been an uptake in the cloud solutions, specifically in infrastructure as a services due to the fact that people are noticing the direct coloration on their CAPEX to invest in virtual machines vs. investing in infrastructure on-site. Findings show that the uptake of other solutions in the cloud sector is still in its nascent stage and will require another three years before we still a significant uptake - the key to the uptake of cloud solutions will ultimately be better established connectivity throughout the country.
It is crucial that businesses start preparing to implement cloud-based services and solutions in their organisation within the next few years if they hope to compete.
My advice to businesses that are considering using cloud-based solutions is to examine their motives for doing so very carefully. In many instances, the cloud has been a solution looking for a problem, and companies have been getting caught up in the hype. The question to put to yourself is: is the cloud solution I want to implement meeting a problem? The technology has to meet the business needs and be driven by that alone.
I have no doubt that the expansion of the cloud will be widespread and all-encompassing very soon. But I always know that whatever we think it will look like in a few years will be quite different in reality. Plan for the cloud, but tread carefully and use the needs of your business as your compass.