Leadership

through a Global Pandemic Leadership Resilience and Business Continuity

BY: RRE ELIJAH LITHEKO

The global economy has been disrupted severely by the outbreak of the coronavirus, also referred to as Covid-19. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the virus originated in the city of Wuhan in the province of Hubei, in China around December 2019. The virus has since spread across the globe causing panic in its wake because of its contagious nature, with fatal consequences. On the 11 th March 2020 the World Health Organisation declared the coronavirus a global pandemic and raised a concern in relation to its spread and severity. It pointed out that lack of action from governments in response to this pandemic will pose a health risk to people globally.

Its Director-General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, however, indicated that “all countries still can change the course of the pandemic” if they could put systems and processes in place to detect, test, treat, isolate, trace and mobilise their people in response. Details, updates and advice on the coronavirus are accessible on: www. gov.za; www.who.int; www.unfoundation.org; www.sacoronavirus.co.za Indications are that the South African government heard and understood the call to action from the World Health Organisation loud and clear, as evidenced by the following actions: • On Monday 21 March 2020 President Ramaphosa announced to the nation that with effect from midnight on Thursday 26 March 2020, the country will be on a 21-days lockdown until midnight on 16 April 2020 as provided for in the Disaster Management Act • Government interaction with social partners, including civil society and faith based organisations • Deployment of the police and army to monitor general compliance of the lockdown • Setting up of the Solidarity Fund • Testing and isolation of affected people • Putting health facilities and health-workers under alert and other related measures • On Thursday 9 April 2020, President Ramaphosa in a public address to the nation extended the lockdown period by a further two weeks to 30 April 2020 and gave a detailed motivation for such a course of action

On 1 April 2020, the Director-General of the Health World Organisation reported as follows: “Over the past five weeks, we have witnessed a near exponential growth in the number of new cases, reaching almost every country, territory and area.” This is a clear indication that this pandemic knows no boundaries nor is it concerned about social status. It impacts people at all levels – employees, managers, business executives, public servants, professionals across all sectors of the economy – hence the government’s timely response.

People across the world are hoping that a sustainable cure to this virus will be found, thereby curbing its spread and destabilising effect. Commendable initiatives and interventions that demonstrate high levels of empathy, compassion, generosity and caring attitude are beginning to emerge all over the world in a spirit of solidarity. This spirit of solidarity might be ushering a new world culture of collaboration and sharing where everybody knows that he/she is a welcome member of the society with a role to play.

With this context in mind let us now consider the impact of the pandemic and the lockout on business operations.

It is clear that since the proclamation of the lockdown, economic activity in South Africa and across the world has been severely affected – all business transactions except for essential services and retail outlets selling groceries and medicine have all come to a halt with some conducted remotely. Very few business leaders were prepared for this dramatic change to the way they have been running their businesses. The type of change facing them now is different from any that they have managed in the past as due to the increased level of uncertainty that this pandemic has caused. I have been researching these developments and have come across the ideas below which I believe could assist business leaders in redirecting their organisations during these uncertain times:

Firstly, it is important to acknowledge that to thrive during periods of uncertainty ‘one does not have all the answers and control, and therefore should have a willingness to trust, build together and be flexible’, as Organisational Behaviour researcher, Margaret Wheatley advises.

The greatest thing an organisation can do during periods of uncertainty, she says, ‘is to lead toward a greater capacity to handle unpredictability, and with that, a greater capacity to love and care about other people’.

Expanding further on this another researcher, Nathan Furr, writing in the Harvard Business Review had this to say: “For the last few years, I have been studying how to develop the capacity to deal with uncertainty – to find the possibilities and opportunities within the unknown, rather than to panic and retreat from risk.” . What these two researchers in human and organisational behavior are confirming is the following: • That there is no need for leaders of organisations to panic when faced with uncertainty but to remain calm • That with uncertainty comes opportunities, possibilities and lessons that need to be explored further and leveraged. • That abnormal levels of uncertainty require a different strategic response from business leaders to ensure the continuity of their organisations.

Below, I would like to share two possible approaches that could assist business leaders in navigating uncertain environments to ensure the continued existence of their organisations. The first will focus on repositioning the organisation: 1. Ensure that all executives and key stakeholder have a full grasp of the realistic view of the organisation’s current state. This will require the development of a clear baseline of the company’s current position which should be shared with key stakeholders. 2. Develop scenarios for multiple versions of the organisation’s future.

These scenarios are based on the assumptions made by the Executive

team as to how things may turn out under different conditions in the future. Some of these scenarios in response to the implications of the lockdown, might be based on the assumption that both management and employees will forgo their annual increases and bonuses for one/ two years as a way of saving jobs and ensuring business continuity.

Another assumption might hinge on government bailout and so forth. 3. Establish the organisation’s posture and broad direction for immediate to medium-term operations, with evolving strategic and tactical responses regarding communication, meeting scheduling, travel or physical contact imperatives and related protocols. 4. Determine actions and strategic moves that are robust across scenarios. This would require the development of a portfolio of strategic moves that will perform relatively well as a collective across all likely scenarios, even if a move isn’t a winner on its own. 5. Set trigger points that will activate the organisation’s leadership to act at the right time. In a fast changing world there is no perfect plan, and an acknowledgement that the plan will require constant adaptation as new information emerges. Thus, an ability to recognise signals or triggers is critical to enable a speedy adaptation of the plan. The above process supported by continuous learning culture will help leaders in organisations to detect systems/processes/policies/ procedures that are not suited in an environment characterised by high levels of uncertainty and review them accordingly to ensure the elimination of waste. Embedding a learning culture is the second critical feature of strong leadership during periods of uncertainty. A learning culture encompasses the following: • Ability to detect and correct errors • Continuous improvement informed by new insights • Commitment to using the broad skills of the workforce at all levels • Willingness to let go of practices and processes that do not add value • Adoption of structures and strategies designed to enhance and maximise organisational learning • Instituting a knowledge management system that will ensure the retention of institutional memory • Acknowledgement that questioning and/or modifying existing practices, procedures, policies and objectives is part of the organisation’s growth and market positioning • Continuous environmental scan to identify opportunities that the organisation can pursue and threats that need to be avoided. Faced with this situation, I chose to follow the positive sentiments expressed in Charles Dickens quotation above - sentiments that expressed light, hope, wisdom and renewal. I also saw this as an opportunity to manage sentiments that portend darkness and hopelessness and eliminate them in my consciousness. Above all, I was encouraged by the fact that South Africa was now a democratic country - a country that has committed itself to: “Heal the divisions of the past and establish a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights.”. This represented the best of times for me and the HR professionals who were committed to shaping a new HR and business environment anchored on democratic values and Human Rights.

Thus, IPM was for me one of the platforms that could support the country in the attainment of these noble objectives and nothing could deter me from this cause. I saw this as an opportunity of a lifetime where IPM could continue playing the strategic role of promoting the adoption of leading people management practices in the African continent and the world. This objective has been achieved, evidenced by the fact that: • IPM has been and still is the administrative arm of the African Human Resource Confederation (AHRC) • IPM has facilitated the establishment of HR professional bodies and/or forums in Namibia, Mauritius, Swaziland, Botswana and Lesotho • IPM has served and still serves on the Board of the World Federation of People Management Associations (WFPMA) • IPM has served and still serves on the Human Resource Development

Council of South Africa • IPM is a registered professional body with SAQA in terms of the

National Qualifications Framework Act • IPM has hosted and still hosts a world-renowned Human Resources and Business Leadership conference in partnership with experts in the field of people management and business leadership • IPM has been providing and still provides the largest exhibition platform for service providers in the Human Capital Development space • IPM continues to influence the culture of progressive human resource practices in collaboration with strategic partners • IPM has a dedicated Board and Executive leadership team that are working with multiple strategic partners to promote the strategic role of the HR profession in society. …and everyone was running amok, wideeyed and panicked. They were looking around for leadership, until they found it. Hiding deep within themselves. – Litsibolo la Barotse

During my tenure at the helm of the Institute of People Management, I had the opportunity with the support of successive Boards to apply some of the ideas shared in this article. At the beginning of my tenure I had to deal with the stark reality that all the leadership and heads of programmes that used to run IPM during the Apartheid era had abandoned IPM. Compounding the matter even further was the fact that IPM’s intellectual property was nowhere to be found.

The challenge facing IPM at the time could aptly be described in Charles Dickens words: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.” My personal experience at IPM has taught me that “worst times could be turned into “best times”; that the season of darkness could be turned into a season of light” and that the “winter of despair could be turned into the spring of hope.”

The coronavirus and the resultant lockdown has presented all of us with an opportunity to turn the “winter of despair into the spring of hope!” and I am confident that business leaders have the capacity to do this!

Rre Elijah Litheko is past Chief Executive of IPM (2005-2016), and currently serves on various national Education structures and Boards, including The UKZN Council and Executive Committee, and the South African Society for Cooperative Education

WWW.IPM.CO.ZA JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2020 VOL43 NO.10

OPTIMISING HUMAN CAPITAL

SAVEOURDATE 18-21 OCTOBER 2020 IPMACE2020

IPM Tracing the Heritage

As rumbles of war reverberated across the world in the early 1900’s to mid-1940’s, the call for humanity in the workplace and society at large was becoming a global movement, leading to a Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1945.

In 1943, Rhodes post-graduate student, Isobel White, sought ways of putting her social studies and knowledge obtained through her membership with the UK-based personnel management body into good practice. While busy with her research work, she organised people management fora among fellow students and personnel managers in the Eastern Cape region. In 1945, the group formed itself into a South African chapter of the UK Institute of Personnel Management. They began challenging local industries to improve the welfare of workers: to improve accommodation and convenience facilities in the workplace and set humane standards for recruitment and management of people.

Borrowing from human rights principles and from both Taylor’s scientific management theory and Mayo’s Hawthorne psycho-social (human relations) studies, Isobel White produced a curriculum for the first people management qualification in South Africa. The post-graduate diploma in Welfare and Personnel Management saw graduates from several fields, including health, social sciences, law, administration and arts take an interest in pursuing a career in personnel management. This practice-based qualification took much of the South African industry landscape into context and to maintain its relevance, White was instrumental in activating IPM branches that exchanged information and standards throughout the country.

She led the work of producing workplace guidelines to aid practicing personnel officers, work supervisors and agents involved in the facilitation of labour recruitment and communication or translation. In time, IPM adapted the diploma curriculum for those who needed guidelines in specialised areas of personnel management, and developed modules that would be accessible to students or officers with no undergraduate qualifications.

IPM had strong branches in Johannesburg and Cape Town (started in 1946) and Durban (1947). Isobel White had met her match in an equally passionate mining researcher, Francis Hill, who led the Johannesburg branch into a formidable force, thanks to the steep growth of mining as a major employer at the time.

From 1955, IPM began a series of regional conferences that enabled members to network, exchange knowledge and develop ‘best practice’ for a common, more professionalised personnel management approach and application. Also, one to walk the talk, Francis Hill successfully established what became the first fully-fledged personnel management department in South Africa.

Thanks to the early pioneers of the 50’s, IPM increased the awareness of human relations in the workplace, and during the 1960’s gaining an independent profession status became a focus. IPM sought to have statutory recognition and have personnel management professionals on an exclusive national register, the same way as doctors, accountants and lawyers had professional boards.

As far as government was concerned, IPM was doing the unthinkable, not only by breaking itself off from the social work profession, but by seeking to register all its members on one new board. The proposal included blacks, whom at the time were not recognised among employees, let alone professionals in the apartheid workplace. It was not surprising, therefore, that the government turned down the application.

An attempt to bypass the local professional resistance and obtain direct association with the world structure of personnel management was thwarted, with the UN-inspired global body insisting on the country’s adopting and living by the tenets of the UN Declaration of Human Rights.

The political strife spilled tensions onto members, with some feeling encumbered by the IPM stand that led to the government’s rejection of the professionalisation application, and others enraged by the divisive machinations of the apartheid regime. As if to quell the frustrations and forge unity, IPM had decided to host a combined national convention in 1964, thereby bringing all the regional conferences together for the first time. And it seemed to work.

Despite differing political views and social frustrations, all members of IPM made what contribution their circumstances allowed to increase contribution toward the training and development of aspiring personnel managers, some of whom they mentored.

Insisting on focusing its members on developing competent quality managers, IPM, between 1969 and 1970, worked on adapting and updating the curriculum for personnel management, and in 1971, formally launched a National IPM Diploma in Personnel & Training Management. The product had input from members of various associations such as APM and PMA – made up of predominantly nonEuropean professionals who felt that the Mother Body’s executive had African members’ challenges on the back burner.

Into the 1980’s, in a world dogged by segregation, a selfintrospective IPM would become a nag to the apartheid government, advocating for equal status for all people in the workplace, irrespective of race.

Evolving the people management from welfare, admin, professionalisation and training focuses, IPM was, in the 70’s, moved to respond to an increasing globalisation of economies. It

supported industries’ pursuit for competitiveness by introducing a performance-based people management culture. In line with this, the Institute introduced a series of lectures to drive the contribution of human resources (employees) to the organisations’ bottom-line. IPM captured most of the content in a new journal People & Profits, launched in 1973.

To make strides in people management quality assurance, IPM created an exam body that would be responsible for quality management of personnel management qualifications and maintain a register of all professionals graduated from institutions countrywide, including IPM’s own programmes. In a quest to maintain segregation of duty between the tuition personnel and the examination structure, IPM encouraged independence of the exam body’s operation, only having IPM (mother body) representation at board level. The new board got to be called ‘S.A. Board for Personnel Practices’. The SABPP as it is better known, was inaugurated in 1981 and began registering practitioners from 1983.

IPM constantly revised and adapted its education content to accommodate various forms of tuition (in-class vs distance learning) and different levels of study. It still supported post-graduate curricula offered at universities, as well as under-graduate /diploma level courses. It also provided bridging short courses and certified those who acquired people management knowledge through workplace application or experience. This made IPM content and qualifications readily accessible to aspiring professionals throughout Southern Africa, from all walks of life.

Then came the trickiest of transitions for the institute, the 1990’s.

Amidst the struggles of a country restructuring toward a democracy, minority groups went on offensive mode to avoid marginalisation or irrelevance; majority groups suffered bouts of stage fright while finding a handle on grand administration responsibilities. IPM became a casualty.

A formidable giant that it was, with as admirable a heritage, IPM’s lack of agility saw it lose its footing. The new regime got many members scrambling to establish themselves in new (educational-, admin- and authority-type) structures, to take advantage of new opportunities that cried out for their skillset and background.

Universities and colleges were recruiting en masse; sector education authorities were looking for training consultancies to contract as suppliers; government was on the hunt for L&D specialists to facilitate transformation and diversity management programmes; private companies were scrambling for top resources to take charge of employee relations and facilitate change management and CSR to gain themselves legitimacy in the new dispensation.

With little warning, the scores that had looked to IPM for a professional home, advocacy and association, and the minorities that had found their professional voice, affirmation and lucrative income source – all had their attention dragged to all sorts of directions. Even as the board attempted to integrate and forge strong bonds among different fragments of people management bodies, the leadership struggle was real.

Lacking the guaranteed funds assured only to statutory bodies through mandatory certification and annual practitioner renewals, IPM stood because of the purity of its foundation and the loftiness of its purpose. Those who kept the institute together had to contend with challenges such as loss of admin files, financial records and course material/intellectual property. As specialisations in people management grew, a fragmentation of membership occurred.

In differentiating itself, and in reaffirming its founding principles and motivation, IPM re-coined its name into Institute for People Management. Its leadership worked hard at supporting the ‘human relations’ approach in people management, highlighting new studies that showed a link between organisational success and good employee relations. In a country overwhelmed by labour unrest, IPM supported the country’s transformation effort by working with people managers to persuade organisations to see, recognise and treat employees as people as much as they regarded them as resources, labour, assets, human capital or another economic factor.

The efforts of IPM leadership didn’t flounder as they successfully put the institute on the international map through international professional affiliation. IPM South Africa became instrumental in the founding of a continental federation structure for people management, thereby strengthening its contribution to the global HR management voice.

In the early 2000’s, the re-grounding work proved testing and arduous. Operating the Institute called for a different type of leadership, and certainly for a refined set of values. Despite challenges, the board and its committees worked to strengthen the international professional ties. IPM used its events to facilitate dialogue and build cohesion among different local and international stakeholders, including business leadership, employee representation structures and heads of governments. In particular, IPM kept strengthening the content quality and diversity of the profession’s dialogue through its journal and its mainstay event – the internationally-acclaimed IPM Annual Convention and Exhibition, which some dubbed as the real HR university of Southern Africa.

After a series of care-taker leaders at its helm, the institute enjoyed the relatively long tenure of one of its long-serving members and board committee member at the time, Rre Elijah Litheko.

Through his eleven-year tenure, IPM survived a liquidation and continued to flourish, thanks to a strong board and volunteer support, active operational committees, discretionary membership of students and practitioners, a range of industry- and government- partnerships as well as strong alumni who share a common vision, values and human principles such as those that moved Dr Isobel White and Dr Francis Hill to make the sacrifices they made in the 1940’s.

The assuming of the IPM-helm by Dr Jerry Gule ushers a new era. Gule represents a fresh, untainted and optimistic professionalism. He brings fresh energy that infects young members as it engages the old. His approach blots out lines and smooths over differences, to inspire people from a position of human conscience and professional passion, focusing all members to a future of possibilities.

Indeed, it is time that HR leaders and line managers march employees, mentees, coachees or students ‘to the next’. To help them use their human imagination, creativity and collective power to see beyond threats and convert opportunities into advantages that help them thrive into the latter part of the 21st Century.

Inspired by the fathers, mothers and siblings of liberation, let us celebrate the gift handed down by those who walked ahead of us… Beginning from King Cyrus the Great, who without bloodshed or loss of life, stood to end slavery and promote human rights and equality as far back as 539 B.C.

“The opening up of the profession has made people management education as easily accessible as it is varied in quality. The fact that the profession has no mandatory licence requirement for practitioners is both a blessing and a curse. Notwithstanding, IPM’s job is to ensure that the collective effect of the profession equips South Africa with capabilities that makes her people effective players in the workplace, and valuable contributors to the economy.” Says researcher Nolitha Mokoena, and we concur.

The Universal Declaration of HUMAN RIGHTS

Article 1.

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 2.

Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.

Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

Article 3.

Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

Article 4.

No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

Article 5.

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Article 6.

Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

Article 7.

All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.

Article 8.

Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.

Article 9.

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

Article 10.

Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.

Article 11.

Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.

No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.

Article 12.

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Article 13.

Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

Article 14.

Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.

This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from nonpolitical crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 15. Everyone has the right to a nationality.

No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.

Article 16.

Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.

Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.

The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

Article 17.

Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.

Article 18.

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Article 19.

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Article 20.

Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association. No one may be compelled to belong to an association.

Article 21.

Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives. Everyone has the right to equal access to public service in his country.

The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.

Article 22.

Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international cooperation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

Article 23.

Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.

Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection. Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

Article 24.

Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

Article 25.

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

Article 26.

Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.

Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.

Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

Article 27.

Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.

Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

Article 28.

Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.

Article 29.

Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.

In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.

These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 30.

Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

A symbol of tolerance and freedom THE CYRUS CYLINDER

The Cyrus Cylinder tells an amazing story of King

Cyrus of Persia conquering Babylon and setting all the peoples free to go back to their homes and homelands.

Most amazingly, he lets them recover all the things that were confiscated as symbols of victory – and go back to their lives and religions, worshiping their gods in their own way and in their own temples. The Cyrus Cylinder conveys a message of tolerance, peace, and multiculturalism, hence many have called it “the first bill of human rights.”

Over 2600 years later, the Cyrus Cylinder unites people from different backgrounds, ethnicities, and religions in cherishing the wisdom of tolerance.

It served as a source of inspiration for all leaders and organisations who stood for human liberation, including the assembly of states that crafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

A TRIBUTE

The history of IPM takes different versions, depending on who tells it, from what era, what viewpoint or what motivation.

At the end of the day, each version is truth. At least to the person telling it. As a researcher and a writer, I respect every version. I honour the person telling it as I respect their unique take, their context, their fears and the refuge they find in ‘their version of the story’. I appreciate the personal meaning they take and attach to their own experience of the Institute which, no matter what badge anyone attaches to it, subtracts nothing from the original motivation of the founder.

Like her motivation, the Institute remains pure, true and representative of the most honest of intentions in the development of talent and the nurturing of the human soul – the human being and the person beyond the resource, tool or factor of production, capital, asset or labour.

To those who came to the Institute to use her, she made herself useful; for those who came to the Institute to learn, she afforded them the education; even those who came to loot, she allowed them the surfeit. In whatever way anyone needed, she equipped, gave, empowered and stood tall to keep giving to those who need. And stand, she will continue.

The Institute of Personnel Management presented hope, a future, a sanctuary and a vehicle to affirm all those she entertained with her wisdom. Even when she entertained the change in regimes she lived through, she remained a true home for conscious and ethical leadership of those who are custodians of the workplace.

Whether the flavour of the decade was talent evaluation and personality tests, social justice, workplace transformation, competency development, industry professionalisation, strategic alignment, resource optimisation, organisational competitiveness or socio-economic sustainability – she rose and raised others to the occasion. She evolved, adapted and became the right things to the right people – the ones who saw and related to the good on which she was founded.

Today, as we celebrate 75 years of great leadership, it is still worth remembering the foundations – the values and the principles on which the Institute of People Management was built.