Navigating Turbulent Times and the Importance of Good Governance by Shuaib Jooman, Governance & Board Advisory Lead at GRIPP Advisory
Good governance is beneficial to the stakeholder community through the creation and enhancement of sustainable shared value.
SOUND GOVERNANCE practices build trust, inspire confidence, and advocate an organisation as being a responsible corporate citizen. Research suggests that investors are willing to pay a premium for a well governed organisation. Moreover, good governance is inextricably linked to good performance, therefore making it a critical success factor. An organisation’s governance processes should extend beyond mere siloed “tick-boxing” and pivot focus to an outcomes-based approach. With the recent spate of governance failures coupled with the impact of
geographical complexities, amongst others. As such, organisations are identifying innovative ways of staying competitive and remaining relevant. The proliferation of Covid-19 is ubiquitous and spread effortlessly across the globe wreaking havoc by creating uncertainty in geographies, their economies and markets, as well as causing panic throughout civil societies. Africa has not been spared and select industries were and still are disproportionality affected. Gaming operators are still reeling from the impact of lockdown measures which included;
“Sound governance practices build trust, inspire confidence, and advocate an organisation as being a responsible corporate citizen,” - Shuaib Jooman, Governance & Board Advisory Lead at GRIPP Advisory Covid-19, stakeholders are demanding greater transparency, accountability, fairness, and inclusivity from organisations. This is amplified in the context of other fundamental and structural changes within the business environment. These changes are centred around themes such as globalisation, climate change, disruptive technologies, and social, political, and
22
Gaming For Africa
inter alia, travel bans, social distancing on the gaming floor, curfews, supply chain disruptions, reduced disposable income, limitations on numbers at gatherings, and prohibition on the sale of alcohol. This led to significant operational losses and stringent cost cutting measures within the gaming sector. This, on the back of already anaemic
economies on the African continent, has and continues to have dire consequences for organisations large and small alike, with ripple effects and unintended consequences experienced throughout economies and its actors. Could the pandemic be termed a Black Swan event? In his book titled The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, Nassim Taleb postulates that such an event has the three attributes. “First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility. Second, it carries an extreme impact. Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable.” The very difficult question that seems to be propping up time and time again is “Were organisations adequately prepared, resilient and agile enough to respond to the challenges that the virus has brought?” The short answer is no. Ben Okri, in his essays, opines “Nature and history are not just about the survival of the fittest, but also about the survival of the wisest, the most adaptive and the most aware.” This piece aims at providing certain topics, touch points and questions on
April / May 2021
