Interview - Nyimpini Mabunda, Chairperson, Schindler SA

Helping Others To Reach Their Full Potential

By Fiona Wakelin

Nyimpini Mabunda started his career at Procter and Gamble, then joined Diageo, where he worked for 15 years in three different countries: South Africa, the United Kingdom and Uganda. His first executive suite role was as CEO of Uganda Breweries – after which he was appointed CEO at Vodacom for Consumer Business. Nyimpini’s latest role, before starting as Chairperson at Schindler SA, was with General Electric as a CEO for Southern Africa.

We asked him to unpack his role as Chairperson of Schindler SA.

“I think at large, my role is to make sure that the board of directors works - for me it is important to make sure that the team is diverse, well recruited and operates well in terms of adding value to management.The second thing is to ensure the sustainability of the organisation through succession planning and providing the long term strategy.

And then there is the issue of governance. I want to be careful to emphasise that it actually goes beyond governance - hence we have audit committees, as well as risk and compliance committees. That’s a big part of making sure that organisations do the right thing and continue to have the reputation for doing the right thing, which in turn ensures sustainability.”

Q: What do you enjoy most about your role?

“I thrive when I see people grow. I think a lot of this comes from my upbringing. I’m a son of an educator, a teacher, and as a nurturer I want to develop others. This has helped me in my own career, because, when your team thrives and shines you get recognition, which, of course, you reflect back to them. It’s an ecosystem. I think I exist to help others reach their best potential. I want to help others succeed and nothing gives me more satisfaction when I see people becoming what they never thought possible.”

"Schindler produces three core products: elevators in residential and commercial buildings as well as in industrial spaces such as mines; escalators; and walkers, found in airports. The company manufactures them, installs them, and most importantly, services, renovates and replaces them. Globally more than 69,000 Schindler employees work around the clock to serve 2 billion people everyday. “For our employees, for the users of the lifts, the escalators, the walkers, safety is of paramount importance”.

Schindler Lifts (SA) (Pty) Limited was formed in 1949 with offices, a workshop and a factory in Johannesburg. Nearly three quarters of a century later the company has grown from strength to strength.

Q: What is the secret of this success?

“Firstly, there’s no substitute for great quality products and our products have stood the test of time. We’ve been here a long time and our customers are repeat customers because they are happy. We pride ourselves on fantastic products. The second one for me is customer orientation. We have a customer-first attitude, where you give the level of service to the customers that ensures they keep coming back; we monitor very closely customer engagement and our net promoter score. And then thirdly we’ve become an employer of choice, so we are able to attract the best talent. You need to keep on reinventing yourself, modernising, finding ways to deliver better products, more efficient products so that you are at the forefront of tech and new products and services”.

"There has been a lot of debate amongst multinationals regarding B-BBEE, and some companies have opted for ownership equity credits – Schindler SA is, however, a proudly BEE Level 2 contributor, which is important for transformation in the country and something to be celebrated. “I’m really proud that we achieved a level 2 scorecard – we have a black female CFO and the organisation itself is diverse; we also do great work in an operational procurement with small businesses – we train them and improve livelihoods and improve employment.”

Q: What are some of Schindler SA’s flagship projects?

“There are so many, but to name a few – the iconic Discovery building; the Leonardo Hotel; the Mall of Africa; Sandton City; the Silos in Cape Town; Waterfall; Gateway Mall and we are working on some new exciting projects. I’m grateful to all our customers and for their support.

“For us, it’s about sustainability. We have to look at our components, how they are transported because we also globally have our own decarbonisation targets and net zero targets which we get monitored on. You have to be extremely ignorant and careless to not want to do something, especially after this year, which was the hottest one in recorded history. I have spoken at several COP conferences, and I understand the agenda very well. But we all need to do our part. And Schindler’s commitment is to implement ESG practices."

“In terms of CSI, our big focus in South Africa is on education. In the subcontinent less than 40% of youth are finishing matric. So to challenge this, through our education trust, we do a lot of school revamps, school refurbishments and capacitating in the schools, with particular focus on STEM and the curriculum. We are very interested in this because of the skills deficit in Africa and the challenge of 70% youth unemployment - if we don’t come together and do something, we’re going to end up with unskilled youth who are unemployable. And that is a big risk for us – so education is a key focus”.

Q: Sharing success stories is another way to inspire the youth to reach for the stars and Nyimpini’s book “Take Charge” has already been reprinted several times - what was the impetus behind the book and what are some of the key takeaways?

“Throughout my career I would meet brilliant, brilliant youngsters that I would bring into organisations and then somehow they would never make it and disappear in the system. They just got lost. So that’s the one thing. But the second thing is that I also met a lot of people who just waited for things to happen for them in organisations – a culture of entitlement and passivity.Do not expect that your career will just grow and thrive unless you drive it and push it. It’s up to you. You must take charge and drive it, and that is exactly what ‘Take Charge’ is about.

I wanted to use the simplicity of my background and my stories and the accessibility of some of the things that I’ve done to say that it’s not rocket science. Sometimes the thought of becoming a CEO or chairperson can be intimidating. I wanted to break it down to say, actually, I went to a school, just like you do, in a village. I did this and that, and you can do it too. And so hopefully people can see themselves in some of the stories that I’m telling. And the outcome I’m hoping to get is, through reading ‘Take Charge’ and challenging yourself, you can accelerate your own career growth.”

Q: What are you looking forward to in the coming year?

“I’m very pragmatic. I’m honestly looking forward to less load shedding. And I hope that Eskom is on the right path. They’ve got two senior business people in leadership there and I hope that combination will work. This country needs to restore GDP growth. That cannot happen unless Eskom and Transnet get their houses in order. And the last thing I am looking forward to is for the elections to come and go so at least we know what the set up will be for the next five years. So those are three things - and when they happen, the country will start to report growth.

“It’s really tough in South Africa right now. Everything seems hard, from high unemployment, high inflation, low electricity, geopolitical issues and so on – but it cannot continue like this, what goes down also comes up and there are indications that the graph is starting to move upwards."

“The darkest part of the night is just before dawn; we need to keep the faith and hang in there, because the tide will turn.”