Five tests of your BEE health

Posted by Dr Robin Woolley
Tuesday, 7 July 2009  |  1 comments
Dr Robin Woolley is a consultant at Transcend Corporate Advisors.
Read all of Dr Robin Woolley's Posts

Companies in our country are moving along a process of socializing transformation into the fabric of their businesses. Some are doing this better than others. This article does a simple five point check of how healthy your BEE process is against best practice. The experiences of 700 South African companies of various sizes and complexity are drawn from as a basis of this article.

The best practice processes are encapsulated in the diagram below and the health tests make reference to this process.
 

Test 1:

Do your employees understand empowerment or are they "yes….but" in their response to your efforts in furthering transformation?

Rationale

The reason for this test is that your employees implement your strategy and hence are involved in implementing empowerment. If you want their hands and feet then you need their hearts and minds as well. Currently BEE starts with the word black and is hence loaded in the minds of white employees – i.e. it must be bad for me!

You need to inform and help in interpretation of empowerment so that the developed actions co-opt your employees into the process.

Test 2:

Are you able at the push of a button to surface a year to date BEE scorecard that shows the “good the bad and the ugly” both qualitative and quantitively.

Rationale

You have developed the capability for your business to monitor an important performance indicator like profitability on a monthly basis, and your empowerment scorecard needs to be considered in the same light. It should not have to go into convulsions once a year to produce a “current state”, it should be a press of the button and as often as the exco needs an update.

Does this scorecard capture ALL qualifying activities and are those activities optimized against the BEE scorecard. It is my experience that many activities that could qualify on the companies scorecard are not captured our surfaced and hence are not recognized.

Linked with this is the need for the process to surface auditable supporting evidence, otherwise the rating agency would not recognize your outcomes at the end of the year

Test 3:

Has your exco applied themselves to BEE and explored ideas of how to improve the weak areas on the BEE scorecard so that they are aligned with and support the company strategy?

Rationale

Does your exco ready understand BEE? We very quickly distance ourselves from tick box behavior but if we are to socialize transformation into the fabric of our organizations in a sustainable way that minimizes the cost and maximizes the return on investment then we need to be clear that this relates directly to our company strategy. BEE is not a functional strategy it is a factor that influences and needed to be directly accounted for in our overall strategy. Ideally you are looking for what I call the “big five” which is five ideas that have significant impact on your transformation journey but that are also aligned with and support your business strategy and growth. If the idea does not grow your business you cant hire more people. If you cant hire more people you will find yourself in an exchange behavior mode which can be very destructive. If your BEE ideas compliment your strategy they grow your business and you will need more hands and feet to support the growth. This is the scenario we need as a country.

Test 4:

Have you for the ideas to improve the scorecard appointed subject matter experts or champions that have co-opted the input of an implementation team and built project plans for the implementation of these ideas with clear timelines and deliverables?

Rationale

The issue of a strategy implementation disconnect exists not only for BEE but any change process that an organization needs to affect. Many great ideas never see the light of day just because an implementation team was not formed, briefed, empowered and managed in tight 30-day review cycles. I like to see a clear project plan with deliverables, timelines and peoples names to know theres any chance of the idea getting off the starting blocks.

Test 5:

Does the deliverables in the project plan affect the pockets of the people involved?

Rationale

Businesses in our country have a tension between memory and vision, between foresight and hindsight. There will be those that are the custodians of the past and those that have a vested interest in status quo. You have to make it a personal issue for people and you start to get their attention if you impact their pockets. They will be trading uncertainty in the change process with a certain impact in what they take home.

Conclusion

The tests of your empowerment process are not intended to be exhaustive but just cause some reflection on the processes you use in your business. Every business is different and hence will use different processes. At a high level however if the rationale holds true for your business but your answer is weak in more than one test, get medical attention because this issue is not going to just go way!

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