I recently abandoned our balmy shores for those of the fairest Cape to participate as a panelist at Rotary International's Economic Development Conference. The conference formed part of the 2016 Rotary
International Presidential Conference Series and my participation resulted from an invitation extended via our local Ballito and Zimbali Rotarians.

The conference was aimed at exploring solutions to South Africa's poverty and unemployment crisis,
especially through expanding job opportunities and entrepreneurship. Since South Africa has one of the highest unemployment rates in the world, the theme was spot on and a vote of confidence in the job creating potential of South Africa's R500 billion+ small business sector.  Contributors to the conference
included Ebrahim Patel, the National Minister of Economic Development and Clem Sunter, futurologist and chairman of Anglo American Chairman's Fund.

I participated in a plenary session that dealt with the mouthful Best Practice Replicable Models for Small Business Acceleration and my contribution mostly focused on the KZN provincial The Entrepreneur
Programme, a public/private sector partnership initiative between the KZN Department of Economic Development, Tourism and Environmental Affairs and the KwaZulu-Natal Business Chamber Council.

I left Cape Town on the late Sunday evening flight unable to rid my mind of mainly two thoughts.

Firstly, how the behavioural sciences appear to dominate the field of economic development.

And secondly how skewed our perceptions of what it takes to be successful in business has become.

As to be expected, the virtues of mentorship and life skills coaching as a means of enhancing entrepreneurial performance featured prominently. And rightly so.

My mullings were more related to the response to my suggestion that, like adolescents entering maturity, the comfort of mentorship ought to advance, over a period of time, into accountability.

The transformative effect of mentorship in developing life and work skills, crucial to success in economic participation, is not denied.

My proposition was however that evolving mechanisms, for example small business advisory boards, would also serve entrepreneurial development, and most importantly economic development, by encouraging accountability and independent decision making. My unease is not with mentorship per se, or life skills coaching for that matter, as long as real accountability for job creating business performance is an end-result.

In another plenary session an ex-prisoner was asked why criminals should be encouraged to become entrepreneurs. His in-no-doubt response was that both criminals and business people share two most enabling characteristics; they are good networkers and they are good hustlers.

To make absolutely sure that my negative connotation with the word hustler is not misplaced, I consulted the dictionary, which confirmed my suspicions.

Hustler noun. 1. someone who tries to deceive people into giving them money. 2. someone who knows how to get money from others.

Avoiding the trap of venturing into the purpose of business, I safely assume that business success implies an ability to generate positive returns on whatever capital you have at your disposal, to protect and increase the value of an initial capital investment, to create wealth.

Attempts to address disheartening levels of unemployment, amongst others, has created a business culture where 'laying your hand on funds' trumps any ability to create increasing wealth and grow
the funds entrusted.

An article on the Virgin Entrepreneur website claims that the culture of acceptance of business failure has gone too far - reflecting on a perceived reality that credibility in entrepreneurial circles are built on really good failures.

The article further suggests that maybe it is time to add a bit more of a stigma to failure... 

Previously published in Independent Newspapers and The Mercury's Network