Johannesburg, 13 May 2019
Ralph Waldo Emerson said: "What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." This is a quote that resonates deeply with Maredi Technologies as a company, because it speaks volumes to why the company is still here and why it will continue to remain ahead of the pack.
We live in a business culture and environment that primarily celebrates and applauds winners and number ones. We are reminded constantly that no one ever remembers number two. This, sadly, creates a business environment that promotes an anti-failing culture and unfortunately robs our businesses of the critical and vital ingredient needed to make our businesses thrive, grow and innovate.
Our obsession to succeed makes us blind and intolerant to how the nature of failure is an essential component in the equation of success. Thomas Edison, who had the best attitude to failure, was reported to have famously said: "I have not failed. I've just found 10 000 ways that won't work." Ten thousand times! Is there a business that would ever accept failing that many times? If anything, most organisations throw in the towel after a few failures. But, Thomas Edison, who we remember today, failed 10 000 times.
So, what is the gold nugget that can be extrapolated from Edison's sentiments about failure that can help improve our thinking with regards to our businesses? It is simply that we need to see failure as a way of thinking. As businesses operating in a complex and competitive landscape, we need to learn and embrace failure as an important mechanism for cultivating new ways of building efficient and effective organisations. Maredi Technologies, as a company, has had to embrace this Edison mindset as a way of achieving its business success.
We have cultivated the key learnings from this system thinking and applied it in our health and safety department. Through the recruitment of great talent, we have bridged the gaps and shortfalls that have resulted in great change and innovation in this department. We are happy to report that we have achieved a remarkable balance between our health and safety department standards and accountability to our clients through our renewed ability to embrace the Edison approach to success model.
Our journey in getting this right, with its pitfalls, has been most rewarding and it is a gratifying sign of the hard work we have injected in building a health and safety department that encompasses an error management system that works intuitively to prevent violations or shortfalls of the industry health and safety norms and standards. We have managed to achieve this great and exciting feat by recruiting in our talent pool Sibusiso Mzimba. With his expertise in the Occupational Health & Safety Act and the Regulations 85 of 1993, we are confident that he will help usher Maredi Technologies into a new and redefined stage of business success. We are excited about the advent of Mzimba's arrival, and we know his contribution will catapult our growing brand to new and higher levels.
In closing, the word kintsukuroi is a Japanese art form of taking broken pieces of pottery and repairing them by using gold to connect the broken pieces. The Japanese believe the true nature of the pottery's value is revealed after it is broken. Kintsukuroi encapsulates the art and science of how we see and approach our business journey. We believe that our uniqueness and value lies in the combination of the cracks and breaks that we have experienced along our journey, and the gold, the resilience of our leadership that always repairs and connects the broken pieces together.
Share