A bit about Jules: Jules Newton is a businesswoman – MD and founder of Avocado Vision, a learning and development company that she has been running and building for the past 12 years. She is also founder and director of Ngikwazi Field Marketing PTY Ltd, which is a field marketing company that manages the 8000 retailers nationally that sell tickets for the National Lottery.

Jules regularly speaks at blue-chip corporate conference on the subjects of relationship mastery, generational theory, people management and talent management.   She has lectured on the MBA programme at the Gordon Institute of Business Science. She was recently featured in the book ‘Inspirational Women at Work’, and was named “Emerging Leader of the Year 2006” by the Unisa School of Business management. She is a thought leader in her industry, and is published extensively in the local media, most recently in FinWeek; Business Day and The Star Workplace.

Jules is a passionate South African, and is deeply committed to building South Africa, one person at a time!

Managing Talent in South Africa

Every second conversation around the boardroom and cafeteria table nowadays is about the lack of specialized skills.  Companies in finance, construction, engineering, mining and large scale manufacturing are nervously chewing their nails, not really knowing how they will remain sustainable, as they watch their skills leaving the building, and sometimes, even the country!  Many of those same companies have had ‘talent management’ teams in place for years now: they’ve been applying solid academic principles, identifying top talent and ‘fast-tracking’ them through expensive and rigorous development programmes, throwing truckloads of money and shares at them in a desperate attempt to make them stay! There have been some (temporary) successes in this approach, but there is much more to the challenge than simply locking in scarce skills. We are in a changing workplace: don’t blink or you might miss it!

Something important that changed is that the word ‘Talent’ actually means something different now.  It applies to all the core skills that companies need to remain sustainable.  It includes all the experience that people gain over years of work in the career path that sometimes starts near the bottom of the organisation, and works its way to the top. That’s if it doesn’t leave somewhere along the way.

Which it often does. The stats tell us that people join companies but leave bosses.  That 60% of people who leave, leave their bosses. This means managers have a responsibility to address talent retention worldwide, but South African managers face more layers of complexity. The challenges South African managers face in day-to-day managing people are tough and complex, and stretch us to deal the issues and still remain competitive in a global economy.

I suppose it’s a bit like doctor training: doctors working at Bara are world experts on treating bullet wounds and related trauma.  The reason is quite obvious: through the volume of gunshot patients that are wheeled in thorough the casualty doors each day, the trauma doctors become experts through sheer volume of exposure, as opposed to a doctor in a quiet hospital somewhere in rural England, who may see the occasional bullet wound every year.

 It’s so easy to feel completely out of control and a victim of the life we feel ourselves forced to live here, and managers have a role to play in helping their people stay the course, and remain competitive and productive.  I was so impressed by the email that did the rounds a few months ago where Alan Knott Craig (junior), recognized the symptoms of a flagging morale and ‘victim state’ of most South Africans, and also his iburst staff. 

He threw himself into action and reminded his team the all is not lost: He reminded them that we have felt like this before. “On each of those occasions everyone thought it was the end of the world and that there was no light in sight. And on each occasion, believe it or not, the world did not actually end, it recovered and in fact things continued to get better”.

“I think 2008 will be a tough year, but I also see it as a great opportunity to seize the day whilst everyone else is whinging and get a front-seat on the inevitable boom that we’ll experience in 2009, 2010 and beyond.”

“Make sure you make a mental note of everything that is happening now, because it will happen again and again, and if you don’t recognize the symptoms you’ll be suckered into the same negativity, and forget to look for the opportunities”

He is demonstrating the critical skills great managers in South Africa use to lead effectively here: resilience and optimism.  He is able to see through the toughness of the present, get a sense of how his people are feeling, and address the issues head on, helping his people see light and opportunities even when the (literal) darkness threatens to overwhelm them.

 I think that, in order for South African companies to thrive in the global economy, they have to realize that a lot depends on their managers learning how to build and engage people effectively in these trying times.Its up to them to employ resilient people, coach resilience and optimism into their people, remain resilient and optimistic themselves in the face of tough challenges. 

In short, South African managers need to build higher levels of emotional intelligence and people management skills in order to meet the requirements of thriving in South Africa.

Effective Communication

After completing her Bachelor's degree from the University of the Witwatersrand , Jules Newton spent 4 years as a teacher and 3 in sales and training in the financial services industry. Over the last 8 years, Juliet has become one of the most sought after specialists in the field of interpersonal communication. She speaks regularly at blue chip corporate conferences and functions, and has lectured on the MBA programme at GIBS. She was recently featured in the book ' Inspirational Women at Work'.

Her philosophy centers around the premise that the better we understand ourselves, and the people we are communicating with, the more effectively we will be able to manage that communication. She has spent the past 7 years deepening her understanding of all the elements that contribute to effective communication, and shares a lot of this knowledge in highly entertaining, powerful conference talks.

She operates within a few key blue-chip companies, rigorously seeking to understand their business goals and objectives. Her talent is then to transform management thinking into staff training interventions that deliver on the strategy, no matter what the scale or medium.

Juliet has an impressive track record in helping leading companies and people across a wide range of industries to market themselves successfully and appropriately within their business environment.

The Death of the Salesman

Sales is not what it used be. There was a time when all you had to do was connect your client with a product, find the right price and sometimes manipulate the customer or client into buying the product or service. We all hit the target. Now clients are getting more demanding, and the manipulation techniques of the 80's and 90's are much more likely to irritate clients into showing you the door than landing the sale.

What today sales world requires of sales people is to become partners of their client and help them make good decisions that benefit them. Never before has it as important to achieve relationship mastery.

Jules Newton will expose her audience to some thoughts and insights around how sales people must transform themselves into relationship masters if they are to preserve their position in the sales career, by focusing on the following points:

•  The New Economy is changing who salespeople need to be: reinventing the sales role

•  Tuning in to customers: managing the relationship

•  Effective communicating skills

Mind the Gap

The era in which a person is born has a lasting influence on their value system. This is their "normal" - and everyone else's worldview is "weird". It is this lack of understanding of different generations that leads to much of the conflict in workplaces, mismatched marketing and the loss of the talented, bright young things. This session is an exciting, multi-media driven exploration of the eras from the 1930s to today, and how we can get the most out of each generation.

Future success is not dependent on past achievements. Whatever got your business to its current position of market success will not necessarily make you successful in the future.  It used to be said: “People are our most important asset”. Increasingly, your future success will be determined by resources that you cannot ‘control’ – your people, your business partners and your customers. Now, relationships are becoming your most important business asset.

Relationships are becoming the means to competitive differentiation.

The reality is this: there are massive walls that inhibit all relationships in organisations.

Age, culture, beliefs and experience t hreaten to put us all into organisational boxes.

20 th Century management has been likened to herding cattle. Today, with the increased pow

er and choice available to the individual, the new challenge of managing relationships has been likened to ‘herding cats’.  In a typical organisational hierarchy, the ‘herders’ are the middle aged ‘Baby Boomers’, with their grand visions, unbridled optimism and energetic style. Most of the ‘cats’ are the young ‘Generation Xers’ whose values and life experiences are vastly different. And, at the top of the organisation, sit the so-called ‘Silent generation’ – espousing a third set of values - born of difficult economic times and scarcity.

Different points of view. Different values.