An Avenue of Cultural Intelligence

If you are part of a small white-owned company, I am sure you are familiar with the headaches of Black Economic Empowerment. The headache is not due to an unbelief in the system of broad-based black empowerment – but rather due to the fact that you know this is something you need to do in order to win tenders; and not necessarily because it would be the right time or step for your business to go into an association or sharing of ownership – whether it be with a black person or any other.

In the pursuit of compliance to BEE and use of BEE suppliers; the route for small white-owned companies providing outsourced services to corporate systems and governments is extremely complicated. I know of more than one event where service providers were faced with one of the first qualifying questions: “Is your company BEE compliant?” And if the answer should be no, your chances of getting the business is little; except if you provide a highly specialised service that the organisation cannot find a suitable BEE compliant provider for.

I read an interesting outlook on BEE the other day. The author said that seeing as 80% of the population is black; one needs to have a black person as director in order to adequately understand and enter into the market of providing service / products suited to the majority of the population. This made me realise that even though we claim diversity and positive relations between races is being implemented; we still tend to live in cultural silo’s – whether it be by believing that one human being of one race cannot understand the needs of his fellow man (who happens to be of a different race and background); or whether it is in not realising that the potential of marketing in a culturally intelligent way.

Written by:
Marieta van Staden
Strong Foundation
www.strongfoundation.co.za