Updates about our firm and team.
Season’s greetings from the Global Advisors team.
This festive season, we wish you — and the world — a time of peace.
We also wish you a prosperous 2025 filled with strength and kindness.
Season’s greetings from the Global Advisors team and all the best for 2025!
Read -> Our most popular 2024 insights
Season’s greetings from the Global Advisors team.
(Click here for the team’s greeting!)
So often this time of the year is about journeys. On holiday. To friends and family.
Journeys seldom go exactly as planned. Learning to focus on the journey and the goal is one of life’s lessons.
Thank you for sharing your journey with us – whether it be as a client, team member, alumnus or potential recruitee.
Season’s greetings from the Global Advisors team and all the best for 2024!
Read -> Our most popular 2023 insights
We have a big growth journey ahead in 2024 -> Refer a potential employee
THANK YOU
“Season’s greetings and best wishes for 2022!
Thank you to our clients, recruitees, alumni, team, families and friends.”
From Marc, Donnée and the Global Advisors team
Press drew attention last year to a slew of JSE-listed companies whose share prices had collapsed over the past few years. Some were previous investor darlings. Analysis pointed to a toxic combination of decreasing earnings growth and increased leverage. While this might be a warning to investors of a company in trouble, what fundamentals drive this combination?
In our analysis, company expansion driven by the need to compensate for poor performance in their core business is a typical driver of exactly this outcome.
This article was written in January 2020 but publication was delayed due to the outbreak of Covid-19. Five months after South Africa’s first case, we update our analysis and show that core-based companies outperformed diverse peers by 29% over the period.
Management should always seek to reach full potential in their core business. Attempts to expand should be to a clearly logical set of adjacencies to which they can apply their capabilities using a repeatable business model.
In the article “Steinhoff, Tongaat, Omnia… Here’s the dead giveaway that you should have avoided these companies, says an asset manager,” (Business Insider SA, Jun 11, 2019) Helena Wasserman lists a number of Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) listed shares that have plummeted in recent years.
In many cases these companies’ corresponding sectors have been declining. However, in most of the sectors there is at least one company that has outperformed the rest. What is it about these outperformers that distinguishes them from the rest?
The outperformers have typically shown strong financial performance – be that Growth, ROE, ROA, RONA or Asset Turnover – and varying degrees of leverage. However, performance against these metrics is by no means consistent – see our analysis.
What is consistent is that the outperformers all show clearly delineated core businesses and ongoing growth towards full potential in these businesses alongside growth into clear adjacencies that protect, enhance and leverage the core. In some cases, the core may have been or is currently being redefined, typically through gradual, step-wise extension along logical adjacencies. Redefinition is particularly important in light of the digital transformation seen in many industries. The outperformers are very seldom diversified across unrelated business segments – although isolated examples such as Bidvest clearly exist in other sectors.
Analysis of the over- and underperformers in the sectors highlighted in the article shows that those following a clear core-based strategy have typically outperformed peers through the initial months of the downturn caused by the Covid-19 outbreak.
By Marc Wilson
Marc is a partner at Global Advisors and based in Johannesburg, South Africa
Download this article at https://globaladvisors.biz/blog/2018/06/26/leading-a-deliberate-life/.
Picket fences. Family of four. Management position.
Mid-life crisis. Meaning. Purpose.
Someone once said that, “At 18, I had all the answers. At 35, I realised I didn’t know the question.”
Serendipity has a lot going for it. Many people might sail through life taking what comes and enjoying the moment. Others might be open to chance and have nothing go right for them.
Some people might strive to achieve, realise rare successes and be bitterly unhappy. Others might be driven and enjoy incredible success and fulfilment.
Perhaps the majority of us become beholden to the momentum of our lives.
We might study, start a career, marry, buy a dream house, have children, send them to a top school. Those steps make up components of many of our dreams. They are steps that may define each subsequent choice. As I discussed this with a friend recently, he remarked that few of these steps had been subject of deliberations in his life – increasingly these steps were the outcome of momentum. Each will shape every step he takes for the rest of his life. He would not have things any other way, but if he knew what he knows now, he might have been more deliberate about choice and consequence…..
Read more at https://globaladvisors.biz/blog/2018/06/26/leading-a-deliberate-life/
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By Marc Wilson
Marc is a partner at Global Advisors and based in Johannesburg, South Africa
Download this article at http://www.globaladvisors.biz/uncategorized-2/20171024/passive-aggressiveness-is-a-cancer/.
Everybody knows the behaviour. We all experience it from others and all of us will be guilty of it at one time or another.
The sulky silence, the acquiescent “Yes,” the reserved feedback, the withheld compliment, not accepting compliments, the refusal to participate, minimum acceptable effort, sarcasm, put-downs, “forgetting,” lying, procrastinating – they’re all examples of passive aggressive behaviour. It is the cancer eating at your relationships with your significant other, your co-workers, your friends and your family.
If you are a leader it is the cancer eating at your organisation.
Maybe passive aggressive behaviour exists to an even greater extent in relationships we are committed to – our families will still be family, our spouses are married to us for better or worse. It allows the behaviour to continue to a far greater extent than an acquaintance might.
In most ways, passive aggressiveness is worse than outright aggression. An argument can be resolved, criticism understood and anger or sadness worked on and resolved. Passive aggression invites no constructive response and escalates rather than resolves issues.
Maybe passive aggressiveness starts through unspoken anger, resentment or sadness. Maybe it starts from fear and being disempowered. Maybe from a lack of caring enough to…
Read more at http://www.globaladvisors.biz/uncategorized-2/20171024/passive-aggressiveness-is-a-cancer/
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We were delighted to welcome Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh to our Johannesburg offices today.
Sizwe worked at Global Advisors in 2013 before accepting a scholarship to read for his masters and doctorate at Oxford University. He was awarded his masters and is currently completing his doctorate. Sizwe had been based at our old offices in Hyde Park and this was his first visit to our new offices in Sandton.
He recently published his first book and CD, “Democracy and Delusion – 10 Myths in South African Politics.”
Sizwe described the value gained from his consulting experience: “Consulting showed me that we often debate issues esoterically – without understanding the available data and therefore what is myth and what is reality. That helped me with the idea for this book.”
Sizwe also found that the exacting demands of consulting also prepared him well for the busy life he has taken on. He has simultaneously juggled studies, political involvement, authoring a book and recording a CD – and married life. He magnanimously says this was easy after consulting!
Sizwe was impressed by the growth in Global Advisors since he had left – particularly the library. He gave a gift of his book and CD to add to our collection.
Well done Sizwe! All the best with the book and CD!
Some of the Global Advisors team and alumnus Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh.
By Marc Wilson
Marc is a partner at Global Advisors and based in Johannesburg, South Africa
Download this article at http://www.globaladvisors.biz/inc-feed/20170907/thoughts-is-insecurity-behind-that-dysfunction
We tend to characterise insecurity as what we see in overtly fragile, shy and awkward people. We think that their insecurity presents as lack of confidence. And often we associate it with under-achievement.
Sometimes we might be aware that insecurities can lie behind the -ias, -isms and the phobias. Body dysmorphia? Insecurity about attractiveness. Racism? Often the need to find security by claiming superiority, belonging to group with power, a group you understand and whose acceptance you want. Homophobia? Often insecurity about one’s own sexuality or masculinity / feminity.
So it is often counter-intuitive when we discover that often behind incredible success lies – insecurity! In fact, an article I once read described the successful elite of strategy consulting firms as typically “insecure over-achievers.”
Insecurity must be one of the most misunderstood drivers of dysfunction. Instead we see its related symptoms and react to those. “That woman is so overbearing. That guy is so aggressive! That girl is so self-absorbed. That guy is so competitive.” Even, “That guy is so arrogant.”
How is it that someone we might perceive as competitive, arrogant or overconfident might be insecure? Sometimes people overcompensate to hide a weakness or insecurity. Sometimes in an effort to avoid feeling defensive of a perceived shortcoming, they might go on the offensive – telling people they are the opposite or even faking security.
Do we even know what insecurity is? The very need to…
Read the rest of “Power, Control and Space” at http://www.globaladvisors.biz/inc-feed/20170907/thoughts-is-insecurity-behind-that-dysfunction
So you think you’re self-aware?
By Marc Wilson
So you think you’re self-aware? 95% of people believe themselves to be self-aware. Recent research shows that just 10 to 15% of people are (Eurich, T – “Insight” – Crown Business – 2017).
Self-awareness may be the most elusive and challenging skill we attempt to gain. It is a foundation for authentic leadership, it is required to be empathetic, it helps us conquer our insecurities, it is critical for robust, true friendship and love. Without it, we can never be sure that we will achieve happiness. Without self-awareness success will be ill-defined. Also, we will never be sure if how we act and react to others is real or merely a result of our attempts to craft our image to meet our own or others’ desires – or in order to avoid being what we fear.
For many of us, there are people around us who have a better understanding of us than we do ourselves. We delude ourselves based on what we want to be or don’t want to be. It is also a sad reality that our true self….
Read more at
http://www.globaladvisors.biz/thoughts/20170724/so-you-think-youre-self-aware
By Kate Barnes
I am a working mother, as are many of my friends and past colleagues. Naturally we often debate the challenges of getting the balance between work and family right.
Personal circumstances vary widely and have a big impact on the choices one has, but my solution has been to work on a part-time basis. I have been lucky enough to do so for the past seven years and to me it seems like an excellent compromise. Yet there are many times when it feels like balance is the last thing I am achieving – in fact, I have the distinct feeling that I am failing on every front – my kids, my husband, and my boss, colleagues or direct reports, all want more of me.
Perhaps the truth is that I want too much. I want to be stimulated, challenged and to feel like I am adding value in the work place, but I also want to see my children more than the average, full-time working mother.
Many working mothers have made decisions involving changes to their working day in order to manage the work-family balance better. Unfortunately, I have found that one of the biggest issues is that one cannot simply decide on an approach, agree it with your employer, and then settle into whatever routine that entails. You might agree an arrangement to work 5, or 6 or 7 hours a day, or 30 hours a week, or to arrive at work early and leave by 3 or 4pm. But in most jobs, you will have to consider the balance equation on a daily basis, sometimes multiple times a day. Is today the day I give more to work because there is a demanding deadline and everyone else is working late, or is it the day I give more to my child, because he is receiving an award at school or swimming in a gala?
And often the call has to be made taking into consideration not only what is happening today, but also looking at where the pendulum fell yesterday, or last week, or over the past couple of weeks.
As with any decision there are consequences, even if at first they are unforeseen. In the early stages of my career, I like many, was an idealistic youngster with dreams of holding a very senior, leadership position. I was ambitious, and some might say that I had much of what it takes to achieve my goal. Some years down the track I was being interviewed for a prospective job and the potential employer noted from my CV that the achievements in my career (or lack thereof) were not in line with my academic record, and he wondered why this was. I can’t remember what my response was, but I know I knew the answer. I even knew at exactly which point in my career the upward trajectory slowed. It was the day I was working at a large corporate, and I asked for flexitime. I negotiated that on two afternoons a week, I would be allowed to leave at 2pm and I would make up the time in the evening, after my young children were asleep.
Shortly thereafter, when a potential internal move to a new position was being discussed I was informed that I could not be considered for the role as I was “part-time”.
This was a wake-up call.
Read more at http://www.globaladvisors.biz/thoughts/20170719/getting-the-balance-right/
By Marc Wilson
Our team had just finished a book review presentation on Dale Carnegie’s “Making Friends and Influencing People”. Jane (*name changed) looked troubled: “Isn’t this stuff about manipulating people?”
Therein lies a paradox in showing empathy: without empathy for others, you face less influence, friendship, love and success. But if those are your goal rather than the sincere care for others, then your empathy is not really empathy at all.
Many people might react to empathy as “soft.” But empathy is a mark of incredible strength. It dares us to care. It requires us to put ourselves to one side. It requires us to be vulnerable – otherwise all we are doing is showing sympathy. Empathy requires self-awareness and skill.
Sympathy is easy. Sympathy does not go as far as empathy – it keeps us distant from the situation someone else is experiencing. It places us in danger of being condescending. Empathy requires us to put our self into their situation as them – not us.
Empathy gets the best out of those around us – and opens us up to be a better version of ourselves.
I find it incredibly difficult to manage a balance. A balance of being sufficiently confident and willing to share my own experience in an unbiased and helpful way – while removing enough of myself to allow someone else to find their own path and live their own experience. To be an empathetic leader, I believe I need to care about my team being at their best at work and in life.
Skills such as active listening are important to remove ourselves from the coaching we give others. But I think empathy requires us to be authentically present and involved in a way that facilitating someone else’s own solution does not.
Empathetic leadership challenges me to use my own experience and position in a way that is open to the challenges and experiences of others. And most critically demonstrates that I act out of care and acknowledgement of them.
Empathy requires that we know our self well enough that we are able to remove our projections of our own biases and feelings from the situation, appreciate the other person’s view of the world and how that impacts the situation for them.
Think about how you respond to others. How often do you respond to their experience, feelings and fears based on your own fears? Do your responses contain the word “I?” Do you fear genuinely experiencing the world as them? Do you seek to affirm your own view and experience through your response? Are you scared as being seen as similar to the other person in their own “deficiencies” and “imperfections”? How many of these imperfections are merely your own biases and fears?
Read more by clicking here: http://www.globaladvisors.biz/thoughts/20170627/empathy-and-understanding-why-they-are-the-qualities-that-help-us-achieve-our-own-happiness-and-success
By Marc Wilson
(Alternative titles could be: “Who are you and what did you do with the person I hired? “Who are you and what did you do with the boss who hired me?” “Who are you and what did you do with my client?” …)
Some years ago, a friend of many friends died tragically. I had never met Joe (not his real name) but often heard of him. He was exceptionally popular and well known. In fact, he was clearly loved by a huge group of people.
What followed Joe’s death was amazing. Hundreds of people went to a Facebook page and wrote of their sadness and memories of him. Many were personal, some merely referring to chance meetings and the incredible impression he had left on them. Some were even from people who had not met him, but were moved by his impact on people they knew.
One person wrote of meeting Joe at a party and how even though this was their first and only meeting, Joe had showed so much interest in her and interacted with her like an old friend. She had felt special – and left with an impression of how special Joe was.
Another wrote of a childhood cricket experience. He had played a blinding hook shot only to be caught by Joe at square leg in the crease of an arm. Joe had laughed and apologised repeatedly for accidentally catching him out off such good shot. Joe was secure with himself and the world and didn’t seem to need praise or undue accolades.
It was incredible. This was the type of person that most of us hope to be. Super-achiever, immensely popular, loving and loved. Years later, people still go back to that page and comment.
Joe committed suicide. It did not fit with …. Read more here: https://globaladvisors.biz/thoughts/20170601/who-are-you-and-what-did-you-do-with-my-team-member
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In August 2016 – the year of our 10th Anniversary – Global Advisors moved from our Hyde Park Johannesburg offices to the 16th floor of The Forum in central Sandton.
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The new offices in central Sandton
Our previous Hyde Park offices
The new offices – Planning and construction
New joiners in Global Advisors are usually graduates. We’ve become accustomed to welcoming them and making a fuss of them as part of normal business. So it’s quite special when we make experienced hires and have the opportunity to share our excitement with the outside world.
We’ve been hugely fortunate to recently make two experienced hires – two amazing individuals who add an enormous amount to our team.
 Kate Barnes is an experienced consultant and business professional – and a working mother and trail runner! Kate has extensive experience in management consulting from positions held at a number of organisations including Gemini Consulting and Mac Consulting. She has worked on strategy formulation in a several industries including wholesale and retail, FMCG, mining, and mining engineering. Kate has also been involved in operational and performance improvement initiatives, including hot housing, business process reengineering, Balanced Scorecard implementation, Business Operating Model assessment and capability mapping. Kate has worked in line management positions at Standard Bank, in the areas of customer strategy and value proposition development, product management and business architecture. She has also had programme and project manager roles while working as a contractor and managing several software development projects in the Financial Services sector. Kate joins us in the role of Principal consultant and is already playing an important role in our business leadership. We’re really fortunate to welcome Kate to the team and leverage off her fantastic experience. |
 Daniel Rowland is an experienced business finance professional – and a professional desert and trail runner! Daniel has working experience in multiple countries around the world and is currently based in Switzerland. He has a background in corporate finance, exploration projects and project evaluation in the mining industry. Daniel has won the 250km multi-stage Atacama Crossing desert race, the 250km Kalahari Augrabies Extreme Marathon and the 230km Amazon Jungle Ultra. He has placed in many other races and pursued Olympic triathlon training immediately after school. Daniel worked with a South African mining company to evaluate the expansion of operations beyond the existing pit and plants. He worked for Anglo American based on a remote copper exploration project in North America preparing and controlling the budget and costs of exploration, mine design and environmental liaisons. He worked with Anglo in South America where his role included reporting to group headquarters on monthly mine performance and evaluating new capital investment projects for the different mines. Since joining Global Advisors, Daniel has worked in the FMCG industry on a project to develop a portfolio strategy. We are tremendously honoured that Daniel has agreed to take on a part-time role with Global Advisors where he has joined us in the Consultant position. He continues his professional running career and has upcoming races on the Eiger Ultra and the Ultra Trail Mont Blanc. We learn from Daniel’s tremendous discipline, positive attitude and world-leading success every day. We first learnt from this in a talk Daniel gave to the team in 2013 after winning the Atacama crossing. You can read about that here.  Daniel Rowland winning the Kalahari Augrabies Extreme Marathon 2013 (picture Hermien Webb Photography, Facebook) |
By Marc Wilson
We all want success. And as we embark on a career, most of us want to be successful. But when I probe aspirations, “being successful” is usually a proxy for “I want the rewards / power /status of success.”
If you think that business success has different rules to success in sports, less reliance on discipline, more reliance on connections and things out of your control, reconsider or stop reading.
If your job is a ticket to a pay-cheque, is so-many-hours-per-day, stop reading.
Brutally, most of us will not be successful. We will not achieve stand-out performance. We will under-achieve our childish dreams. Choose:
Dreaming is important. It is the often the reason that we try at all. But the great achievers realise that a dream without a plan and action remains a fantasy.
“…in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things.” — U.S. President Barack Obama
Obama was quoting “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”
When I was younger and starting out, I think I marked a lot of my desires for success in positions or promotions I hoped to achieve. In the first draft of this article, someone remarked that I had not mentioned promotion once. That is quite a stunning reflection. I believe my experience and growing up helped me realise that promotion and position reflect a result of success rather than success in itself.
Many of us do fantasize. As adolescents, we dream of mansions and sports cars, of power and glory, of beautiful spouses and successful children. As we begin our career journey, these dreams inevitably meet reality. We may continue to deny reasons for the gap between dreams and reality, but many reach a realisation at some point that not everybody can be excellent – by definition. And that to be excellent, we need to be doing things better than those in our defined benchmark.
We fantasize for good reason. Life is hard. As we become more experienced, we discover that achieving success typically requires far more from us than we imagined, we are not all exceptional, success is often dependent on the support of others – and people and relationships are not predictable. Life throws curve balls – illness, family needs and financial constraints to name a few.
But if we are to undertake an adult approach to success, it becomes time to replace fantasy with a deliberate approach to achieving our dreams.
What is success? At its simplest, success is achieving a goal. Being successful is therefore achieving goals regularly. But to most of us, being successful is more than this. Being successful in many people’s minds equates to excellence. Excellence – exceeding standard performance, standing-out, being the best. And pointedly, the rewards most desire for being successful equate with those for excellence.
This is an important distinction. The definition of excellence seems to be far more closely aligned with the aspirations of those with the desire to be successful. The measures of excellence are far more objective and demanding than those of success.
We tend to apply different rules to business success. It must be balanced. It must be within its 9-to-5 box. Here is my challenge to you: if you desire super-achiever business status, why would the lessons learnt from Olympian sports success be different to achieving Olympian stand-out performance in business?
Olympic sports success is not balanced. It is not confined to a part of the day. Olympian sports success is obsessive. It is unbalanced. It is single-minded. It requires brutal sacrifice and pain (see the graphic to the left showing the cost and effort required to get into the Olympics – source: Voucherbox). Why would being the best in your business field require anything less?
I think we tend to create an artificial distinction because an Olympic goal might be confined to a target by the age of 30. Thereafter an athlete can retire to a “normal” life. Similarly, an overachieving student might single-mindedly pursue “top-of the-class” performance knowing that the pain and sacrifice will end with the award of a degree. A business career is part of most of our adult lives and sacrifice for that amount of time is untenable for most people. For this reason, careers like investment banking and management consulting tend to have short lifespans before achievers move on to a second phase. I believe that for this reason they tend to attract more employees seeking super-achievement before the “second-phase” – people will accept the discomfort for a short time horizon.
I believe that there are fifteen determinants to achieving business-career excellence.
It is impossible for everybody to…. To read more click here.
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