From Catastrophe to Synergy: The Companion Animal Welfare Challenge

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It was 1995. I had joined a company as Group Financial Manager after consulting to them for several months, and it was beginning to dawn on me what a huge challenge I had taken on. The company was in trouble, and the MD had asked me to fix one division in particular – a manufacturing division that was fraught with problems, from worker unrest to product quality, from capacity constraints to inventory issues.

My girlfriend and I had decided to spend a long weekend at the Kruger Park on a hiking safari, and since Angela was driving, on the way there I started a book that I had wanted to read but had not had the time. It was titled ‘The Goal’ by Eli Goldratt, and I had been referred to it by a colleague more than a year before. It made compelling reading, and by the time we got back after the long weekend, I had finished the book. On the Tuesday I hit the ground running and started implementing the methods spoken about in the book, and just 6 weeks later the result was a turnaround, from R250k per month to R750k per month and we were already cash flow positive a month later…

Anyone who has been engaged in Management Consultancy will tell you that such an achievement is unusual to say the least. What was it that turned a ‘Dog’ – the term used in industry for a failing business that should be closed or sold – into a ‘Star’, Continue reading →

Beyond the Band-Aid

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Solving the Companion Animal Welfare Crisis

“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root” ~ Henry David Thoreau

We’re euthanizing more than a Million companion animals a year in our shelters, never mind all the ones that die as strays, or die from hunger, or die from disease because their ‘owners’ are either ignorant or don’t care because the animal represents little more than a source of income. If you don’t think that’s a crisis, you need to think again – the consequences to a society that allows such events to occur include health risks (in some cases epidemic in nature), increased incidence of injuries resulting from dog bites, and of course the social effects of a lack of sensitivity to animals. The inherent cruelty to animals in the overall scenario is horrific, and widespread, and to say that there is a crisis is to make an understatement.

Many people involved in Companion Animal Welfare in South Africa share a viewpoint concerning the solutions to this crisis. It goes something like this: If we all just work together, and if more people get involved in Animal Welfare, then more and more animals will be saved and the crisis will be averted.

Before I show you why this is hopelessly and emphatically wrong, let me be clear that the role of Continue reading →

Big Pictures and Blinkered Thinking

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THE BUILDER

I saw them tearing a building down

A team of men in my hometown.

With a heave and a ho and a yes yes yell,

they swung a beam and a sidewall fell.

And I said to the foreman, “Are these men skilled,

like the ones you’d use if you had to build?”

And he laughed and said, “Oh no, indeed…

the most common labour is all I need…

for I can destroy in a day or two

what takes a builder ten years to do.”

So I thought to myself as I went on my way…

Which one of these roles am I willing to play?

Am I one who is tearing down

as I carelessly make my way around?

Or am I one who builds with care,

to make the world a little better… because I was there?

(Anon)

It’s much easier to break down than it is to build. Breaking down requires little skill, and a recipe including blinkered thinking, a dash of judgement and condemnation sprinkled with isolation and disinvestment will do it every time. Continue reading →