Executive Day 2024, held at the lively Melrose Arch in Johannesburg on 5 September 2024, lived up to its promise as an immersive simulation experience for South Africa's brightest financial minds and their HR and IT counterparts in the C-suite.
Under the theme Connected Leadership, attendees kicked off the day with an innovative simulation session which gave CFOs, CHROs and CIOs a chance to work together for 30 minutes on a Harvard-based simulation exercise. The simulation outcome was for the group to work on key business levers, like price elasticity, R & D and other factors, to ensure the highest profit - and make decisions within five minutes.
The session proved to be inspirational for the over 100 executives in attendance with the more competitive personalities coming to the fore. The simulation, which comprised six-minute rounds to make decisions that affect profitability resonated deeply with attendees, tested their decision-making skills and benchmarked their performance against peers.
Brian Simelane, from LearningSims, who facilitated the simulation sessions, explained, “What happens is that in real life everything works fine, and in economics there are variables. This includes dealing with the market and leading yourself and the winning criteria for the simulation is accumulated profit.”
It was an extremely popular breakaway session, with the winning group recording R24,3 million in accumulated profit.
Vodacom CEO Shameel Joosub then took attendees through a frank discussion on The CEO perspective, unveiling the secrets to successful exco collaboration.
“Start off by having the right people around the table. I can’t stress that enough,” he said.
After an amazing lunch, which gave the executives literal tastes from across the world, it was time to return to the plenary and hear from Dr Susan Winks, head of research operations and business development at H3D Foundation.
Then it was time for a panel discussion on the risk and rewards of collaboration (and what to avoid!) with Sappi Southern Africa CFO Pramy Moodley, Adcorp Group CPO Vinolia Singh and KWV IT manager Philip de Kock.
“It’s very difficult to rely on third parties to assist when you have customised systems. Also you can’t be excellent at everything so you have to have trust and build a long-standing relationship,” she explained.
The final session of the day looked at how executives could unleash the power of their backstory., with Harambee CEO Kasthuri Soni and executive transition coach Graham Fehrsen.
Beyond the formal sessions, Executive Day offered ample opportunities for networking and relationship-building, as attendees enjoyed sundowners while recapping the highlights of an informative and entertaining day.
View the 2024 Executive Day gallery here.
Executive Day was hosted with Principal Partners Entelect, iOCO, Liquid Intelligent Technologies, MakwaIT, Mercer, Onestream, Old Mutual; Executive Partners Africa Data Centres, BCX, BDO, Equinix, HCL Tech, Stanlib, Workday; and Associate Partner SAS.
