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Launching Inno Yolo Leadership Conversations

Lead. Learn. Share. Soar.
In an ever changing world, where technology’s massive strides make it urgent to decode IT, we’re excited to have (re)launched the Inno Yolo Leadership, Technology and Career Conversation Series last week. We kicked off with an inspiring, urgency-creating Leadership Conversation from Dr Brandeis Marshall this past Thursday, 01 February 2024. Dr Marshall is the CEO of the DataedEx Group, a Leader, Entrepreneur, Leading Voice on Debiasing Technology (particularly data and AI), Author, Dr of Computer Sciences, Academic, former Professor… (I need to pause here because I could go on for some time). Along with the conversation series, we want to create a community where we encourage all to take on leadership roles in their environments (with or without the requisite title), learn from each other and from experts, share what we learn and have learned with others and enable each other - as leaders, entrepreneurs and professionals - to soar (however we define that individually). We invite you to help us build this community.
Here’s a quote from an icon that I deeply respect:
Nobody, but nobody makes it alone.
In this newsletter:
10 Career Fortifying Insights from Yolanda Cuba, Group Regional Vice President at MTN
Leadership Conversation with Dr Brandeis Marshall, CEO of the DataedEx Group
Tech Corner - Why Doomsday Narratives are Distracting us from what’s Really Concerning about AI
Writer’s Corner - Are We Living up to our Role as the Archivists of our Generation?
Healthy at Work - Why Choosing a Low toxicity Work Place Could Save your Life
Entrepreneurs’ Corner - We Share Some Entrepreneurial Opportunities to Consider
To honor the previous conversation series, here are some career strengthening insights from an interview we did in August 2020 with Yolanda Cuba, current Group Regional Vice President at MTN (the largest mobile network operator in Africa and one of the largest in the world ). At the time, she held the role of Group Chief Digital and Fintech Officer at MTN. Having experience in both, I can assure you that these recommendations apply to both entrepreneurs and career professionals.
10 Career Strengthening Insights from Yolanda Cuba, Group Regional Vice President at MTN
Career Fortifying Insight 1: Your environment matters. Yolanda credits her trailblazing career path, where she was made Deputy CEO in her mid-twenties to more than her abilities. She believes it resulted from being surrounded by people who believed in her, supported her and trusted her enough to take chances on her. So, if you’ve got big ambitions then it’s worthwhile checking your environment to see if you have the support that you need to realise your goals or come close. If not, take the necessary steps to see if you can get that support. If there’s no appetite to provide an enabling environment, you may need to reshape your medium-term plans and rethink the company you keep.
Career Fortifying Insight 2: The importance of understanding your value and who you are when you choose a job is under-rated. Yolanda got a dose of reality at her first job, where she was told they’d strategise everyday. Reality check: „You won’t strategise everyday“, but you should strategise enough, if you consider yourself a strategist. So make sure you ask this question when engaging about a new job: „What am I going to do everyday?“ Otherwise, you’ll be sold the highlights, but your reality on a daily basis could be much (too) different. I couldn’t agree with this piece of advice more!
Career Fortifying Insight 3: So you’re not “strategising” (replace with whatever you’re passionate about) enough? Then take action starting now. When you do not like the game you are in, change it (but please - no sudden moves). It is incumbent on you to make the changes that will lead you to a sustainable and successful career. Making that change may require sacrifice. Yolanda gave it a year in the new place and then went back to do her Bachelor of Commerce Honours in Accounting. She planned ahead, applying for a place at a university way before the year was over, because she knew that job “wasn’t it”. She gave up a decent starting salary at her first job, her car and her flat (A flat is an apartment, for those who speak another form of English;-)). She moved back in with her parents back home - giving up the independence she’d enjoyed at her flat. Her recommendation is: we need to be ready to walk a few steps back so that we propel ourselves effectively. Maybe your self-empowering move is not as dramatic, but it’s worth a think - what could you start doing today to align more strongly to your goals, ambitions and / or passions?
Career Fortifying Insight 4: Your success is a by-product of how much you apply yourself. Too many people want to start with relationships before mastering competence. You won’t be noticed if you aren’t delivering on the job you’re given exceptionally. Few people will have your back, if they have to sacrifice their reputation to do so. Competence comes before relationships. Prior to her Mvelaphanda roles following her articles, Yolanda volunteered her Finance Management Services to a number of organisations to build up her competence. Mvelapanda hired a „rookie“ on paper and got someone that could deliver exceptionally well. She was so good at her job, despite her level, that external clients gave feedback to the organisation’s leadership. She had never worked with Exco since there was another hierarchy level in between, but feedback from external clients, such as the CEO of a large mining company calling Tokyo Sexwale directly to ask if he could employ Yolanda, opened the path to her becoming deputy CEO in her twenties. What investments do you need to make in your development to delight your clients and customers? Read full article.
Leadership Conversation with Dr Brandeis Marshall, CEO of the DataedEx Group
Dr Marshall is one of the leading voices on Debiasing Technology with a particular focus on data and artificial intelligence. She is the author of Data Conscience: Algorithmic Siege on our Humanity (Wiley, 2022). She wrote the book to illustrate the perils of the tech, „move fast and break things“ mantra that is the established tech legend at the core of some of the data analytics and AI harms seen, from recruitment solutions to solutions leveraged in the criminal justice space. In the book, she provides practical and ethically sound alternative pathways.
True to her origins as a professor, she also makes data and AI concepts „snackable“ to support decision-making and practical implementation from the classroom to the boardroom. An academic turned entrepreneur; Dr Marshall is one of the few voices advocating for a responsible, sustainable, ethical lens during an AI summer that is both exciting, ground-breaking and accompanied by a notable amount of hype, heavy marketing and unclear communication.
Dr Marshall’s thought leadership has appeared on the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung platform, Medium, OneZero, The Moguldom Nation, and on CNN. She has spoken to audiences across the AI and justice sectors including ACLU, Harvard, Kapor Center, Stanford, Truist, Urban League and Visa.
During the conversation titled, Debiasing Tech – Building Accountability and Responsibility into AI and Data Solutions, we spoke - amongst other things - about:
1. The importance of understanding historical codes, and how they have shaped the present, to our ability to debias technology solutions. Examples are categories, geographical re-locations and economic dispossessions that were determined and applied by oppressive regimes that have made it into the datasets we use to make decisions at the companies and organisations we lead today OR current discrimination, such as lower pay for women or black people, that leads to that discrimination being reinforced by risk algorithms that, e.g., emphasize earnings levels over financial behavior. These may be hidden behind, and approximated by, innocent sounding terms such as, “risk-based”, “lower income” or “mass market”. All this leads to a need to examine data for bias and other issues, rather than accept it at face value.
2. The intersectionality of data, i.e. the interplay and interconnections between variables in data records, is often ignored or not taken into account when capturing and analysing data. The reductive nature of the way we store data in rows and columns further deepens this challenge. Unaddressed, both these issues will almost certainly lead to limitations in the knowledge and insights generated from the data sets we use. This may even lead us to inadvertently making harmful decisions. It might matter, for example, even if that is not our conscious intent as an organisation - that the insurance payouts we delay and investigate as an organisation are persistently, or mainly, claims made by women, of a specific ethnicity, who speak a specific language and/or live in a specific geographic area. Contrary to mantras that we’ve grown up with in the technology industry and other business areas - the data reflects our biased input, so it does lie and does so more often than we’d like. The ability of organisations to hold a mirror to themselves and the impact of their practices is paramount.
3. How a lot of organisations are collecting or sourcing data en masse and moving straight to using it without i) a view of that data’s provenance (end-to-end traceability throughout it’s life cycle) nor ii) taking steps to put measures in place for ensuring that said data is good quality data that a) is not error prone or b) not prone to biased outcomes; c) lives up to ethical standards and internal standards of trust, etc., is problematic. Many organisations have no data strategy; have limited AI and data governance- if any; have not implemented specific in-process and executive-level checks to mitigate against potentially harmful outcomes. Further, most implement no post implementation impact assessment processes and tools to measure their impact and adjust accordingly. Additionally, organisations are often ill-equipped to ask vendors the right questions before contracting for data as well as AI and data solutions that they stake their customer relationships, reputations and license to trade on.
We’re excited that we’ll be sharing this conversation with you as a podcast soon. Naturally, an hour wasn’t enough and we’re looking forward to hosting Dr Marshall again in the near future.
Our next event is with the CEO of Accenture in Africa, Vukani Mngxati, on 29 February. Take a look at our upcoming events.
Tech Corner - Why Doomsday Narratives are Distracting us from what’s Really Concerning about AI
Reading the headlines recently, you could really end up in panic thinking about the imminent end to humanity that AI - all on its own - is about to herald. The dystopian headlines about AI ending humanity have been abuzz lately. From the reporting done on the open letter signed by tech top brass; to dire warnings from Geoffrey Hinton - dubbed the father of AI; the rather dystopian interview where Mo Gawdat, inter alia, recommends people hold off on having babies because of the impact AI will have; to recent reporting that „42% of CEOs say AI could destroy humanity in five to ten years“ amongst others.
So, I know it’s difficult to be nuanced in headlines and that a lot of this comes from the very real need to draw attention to the critical need to address the „dark side of AI“. To create a sense of urgency, especially since the enthusiasm from the supply side tends to be hyper-optimistic and, more often than not, fails to touch on the risks and issues. However, these dramatic headlines are taking a technology that’s already feared, but has a lot to offer, and ginning up the fear the general public is already grappling with to an extreme that can overwhelm. This is often done without getting specific about what the risks are, whether what we’re facing is - in fact - manageable and outlining where the accountability for addressing concerns sits. It would be great if the leading voices of our time, when it comes to this topic, would use their platforms to improve the understanding of AI, the risks involved and recommended clear steps for mitigating against the very real risks that some AI developments pose.
Reading all these panicked articles I, admittedly, still haven’t figured out why we would let AI destroy us, in the literal sense, without simply turning off the electricity. After all, software runs on (physical) digital infrastructure, which needs electricity and cooling - all of which need to be guaranteed by humans. Read full article.
Writer’s Corner - Are We Living up to our Role as the Archivists of our Generation?
Some years ago at the Abantu Book Festival in Johannesburg, I got goose bumps listening to Ainehi Edoro say, “We are the archivists of our generation.” Those words made me think of the way that writers like Zakes Mda, Bessie Head, Nadine Gordimer and many others helped us see, feel and get a sense - at an emotional and logical level - of the conditions people had to live through during apartheid. Consider, for example, the works of Alice Walker and Maya Angelou and how they help us understand life under Segregation in the United States. Consider the Diary of Anne Frank. All authors whose work helps us say, “Never again”. Yet, when I think of literature post 1994, I struggle to point to biographical and autobiographical fiction that lives up to the goal of archiving our lived experience - the good and the bad. It’s possible that I am underexposed. Do you feel that there’s enough literature about modern day lived experiences? Who is capturing the soul of our time?
When your children ask what it was like to live through the last 30 years or through a major transitional period that you’ve experienced, what literature would you recommend to them? Hit reply on this email and let us know.
We’re mulling an (auto)biographical essay competition with this focus, so we’d really love your thoughts on this.
Healthy at Work - Why Choosing a Zero - Low Toxicity Work Place Could Save your Life
A toxic culture is 10 times more predictive than salary and benefits in foretelling turnover. The impact of toxic work environments such as abusive managers, bullying and unethical behavior, are difficult to compartmentalise. Employees can’t help but take the stress home, often struggling to sleep at night. The medical impact of toxic work environments is immense and often underestimated. People working in toxic work environments are between 35% - 55% more likely to be diagnosed with a major disease, such as strokes, diabetes or cardiac disease. It’s not just employees who suffer, toxicity is estimated to cause a 20% drop in productivity. That is mind-blowing - imagine losing 20% of the return on the salary you pay to someone because of a failure to maintain a healthy work culture at the company you lead. The loss is compounded by the costs of reputitional damage (employees and ex-employees talk) as well as losses that arise from losing already recruited people (recruiting is expensive) and the cost of increased effort when it gets harder to recruit people into the organisation. Companies also take multiple hits.
If a toxic work environment is part of your lived experience, hit reply to let us know what would have been most helpful to you during that time, tips that you have for others who may be facing the same situation right now and recommendations for those leaders who would like to build a healthy work culture. We’d love to share some recommendations in our next newsletter.
Your boss has a greater impact on our health than your doctor.
In this section, we highlight an opportunity or two that could be of interest from different parts of the world
South Africa
The IDC is South Africa’s looking to help hospitality businesses beat load shedding by installing solar systems at their hotels, bed and breakfasts, conference centres, etc. They do this through the Green Tourism Incentive. They cover between 50% and 90% of the cost of installing a solar system up to a maximum of R1 million. To be eligible, businesses need to be at least 12 months in business; be Exempt Micro-Enterprises (Revenue less than R5 m) or Qualifying Small Enterprises (Revenue between R5 m and R45m); and demonstrate commercial viability. Applications are currently open and we have a well-versed team that’s successfully accompanied tourism businesses through the process. Hit reply and let us know you’re interested, if you’re a qualifying business that’s ready to mitigate against the cost of load shedding.
If you think someone else could benefit from this newsletter, please share it with them.
Now to leave you with this thought:
Agency is a rather susceptible phenomenon. You’ve got to believe you have it, to exercise it. It’s also quite elastic - the more you exercise it, the more it becomes second nature. So, yet again - as is so often the case - exercise is the answer!