The founder of Mantelli’s biscuits, Simon Mantell, last Friday delivered a Leader’s Angle presentation on “Turning obtacles into opportunities” at the University of Stellenbosch Business School (USB). To him, “business is an exercise in common sense”. 

Herewith some highlights from Mantelli's founder Simon Mantell's Leader's Angle presentation last Friday (20 May) at the USB. He spoke on the topic "Turning obstacles into opportunities". These highlights were compiled by Heindrich Wyngaard and Amber Kriel from the USB's media team.

On turning obstacles into opportunities:

Life and business offers us the choice of wearing either an obstacle hat or an opportunity hat. Somehow personal and business life seems to be a never ending obstacle course; sometimes mole hills and sometimes they seem like insurmountable Everest type challenges.

Yet, out of almost all these obstacles, come opportunities which provide optimism and hope – two viral character traits.

On creating and developing markets:

Entrepreneurship is a fancy overused buzzword. Business is an exercise in common sense. It's about implementing systems and controls and it requires practice (like a golf swing).

Whether one is a business owner, a director, a middle manager or an employee on the [shop] floor, I strongly believe that it is possible, with practice, to be able to:

• Identify the opportunities
• Develop the opportunities; and
• Profit from the opportunities

On how to foster job creation and skills transfer:

This is the time bomb we face in South Africa today. What is being done to the masses in the country today is even worse than the Bantu and Black Education Act. They were promised a better life [post-1994] and it hasn't happened. In fact, education is deteriorating. We have excessive school leavers who are unemployable.

If you haven't employed blue collar workers you don't understand what they go through on a daily basis. I have staff that are up at four in the morning in order to get to work and then the taxis are late, and then the taxi drivers/owners are shooting at one another. As a result, absentee is a problem.

For white collar workers there is this terrible four letter word called "work". They want a job, but unfortunately with the job comes this terrible side effect called work. There is unrealistic expectations from people with a tertiary education and they feel the world now owes them a living.

Employing people is not an easy task. But here is the opportunity: If there was zero unemployment, we would have no one to employ.