MaST Botswana will, beginning next month, sell a significant number of shares to citizen employees as an empowerment component.
Citizen employees will have a bite at the cherry of the company’s shares as MaST Botswana adds a new dimension to its business of training and consultative focus in developing organizations and people.
“By later this year, a significant amount of MaST shareholding will be in the hands of citizens. The exact number of shares will depend on negotiations between the parties. Our long term goal is to make MaST a fully citizen empowered company, but there is no time frame on this yet,” says the company’s managing director, Nigel Turner.
MaST has been rolling out management programs for new and existing businesses in Botswana. The company, which has been operating in Botswana since 1987, says it has helped a major new hotel with management and personal skills development in the late 1990s while in 2000 it was involved with a major food processing startup both of which are thriving.
The company says it is also extending the scope of its work to include strategy development, organizational restructuring and business process reengineering – a task that will be spearheaded by the company’s managing consultant, Liverson Mdongo.
At a business breakfast held in Phakalane, Mdongo presented a paper inspired by another, titled ‘10 principles of Change Management Tools and techniques to help companies transform quickly’, published by the Harvard Business Review.
Mdongo’s paper titled: ‘At the helm of organizational change: Leaders as agents of renewal’ seeks to demonstrate that while change in any organisation must be owned by all, it is imperative for leaders to be the drivers of that change.
Mdongo says too many change projects fail, leaving a trail of despondence amongst employees and deep frustration among organisations’ leadership. That continued attempts at changing at the workplace often leads to costly employee burnout and increased resistance.
“The challenge of leading change is centered on the quality of leadership, the dominant culture and the perceived urgency of the need to do things differently,” says Mdongo.
MaST Botswana, with a client portfolio that includes blue chip organizations, parastatals and government departments, is affiliated to the MaST International Group in the United Kingdom. The company has offices in Australia, Ireland, Singapore and Turkey.
