Christo Davel on karmic debt, poetry and profit
For most of his entrepreneurial career, Christo Davel has worked at the intersection of finance and technology, even before “fintech” was a thing. Among other businesses, he founded what became Old Mutual Direct, 20twenty (South Africa’s first pure online bank), and 22seven – which is where we met. Disclosure: we have become friends and have worked together on and off since then. In that time, he’s used some expressions that struck and stuck with me. In this interview, I asked him about them.
Mind the gap between actual and aspirational values
If you want to know what an organisation actually values, don’t look at what it says. Look at what it does.
Do we lose our humanity when we put on our work clothes?
I once worked at a company where the marketing team had come up with an idea, for a corporate audience, that was overtly and deliberately socially and environmentally responsible. When they showed the idea to the sales team, one of the responses was that “corporates don’t care about CSR.”
Why companies should hire Chief Lovability Officers
If you want to be more marketable, be more lovable.
Telling your story is like training your dragon
“Times are changing. We can’t get away with being bigger and more violent than everybody else anymore. IMAGINATION. That’s what they need and you’ve got. A Hero of the Future is going to have to be clever and cunning, not just a big lump with overdeveloped muscles.”
From “How To Train Your Dragon” by Cressida Cowell
Fuck the consumer
If I had my way, I would ban consumers. Not the people. The word.
Tell your story by answering 3 questions
Some stories are complex. Some are muddled or muddied. Some are overwritten or under-edited. Or sometimes you’re too close to a story to be able to see it clearly. In instances like these, it’s helpful to simplify your story to the answers of just three questions.
Work with purpose
There’s a lot to be said for having fun at work, and you should always have some, but even having a lot of it is not going to stop you from feeling a little empty.
What’s deeper than data-based decision-making?
I’m not against data. We certainly should use it. But decisions made only on data can be narrow and short-term.
What my children taught me about company culture
A lot of anxiety is unnecessary and could be avoided if companies created very clear and explicit expectations for their staff, like we started doing for our children .