Lindani Dhlamini’s business success as co-founder and CEO of SkX Protiviti was founded on the marriage of two core components of any successful business: financial control and strategic acumen, combined with an entrepreneurial spirit… but to this, she added an understanding of how to succeed in business as a woman
“As a woman, you need to liberate yourself from guilt and you need to disabuse yourself of this notion that you can do it all at the same time, because that’s what generally ends up getting women bent out of shape. As a woman, you must accept that you can only ever be in one place at a time… so when you are in that place, give it your all,” says Lindani Dhlamini, the CEO of SkX Protiviti, a professional services firm.
“Secondly, you don’t have to be a superstar and do it all. This requires that you need to get greater support at home because it is really not possible to do it all. These two lessons have helped me navigate a busy career with raising two children.”
Dhlamini is adamant her success is due to her ability to navigate the work environment and the home environment because she was able to create a big support structure and a network of people able to help her.
“Thanks to that support structure my kids did not feel the gap of a mother not being at home, so when I was in the office, I was able to mentally commit myself fully to everything I was doing.”
The seeds of Dhlamini’s entrepreneurial journey were subtly planted by her mother, who was an entrepreneur who ran a small business at home selling sweets and cakes.
Dhlamini’s own path took her to UCT, where she earned a BSc in Computer Science, after which she worked as a systems developer for two years. Her boss at the time was a Chartered Accountant, and “he seemed to be having a better time than I was, so I decided to go back to university and study towards becoming a CA”.
After qualifying as a CA in 2000 Dhlamini embarked on her articles, and as luck would have it, she was placed in a business unit that worked with entrepreneurs, which meant that she started to engage with entrepreneurs at the highest level very early on in her career.
“Entrepreneurs like talking about their business and their journey and it was all fascinating for me, and the seed to become an entrepreneur started to blossom,” recalls Dhlamini.
She started her business, Xabiso Chartered Accounts in 2003, then merged with Sekela Consulting in 2012, and as the business grew, they began to feel ambitions of servicing a wider range of clients, including global clients.
“For us to be able to do that, we affiliated ourselves with Protiviti, a US-based consulting firm with offices in over 20 countries. As we are their representatives here in South Africa, we generally tend to do most of the global work that needs to be done on the continent, so becoming affiliated with Protiviti has opened up opportunities for us to land global clients.”
Their client portfolio now includes high profile, local clients such as ABSA, African Bank and Nedbank, in addition to some of the big insurance companies such as Old Mutual and Hollard Insurance. The affiliation to Protiviti has given them the depth of skill and expertise to be able to do some highly sophisticated work for some very sophisticated clients.
Dhlamini has always been very conscious of where black women are in terms of the social and business hierarchy, which is “at the bottom of the ladder”. As an entrepreneur, she realised she had the chance to impact this in a meaningful way to assist the girl child in moving up the career ladder. And pursuing this entrepreneurial journey seemed to be the most appropriate vehicle for me to be able to fulfil that dream. However, there is a fundamental problem impacting her industry of financial services: and it’s maths!
“Women are hugely underrepresented in our sector, and this is partly because it takes a long time to qualify as a CA. It’s at least seven years of commitment to this journey. However, the biggest challenge is that girl children are discouraged from doing mathematics at school, and it happens a lot. The problem is that our profession is closed if you do not do mathematics,” she cautions.
For women in the industry, there are further challenges in terms of the work environment that are not conducive to having women in the profession. After-hours meetings and after-hours drinks are where a lot of big issues are discussed and major decisions taken, as well as weekends away to bond with the team, or a golf weekend away where you can engage with potential people who can help you progress in your career, or to do more business.
“As a woman, it’s often just not possible because you’ve got small children that you need to look after at home. So, there are some practices that we need to be conscious of as businesses that by their nature exclude women from this profession.”
SkX has a seven-member exco, and Dhlamini has ensured that four of those individuals are women in order to demonstrate from the highest level of the business that women belong and that they have a seat at the table. The company also replicates this representation of women across all levels of the business. Aside from normalising women in higher positions within the company, it also offers inspiration for women within the organisation, because women often struggle when it comes to self-promotion.
“I find that men are very good at selling themselves and saying, ‘I’m ready’, and asking for opportunities, whereas women will wait to be discovered… or they will wait for somebody to tell them that they are ready. So, we’re very intentional and deliberate about making sure that at all levels of our business women are empowered to promote themselves.
Whether it comes to your career or an entrepreneurial ambition, Dhlamini stresses the importance of having a goal or a vision of what it is you want to achieve, and that needs to burn bright to guide your path, like a beacon, as there will be lots of detours and distractions on your journey, but if you’ve got this crystal clear goal and vision then you’ll be able to find your way back.
“My vision was to create an opportunity for women to be able to do things in my business that they were not able to do in other businesses.”
This vision in itself is typical of the entrepreneur: you have a sense that there’s something you know that others don’t and that you want to create.
However, she stresses that the successful entrepreneur accepts that others will probably know more than you, and that you need the support of such people in your journey: people who know more than you and people who know different things to you.
Her dream is for the business to grow into a truly global player, and it’s already on track to achieve that vision, with a client base that includes major corporates in South Africa including MTN (that has a strong client base in Cameroon and the Middle East) and Rio Tinto, and that has operations in South Africa, Madagascar, Mozambique and Australia.
“The vision for this business is we to see ourselves grow into a formidable global business that still has its roots in South Africa. That’s a tall order, but we think we are ready for it.”
That vision feeds into another fundamental that she believes is essential for entrepreneurs to succeed: you can never rest on their laurels.
“That’s the day you die as a business. An entrepreneur must always be prepared to do new things, learn new things, take different paths. You need to embrace continuous learning and have a continuous hunger to do more, because complacency is the death knell of any entrepreneur,” she says.
SkX’s growth bears testament to that attitude of continuing to grow, but while her vision was to create a company that could showcase black excellence as well as create employment opportunities, she has noticed a disturbing trend in South Africa that there’s more trust in global brands than in local brands.
“My plea to South African consumers and to businesses who consume our services, is to give more opportunities to local brands because we are more in touch with what this economy needs in terms of moving it forward.
I’m very conscious that everything I do in this business must create employment opportunities for South Africans, and if the public and private sector could be more supportive of local firms it would make a huge impact in helping us as a nation to create the economic growth that could go a long way to solving so many of our greatest challenges.”
