MTN, ALTRON & BSG

MTETO NYATI

Betting on Excellence

If leaders do not talk about their own faults, they give the
impression that they're perfect, which makes people think that they
have all the answers - yet they don't.'9

MTN, ALTRON & BSG's Mteto Nyati

(Photo: Courtesy of Altron)

I first met Mteto Nyati in August 2020 - at his home - when, as organiser of the SA Professional Services Awards, I presented him with a Lifetime Achievement Award for excellence in management. We had just emerged from the first hard COVID-19 lockdown and still had to wear masks, which made our interaction somewhat awkward. Still, I could gather even from our brief engagement the aura of a leader who consistently inspires his charges.

It was for that reason that he was at the top of the list of CEOs I wanted to interview for this book. I eventually managed to pin him down for a chat one evening in July 2022, shortly after his farewell party at Altron, a company he had joined in April 2017. My first question was what he planned to do now that he was 'retired'.

He laughed and said he had invested in a few medium-size companies.

'Are they start-ups?' I wondered.

'Not at all,' he replied. 'I realised a long time ago that I'm not an entrepreneur; I'm not the kind of person to conceptualise something. Rather, I'm the type who gets into something that already exists and makes it better. The companies I've invested in are in advertising and data analytics. I will participate in their management, which means I will have to limit my other board seats to only three other companies.'

Months after our interview, in November 2022, Business Systems Group (BSG) announced that Mteto had acquired a 40% stake in the company. BSG is a 25-year-old business and technology consulting firm founded by Greg Reis. With his investment, Mteto replaced Reis as executive chairman.

Mteto has a long history in leadership positions. He served as the CEO of MTN South Africa from March 2014 to March 2017, following his position as chief enterprise officer of the group. This was after his time at two software giants - first as a director of global technology services for South and Central Africa at IBM, and then as managing director at Microsoft South Africa between 2008 and 2014.

After their retirement, many CEOs sit down to write their memoirs. Mteto ticked this off his list in 2019 already, when Betting on a Darkie - Lifting the Corporate Game was published. The book is a tell-tale account of his life, starting with his upbringing as the son of a shopkeeper in Tabase in the Eastern Cape.

As a child, Mteto was, to his own admission, naughty. Towards the end of his primary school years, his mother discovered that he and his friends got high on inhaling petrol they had stolen. His brother also told on him for smoking second-hand cigarette butts. These revelations got him a proper hiding and he was packed off to boarding school.

Even at university Mteto was a 'poster child for irresponsibility'. He ended up having a son with a medical student, and someone he knew from his high school days, and a daughter with a BCom student. 'My actions almost derailed the studies of two talented people,' he writes in his book. 'It pains me when I cast my mind back to this period of my life.'

I tell him I was surprised by how forthcoming he is about his own shortcomings. 'I'm an honest person and I felt it was important to include that information in my book to show people that there is nothing special about me,' he explains. 'People need to know that I did not grow up as a model citizen. I draw parallels to Barack Obama who, for example, was a chain smoker but ended up as arguably one of America's greatest presidents.

'If leaders do not talk about their own faults, they give the impression that they're perfect, which makes people think that they have all the answers - yet they don't. Creating an environment where you are honest about your imperfections shows that you are open to be persuaded by views that are different from your own.'

Telling it like it is

Mteto is indeed fiercely honest in his book. For example, he is critical about how the IBM management tried to recruit him for the role of CEO behind the back of the incumbent. He also writes about how a director at Eskom, who he names in the book, attempted to solicit a bribe in the process of awarding a contract, and how MTN wanted to downplay the reasons for his departure when he left the mobile communication giant for Altron.

Mteto is frank: he decided early on that he was not going to ask anyone for their permission to write about them. He intended to be honest about events as he recalled them, he explains. 'If someone wanted to challenge me in court, then so be it. They could claim that I wrote something that didn't happen and call me a liar, but so far, nobody has made such claims. I suppose there are people who are uncomfortable about the things I wrote, but ultimately it's my story and my truth.'

The book contains several testimonials from people who've worked with Mteto over the course of his career. 'I wanted to include other people's views because I'm generally uncomfortable talking about myself; I prefer others to give me their perspective,' he says. 'So I asked a few people to write about me. All I gave them was the preferred length, nothing else. And I did not change what they submitted to me.'

Dingulwazi Makwelo, who worked in the IT support division at Altron, contributed to a chapter. His initial take on Mteto was of an astute businessman with little empathy for staff, someone who cares only about the bottom line. However, Mteto's emphasis on taking people's feelings into account to inform decisions convinced him otherwise. 'With his unique and modern approach, he makes you feel appreciated and valuable no matter what position or and status you hold,' Makwelo writes.

Each chapter in the book opens with an appropriate quote. If you follow Mteto on LinkedIn, you will notice that he frequently posts quotes aimed at not only encouraging people but also challenging them to excel. 'At almost every meeting I go to, there will be at least one person who tells me how they wake up to my quotes and what impact it has on their day. Although that wasn't my intention when I started sharing these quotes, it's become a way in which I can help shape people's lives.'

Tempting parking spaces

My favourite quote in his book is one by Will Rogers, an American tongue-in-cheek social commentator. 'The road to success has many tempting parking places,' he says. I asked Mteto about the parking spots of his career.

'When I go back to the village [Tabase] and look for the people I grew up with, many of my peers are not doing well. In fact, carrying on with negative behaviour has cost several their life. That could have been a parking space I might never have gotten out of had my mother not pointed me in the right direction.'

Being at IBM South Africa for close to 12 years, Mteto didn't realise that he was parked in a comfortable spot. 'I should have realised earlier that the promises of my becoming CEO would not come through in good time. It's important not to let your loyalty stifle your growth. Leaving IBM accelerated my career growth, which made me realise I would have been much further had I left sooner.'

Although he was very successful during his time at Microsoft and leaving the company was difficult, he realised, though, that if he had stayed, he would have missed out on valuable lessons learnt at Altron. 'Altron is a listed company with high demands from investors. In contrast, the Microsoft business was well supported by funders in the US. If I'd stayed, I would never have developed the expertise to deal with the kind of liquidity problems I found at Altron.'

In all the positions Mteto has held, he's shown that a leader's primary responsibility is that of stewardship. It is about ensuring that management takes care of everything they're the custodians of, and when they hand it over one day, it has to be in a better shape than what they had found it in. This is one of the principles along which he shapes his career.

'I don't think I would have had the impact I had at MTN without the experiences at Microsoft and IBM. Each new assignment I've taken on has been progressively harder than the one before, but each prior role was necessary for me to be able to tackle the issues in a new position.

'For example, MTN was my first encounter with investors in a listed company, and I came to appreciate how important people are in the success of companies. It is critical to give them a voice to shape and execute strategies.'

Strategy, Mteto believes, should be based on practical insight gained from customers. For example, at Altron he realised that the buying behaviour of their customers was changing. They were cutting down on the number of suppliers they dealt with and buying more from the ones they retained. This meant that a client would develop a strategic relationship with a certain supplier, which they then would give lots of business to and consequently demand bigger discounts.

He was concerned that customers would shy away from the group, which was seen as a collection of different, largely independent companies....