The corporate image tango   by Clive Simpkins

I've just finished facilitating at a conference for the Insurance Institute of South Africa (IISA), and had the pleasure of getting discussion going between luminaries like Gill Marcus, Kennedy Bungane (one of the architects of the Financial Services Charter) and an audience of about five hundred. The main foci were the Charter and the Financial Advisory and Intermediary Services Act (FAIS) and their implications for the insurance sector. The insurance industry, representing all sectors, short, long-term, life, reinsurance, brokers, direct etc. all get together annually to share insights and learn new things.

It was interesting hearing the many stories and experiences surrounding BEE, mentoring, scorecards, transformation, fears and everything else that goes to make up this exciting melting pot called changing South Africa.

Kennedy Bungane and I revisited a seminal moment when I was guest-lecturing at the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) and he was one of the 'bright young things' completing his MBA. The morning in question I was wearing a bespoke purple shirt, purple and yellow braces and a lilac Turnbull and Asser bowtie. The outfit looked really good, but would certainly have fallen into the category of the idiosyncratic. As always with my wardrobe, it must have somehow reflected my mood on the day.

Having gone to great pains to emphasise that what I was talking was 'globally generic' business dress, not culture-specific or Eurocentric etc. etc. I assumed everyone was on the same page headed 'culture neutral.' Imagine my amazement therefore when Kennedy stood up, dressed in township baggy chic, with shapeless cotton hat pulled down over his eyes and said, 'I'd like to point out two things. First of all, you're conservative. Secondly, you're white!' That second observation really surprised me. (Smile).

I mustered my thoughts and at my diplomatic best assured him that if he were to seek a job in the hallowed portals of an Anglo American, he wouldn't get it dressed like he was. If he didn't look like 'one of them' - whoever the 'them' was that he sought to join, he would remain on the periphery of business. I was delighted then, to hear him say at this conference, that despite his best efforts, here he was in dark suit, white shirt and classy tie. He feigned protest about the colonial remnant dress. The reality is - here was this dynamic, compelling young speaker, holding forth to a raptly attentive audience, whilst dressed, groomed and presented in a manner that would have done him proud on any international platform. I was delighted and we light-heartedly traded jibes in front of the audience about our GIBS contretemps.

What's the lesson in this? Just as this young man was sensible enough to go away and ruminate on his sense of individual style versus corporate stereotypes versus tasteful 'compliance', so anyone wishing to enter corporate life today will have to do the same.

It's a contract that will need to work both ways. If one factors in generational theory and examines the attitudes and aspirations of the 'X-ers' about whom local author Graeme Codrington so eloquently writes and speaks, we have a real challenge. Non conformity is a natural part of the X-er package. The paradox of course is that in order to be a non-conformist, you have to conform to certain criteria to be perceived or accepted as one. This means that you conform to B in order not to conform to A!

The bottom line is there's no such thing as a totally individual person in corporate. Fact is that when you join a company or organization you voluntarily sign up for a degree of behavioural and dress conformity. If you don't, that organization will have an 'immune system response' to you. The CD4 cells will come rushing out and attack you. They'll suppress you, drive you out or 'kill' you. But so long as you're not perceived or received as 'one of them' you'll be hounded from pillar to post.

It may be a corny analogy, but we're all like a diamond - multi faceted. So when we make appropriate and integrity-based adaptations or adjustments to fit in with others or a corporate culture, we're not selling our birthright for some mess of pottage. We're behaving with social and emotional intelligence and skill. It's those who cling doggedly to the idea that they only come in one flavour and that they're not going to 'compromise their integrity' for love nor money, that have the wrong end of the stick.

You can wear your 'township chic' after hours. Even if your township is Sandton! But having wardrobe or behavioural inflexibility of the sort that means you only fit in with comfort or ease to some narrow potentially marginalised segment of society, doesn't make an awful lot of sense.

It makes me think of a rigidly prescriptive young female speaker at a conference, who pointed to my shaved head and said, 'That's not a good look for the corporate world. Some companies really wouldn't like it.' My very quick and loud response was, 'Fortunately, I own the company!' There's no 'one size fits all' in dress or behaviour. What it takes is flexibility, adaptability and 'accommodate-ability.' When we have those three facets as an intrinsic part of our make-up, we'll find social,corporate and interpersonal success.