Working to keep the balance in life
Andrew Gillingham Business Times Sunday, August 09, 2009
Pinky Moholi, managing director of Telkom SA, was exposed to strong family role models in her earliest years and they, along with the example of her Aunt Marina who studied medicine in Sweden, helped form the person she has become.
“All my relatives emphasised the need to take responsibility for my life and for earning my way in the world.
“My mother created a nurturing environment and I was very close to my father — though I lost him when I was only 19 — and he had a big influence on my life and the way I and my siblings view success.”
Moholi was born in the small town of Willowvale in the Eastern Cape, matriculated from Mthatha’s St Johns College, and earned an electrical engineering degree from the University of Cape Town.
She worked for British telecommunications company GEC, based in Johannesburg, before moving to Siemens two years later. “Siemens believed very strongly in development and I was given a lot of training and even posted to Germany,” she says.
Leaving Siemens in the early ’90s, when the new South Africa was taking its first steps, she joined a nongovernmental organisation so she could be an active player in the process of transformation.
In ’94, Moholi went back to telecommunications and joined Telkom as the head of the payphone business.
“It was a time of transition in South Africa and Telkom was a very male dominated environment. However, it is a strong technology company and as an engineer I received instant recognition from my new colleagues. I was surprised by the ease with which I was able to work with most people and I was given a lot of help and mentoring in adjusting to the new environment,” Moholi says. “It was a very exciting time with a lot of activism surrounding telecommunications and the right to communicate,” she says.
Out of this phase in Telkom’s evolution came the commitment to roll out telecommunications services to townships and rural areas, with the issuing of new licences.
The next shift in her responsibilities was to head up Telkom’s newly formed regulatory division, a post she held for four years before taking charge of Telkom’s international business unit.
Moholi faced significant challenges as overseas call charges were high and local call rates were too low, and Telkom embarked on a process of rebalancing call charges.
“I was responsible for Telkom’s wholesale relationships with international and mobile operators so we could negotiate better rates and acquire better connectivity.”
The environment was further changed by the sale of 30% of the company to SBC and Telekom Malaysia, which brought in a wave of overseas experts with a mandate to introduce skills and advance its technology.
Telkom moved Moholi to the role of chief sales and marketing officer in 2002. Telkom listed on the JSE and NYSE in early 2003.
“Telkom has always been very committed to development and even in those days the company ran a number of programmes focused on developing women.
“The company really shook things up and gave many female administrators technical training and technical responsibilities, many of whom rose to meet the challenge and really flew,” she says.
In 2005 Moholi took off in a very different direction, leaving the telecommunications company to take a post with Nedbank as the head of strategy and marketing. However, when Telkom approached her in early 2009 to take on the job of managing director, she immediately accepted.
“Telkom wanted to renew the organisation and I could not resist the temptation of being part of the process. The telecommunications environment is more competitive and we need a new focus and a new culture to negotiate the competitive waters.”
As she has grown as a person and as a manager, she has realised that her role as a leader is mainly to choose the right people to take on the right tasks, and give them the right resources and direction.
Moholi met the man in her life at university and she and Phumlani married 25 years ago. The couple have two children, Bonolo, 25, who works for CellC, and Ayanda, 20, who is in the second year of her degree. “Both my girls have studied economics, which is a bit strange as both my husband and I are electrical engineers.”
In the challenge of “having it all” — a demanding career and a family — Moholi has support from her extended family, husband and children.
“My husband is a very calm and gentle man, and when I lose it he is able to bring me back on track. Finding the life balance between work and home is always a major challenge and it is a skill that you have to acquire over time.
“You have to learn to say no at the right times at both work and at home. This is not a skill which we are born with and it is still a work in progress as far as I am concerned.
“I have had to make time for family, even going so far as to block off time in my diary and stick to that commitment. I have not always managed to be the ideal mother and I have missed many school events and meetings over the years.”
Moholi spent a lot of time on the road in South Africa and abroad, and her husband picked up the added family responsibilities during these periods.
“We are both committed to good family values. However, Phumlani also has a career and there are times when neither of us can be at home and family and friends have stepped in to help us.”
She says her biggest fear is that of failure, whether in her career or as a mother — but “you must not let fear of failure drive you to be a perfectionist. You have to accept that you cannot be everything to everybody; the issue is working to keep the balance.”
New boss to clear Telkom cobwebs?
Originally Posted by Captain Slog
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