#016 Kosheek Sewchurran | Creating worlds through conversation

Kosheek Sewchurran, guest · [04:52]when I finished school, growing up in a poor working class neighborhood, there was, there wasn't any money to go to university. So I started work immediately. And I started work as a production control clerk, you know, somebody who tries to capture production records and machine logs and, and information out of a production plant. That was my first job, and whilst doing my first job, I started, studying towards a diploma data metrics, which was, a computer programming qualification at the time. And my first job was a combination of this clerical activity and trying to, understand and learn about how to program the computers I was working in.

Petro du Pisani, host · [05:38]And then what happened?

Kosheek Sewchurran, guest · [05:40]Yeah, it's quite interesting. I mean, my first job exposed me to, a work environment, and with that, I became more ambitious when in terms of trying to do complex technical things. So I continued studying. I then did a BSc through UNISA in software engineering. I did, one with three majors, actually, with operations research and then one with statistics. I was fascinated by plant optimization and the kind of work industrial engineers, really get trained to do. So I had this dual career, you know, studying in the evenings and working during the day and working as a, a analyst programmer, a process analyst. So I had this dual path through life, learning and then trying to practice what I learned during the day. And, I did that for probably ten years. So I, you know, I was the typical corporate athlete trying to be as productive and ambitious and until you, until you fail. And I think, by, you know, the, the first ten years was about becoming technically proficient and excellent, and the next half a decade was about, learning how to fail and learning how to transcend the failure and the politics. And then it brought me to the limits of technical knowledge, which was, you know, a period in which I earned my, my honors in computer science and then a master's in systems thinking, and then starting to understand the limits of technical knowledge and thinking you can automate human beings.

Kosheek Sewchurran, guest · [07:59]understanding politics and understanding how, you know, I was young, much younger then, so I was, I was intrigued by the lived experience, of working in these environments. I was also intrigued that, you know, human beings do not behave as, according to the expectations we have about them. And is there a different way to understand human beings so that you could, you know, you could design things that take the best of a human performance and complement that human performance with technology or ways in which you can enhance it? And then I joined UCT in 2006. So after a fifteen year, industrial experience, I registered for a PhD. And, I, for three years, read all the existential philosophers, Martin Heidegger, you know, Really, on the one hand, what's the purpose of a human life? And on the other hand, how do you deal competently with the lived experience of being human? And, I was fascinated to find out at the end of it all that, you know, that, this opened up a whole new world for me, a whole new world of, scholarship that I could try to untangle and revitalize some of the pedagogy for project management, how do we train business analysts. And that period was an intense learning period, and it was a period of me, understanding complexity, but from a philosophical point of view. And, I had then made connection with the dean of the business school at the time, Walter Bates. And Walter Bates and I shared thoughts about complexity from different points of view, and, and then I was pushed into a whole bigger world of, executive MBA scholarship and executive scholarship, and that was a world I realized I was truly most interested in working with and mastering. So it was about, you know, problems of will are problems that we seldom think about, but problems of will have fascinated philosophers for, for centuries, and mostly the pragmatist philosophers. So Walter Bates and I had a really good relationship, and I was, head of department of, a department in commerce, and he was a dean of the business school at the time. And he kind of poached me, which is not good in academic politics, so he poached me to come and run the executive MBA, and I had abandoned the Faculty of Commerce at the time, and, I haven't looked back. I mean, I'm still learning so much and inquiring.

Kosheek Sewchurran, guest · [12:36]So it was about 2003 or 2004. I was in, a large-scale expansion project, and, we were implementing, an enterprise resource planning system, and it was the wrong decision, but we'd spent millions trying to do it. And, we had to get to a point of accepting we'd made a mistake and, deciding we had to build something different. So in that period, I understood then that, you can only get organized, coherent action going if you understand how to design purpose in systems and in people. And, it was a humbling journey when you, when you start to understand that the, you know, you could design the best, engineering systems. If they don't resonate with the purposes people have, they're just not going to see it, and they're just not going to use it. Then I, I realized I knew so little about people. I was, you know, I was so skilled in everything else. And, I also realized that the practice of strategy, the practice of, leadership was not taking into consideration enough of the lived reality of, every moment of being in these situations. Then I decided a PhD would work.

Kosheek Sewchurran, guest · [17:49]I've been the director now for eight years, I think, thereabouts. So the one person, most recent example, is a colleague called Simon Alston. He's the CEO of Wellness Warehouse. He came onto the program as a asset manager, really, competent technically, engineering financial growth. And Simon and I had, a deep discussion about what he'd like to do, and he says, you know, he's tired of engineering value. He wants to create value. But he doesn't know quite whether that's the world he'd like, but he'd like to discover how to do it, and then if he'd like that world. And, Simon Alston in his position paper four and position papers three, whilst being an investor in Wellness Warehouse, produced a strategy and a business model to take it into a period of sustained growth. And it was such a good piece of thinking that then they hired him to be the CEO. So he had this dual responsibility of having the investor, but Simon had discovered a joy of running a business that I had seen him, grow energy with enthusiasm, and he was working harder, but having probably twice as much fun, but at the same time creating, value for people all around him. You know, he was in a productive part of the economy, if you want to call it that. So that's one story. And then I think it's important because I think the executive MBA shifted his will and disclosed a whole new world for him. And, you know, the, the possibilities are just limitless of what he's going to do next.

Kosheek Sewchurran, guest · [31:14]I'll tell you how I see it. The struggle with all of us, Petro, I think the, the struggle in you in particular is similar to most, I would say people who want to produce impact in their lives and better human performances. We drive ourselves really hard, and I think the, the idea is to reframe what we consider as a day or reframe the idea of, what we consider And everydayness in particular is trying to reframe the concept of momentary existence in the world. And I think when you reframe that, then I think you, you're not searching for full days. You're searching for conscious effort on little things and seeing them accumulate. So you, you do become productive, I'd say. I, I would say that you become more conscious, more productive, but you also start to understand how you can trick yourself into better performances. Because, you know, it's like a simple example would be, if you put down, I need to spend 12 hours tomorrow reading VSM, you're going to be utterly disappointed that you're never going to get there. On the one hand, it's not practical, but if you took a little bit of time and said, I want to read about, if you take one concept, variety, I want to understand variety tomorrow. You could understand variety from a twenty minutes reading effort. Then you realize I've got a whole day free now. What else can I do? So it's about how specifically do you define what you want to do so that the motivation when you've achieved it is much higher, and you don't end up with disappointments about poor performance when there was no real chance you'll get there in any case.

Kosheek Sewchurran, guest · [38:43]I think we're going to recreate the construct of the organization, and we're gonna recreate the construct of economy. We're probably going to bring into being what we call a circular economy or circular economy ideas, and we're gonna recreate organization to unbounded organizing. You know, those are the two interesting pieces of work that I think, are begging for Scaling and growing and evolution. So I'm busy with some research at the moment on those two concepts.

Petro du Pisani, host · [39:14]Tell me a little bit more about that. What are you thinking about it so far?

Kosheek Sewchurran, guest · [39:17]So there's a, the circular economy is about how do we, how do we bring human beings and their direct labor and value that as a process by which these human beings acquire human development. Now we often think about economic development, then you might get social development, then you might get human development. But the circular economy thinking is rephrased and says you first get human development, then you get social development, then you might or might not get economic development in the way we're thinking about it. And it's done through the, you know, there's a little farm in the Northern Cape in Priska that I'm working with the farm, there was a farmer and his wife, who have changed the farm into an organic farming enterprise. But together with that, they've created all kinds of circular economy principles in the downstream industries. And, we're just thinking about how to scale that, you know, and so the, the scaling of it is to value human labor, but also the human development that goes through with the human labor. So it's probably a mouthful now, but that's really what I'm experimenting with.

Petro du Pisani, host · [40:27]And what are you hoping to achieve or prove with this?

Kosheek Sewchurran, guest · [40:31]So I'm hoping we can prove that circular economies can be planned by being more deliberate about them, and we can scale them. So I'm hoping that would be some outcomes we can try and test out to change the climate question, but also to change the good nutritious food and respecting the, the biosphere a lot more.