{"id":673,"date":"2014-11-12T13:00:12","date_gmt":"2014-11-12T12:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/?p=673"},"modified":"2016-10-28T13:48:51","modified_gmt":"2016-10-28T12:48:51","slug":"talent-development-and-african-values","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/2014\/11\/12\/talent-development-and-african-values\/","title":{"rendered":"Talent development and African values"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week I attended a conference of business school administrators<\/strong> hosted by IESE Business School<\/a>. The theme was “Quality in context: Management education for the developing world,”<\/strong> and the focus was on Africa. In one of the panels, a leader from one of the most prominent MNCs, which has operations in 13 African countries, highlighted finding talent<\/strong> as one of the most important challenges to doing business in Africa<\/a><\/strong> (my apologies for putting all of Africa in one big basket \u2013 big mistake, I know! But I think the generalization is not that serious in this case.) His point was that even if important, technical skills are secondary as they can be easily trained<\/strong>. In his words, “the most important part is the humanistic component.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Connection<\/a>
Connection to the family: an important African value<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

According to him, specific African values<\/strong> that need to be taken into account to manage operations in Africa (and \u2013 I would add \u2013 from which we all can learn) include:<\/p>\n