Vision 2026

The new process lasted three weeks.
“The way we’ve always done it” made a full recovery.

Sound familiar?
That is why I’m looking forward to welcoming Joyce Lebelo to Vision 2026 this Thursday.

Joyce is an ICF Certified Executive Coach, Management Consultant and organisational change practitioner, with more than 25 years of experience as a businesswoman, executive and trusted advisor.

She has partnered with more than 150 corporate clients, spanning telecommunications, financial services, mining, FMCG, technology, education, the public sector, and professional services.

But what makes Joyce particularly relevant to this conversation is the work behind those credentials.

Her experience includes strategic transformation, major technology and business implementations, operating model changes, culture initiatives and leadership development—working with both South African and international organisations.

These are situations where approving a decision is only the beginning.
 →  People must work differently.
 →  Managers must reinforce it.
 →  Leaders must demonstrate it.
 →  And the new behaviour must survive a busy Tuesday.

Joyce’s work connects strategy, organisational culture and change, with a practical focus on turning strategic intent into changed behaviours and sustainable performance.

As an executive coach, she also works with the people responsible for making that happen: helping leaders and teams develop the self-awareness, capability and behaviours needed to lead change.

Her supplied biography captures it beautifully:
“Adoption is what people do. Culture is what becomes normal.”

This Thursday, we explore:
🎙️ FROM ADOPTION TO CULTURE
Why Good Business Decisions Fail—and How Leaders Get People to Act

Our central question:
"How do we turn a change people follow temporarily into a habit the business sustains—even when the owner is absent, and the pressure is on?"

If you keep chasing, reminding and restarting the same improvements, bring that experience to the conversation.

📅 Thursday, 8 October 2026
🕗 08:00–08:45 SAST
📺 Live on LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube

Join me, David Bouwer, and our Vision 2026 co-hosts as we welcome Joyce and explore what it takes to make change endure.

Set your reminder—and invite the person who keeps saying,
 →  “But we agreed to this months ago.”

Vision 2026 | Giving Expertise a Voice

#Vision2026 #JoyceLebelo #Leadership #OrganisationalCulture #ChangeManagement

1 day ago | [YT] | 2

Vision 2026

“SOMEONE SHOULD DO SOMETHING.”
A term frequently heard and possibly the most comfortable sentence in the world.
It sounds concerned. But it requires nothing - no action, no responsibility, no accountability; it's someone else's problem. BUT is it?
A packet of chips lies on a park path.
→  You see it. →  I see it. →  Twenty people or more walk past it.
→  Someone should pick it up. → Should you?

Apparently, Someone is running late - an excuse?

But the packet is only the beginning.
•  The leaking tap we have learned to sleep through.
•  The family tension everyone tiptoes around.
•  The loose paving stone outside the gate.
•  The customer complaint that travels between departments until the customer leaves.

Different settings. A familiar sentence:
“Yes, we know about it.”

Knowing can become a surprisingly comfortable substitute for acting.

There is psychology beneath this.
Responsibility can become diluted when we believe somebody else will act. We also look to others for cues: if everyone carries on, maybe we can too.

Then come the quieter thoughts:
“If I raise it, will it become my problem?”“What if I make things worse?”“Who am I to interfere?”

Sometimes we need support or authority to act. Sometimes we are simply hoping the problem will choose another owner.

Think of the warming pot as a metaphor.
→  A little more heat. →  A little more discomfort. →  Another adjustment.
→  We keep adapting to something we should be addressing.

“We can still cope” becomes the reason we do nothing.

Until coping becomes a crisis.

Before you picture somebody else, consider this:
“What problem in your life have you become very good at working around?”

→  At home? →  At work? →  In your community?
→  In your country?

What have you explained repeatedly—but never helped move towards resolution?

This Thursday on Vision 2026, Cubin Dhevaraj joins us for:
FROM PROBLEM TO OWNERSHIPEveryone sees it. Who owns it?

We’ll explore what keeps us watching and reveal the practical shift that helps us move from concern to ownership and action.

Come and listen. Bring the problem you have been hoping Someone would resolve, and you may discover why that someone has not arrived.

#Vision2026 #FromProblemToOwnership #Leadership #Accountability

5 days ago | [YT] | 0

Vision 2026

You’re walking through a park when you see an empty chips packet on the path.

You notice it. It shouldn’t be there.

Perhaps you think, “The gardener will pick it up.” Or “Surely the cleaners will deal with it.”

You walk past. Tomorrow, it’s still there. After a while, you hardly notice it at all.

That happens in businesses too.

→  The customer complaint everyone knows about.
→  The handover that fails every Friday.
→  The risk that appears in every report.

People see it.

They assume someone else is dealing with it.

Eventually, the problem becomes part of how the business operates.

Seeing a problem does not tell us who owns the outcome.

This Thursday on Vision 2026, we’ll be speaking with Shanmogam Cubin Dhevaraj, Director of Synapse Risk Solutions, about:

FROM PROBLEM TO OWNERSHIP.

Cubin has spent more than 25 years working across risk, operations and technology in complex organisations.

We will explore with him what leaders can do when a problem crosses teams and responsibilities:

Who can make the decision?

Who will act?

And who will ensure the problem stops recurring?

Join the discussion, ask your questions, bring your examples, your case studies...

📅 Thursday, 1 October 2026
🕗 08:00–08:45 SAST
📍 Live on LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube

What is the “chips packet” in your business—the problem everyone has learned to walk past?

David Bouwer | Host, Vision 2026 - Giving Expertise a Voice.

1 week ago | [YT] | 0

Vision 2026

In 1847, a doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis noticed something disturbing.
Women in one maternity clinic were dying at a far higher rate than those in another.
→  He investigated.
→  He changed one simple procedure:

Doctors had to wash their hands before treating patients.
↳  Deaths dropped dramatically.
↳  Problem solved?

Not quite.

Many doctors resisted the change.
→  The evidence was there.
→  The decision made sense.
→  The solution worked.

But people didn’t adopt it.

And that is where this 179-year-old story becomes a leadership lesson for today.

How many businesses have:
✅ Approved the strategy
✅ Bought the technology
✅ Launched the programme
✅ Announced the change

…but months later, people are still working exactly as they did before?

The uncomfortable truth:

IMPLEMENTATION IS NOT ADOPTION.

A business decision only starts creating value when people understand it, believe in it, are equipped for it—and change what they actually do.

That is exactly what we are unpacking this week on Vision 2026.

🎙️ FROM DECISION TO ADOPTION
A Decision Isn’t Made Until People Act on It
with Paul Strodike Business Transformation Architect

Hosted by David Bouwer

If you lead people, strategy, technology or transformation, this is a conversation you should hear.

👉 Join us LIVE on Vision 2026 and discover what has to happen AFTER the decision is made.

Because your strategy may not have failed.

Perhaps it simply hasn’t been adopted yet.

#Vision2026 #PaulStrodike #DavidBouwer #BusinessTransformation #Leadership #ChangeManagement #StrategyExecution #ChangeAdoption

3 weeks ago | [YT] | 0

Vision 2026

YOUR STRATEGY DIDN’T FAIL. YOUR ORGANISATION NEVER ADOPTED IT.

This week on Vision 2026, we welcome:
Paul Strodike
Business Transformation Architect

Paul works in the space where many business strategies break down:

Between the decision and the action.

•  A plan can be approved.
•  A strategy can be signed off.
•  A new system can be implemented.

But if people don’t change how they work, has anything really changed?

Paul’s work spans business transformation, strategy execution, governance, digital transformation and organisational change, with a strong focus on turning strategy into measurable business value.

That makes him the right person for this week’s conversation:

FROM DECISION TO ADOPTION
A Decision Isn’t Made Until People Act on It

We’ll explore why good decisions lose momentum, why implementation is not the same as adoption, and what leaders can do to turn intention into real behaviour and results.

🎁 Paul will also share a practical resource to help leaders identify where their organisation may be getting stuck between decision and adoption.

💬 Comment “ADOPTION” to receive the resource/access details after the show.

Vision 2026 — Giving Expertise a Voice


#Vision2026
#BusinessTransformation
#Leadership
#StrategyExecution
#ChangeManagement

3 weeks ago | [YT] | 0

Vision 2026

CEO QUESTION: If you approved a data or AI spend in the last 12 months, can you name the number that got better?

Most leadership teams have more data than ever before.
More dashboards.
More reports.
More analytics.
More AI.

And somebody signed off on every one of them.

Here's the uncomfortable boardroom question:
Would that spend have survived the same test you run on a new plant or a new branch? A business case with a baseline. An owner. A stage gate. A review a year later.

If the answer is unclear, the problem is not your data team.
It is what the person who approves the spend asks before signing, and what they demand afterwards.

This Thursday, Vision 2026 goes BEYOND THE DASHBOARD with Karl Dinkelmann CA(SA) — Business Growth Strategist, Bestselling Author, Speaker, and Co-Founder & Chairman of Nexus Data.

Last week Zjaén Coetzee showed us how data value gets produced. This week Karl takes the other seat: the CFO, CEO or chairman who signs the cheque and carries the result.

Karl has sat on both sides of that table. A Chartered Accountant who became the data guy, and now the chairman who approves the spend. He brings two frameworks from his bestselling book, Drive RAPPID Results From Data: what to demand BEFORE you sign, and how to recognise the value AFTER.

BEYOND THE DASHBOARD
How Leaders Turn Data Insights into Decisions, Adoption and Measurable Business Value

We'll put questions like these to Karl:
🔹 What should a CFO ask before approving the next data or AI initiative?
🔹 Why does finance run a capex test on a plant purchase and skip it on a data project?
🔹 How does a board know, a year later, whether anything actually got better?
🔹 Who outside the data team owns the result?
🔹 What would have stopped the churn model that was built five times?

📅 Thursday, 10 September 2026
🕗 08:00–08:45 SAST
🔴 LIVE on Vision 2026

So, CEO, CFO, executive or business owner:
Bring the question you would ask in your own budget meeting. Post it below with your role and the last data or AI spend you approved.

🎁 Karl is giving five signed copies of Drive RAPPID Results From Data to the questions he picks during the show.

At Vision 2026, we believe:
Wisdom should be shared, not retired.

💬 Comment VALUE during or after the event to receive the practical Vision 2026 resource created from the discussion.

Vision 2026 – Giving Expertise a Voice

#BusinessLeadership #DataStrategy #AIForBusiness #BusinessValue #KarlDinkelmann

4 weeks ago | [YT] | 0

Vision 2026

We started with the leaks. Then we followed the data. Now we’re taking the conversation into the boardroom.

Over the past few weeks on Vision 2026, we've followed a deliberate progression.

We began by looking at the hidden leaks inside businesses — the small operational, behavioural and leadership issues that quietly erode performance and profit.

That raised an important question:
"How do we know where the leaks really are?"

The answer took us into data.

Last week, we, together with Zjaén Coetzee, explored how organisations collect, understand and use data to generate meaningful insight.

But that is not where the journey ends.

In fact, that is where the harder conversation begins.

Because once the data is credible, the analysis has been done, and the dashboard is sitting in front of the leadership team, there is still one critical question:

What happens next?

This Thursday, we move Beyond the Dashboard with Karl Dinkelmann CA(SA) — Business Growth Strategist, Bestselling Author, Speaker and Co-Founder & Chairman of Nexus Data.

Karl brings a distinctly executive and financial lens to the conversation.

His focus is not on how dashboards are built.

It is on what happens when the insight reaches the boardroom.

Because executives are not really asking:
“What does the dashboard say?”

They are asking:
“How does this move the business forward?”

That changes the conversation completely.

We will explore questions such as:

How does a data or AI initiative become relevant to the organisation’s strategic priorities?

Why is the CFO often the ultimate gatekeeper when it comes to funding?

Why do businesses sometimes apply less commercial discipline to AI than they would to a major capital investment?

What makes an insight worth acting on?

How much risk should leaders be willing to accept in pursuit of innovation?

And how do we ultimately know whether a data or AI investment created real, measurable business value?

So the progression now looks like this:
BUSINESS LEAKS → DATA → INSIGHT → RELEVANCE → BUSINESS CASE → FUNDING → RISK → ACTION → VALUE

That is the journey we are continuing this week.

Not more dashboards.

Not more reports.

A boardroom-level conversation about what leaders do with insight once they have it.

BEYOND THE DASHBOARD

How Leaders Turn Data Insights into Decisions, Adoption and Measurable Business Value

📅 Thursday, 10 September 2026
🕗 08:00–08:45 SAST
🔴 Live on LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube

Join us live and bring your questions for Karl.

And as always, we will turn the key insights from the conversation into a practical Vision 2026 resource because we believe:

Wisdom should be shared, not retired.

💬 Comment VALUE during or after the event to receive the resource.

Vision 2026 — Giving Expertise a Voice

1 month ago | [YT] | 0

Vision 2026

THE PROJECT WORKED. BUT DID THE BUSINESS?
That was the question I kept coming back to after this week’s Vision 2026 conversation with Zjaén Coetzee, CEO of Nexus Data and co-author of Drive RAPPID Results from Data.

We started with Data and AI.
We ended up talking about something much bigger:
How leaders make better decisions.

Zjaén’s biggest message was simple, but powerful:
Delivery ≠ Value.

→  A dashboard can work.
→  A model can be accurate.
→  An AI solution can be deployed.
→  A project can be on time and on budget.
→  And still create very little measurable value.

That idea shaped the entire conversation.

For Marna Bouwer, the takeaway was about the space between data and judgement. Data can tell us a lot, but leaders still need to understand the human context behind the numbers. The real skill is not choosing between instinct and evidence. It is learning how to use both intelligently.

For Glen Leece-Jones, the message came down to two words:
→  Define value.
↳  Before we invest.
↳  Before we build.
↳  Before we get distracted by the newest technology.
↳  What exactly are we trying to improve?

For Wilhelm Lombard, the conversation came back to people.
You can have the right data, the right insight and the right technology…
…but if people are not taken on the journey, behaviour may never change.
And if behaviour doesn’t change, the insight remains theoretical.

For Russell-John Fagan, the commercial lesson was equally important.
An organisation can optimise something internally and unintentionally make things worse for the customer.

That made me, David Bouwer, think:
→  Value for whom?
A cost saving in one department can become lost revenue somewhere else.
A faster system can become a worse customer experience.
A “better” KPI can hide a weaker business outcome.

→  And my own takeaway?
AI can help us think faster.
But faster thinking does not automatically mean better judgement.

We still need to ask:
→  Is this taking us closer to the outcome we actually want?

Zjaén Coetzee closed with perhaps the most important challenge of all:
→  Never forget why you are doing what you are doing.

That sounds obvious.

But in businesses full of urgency, projects, dashboards, AI tools and constant firefighting, “why” is often the first thing we lose.

So perhaps the question to take into your next leadership meeting is this:
What became measurably better because we did this?

If the answer is unclear, the work may not be finished yet.

Thank you, Zjaén Coetzee, Marna Bouwer, Glen Leece-Jones, Wilhelm Lombard and Russell-John Fagan, for another valuable Vision 2026 conversation.

Vision 2026 — Giving Expertise a Voice. Unconventional Wisdom Should Never Retire.

#Vision2026 #DataToValue #ValueAssurance #Leadership #AILeadership #DataLeadership #BusinessValue #FutureForward

1 month ago | [YT] | 2

Vision 2026

Ever created something you were really proud of... only to discover nobody knew what to do with it?
A painful moment, I am sure.

You’ve done the work.
You’ve solved the technical problem.
You’ve delivered what was asked for.

And then someone says:

“So… what do we do with it?”

That happened to Zjaén Coetzee early in his data analytics career.

His team had built a churn model designed to identify customers likely to leave.

The model worked.
The data was good.
The prediction was useful.
Technically, it was a success.

But then the real questions started.

Who should act on the insight?
What should they do?
What intervention should happen?
Who owns it?
How much should be spent?
At what point should the business step in?
And most importantly:
What decision was supposed to change because this model existed?

That is where the problem became clear.

The issue was not the model.

The issue was that nobody had designed the path from insight to action.

So the model was rebuilt.
And rebuilt again.
At least five times.

Each new version uncovered another question that probably should have been answered before the first line of code was written.

Something about this story feels uncomfortable because it applies far beyond data.

We do it with technology.
We do it with dashboards.
We do it with systems.
And now we are doing it with AI.

We get excited by what can be built.

But perhaps the first question should not be:
“How do we build it?”

Maybe it should be:
“What are we expecting to change because it exists?”

That is where Thursday’s Vision 2026 conversation gets interesting.
Because a technically successful project can still create little or no business value.

And an AI solution can be impressive, innovative and beautifully delivered…
…and still change nothing.

This Thursday, we explore:

FROM DATA TO VALUE
Why Insights Don’t Matter Until Something Changes

One of the questions I want to put to Zjaén Coetzee is this:

How do leaders make sure they are not approving expensive solutions before they are clear on the decision, action and measurable value those solutions are meant to create?

If you are investing in Data, Analytics or AI, this is a conversation worth joining.

Thursday, 3 September | 08:00 SAST

#DataToValue #ValueAssurance #AILeadership #DataLeadership #BusinessValue

1 month ago | [YT] | 0

Vision 2026

This Thursday on Vision 2026, we are joined by Zjaén Coetzee, CEO of Nexus Data, professional speaker, and co-author of Drive RAPPID Results from Data.

What makes Zjaén especially relevant to this week’s topic is not simply his technical background.

It is what experience taught him about the gap between delivery and value.

Early in his career, Zjaén and his team built a churn model.

Technically, it worked.

It could identify customers likely to leave.

From a data perspective, the project had been delivered.

Then came the question:
“Okay… what do we do with it?”

That exposed the real issue.
↳  Who acts on the insight?
↳  What should they do?
↳  What process changes?
↳  Who owns the decision?

And how do we know whether the intervention actually created value?

The model was eventually rebuilt several times because questions that should have been answered before version one only emerged after delivery.

The lesson was simple:
↳  Delivery does not equal value.

A technically excellent model can still create almost no business value if nobody changes a decision or takes action because of it.

That thinking now sits at the heart of Zjaén’s work at Nexus Data and the RAPPID methodology.

His background combines a postgraduate qualification in Management in Digital Business, a Master’s in Computer Science, executive business development experience at BCX, and practical leadership in creating data value.

In Drive RAPPID Results from Data, the central idea is clear:
→  Data has value only when it improves a decision, changes action, produces an outcome and creates measurable benefit.

And in the age of AI, that matters even more.
→  AI lets organisations build faster than ever before.

But that also means we can build the wrong things faster.

So perhaps leaders should stop asking only:
☑  Can we build it?

And start asking:
☑  Should we build it?
→  What value do we expect?
→  What decision must change?
→ How will we measure success?
→  How will we know the value was realised?

That is the conversation we will explore this Thursday:

FROM DATA TO VALUE
Why Insights Don’t Matter Until Something Changes

Last week, Vision 2026 explored The Leak You Can’t See.

This week, we take the next step:

Once we identify the real problem, how do we use data to act on it — and prove that something became measurably better?

That is why Zjaén Coetzee is the right person for this conversation.

#DataToValue #ValueAssurance #DataLeadership #AILeadership #BusinessLeadership

1 month ago | [YT] | 1