S1 Ep 02 - Themba Chakela - People Are Not Cattle!

In this episode, Themba talks about how HR and “Ways of Working” is like music, painting, cattle herding, village elder meetings, and warrior collectives, how much better work could be if, as with his son going to school, we went there more for the people than the job itself, and what both African and artificial intelligence have to offer toward employee engagement.

Themba Chakela is the General Manager of Ways of Working at Transnet, South Africa’s state-owned transport company. a Change Maven, Impact Driver, Culture Chemist, Transformation Trooper, Organisation Whisperer, Complexity Slayer, Value Wrangler, and Engagement Engineer. Before Transnet he was Principal Head HR, Southern Africa at Dimension Data.

Silicon Valley based company Innovation Minds takes a crucial step in helping  solve the new challenges of the post-pandemic global workplace by launching this podcast, in which we interviews a diverse offering of business leaders from around the planet on how to use innovation to engage the workforce, as well as how to innovate engagement using technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning to humanize relationships in the new distributed workplace.

Innovation Minds is a leader in using AI-driven technology to engage employees through their philosophy of Innovation At the Edge, and decided to launch this podcast to promote the urgent need for engagement at this delicate time.

Guests for our first season include corporate HR leads, world-class consultants, best-selling authors, and employee engagement and innovation experts working across a wide range of industries: Clint Pulver, Themba Chakela Jamie NotterMaddie Grant Delano Johnson Shawn Nason Luke Jamieson Coonoor Behal Jeff Tobe Niven Postma Adriana Bokel Herde Sindhu Joseph and Dickson Tang

You can read more about our season one guests at our website, and sign up for reminders to make sure you never miss an episode.