BUS 303 Graduate School and Further Education PlanningRead and w.docx

BUS 303 Graduate School and Further Education Planning
Read and watch pieces on Planning for Graduate School.
Answer related questions and write an essay.
· Read about earning a Master’s Degree.
· https://www.gradschools.com/masters/business
· Choose and read about two Master’s degree programs from the
left hand column of Subject Selection options (image below)
found on the webpage
https://www.gradschools.com/masters/business
1-Report - List two subject that you selected to read/research:
One: ____________________
Two: _____________________
2-Discover:
Conduct research on two Master’s degree programs related to
your undergraduate major that are offered by Virginia, DC, or
Maryland Universities. Choose programs at two separate
universities. If you are interested in other universities outside of
this area, please feel free to research them as alternatives.
Discover information such as: What are the application
processes, preferred GPA, required entrance exams, or
prerequisites. What are the options for study (full time study,
part time study, face-to-face classes or online classes)? What is
the typical timeframe for completing the graduate program?
What are the typical career opportunities for graduates from the
Master’s program?
Section One- First - University and Graduate Program:
List the university and graduate program that you researched.
Answer the research questions with words, phrases, or
sentences.
· University and graduate program that you researched
(Enter information here)
· What are the application processes, preferred GPA, required
entrance exams, or prerequisites?

· What are the options for study (full time study, part time
study, face-to-face classes or online classes)?
· What is the typical timeframe for completing the graduate
program?
· What are the typical career opportunities for graduates from
the Master’s program?
Section Two: Second - University and Graduate Program
List the university and graduate program that you researched.
Answer the research questions with words, phrases, or
sentences.
· University and graduate program that you researched
· What are the application processes, preferred GPA, required
entrance exams, or prerequisites?
· What are the options for study (full time study, part time
study, face-to-face classes or online classes)?
· What is the typical timeframe for completing the graduate
program?
· What are the typical career opportunities for graduates from
the Master’s program?
3-Write:

Questions to answer in an essay with at least 400 words. The
expectation is that the essay in made up of flowing sentences
that are organized in to paragraphs. WORD formatted document
is required.
· What did you learn about Master’s degree programs and
earning a Master’s degree? If you have researched graduate
programs in the past, what are the most important aspects of
information that you learned about graduate education
opportunities?
(At least one paragraph)
· List and discuss two Master’s degree programs related to your
undergraduate major that are offered by Virginia, DC, or
Maryland Universities. Include in your discussion the required
exam for being admitted to the program (Total of two
paragraphs - one paragraph about each program that you
researched)
· Discuss your planning for continuing education related to your
career and/or your thoughts on attending graduate school and
earning a Master’s degree. How likely is it that you will pursue
a Master’s degree? If it is likely, do you plan to begin your
graduate studies soon after you complete your undergraduate
degree or sometime after you graduate. If you do not plan to
attend graduate school, what activities will you pursue to
continue learning and growing in your professional knowledge.
(At least one paragraph)
9B20C016

OLD MUTUAL LIMITED: LEADING CULTURE CHANGE
Michelle Govender wrote this case under the supervision of
Professor Caren Scheepers solely to provide material for class
discussion.
The authors do not intend to illustrate either effective or
ineffective handling of a managerial situation. The authors may
have disguised
certain names and other identifying information to protect
confidentiality.
This publication may not be transmitted, photocopied, digitized,
or otherwise reproduced in any form or by any means without
the
permission of the copyright holder. Reproduction of this
material is not covered under authorization by any reproduction
rights
organization. To order copies or request permission to
reproduce materials, contact Ivey Publishing, Ivey Business
School, Western
University, London, Ontario, Canada, N6G 0N1; (t)
519.661.3208; (e) [email protected]; www.iveycases.com. Our
goal is to publish
materials of the highest quality; submit any errata to
pub[email protected] i1v2e5y5pubs
Copyright © 2020, Ivey Business School Foundation Version:
2020-03-30

Karabo Morule, managing director of Old Mutual Limited (Old
Mutual) Personal Finance, gazed out from
Old Mutual’s1 iconic new headquarters at the skyline of
Sandton, South Africa, the morning of June 26,
2018. Morule was considering the dilemma of how to retain the
heritage of a culture based on shared values
while modernizing and strengthening it to express a new
customer-led approach with a focal point of Africa.
The company’s new 12-storey building, representative of Old
Mutual’s strong position in Africa, was a
striking addition to the Sandton skyline. South African
President Cyril Ramaphosa had officially opened
the building the day before. The date of June 26 represented the
day Old Mutual celebrated the head office’s
return home to South Africa.
As Morule listened to the celebratory sound of vuvuzelas2
below, she reflected on how the change in structure
at Old Mutual had compelled a change in culture in order for
the organization to remain sustainable and
competitive. Morule believed that the organization’s values
defined the culture of the business: The core
values of respect, integrity, and accountability had been an
integral part of Old Mutual’s long history.
Following the announcement of the company’s strategy to have
a secondary listing on the London Stock

Exchange, Morule knew that the business she ran had to change
on a fundamental level in order to achieve
sustainable growth⎯ and a change in values and culture would
be crucial to this. To develop the type of work
culture she wanted, Morule knew she had to establish additional
core values and keep them relevant.
Morule considered how she, as a leader on a path of
transformation, had responded to market conditions and
played her part in creating an environment conducive to change
for employees on their cultural journey of
Anchoring in Africa,3 which was a shift from the founding
culture of the organization (see Exhibit 1). The
previous culture at Old Mutual had been, at best, merely a
theme mentioned on the organization’s website, or
1 Old Mutual Limited was a financial services provider that
offered financial solutions to individuals, small and medium-
sized
businesses, corporations, and institutions across several market
segments and geographies in South Africa and the rest of
Africa; “Who We Are,” Old Mutual, accessed March 4, 2020,
www.oldmutual.com/about/who-we-are.
2 A simple plastic noisemaker in the form of a straight trumpet,
usually between two and three feet long, that produced a single
note and was used primarily at sporting events; Merriam-
Webster online, s.v. “vuvuzela,” accessed October 31, 2019,
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vuvuzela.
3 “Anchoring in Africa” was the term used within Old Mutual
and by the media to describe Old Mutual plc’s creation of a new
South

African holding company, Old Mutual Limited, with a primary
listing on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange on June 26, 2018.
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perhaps an imaginative photograph or statement on the wall of
the company’s reception area. Culture was

only occasionally, if at all, estimated or characterized through
employee behaviour. Currently, the
organization used practices to precisely gauge, deliberately
adjust, and proactively improve culture.
Morule was preparing to address key stakeholders at a
Provincial Management Board (PMB) meeting,4 where
she would generate support for the ongoing effort that would be
required for cultural change on the path ahead
and speak about the importance of the active participation of
employee representatives on this path. These
representatives would be part of every phase of the cultural
change so that they could both contribute to and take
ownership of creating a road map for developing an ideal,
robust culture. The purpose of the meeting was to
establish objectives, set goals, and define roles in the culture
change management process. Rosie Wilson,
chairperson of Gauteng PMB, later commented on Morule’s
contribution to the meeting: “Communication was
clear to all staff. It was open from top to bottom. In other
words, that [Morule’s approach] opened
communication, everybody participated, and everybody felt that
‘I am part of this.’ And it was not management
taking this and dragging us behind them, we were part of it.”5
Wilson was referring to the strategy Morule had
adopted for providing clarity around the organizational change

and in giving individual employees a context for
how their work fit into the big picture. The key principle in
Morule’s strategy was including many voices instead
of using a top-down mandate, where leadership forced change
on employees.
KARABO MORULE’S BACKGROUND
Morule had grown up in Diepkloof,6 Soweto, with a story many
Black South Africans could tell. Her parents
were both professionals who believed in the value of a good
education, and because they had the resources,
they had sent their daughter to a private school. Growing up in
Diepkloof and going to school in the northern
suburbs of Johannesburg meant that Morule had to straddle two
worlds. She believed that helped her in
navigating the corporate world, as she had learned how to
balance her culture and who she was with the needs
of a business. Culture impacted organizations in areas such as
the pace of business, communication, and risk-
taking. The people she had spent time with, including school
peers, colleagues, family, and friends, had all
helped Morule gain insight into how she interacted and
connected with people, as well as how she expected
others to behave in certain environments. She had learned that a

good company culture was built on not only
shared values but also shared trust. As a workplace leader, she
understood that she played a powerful role in
creating and guiding company culture.
Morule began her career at the Johannesburg branch of the
global investment bank J.P. Morgan and had spent
over three years at J.P. Morgan’s London office working on the
Insurance Securitized Products team. Morule’s
work in London helped her gain a global perspective by
expanding her diverse knowledge base as she
encountered new and insightful approaches to business
problems through her interaction with multinational
and cross-cultural teams. Recognizing and understanding that
culture affected international business, Morule
realized that while many African businesses shared underlying
similarities, when contrasted with Western
businesses, a wide cultural difference was evident.7 Morule
knew that Africa was rich in cultural diversity,
and the context of African culture and values influenced how
business was done on the continent. A typical
example of the cultural gap between Western and African
businesses was the approach to written
4 Provincial Management Boards (known as PMBs) played a
key role in the provinces by forming strategic relationships with
provincial stakeholders in the public and private sectors, civil
society, labour groups, communities, and professional

associations. The PMBs represented the microcosm of the
broader business to customers and were made up of leaders from
across the Old Mutual business.
5 Rosie Wilson, in an interview with the author, September 19,
2019, in Sandton, South Africa.
6 Diepkloof was a large township in Soweto, South Africa,
established through apartheid legislation for Black occupation
to
accommodate the removal of Black people from Alexandra.
7 Navin Ravindran, “The Role of Culture in Doing Business in
Africa,” AfricaBusiness.com, June 23, 2016, accessed October
30, 2019, http://africabusiness.com/2016/06/23/the-role-of-
culture-in-doing-business-in-africa/.
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correspondence, which in Western culture was characterized by
a minimal greeting with an accentuation on
rules and deadlines. This was not acceptable in African
business; instead, African culture emphasized polite
greetings and enquiries about the individual’s well-being and
family before attending to the business at hand.
In Africa, a common ground for business relationships was
trust.
Morule joined Old Mutual in 2010, and she held several
management positions before being appointed as
managing director of Old Mutual Personal Finance in January
2016, at age 33. Personal Finance was one
of the group’s largest business segments, with a staff
complement of 5,000 people servicing the needs of
almost 2 million customers.
Morule was only the second Black female actuary to achieve an
actuarial qualification in South Africa, which

she did at the age of 24. She was also the first Black woman to
lead the Old Mutual Personal Finance division
and the first Black female actuary to serve on Old Mutual’s
executive committee. Building on this, in 2018,
Morule became one of only two South Africans to be invited by
the World Economic Forum to its community
of Young Global Leaders. Further recognition came from the
Association of South African Black Actuarial
Professionals when she was given the Inkanyezi Award for her
valuable contributions to the actuarial
profession during 2018. Morule was an accomplished leader in
not just her role in the corporate environment
but also as a Black female pushing boundaries.
Khanyi Chaba, head of Responsible Business, described Morule
as “one of those leaders that I see as focused
on delivering . . . but also, she comes across as believing in
people that she works with, so she’s a driver, she
delivers, and in terms of the specific subject matter on
responsible business, she’s one of those key leaders
who really are driving responsible business.”8
MANAGED SEPARATION
Old Mutual was established in Cape Town, South Africa, in
1845, and it quickly became a trusted and

recognized brand across the country. After many years, the
business decided to expand internationally,
resulting in demutualization9 and a listing on the London Stock
Exchange in 1999. The reasons for
demutualizing included the benefits that policyholders would
receive from free shares, for Old Mutual to
expand into a broader and more international financial services
company, for Old Mutual to be able to more
easily raise money for expansion, and to enable a more flexible
business structure.
In March 2016, the group’s leadership decided that the best way
forward was to separate its business into
independent, stand-alone companies. A “managed separation” or
breakup strategy decision was announced that
month based on a full strategic review of the business. The Old
Mutual Group consisted of four parts: a US asset
manager, a British wealth manager, an African business, and
Nedbank (of which Old Mutual Group owned 54
per cent). The insurer was splitting its four financial services
businesses—Old Mutual Emerging Markets
(OMEM), Nedbank, Old Mutual Wealth, and Old Mutual Asset
Management—into autonomous entities.
The decision to split was a result of the limited synergies
between the four businesses; additionally, their

geographical distribution meant that the different and changing
regulatory landscapes in Europe and Africa
added cost, complexity, and constraints to the business as a
whole. In other words, Old Mutual’s structure was
preventing the efficient funding of future growth plans in
Africa. Accordingly, it embarked on a breakup strategy.
8 Khanyi Chaba, in an interview with the author, September 26,
2019, in Sandton, South Africa.
9 Demutualization was the change from an organization owned
by policyholders to a listed company owned by shareholders.
See “Demutualization,” Investopedia, accessed March 27, 2020,
www.investopedia.com/terms/d/demutualization.asp.
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The old business model implied that the Old Mutual head office
was central to the group of companies and
that the companies were all linked. On the other hand, in the
new business model, only two of the entities
were linked, namely, OMEM and Nedbank. The first stage of
the breakup strategy was selling off a majority
holding in Old Mutual Asset Management in the United States
for US$446 million. Old Mutual would
continue to own only 5 per cent of this business. The next stage
was a separation from its business in the
United Kingdom, which provided financial planning, financial
advice, and investment advice services. The
new business was named Quilter after one of its subsidiaries
and was listed on the London Stock Exchange
and the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE).
OMEM consisted primarily of all of Old Mutual’s African
businesses, including life insurance, asset

management, and banking. Five billion shares in Old Mutual
were listed on the JSE and the London bourse
on June 26, 2018, as well as in Malawi, Namibia, and
Zimbabwe. Old Mutual was created as the group’s local
holding company, and it would incorporate OMEM. It would be
headquartered in Johannesburg and focus on
emerging markets in Africa. This meant that the group’s
emerging market activities now resided in Africa.
Old Mutual had ownership of 54 per cent in Nedbank, but most
of its shares would be transferred to Old
Mutual shareholders in the six months following the listing. Old
Mutual would retain only 19.9 per cent of
the bank. The listing of Old Mutual on the JSE meant that its
senior leadership would be led by local executives
from Africa. Additionally, Old Mutual’s African homecoming
signalled its commitment to and confidence in
the South African financial markets and helped raise investor
confidence in the economy. The OMEM name
was changed to Old Mutual Limited after the unbundling.
CULTURAL CROSSROADS
Old Mutual had reached a cultural crossroads. The core
founding values of respect, integrity, and
accountability were solid and positive; however, the
organization had developed and advanced past these core

values. Additional touchstones were needed to shape, advance,
and strengthen the culture. As a forward-
looking organization, Old Mutual had to constantly adapt by
shifting priorities and influences; as a result, the
core values had to be expanded to include diversity and
inclusion, agile innovation that made a difference,
and championing of the customer. The organization’s leaders
decided that strengthening customer-centred
values at the heart of the business was the key to the change
they wanted to embrace, and it quickly became
clear that refining Old Mutual’s values and culture would play a
critical role in this transformation.
Once the organization decided to add to and change its core
values, it was important to reinforce these with
organization-wide rituals. The journey of transformation for
Morule’s leadership team began in March 2016
with the announcement of the “managed separation” change in
strategy. When Morule joined Old Mutual in
2010, she had found it necessary to learn how to manage the
people side of the business. When she was
appointed as managing director of Personal Finance in 2016,
Morule was able to draw on her learnings from
both engaging her team and learning from them. She realized
that working as a team was a key factor in
recovering from challenges.

LEADING THE CHANGE IN PERSONAL FINANCE
Morule’s strategy began with the inclusion of her executive
committee (see Exhibit 2) in Personal Finance, a
quality team representative of the diversity Morule wanted to
see in the business. The team had started with
three people of colour and seven White members, and it now
included seven people of colour and three White
members. The team also increased in gender diversity, with four
women and six men. This team would begin
building, sustaining, and supporting the creation of a shared
language for change. Morule’s team had a
technical understanding of the need for change and were seen as
leaders in the business who would exhibit
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the change in their behaviour. The entire approach to this
change had to be one of controlled urgency to
achieve an outwardly-focused purpose to enact meaningful
change. There was no backup or contingency plan.
Morule was encouraged by seeing her leadership team embrace
as a priority the need to shift the culture and
their employees to the next step in the unbundling process.
In leading the change in the Personal Finance segment of the
business, Morule had to ensure that key
stakeholders and other influential individuals in the business
knew what was required of them and why.
Morule first engaged her team in individual conversations to
exchange ideas and develop shared
understandings through an honest exchange of information. This

exchange of information would help her
leadership team see how their roles, and the changes being made
to them, fit within the larger strategy being
executed. This one-on-one conversation included knowing
where they were, knowing where they wanted to
go as an organization, and building the road map to get there.
From the start, Morule recognized the
importance of communicating how the desired changes were
essential for aligning the organization with
growth in the new business environment.
Morule then set up a weekly meeting where the leadership team
discussed ways to implement and drive the
new behaviours needed for the change to succeed. Morule
ensured that this weekly meeting maintained a fun
and supportive atmosphere where her team felt safe to suggest
and try new things.
Morule was an executive sponsor of the Gauteng PMB. This
committee consisted of representatives of the
different business units in the province. The function of this
committee was to break down the divisions of
silos and gain a commitment and influence from the front-line
managers, and representatives from the
different branches who had direct contact with clients. Morule
used this committee to share information with

the lower levels of employees in the organization. In order to
leverage change, Morule’s method was to turn
these PMB front-line managers into cultural leaders by sharing
with them detailed information about the
culture change journey. Therefore, every session with the PMB
had an agenda point detailing the way forward.
Morule found that the PMB team both supported and challenged
her executive committee, and, importantly,
they motivated each other to carry the change agenda into the
different levels of the organization. Morule
continually encouraged the PMB managers by recognizing that
everybody’s voice mattered⎯ the PMB
managers had to feel that, as leadership, what they said had
been heard and mattered.
MOTIVATING CHANGE
Morule recognized that to effectively lead change, she had to
understand the landscape of change and to
experience it. She determined that, together with her leadership
team, she had to go through the process of
learning first-hand about their customers. In the past, the
leadership team had found it difficult to relate to
customers because they did not interact with them directly. The
leadership team considered their customers
to be either company employees or third-party insurance brokers

and financial advisers rather than the end
consumers of their services. Morule and her team decided that
they needed to understand the end customer
experience as part of the change journey. Morule embarked on a
business transformation initiative with one
aim: to put the customer first. She encouraged each of her team
members to become customers themselves,
which led to discussions of the customer experience in taking
out a money market account, encountering
challenges when using an ATM for the first time, or
experiencing difficulty getting through to the call
centre. Morule used the feedback from her leadership team to
institute changes that she believed only they,
as the leadership team, had control over. For example, Morule
asked the contact centre to send her team
recordings of phone calls from customers. Then, in preparation
for the leadership team discussion, the team
would listen to the calls to understand how they could improve
the customer experience. Morule personally
sat with an agent during a live call and witnessed the frustration
of an agent having to navigate between
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Page 6 9B20C016
countless screens to deal with a customer query. This led to her
challenging the service teams to use desktop
technology to bring everything together in one place. This
integrated a myriad of existing processes and
streamlined business applications. It was her firm belief that by
empowering the agent in their work
experience, the agent would mirror this in the customer
experience because a great customer experience
was anchored in a great employee experience.

LEADING CHANGE
Morule believed that leadership involved connecting employees
to purpose and empowering them to do
great work, as well as creating a sense of camaraderie. She felt
that Personal Finance should hear about any
cultural or organizational changes from her. She committed to
approaching the culture change with an
upbeat and optimistic energy so others would feel this as well,
and it would alleviate any anxiety about
what lay ahead. Morule was often told in her conversations with
various advisers in the business that they
believed the leaders who determined and set the strategy were
often far removed from the issues of those
further down the organizational hierarchy⎯ the ones left to
execute and deal with the front-line challenges
that change created. Morule set out to change this by engaging
people throughout the organization in an
effort to understand and influence their outlook. For example,
she took part in managing director (MD)
road shows across the entire segment of her business. The MD
road shows were the start of involving people
in creating excitement for the cultural change. The previous MD
had only visited large regional centres
when interacting with employees. In contrast, Morule visited

outlying rural areas to speak with employees
there about the change that was to come.
During the MD road shows, Morule and her team found
opportunities to have individual discussions with
employees regarding how they would be affected by a cultural
change. Over time, Morule had learned that
leadership was not always about what the leader knew but,
rather, about people feeling like they were all
in it together. It was not necessary to have all the answers; it
was necessary to craft answers together. In
view of this, the MD road shows also presented the opportunity
for people in the organization to discuss
their concerns⎯ before any change was ever delivered.
Morule insisted that internal communication be taken seriously,
resulting in the creation and management
of a wide range of interactive platforms and internal channels to
engage and motivate employees to ensure
they were kept in the loop about the latest company news and
business developments. These included an
intranet site dedicated exclusively to updates on the change
process, a weekly newsletter, a rebrand, an
update of the company magazine, and monthly posts by Morule
on a blog titled “Karabo’s blog.”

The Old Mutual leadership team, where Morule was one of 13
executive members reporting to the chief
executive officer, conceptualized what they wanted the Old
Mutual brand to represent.10 As a team, they
jointly defined a series of unique branding propositions⎯ using
collaborative input from people throughout
the business⎯ that would give Old Mutual standout recognition.
The leadership team focused on clarifying
balanced priorities, creating energy, and signalling a
commitment to change in performance and behaviour.
10 The 13 executives who reported to Chief Executive Officer
Iain Williamson (at the time of the case study) were Karabo
Morule, managing director, Personal Finance; Casper Troskie,
chief financial officer; Raymond Berelowitz, director, Customer
Solution
s; Khaya Gobodo, managing director, Wealth and Investments;
Prabashini Moodley, managing director, Old Mutual
Corporate; Garth Napier, managing director, Old Mutual Insure;
Celiwe Ross, director, Human Capital; Clement Chinaka,
managing director, Rest of Africa; Vuyo Lee, chief marketing
officer; Clarence Nethengwe, managing director, Mass and
Foundation Cluster; Richard Treagus, chief risk officer and

acting director, Governance, Regulatory, and Corporate Affairs;
“Our Leadership,” Old Mutual, accessed January 15, 2020,
www.oldmutual.com/about/leadership/executive.
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Page 7 9B20C016
IMPLEMENTING CULTURE CHANGE: PULSE
A shift in thinking from the way communication had always
worked in the past to the way forward would
take time and focus, but a shift had to start. The Old Mutual

leadership team had a unique opportunity to
own their vision of change instead of following instructions
devised in London. This heralded the beginning
of the campaign that embraced “the power of now” and brought
to life the prospects and possibilities that
came with acting in the moment. This was turned into a
motivational rallying cry for Old Mutual, with “The
Time is Now” leading the company’s campaign to change (see
Exhibit 3).
The managed separation resulted in Old Mutual being a stand-
alone entity on the African continent. The
leadership team focused on developing a brand to quickly build
the entity into a viable business, and Old
Mutual adopted a vibrant new brand identity to express their
new customer-led approach with the focal point
in Africa. Performing in a new environment created a need to
identify a new group of values that better fit the

company’s circumstances. Through the stakeholder engagement
process described above, the four existing
values evolved under the leadership team into a set of six
radical values designed to guide employees in their
interactions with each other. This would drive a fresh new brand
and define what great service looked like at
Old Mutual. Using information gathering sessions around
employees’ feelings and perceptions about the
change process, senior leaders in the business led the change by
demonstrating the six new company values
of respect, accountability and trust, diversity and inclusion,
innovation, championing the customer, and always
acting with integrity. The sessions were used as a reminder to
middle management to lead change and were
an opportunity to reward managers who demonstrated the new
values within the business.
Old Mutual’s visual brand drew on the optimism, vibrancy, and
carpe diem11 spirit of the continent,

reinforcing the message of “Made in Africa for Africans.” Vuyo
Lee, chief marketing officer at Old Mutual,
described this as an opportunity the Old Mutual leadership team
could use to establish the organization as
a Pan-African leader with a distinct customer value proposition
that was generating a pulsating new energy.
The organization retained its iconic anchor logo in primary
shades of green; however, several spirited
secondary colours, including bright pink, calypso orange, and
sunshine yellow, signified a dramatic break
with the past and brought the new brand personality to life. The
visuals incorporated many traditional
African patterns to illustrate the richness of African culture.
Morule reflected on her experience of the organization’s culture
before the change and recalled that it had
been difficult to move forward and get things done. She

visualized the change to be a multicoloured expanding
sphere that spoke to new creativity, invention, hope, and
optimism, nourishing the growth of the organization
as it moved forward. Vikash Maharaj, head of collaboration,
described the transition as “winter going into
spring, coming out from this dark greyness to all these colours
coming through, this new bloom coming
through; leaves are turning green, the flowers are blooming, all
of these colours are coming through.”12
Embracing the theme of Africanness, Morule expressed her
identity as an African woman by dressing in
traditional African clothes with vibrant Ankara13 patterns, both
during road shows, and in the corporate
boardrooms. She believed the only way to change culture was to
demonstrate the new behaviours. The
change would be measured by the extent to which people
outside of the organization could see it and how

much people within the organization could feel it⎯ this would
only be possible if people were reminded of
the new values on a daily basis.
11 Latin for “seize the day”, carpe diem urged one to make the
most of the present time.
12 Vikash Maharaj, in an interview with the author, September
23, 2019, in Sandton, South Africa.
13 Ankara was a 100 per cent cotton fabric with colourful
tribal-like patterns and motifs popular in West African
countries.
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Page 8 9B20C016

In further embracing the theme of Africanness, the Anchoring in
Africa road show had been conceptualized
as a symbolic journey from London to Africa, tracing the path
Old Mutual had embarked upon from its
headquarters in London and moving through 13 African
countries on its way to Johannesburg. The aim of
the road show was to share the excitement and significance of
Old Mutual listing on African soil and to
discuss with employees and stakeholders the latest
developments in the business. The leadership team had
commissioned a statue depicting the three anchors powerfully
connected to the African continent; it was
used as a torch to spread the “Anchored in Africa” message,
with the anchors relayed from country to
country where Old Mutual would be listed across Africa.

MOVING FORWARD
As Morule made her way from the sixth floor to the lobby of the
Old Mutual building, she considered
whether she had found the right balance between speed in
integrating the cultural and organizational change
and progress in merging minds with the change. Morule had
challenged herself to achieve the best outcome.
She had resisted the temptation to focus only on making
Personal Finance a “great place to work” or on
financial performance. As the business scaled into Africa,
maintaining Old Mutual’s unique culture was
essential to the brand’s identity and work life. Morule
considered how, beyond great products, great
technology, and great credentials, to grow the strong corporate
culture necessary to inspire motivated,
passionate, loyal, and dedicated employees across Africa.

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Page 9 9B20C016
EXHIBIT 1: CULTURE SHIFTS
From To
Following competitors Winning in the market
Product-focused Customer-led
Compliant Risk-based decision-making
Reactive talent management Acquiring and retaining top talent

Internal-segment focused Externally competitive, and Old
Mutual Limited focused
Planning and designing Executing and delivering
Activity-based Value- and impact-driven
Complicated processes Speed, simplicity, and cost effectiveness
Source: Celiwe Ross, “Radical Values,” Now (Old Mutual
Employees magazine), March/April 2019. 12–13.
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Page 10 9B20C016

EXHIBIT 2: KARABO MORULE’S EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
Note: MD = managing director.
Source: Created by the case authors based on company
documents.
Karabo Morule
MD Personal
Finance (South
Africa)
Khanyisa
Ncemane
Customer

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