Plant Equipment and Hire June 2019 | Page 35

PROFILE (CSARO) operations division as operations director. In this role, I was responsible for leading a centralised function, delivering on operational efficiency improvements and compliance, whilst also leading the cross-border entities of Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland and Zimbabwe as general manager. Then, on 1 September 2018, I was appointed as managing director for Cummins Southern Africa. I’m responsible for the leadership, operations and strategic direction for Cummins’s distribution business in South Africa, Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe. PEH: Your accolades and accomplishments are impressive given the relatively short timeline. How did you find yourself on the senior leadership path? RN: I have been very fortunate to have good managers, which in turn inspired me to aspire to the same calibre of leadership qualities. My managers were willing to: number one, pay attention to me; and two, give me meaningful work. I’m the kind of person that gets bored easily, and they picked up on that very quickly, and were able to give me very meaningful, but also challenging work. At times I would think, “This is impossible, what are they asking me to do?” but I found that it’s through working through what seemed impossible that I found solutions that can advance the business, which in turn leads to being noticed, and as a result, being given bigger responsibilities. I went out there saying that I definitely want to make sure that I leverage on the theory I’d learnt at school; I want to make a difference and make sure that I am learning, and that the business is benefitting – that, combined with great managers and a great environment was a recipe for success. I don’t think I would have stayed with Cummins as long as I have if it wasn’t for the environment I found myself in. I joined as an intern and would hear about people who’d been www.plantonline.co.za working here for 30 to 40 years, which speaks volumes. PEH: What challenges have you encountered as a woman in such a senior role? RN: I think that challenges are an everyday part of a leader’s role. If you don’t have challenges, and things are running too smoothly, you should be worried. You have to learn to live with challenges and become comfortable in a challenging situation. Speaking specifically from a woman’s perspective, I have never thought of myself as a woman first, and then an employee. I’ve always thought of myself as an employee who happens to be a woman. So, my approach is, when I walk into a room, I am there to contribute as an employee, not as a woman who is an employee. I’ll admit this is a very male-dominated industry, but I had the advantage of growing up with five brothers. Through my lens, male colleagues are mostly like my brothers. I also studied IT, which is very technical, and I was mostly surrounded by males – being the only woman in class, or one of few. I became very comfortable with the concept early on. While there may have been instances of some men finding it a challenge to report to a woman, I say to them, “Don’t see me as a woman, because I don’t know if that will make any difference – I’ll be utilising the same brain cells that you’ll be utilising; let’s rather treat each other as fellow peers, fellow colleagues – and work together to move on.” PEH: What kind of support has your professional environment afforded you, particularly as a woman? RN: Sometimes the environment you find yourself in engenders whether people are going to be sexist or not. At Cummins, people are seen as human beings first. The professional environment doesn’t encourage situations where people are disadvantaged because they happen to be the minority. People know that they come to work as an equal; they rise in position as an equal, with equal opportunity to grow – and not because they belong to a specific race or gender. PEH: With the recent launch of the Power Hub, what kind of effect will this have on Cummins’s customer support strategy in Africa, and to what do you attribute Cummins’s confidence in investing so heavily in the southern African market? RN: Our new facility means a few things for us. It’s a consolidation of various businesses, which provide a technologically advanced world-class suite of products and capabilities, all available in one place. The Cummins Smart Office design encourages improved collaboration and innovative thinking among employees. So, the place that we now call home, is really a fortress for us, where collaboration and the work environment are part of the design, allowing us to work as a team as we find new solutions for the benefit of all stakeholders and our customer support strategy in Africa. With regard to investment confidence, this stems from a plan to continue to deliver on our brand promise – powering our customer success, innovation and dependability. We will continue to demonstrate the power of Cummins to our customers through delivering world- class sales, service and support. The facility represents the power behind a global organisation that is able to continue to invest in the African region and create a centrepiece in the journey of innovation that signals our long-term intentions in this region. Plant Equipment & Hire’s takeaway from our encounter with Racheal Njoroge is that she clearly shares the company’s vision of making people’s lives better by powering a more prosperous world. As the ideal ambassador for Cummins Southern Africa, Njoroge leads by example and encourages her team to continue to innovate for their customers to power their success through integrity, diversity and inclusion, excellence and teamwork. JUNE 2019 33