Sensemaking in action.
CASE STUDIES
AUDITOR-GENERAL OF SOUTH AFRICA
STRATEGY 2030 | BUILDING FUTURE-READY COMPETENCE
The Auditor-General of South Africa had a clear vision. One that demanded sharper enforcement, deeper public value, and a culture that could carry the weight of both. But inside the organisation, something needed to shift.
OLD MUTUAL
LEADERS NEED MORE.
OLD MUTUAL IS BUILDING IT.
Despite millions being poured into training, three out of four leaders feel overwhelmed, and seven in 10 admit they’re not ready for the future (Gartner, 2024). The real issue isn’t whether leaders need development – it’s whether the way we’re developing them is still fit for purpose.
BUILDING A HUMAN
FIREWALL
Cybercrime isn't just a systems problem – it's a people problem. Despite billions being invested in technology, human behaviour remains the single biggest vulnerability. The question is not whether your organisation is at risk. It is whether your people are your biggest vulnerability or your best line of defence.
AECI LIMITED
DESIGNING THE AECI OF TOMORROW
AECI has been shaping industry and innovation in South Africa for more than a hundred years. But the next chapter called for something even bigger: a transformation designed not only to strengthen the business, but to uplift the 90,000 lives it touches.
AECI partnered with TPA to design and embed a cultural architecture that could carry the organisation into its next era.
ABSA
P4P INNOVATION ACCELERATOR
In banking, trust is everything. But trust isn’t built by products or services. It is built by how people show up, what they care about, and how they make us feel.
The goal was clear: help Absa Private Wealth Bankers shift from routine delivery to distinctive value; from selling services to curating experiences; and from capable bankers to trusted, human partners in their clients’ financial lives.
AFRICAN BANK
MASTERCLASS | OFENTSE PITSE
Claiming places and spaces never meant for you. Refusing to take no for an answer. Knocking down doors others are waiting to walk through. We share the inspirational story of South Africa's first Black woman orchestral conductor.
AECI LIMITED
A CENTURY IGNITED
"Our best days are ahead of us."
AECI chair Philisiwe Sibiya
As AECI prepared to mark their centenary year, AECI CEO Holger Riemensperger invited us to help honour 100 years of excellence and – equally importantly – to celebrate a bold, unflinching vision for its next 100 years of impact.
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We designed a celebration rooted in the firm conviction: Legacy is not what we leave behind. It is what we enable others to build tomorrow.
ABSA LIFE
BETTER PEOPLE MAKE BETTER LEADERS
The Performance Agency’s Leadership Development Model is rooted in a new leadership paradigm that emphasises the importance of setting meaningful, individualised goals that resonate with every person’s
meaning schema.
When leaders have clarity about their purpose and meaningful goals, they are more motivated, focused, and driven to achieve them. This is essential for their overall growth and success as leaders.
AFRICAN BANK
SALES EFFECTIVENESS COACHING THAT MOVED THE NUMBERS
Sales effectiveness was not where it needed to be. Confidence wavered, results were uneven, and big targets loomed large. African Bank needed more than motivation – they needed a systematic way to embed excellence into daily practice. Through the #ShowMeYourShift journey, we supercharged sales teams to deliver a 20% lift across five core product areas.
MERIDIAN
A SAFETY CULTURE THAT SAVES LIVES
When safety is the backbone of your business, it must evolve from a compliance issue into an operational instinct. We partnered with The Meridian Group to institutionalise a new way of thinking about protecting people, anticipating risk, and enabling performance across thousands of employees in high-risk environments.
AECI LIMITED
MASTERCLASS | TO THE MOON & BACK
AECI needed to galvanise 600 leaders across four continents to deliver on an ambitious moonshot mission: double EBITDA by 2026, a top-three global position in mining by 2030, and a stronger, more resilient AECI for the next century. TPA delivered with a powerful masterclass that left every person in the room energised, aligned, and raring to deliver.
SOUTH AFRICAN RESERVE BANK
LEARNING WEEK | LEVELLING UP
Learning used to be a sprint.
A short-term objective, to achieve a narrowly defined goal. But in a hybrid, disrupted world, learning is no longer what we do.
It is who we are.
More importantly, it is who we are becoming through the conscious, levelling up choices we make every day.
SARB's first ever Learning Week set out to reframe the relationship between how and why professionals learn.
SOUTH AFRICAN RESERVE BANK
LEADERSHIFT | COURAGE AND COMPLICITY
In 2023, SARB made the conscious decision to put ethics centre stage at its annual leadership conference, not as a value statement, but as a strategic imperative. We turned to the cautionary tale of Lance Armstrong, one of the most powerful case studies into ambition, greed, a conspiracy of silence, and the slippery slope of turning a blind eye.
AFRICAN BANK
MASTERCLASS | THABO MBEKI
Our 3rd African Bank Leadership Masterclass set out to inspire, motivate, and seed a profound mindset shift – from traditional banking to stewardship of a mission, manifesting as a bank. The subject of this masterclass – and in the audience as we delivered it – was the former President of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki.
JAGUAR LAND ROVER
MODERN LUXURY
JLR, one of the world's premium luxury brands, is on a transformative journey to redefine what modern luxury looks and feels like. We team up with the JLR team to create a luxurious, tangible, and immersive experience for 180 general managers and sales executives to take back to their teams, to make modern luxury the lived experience of their clients.
ZEDA
THE CULTURE HANDBOOK
Culture is what is taught. What is done. What is passed on. What endures.
After listing as an independent entity, they turned to TPA to design and embed a purpose-led performance culture that would activate 1500+ hearts, connect 400+ leaders, and deliver sustainable strategic performance.
EOH | EASYHQ
SMARTER THAN THE SUM OF OUR PARTS
After a reshuffling and clustering of certain business units around its growth strategy, EOH gave birth to EasyHQ. But how do you encourage accomplished individuals, used to operating in silos, to unite behind a joint cause and change solution? And, once you’ve achieved that, how do you get them to work collaboratively, to the benefit of a range of individual business
units?
ABSA
LEARNING IS TRANSFORMATION
​It was 2020. The world had stopped. And for most organisations, survival was the only agenda. But African banking giant, Absa Group, made a different choice. A bold, transformative one:
They doubled down on their people's development, choosing to turn disruption into transformation.
AFRICAN BANK
SHOW ME YOUR SHIFT
Six years after the bank’s renaissance as a modern, digital bank, committed to advancing the lives of others through affordable and accessible financial and related services, they were ready to tackle a new, even more audacious challenge: To realise 3.5 million customers by 2025.
ABSA
THRIVING REMOTELY
Imagine the performance challenge on a good day! Absa was facing a continent in lockdown, bare-knuckling against the unparalleled opponent of Covid-19. As an essential service, in care of tens of thousands of people, Absa had to act. The objective was clear: Keep Absa colleagues, their families and communities, safe. Support colleagues physically, mentally and emotionally. Ensure they felt secure, heard and cared for! Flatten the curve and inspire others to do the same. Motivate every Absa colleague to get up, dress up and show up — camera ready or otherwise!
JAGUAR LAND ROVER
FEELINGS OVER FEATURES
Over the past five years, the experience economy has challenged traditional notions of luxury, and brought to the fore the growing importance of immersive and emotionally engaging experiences for customers. It’s not what I drive, it’s how what I drive makes me feel.
VODACOM
PEOPLE FIRST
Vodacom Commercial Operations had a three-year transformation strategy, with sights set on an inspirational vision: “To become the world’s best telco for delivering unmatched customer experiences through passionate and engaged people.” Gary Hagel, COPs’ COO at the time, knew that if COPs’ 4000+ employees were engaged, connected and energised, customer experience would take care of itself. He knew, rightly, to invest in his greatest asset — people.
VODACOM
CUSTOMER CARE
Vodacom Customer Care call centres service tens of thousands of people every single day. Every interaction is an opportunity to leave a customer delighted, or create a devastating ripple of discontent. For a red-hot customer-centric culture to take flight in over 5300 hearts — in the thorny frontline environment of customer care — is a challenge. Now comes the impossible: At the time of contacting TPA, Vodacom had five outsourced call centre business partners, who made up the bulk of their customer care team.
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How do you create heart-driven ambassadors of the Vodacom culture, to fuel remarkable, unified customer service, across six autonomous organisations?
EDGARS
CXPRESS
Edgars, a 90-year-old department store, had lost relevance. On the brink of collapse, they had to connect their brand to culture in South Africa, a country as diverse as they come. They spearheaded a successful rebrand with a cultural film featuring Sho Madjozi, which became an anthem for self-Xpression and earned them a 533% increase in brand sentiment.
But the real work was far from over. Their purpose statement was locked, but if it wasn’t adopted by their people, translated on the shop-floor, and felt by the customer, all would fall.
AFRICAN BANK
OMNI TRANSFORMATION
African Bank was transitioning from a strictly loans to a transactional retail bank, with full Omni-channel capability. This required an incredible shift of perspective; a diversification of product offering, reinvention of service and the honest buy-in of an entire team of staff, salespeople and consultants.
How do you gear almost 4 000 humans, in under 12 months, with the skill, ability and passion to make the digital dream a reality? You get shift done.
AFRICAN BANK
DO BETTER TOGETHER
Following a successful launch into the transactional market, African Bank
had to maintain focus and momentum. The bank and its people had been rocked by tremendous change in a short period. Support, inspiration and value-driven behavioural change were key to executing on AB’s ambitious, customer-obsessed strategy.
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We had six months to connect almost 4000 people to story. 183 days to build a unified culture dedicated to African Bank’s pyramid peak purpose of advancing lives.
JAGUAR LAND ROVER
DRIVE THE STORY
Jaguar Land Rover South Africa was gearing up for the launch of the new Land Rover Defender.
The Defender is an undeniable icon, and to rebirth a legacy would never be easy. JLRSA had to communicate the stunning capability of the vehicle to a sceptical market, while honouring its esteemed heritage.
They had eight weeks to gear their diverse dealership sales teams, across Sub-Saharan Africa, with the know-how, confidence and enormous energy needed to take on the vital challenge unique to members of #TeamDefender: To enable adventure!
OMNIA
BETTER@OMNIA
With eight business units and 4000+ people in over 48 countries around the world, the OMNIA Group touches hundreds of thousands of lives every day. The organisation had grown exponentially, establishing a global footprint in the agricultural, mining and chemicals sector. Yet, they were facing environmental headwinds, ever-tougher market conditions and a flagging internal culture.
TRANSNET
GCE TALENT NURTURING
Transnet is a 55 000-person strong logistics company, with over 100 years of experience as South Africa’s custodian of ports, rail and pipelines. Transnet has a dramatic responsibility to its clients, people and country to deliver globally competitive, sustainable, ethical and innovative business results. In order to evolve their strategy and reimagine an admirable culture in a VUCA world, Transnet knows that they need a people development system that forges great leaders. Leaders that magic theory into practice to deliver tangible, meaningful impact. Transnet needed a talent pipeline that can lead into the future world of work.
JD GROUP
THE ART OF SERVICE
When Chairman of the JD Group, David Sussman, opened his first store on Jeppe Street in 1983, he was determined to make every customer matter. 26 years later, his one store had grown into a Group of eleven businesses, including furniture and tech retail. He had done something right. But in the success and frenzy of growth, the culture of service, so fundamental and critical to the Group’s success, had been diluted. The Group’s brands were disconnected, each operating in its own cultural silo. Over 25 000 employees across 1000 branches needed purpose, an anchor of culture and a guiding light, returning them to their foundation: the customer.
OMNIA AX
BETTER SWITCH
OMNIA Fertilizer was switching to Microsoft Dynamics AX. A group-wide change that would affect almost all business processes and impact 960 OMNIA employees in Fertilizer directly.
From procurement to reporting, the AX enterprise resource planning system was a game-changing end-to-end solution that would replace five legacy systems. The switch was pivotal but had extraordinary potential to disrupt key business operations. Fertilizer could not suffer through poor uptake and staggered adoption.​ They needed 960 users up to speed, up to date, switched and ready for an AX way of work.
In 90 days.
AFRICAN BANK
TEAM UP
African Bank positions themselves as a customer obsessed bank. To ensure the promise of customer-centricity came alive on the frontline, the bank had to inform, engage and inspire the Branch Network, Sales and Service Contact Centre to deeply care about the customer. In only six months, 2 400 African Bankers had to become the collaborative sales and service culture African Bank needed. To stoke the fire #1by21 was born. An EPIC goal of being the number one rated bank on the South African Customer Satisfaction Index (SA-csi).
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JAGUAR LAND ROVER
CUSTOMER FIRST REVOLUTION
Globally, Jaguar Land Rover needed to weather the impact of the shifting experience economy and it was critical that they reposition themselves
to focus on the customer experience; the one true differentiator (and
profit- maker!) in a market that is saturated and fickle. The mission: To launch the global Customer First principles, locally in South Africa, so as to mobilise head office. How would they do it? Tanya Ramlagan, Head of HR for South Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa, had experienced TPA and our impact in a previous life. When the performance challenge presented itself there was no other organisation she would rather call.
