{"id":624,"date":"2018-05-22T12:31:49","date_gmt":"2018-05-22T12:31:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tt100.co.za\/?p=624"},"modified":"2018-05-22T12:31:49","modified_gmt":"2018-05-22T12:31:49","slug":"thisisme-brian-makwaiba-director","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tt100.org\/index.php\/2018\/05\/22\/thisisme-brian-makwaiba-director\/","title":{"rendered":"ThisIsMe – David Thomas – Managing Director"},"content":{"rendered":"

Winner of the Management of People award for 2017, category for emerging enterprises
\nHow to compete for talent with the big boys \u00a0<\/strong>
\nWhen competing for talent against the likes of Amazon and Google, cool office furniture, refreshments on tap and PlayStation can only take you so far. You can\u2019t afford to pay the salaries and benefits that the tech giants can, so you\u2019ve got to come up with something that they can\u2019t \u2013 or won\u2019t – offer.
\nHow about letting your own people take all the credit for the solutions they invent while working for your company, and even putting their names on the patents? Yes, indeed. That\u2019s probably unheard of in Silicon Valley, not to mention corporate South Africa, where licences, royalties and patents make big money for the companies that own them.
\nBut then again, ThisIsMe is an emerging enterprise that hasn\u2019t got where it is by doing what everyone else does.
\n\u201cWe are not a corporate machine, although most of our clients are corporates. There\u2019s not much of a hierarchy here and if you have something to say, you put up your hand and say it. The opinions of senior management are expressed alongside those of the most junior staff members,\u201d says David Thomas, managing director and one of the company\u2019s founders.
\nHe describes the culture of ThisIsMe, which specialises in digital identity verification and has about 100 clients, as innovative and intellectually collaborative. \u201cIt\u2019s important to have a set of clear and understandable goals, focused around your client\u2019s requirements, and then to give your staff free rein to get it done. Junior staff are part of the decisions and can see their work become legitimate products.\u201d
\nProducts that are the brainchildren of its own staff, most of whom are in their twenties, include a mobile verification solution, a breach-tracking solution that can test whether an email address has been compromised, and a soon-to-be-launched product that protects against identity theft.
\n\u201cAs an agile business, we can make a decision on a product, develop it and roll it out in two or three months. Corporates take at least a year,\u201d says David, adding that ThisIsMe has two current patents and a third pending, with staff members as the inventors, not the company.
\nAnother key element of its people management philosophy is to hire people \u201cwho are more intelligent and more capable than us\u201d, says David, \u201cus\u201d being the management team. \u201cThere\u2019s no point in hiring someone you think you are better than. We believe it\u2019s crucial to utilise the people you employ and to judge people by their actions and nothing else.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Winner of the Management of People award for 2017, category for emerging enterprises How to compete for talent with the big boys \u00a0 When competing for talent against the likes of Amazon and Google, cool office furniture, refreshments on tap and PlayStation can only take you so far. You can\u2019t afford to pay the salaries … Continue reading “ThisIsMe – David Thomas – Managing Director”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThisIsMe - David Thomas - Managing Director - tt100<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/tt100.org\/index.php\/2018\/05\/22\/thisisme-brian-makwaiba-director\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"ThisIsMe - David Thomas - Managing Director - tt100\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Winner of the Management of People award for 2017, category for emerging enterprises How to compete for talent with the big boys \u00a0 When competing for talent against the likes of Amazon and Google, cool office furniture, refreshments on tap and PlayStation can only take you so far. 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