Glaucus Globe (Pty) Ltd

Company profile

In a world experiencing major changes and shifts caused by events such as the Fourth Industrial Revolution, globalisation and now, the Covid-19 pandemic, our survival has become our most profound challenge. To survive we will need to adapt, transform and grow in a new way, not only in our personal capacities but also in the way we do business.

Glaucus Globe, a South African-based company, has this as its focus, with its inspiration drawn from Glaucus, a Greek sea-god, who ingested a magical combination of herbs and surfaced from the waters as an immortal rescuer of sailors and fishermen.

Glaucus Globe is therefore about rebirth, transformation, perpetual adaptation and growth. It has international reach, offering a rare combination of tools for navigating a pathway through and around global changes and shifts.

This is especially relevant for Africa and the changes and shifts taking place on this continent –Africa not as the needy beneficiary of global development but as an innovator and an important target market featuring in global transformation and societal deals. The emergence of Africa from the mire of uncertainty into its own version of modernity is imminent.  This is affected by and will affect events in the entire world.  It will bring challenges. It will bring opportunities. 

Founder

Toni van Niekerk has 30 years of experience in environments requiring accurate and continuous forecasting. She is a trained futurist and registered with the International Association of Professional Futurists. Inspired by the mythological figure after which the company is named, she is in a constant state of reinventing herself. Her experience and training have equipped her with a wide frame of reference involving various global geographies as well as their markets, market responses and market vulnerabilities and receptiveness. She collaborates with high-profile academics and business experts across the globe – a added benefit for her clients.

Her niche consulting house offers clients a unique way to clearly assess the relevance of global and localised trends and variables and mechanisms to manage the likely impact of such trends and variables through a truly agile transformation journey.   

Approach

Our approach in identifying global changes and shifts is distilled from the field of Future Studies and informed by applied philosophy, applied systems thinking, scenario development, organisational transformation, quantitative and qualitative research, understanding the world from multiple lenses, measuring the future and, more importantly and at the heart of all, environmental scanning.

Offering

The holy grail of Future Studies is foresight, the fact that nothing exists in isolation, and all has a past, present and future. Your future may look completely different to what you have in mind if you do not understand the potential significance of global trends, patterns, changes and shifts and how your business should adapt through ingesting/ [or engaging with] a magical combination of herbs/  [tools, stakeholders, communication]”  to allow you to carefully consider the options  available to you to craft your way to sustainable growth.

By executing the three interrelated pieces of work integral to strategy development - briefly explained hereunder - Glaucus Globe delivers you a futures scenario blueprint to assist you to navigate your business through and around global changes and shifts.

• Environmental scanning

Environmental scanning is the base of our offering and performed in far greater depth and breadth than typically found in business plans or for paradigm-specific purposes. The social, technology, economic, environmental and political domains are fully unpacked at a global, regional, national and local level for your whole environment, inclusive of the following two layers:

• at a transactional level over which your business has a level of influence such as your competitors, partners and stakeholders and
• at a contextual level over which your business has no influences and which are the driving forces behind social, technology, economic, environmental and political domains

We keep clients informed on trend drivers and inhibitors; parallels and precedents; counter-trends; likely spin-offs and commensurate opportunities and risks; company shortcomings; expected trigger events and possible disruptions. All of these inform the transdisciplinary knowledge base required for businesses to consider in strategic thinking and strategy development.

• Stakeholder mapping and profiling (Actors)

The second dimension deals with stakeholder mapping and profiling. Complex systems involve a vast array of stakeholders with many different perspectives; simply having a one dimensional global view of a system is insufficient and will not provide your business with the necessary insight to transform. Stakeholder maps and profiles address the contextual reality required in understanding a system. Glaucus Globe will build a multidimensional view of the whole from the specific vantage points of your different stakeholders. The aim is to gain a deeper understanding of the stakeholder’s values, models, priorities, incentives, funding streams, agendas, competing priorities and the power dynamics in their system.  From this, your decision-makers can start to understand better why the system is the way it is; why your stakeholder perpetuate the system patterns and what the opportunities are for changing those patterns. The long-term consequences of current attitudes, thinking and practices of the stakeholders of a business and, equally, the long-term implications of new policies or plans across a multiplicity of actors or stakeholders are critically important to companies hoping to survive.

• Intentional communication/coaching

The last element in our offering deals with intentional communication, which is another interrelated layer of environmental scanning and stakeholder mapping and profiling. The complexity and relevance of this alignment is generally completely neglected and misunderstood. If communication strategies are constructed based on a deep understanding of the respective disciplines and subcultures of the various stakeholders including their profiles in relation to level of education, ethnic and cultural backgrounds, income groups, gender, professional vs technical vs labour sector, industry or discipline, age, language and communication preferences, intentional communication plans can very successfully mitigate barriers to change and lay the foundations for transformation whilst simultaneously building future-thinking capacity across the entire organisation.

For more information: www.glaucusglobe.com

or contact Toni van Niekerk