This is a not political, but rather a 5-part article about design thinking and some of the questions I have been trying to find answers to regarding South Africa’s last mile delivery market. I would like to keep this an open conversation so please comment or dm your thoughts.
My entrepreneurial journey started at age 25 when I joined a new construction company in Nairobi that had just landed the Zuri Zanzibar resort development job. After a couple of days doing intros in Nairobi, I moved to Zanzibar for 3 years. 8 months into the project the investor’s development team decided to take over the project, so I resigned at the Kenyan company and joined the investor as head of logistics.
Upon moving back to South Africa after my stint in Zanzibar I worked for a distribution company at the onset of the Covid pandemic. During this time, I quickly realised that courier drivers in South Africa work extremely hard, and the challenges they face are increasing. Residential estates and other access-controlled properties being one of the many.
According to Lightstone data, SA had about 9000 registered estate developments in 2019 valued at over R 1 trillion. For those not familiar with residential estates, South Africa has a range of challenges of which personal safety is probably number 1. Estates offer better security and, in some cases, shared facilities like restaurants, gyms, nursery schools etc.
All these estates are managed differently but have a similar process for deliveries which include queuing at the gatehouse, each receiver must be contacted to confirm they can receive the parcel, and, in most cases, drivers now need a pin code generated by the receiver in advance to punch in as a final check.
On my quest to find a solution to the above
mentioned last mile problem I decided to join Stellenbosch University’s LaunchLab in June this year. The LaunchLab designed an interactive incubator program using Larry Leifer’s 5-step design thinking process for creative problem solving. The steps: empathize, define, ideate, prototype and test.
Step 1 Empathy
Putting yourself in some else’s shoes to try and understand what they are experiencing. I believe the biggest reason entrepreneurs and others struggle with empathy and to follow any sort of methodology is because we prefer to be busy with things we enjoy and are good at. Therefore, the beginner’s mindset has become such a buzz word. To empathise is to listen and not talk, be the student. Adults in general find it difficult to be the beginner or the “fool” when learning a new skill. Failing to finish that first marathon you trained 6 months for or freaking out on the surfboard trying to get on your feet. Students going to university, the intimidation of the first class, a great example of being the beginner. Tertiary education has become quite an interesting topic for debate. Is it necessary? Why attend if not to study a STEM subject etc.? When looking at it from a beginner’s mindset perhaps university is the empathic step to the world of work and having colleagues to negotiate with.
We had 12 nationalities working on the Zanzibar development which in and of itself could be a problem for any project, let alone in a foreign semi-dependent country none of us had worked in before. Luckily, we had a good project leader that showed genuine interest in everyone and wanted to understand their way of thinking. The glue that held the team together to solve problem after problem was empathy and of course some luck. Even though our mission wasn’t to move mankind to Mars I got a taste of what belongs at the core for effective problem-solving.
In the last mile saga, the time wasted at access-controlled properties is the problem I thought I wanted to solve when starting the design thinking process.
I’ve had about 60 interviews with anyone who wants to talk from: logistics companies, courier drivers, security companies, guards, property managers, HOAs, trustees, e-commerce, and property developers and during all these conversations trying to validate this problem so many other problems came up and my initial idea to solve it was compromised.
Genuine interest is important for entrepreneurs that want to go from zero to one. What else can guide you through the chasm of despair?