What They Teach in Business School

Covid-19 was not in the business plan. That’s why businesses that opened in March 2020 and beyond were hard hit by the pandemic.

This is where soothsayers come in. Students in business schools globally, are taught that every business plan must have a SWOT Analysis:

Strengths

Weaknesses

Opportunities

Threats

The pandemic threw that into the ocean because nobody anticipated Covid-19 as a threat. Nobody could. Climate change yes, because we’ve been ignoring warnings for years. Development yes, climate change? Not now. We’ll attend to it after healthy profit margins.

Because business plans don’t have a soothsayer requirement, cities have white elephants that looked so good on paper, banks provided finance, cities pitched in, even provincial and federal governments.

One white elephant comes to mind, a multi-use complex in the city I call home. Banks, an apartment building, office block, a grocery store, upstairs food court and a beer parlor all hug a courtyard, with floor fountains that sprout water, much to kiddies’ delight.

Did I say it has a sky walk connecting it to the sports center which also hosts big music events? Same sky walk joins the city library, a casino, an older food court and a liquor mart.

Sounds perfect? Part of the complex opened during the summer 2019, and the rest in 2020, when Covid-19 hit. It had to close like every business. It is a block away from the convention centre, but there were no conventions in 2020-2021, thanks to Covid-19.

Developers and tenants that took long-term leases in the complex are probably lamenting one thing: if only we had soothsayers, who can see into the future. They would have predicted the pandemic.

All they had were business plans.

By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.