You need to know that I am grumpy. At 1:29am this morning, my electricity was turned back on - after 3 days of being off. I mean completely off - nada, nothing - since Monday night at 3am. Then, as I dragged myself out of bed for a 4am wake up to get to the airport, I discovered that the municipality, in order to make up for actually supplying me electricity, had shut my water supply off. So, sitting on an airplane next to some poor soul, I have not yet had a morning shower. And, to top it all, when I arrived at Joburg airport, the check in system had crashed and the queues were out the building. Remarkably, it looks as if we land in Cape Town on schedule. But more of that below, with some lessons for everyone.
The facts
The suburb I live in (most of the time), Bedfordview - on the east of Johannesburg - is serviced by two major electrical supplies - a primary supply and a backup cable. These are underground cables, laid in 1978.- In February this year, the municipality was installing CCTV cables, and damaged the primary supply line. They informed Eskom, the electrical utility supplier, as they were meant to do. Eskom then added this cable to its maintenance list, but electricity was not disrupted as it was supplied via the backup line. That list is way too long, not being serviced enough and is a mess. I know this because we do work with one of the companies that is outsourced by Eskom to do the maintenance, and they have spoken of “disasters waiting to happen” because Eskom is running its maintenance too lean. This is a cost cutting exercise - and I have said much on that topic on this blog.
- At 3am on Monday morning, the backup line faulted, with a major coupling being dislodged. Electricity to more than 100,000 people was instantly cut.
- It was left to Radio stations to let the public know what had happened. It was just short of 3 days later that electricity was restored.
- Eskom’s spokesmen consistently lied to the public and to journalists, and even when their lies were consistently shown to be false, they continued to reiterate them.
- To date, Eskom has issued no apology.
So, what lessons can be learned…
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Sept. 18 /PRNewswire/ (
We have a few clients who work in the news and publishing industries. These industries have always seemed out of date to me, but I recognise that many of these companies are working hard (scrambling?) to get into the digital age. One of the best articles I have read on this issue comes from Fast Company, and was written by Richard Watson under the Innovation heading of the magazine. You can 
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News broke this past week that HP board chairperson, Patricia Dunn, had ordered a probe into how information was being leaked to the press. This investigation led to the obtaining of personal phone records of some directors, and at least two reporters covering HP. The investigation conducted by a company hired by HP used a controversial technique called “pretexting” to obtain the personal phone records of silicon.com sister site CNET News.com reporters Dawn Kawamoto and Tom Krazit, California state prosecutors said. Pretexting is an illegal method of obtaining personal records through misrepresentation of someone’s identity.
Every marketer says that they do. Companies swear that they know their customers. But, as a fantastic article from Fast Company shows, most organisations are just fooling themselves. Its a long read, but well worth it - from Fast Company, Issue 34, April 2000. 
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