I admit I am a bit of a snob. I have pulled my noses up at private schools and
at housing estates. Maybe because I never had the privilege of attending one
or living in one.  When money is tight and circumstances tough, you develop
more than a few unfortunate chips on your shoulder.

However I have learnt more than one humbling lesson this past week. While the
strikes crippled SA and stories of triumph and tragedy emerged, mostly from
the LeadSA campaign, I watched heroes of a quieter kind this week.

Justin Bessler passed away unexpectedly and shockingly on Friday 20th August
11pm. He had fought cancer hard for six months. He was just 21. Two weeks
before, he had undergone his last chemo treatment and save for the infections
he still had to fight, we were all expecting a clear pass and for the
nightmare to be behind him.

His dad called us at 6am on Saturday with the devastating news. When we
arrived at their house at 08h30, there in their lounge, sitting with Justin's
parents and brother were the headmaster, CEO and school psychologist of St.
David's Marist Inanda. The school Justin had matriculated from three years
ago.

Malcolm Williams, Mike Greeff and Sharmanay Pillay in their quiet, calm,
logical kindness sat in that lounge and started, quite literally, taking care
of the most difficult week a parent could ever face.  Their practical,
logical, calm kindness made the most inconceivable decisions and discussions
bearable and so they created and hosted a memorial service and tea that was
lovely, fitting and appropriate.

This for a boy that left their school three years ago. They arranged
everything: from dealing with the undertakers, sorting out flowers, blowing up
photographs, even sending the school nurse to the house to give the family
Vitamin B injections. The kindness was breathtaking.

And then there were the neighbours in Kyalami Estate. People who simply handed
over keys and remotes to their empty houses and rooms and said - put family
there. Neighbours who drove Justin's parents back to the hospital on Friday
night when they received the SOS call that they were attempting to resuscitate
him.

This says nothing of family and friends that have travelled afar. Who have
stood and held a family in grief. Who have stocked a freezer full of meals.
And who have sat and listened to a story that was never supposed to end this
way.

This week has been and will be a blur for Roz, Noel and Warren Bessler. They
will not remember the many acts of kindness from this week. And that makes
those acts all the more special.

I today would like to pay tribute to the people at St David's and Kyalami
Estate. Quietly, unobtrusively and with little fanfare . you have LeadSA
without even knowing. Thank you.

Justin Bessler died suddenly and unexpectedly on Friday 20^th August at 11pm. He had finished his last course of chemo a week before. He was at the finish line and needed to clear the last set of infections before he got his pass to continue his life after six months of chemo. It is shocking and devastating that we lost him when he should have been in the clear. He was 21 years old. This blog is for him.

• I would never take a walk in the park.
• I would never try and ease my bum onto a swing.
• I would never actually bury my head in those gorgeous roses from Woolies that I rush from the till to my car to the dining room table.
• I would never grab a friend that I see too little of and tell her how much I love and miss her.
• I would never chase my sausage dogs around the house, driving them into a yapping happy delirium.
• I would never go lie on the grass in the middle of the day.
• I would never have a glass of wine at 10am or dare to smoke a cigarette in front of my husband.
• I would never stand up and walk out of meetings that are nothing more than a bunch of boys beating their chests.
• I would never read emails from people that are full of defense and excuses, and reply in anything but the most polite and direct manner.
• I would never stop when I saw someone in desperate need. It is easy to stop when someone is half-okay. It is not easy to stop when they are dirty and naked on a pavement. Or swollen and broken on the side of the road. I drove past these two people just last week.
• I would never insist on eating food that is made with love and nutrition and goodness, instead of packing in whatever fast-food is available on the run.
• I would never sit still for a minute and allow that fearful wave of emotions: be it happiness, grief, anger, pride, fear,  frustration. Pack it all in, swallow it up, heads back, get on with it.
• I would never attempt a cartwheel.
• I would never walk out of my office when people have let me down. I would solve the problems for them. No more.
• I would never walk around in my pyjamas until 5pm the next day.
• I would never go out for breakfast by myself.
• I would never paint my nails odd colours.
• I would never visit friends with babies because I needed to hold and smell something good, and pure and innocent. It was because they needed assistance with something or there was a birthday / christening.
• I would never try and climb a tree again.
• I would never walk around in a cozzie or bikini again.
• I would never high heels for fear of throwing my back out or teetering over and sliding down a wall.
• I would never order food in for a party without slaving away trying to perfect a stupid recipe.

Jus – when you catch me doing all these things from now on – have a giggle on my behalf

Dress Code. Aaah. It's a code. Can you crack it? In our crazy lil world of Kezi we don't have to wear suits and ties or adhere to certain colours or styles. But somehow the less rules the more complicated it becomes. Which is why I banned jeans from the office last week. Bah humbug I know. I know jeans can look fabulously smart and dressed up, but they can also look spectacularly sloppy and unprofessional. So when people aren't clear on what the line is ... you gotta just make one fell swoop. Kinda sucks. But if you don't look smart and professional, how do you feel smart and professional?

And how do your clients feel about trusting you with their brand and their money when you look like, well, bedraggled? First impressions and all that.

With more boys coming on board at Kezi I am not sure how long the jeans ban can be entrenched (they somehow look smarter in jeans than girls? How sexist of me?!) but hopefully when you see some smart, sassy, sorted publicists out there ... you will go "Aaah, they must be from Kezi ..."

So I am all about small business and entrepreneurs. A new flower shop has opened just a few doors down from my local Woolies food store. The same Woolies I buy flowers from when I feel the need to pretty up our space or impress visitors (ha, ha, ha). So I veer off my well-beaten track to Woolies on Friday to buy some flowers from the new shop. Spread the wealth. I walk away with four bunches of gorgeous flowers that make my heart smile (and the house smile). And 24 hours later two of those four bunches are dead. Not just slowly wilting or gently drooping. Dead. Why would a florist sell flowers that are clearly past their 'sell-by' date and not warn me? Surely they as experts would or could have advised me that these are near their end. I am not even remotely green-fingered so have no idea what to look out for. So the moral of the story in the Kezi world of PR and Publicity: if you are going to sell a product or service, make sure your value-add is going to last longer than 24 hours!

Yip, we are milking the World Cup for all that it’s worth ... including giving ourselves an excuse to buy these decadent little soccer yummies from Malva at mainstreetlife.co.za

I love my kindle. It’s small and compact and nifty. I can read in the sunlight and in the dark. I can read lying on my left, on my right, up, down. I can download UK newspapers and can preview books before I buy. But I also love bookshops. And I love to feel guilty. So I seem to be spending even more time than usual in bookshops ... poring over design books, cookery books and kiddies books ... when is the last time you picked up some children’s books – they are just pure, lovely escapism.

The owner of the sweet little bookshop in Melville next to The Service Station (the name escapes me now – Love Books?) pointed me in the direction of this little gem ... a reprint from decades ago ... and strangely comforting to read after a spate of ‘sorely trying days’ at Kezi of late ....

Loved this piece from Maureen Collins’ book “Straight Talk: conversations at work that get results”

“Many conversations do little more than rehash previous conversations.  The same problems are raised. The same excuses for bad behaviour are offered.  More actions are discussed. Nothing changes! Conversations do little more than lead to more conversations if you accept compliance when you do not have commitment.  When you tell people what you think of their poor behaviour and then tell them how you want them to fix it, you have not involved them in the conversation or in the solution.  You don’t know how they see the problem or if they even think the issue is important. Nor do you know what they think of your proposed solution or whether they are committed to making it work.

You have done   all the thinking, you have come up with all the ideas and if the solution doesn’t work, the fault will obviously be yours too! The other person has the soft option. They didn’t have to think, they can follow your instructions and they can avoid any accountability if the solution -your solution - doesn’t work.

Obtaining commitment from people and holding them to account for their behaviour means that you ask them for their view of the situation and you invite them to share in the intellectual work of finding a solution. Then you share the responsibility for putting the solution in place.  At a later date you follow up together on whether the action that was agreed on has been implemented. This is the only way to create accountability and avoid conversations that go around in circles.  

When you need personal motivation, creativity, customer service, initiative and problem- solving skills from people, you need more than compliance. Gaining commitment means creating conversations in which people feel safe to say what they think and feel, to speak up with information or ideas, and to challenge you. When people are deeply involved in conversations, they will be fully committed to actions.”

So relevant. So true. Internally it is crucial to have conversations as opposed to compliance... as exhausting as it sometimes is to get there. Externally the challenge is always  to engage with our clients as opposed to ticking off the to-do list.

This strange and beautiful top from Black Coffee haunted me so much I travelled back there the next day to make it mine.

Not sure that I will ever have the guts to wear it but it will hang near my writing desk at home – my sanctuary – to inspire me and remind me that at the end of the day I am a writer, and that I do have a book (or two) in me just waiting to be committed to paper (or shoulders).

So I was at a business breakfast networking thing the other day – not my forte – but sometimes, like my mother says, you need to do stuff you don’t like.

A lovely lady from a leading bank came to our table, brochures and business cards in hand, and told us that she is in charge of small business for our area etc etc. Oh cool, I say, we actually bank with you ... but I had interrupted her monologue and she did not know how to actually converse, engage ... network.

I tried again when the monologue was over, but she had seen the next table and marched on.  Did she get any business out that breakfast? I doubt it. Neither did another lovely lady who, business cards in hand, marched around demanding to know who you are and what you did and if you ever needed xyz because that’s what she does. Hardly subtle.

But after laughing about bad-fitting soccer jerseys, moving table decorations out the way, sourcing delicious moer-koffie and just “being instead of doing” – two lucrative meetings were secured at our table. Sometimes you just gotta like the people around you first.

The doyenne of PR. That’s what I knew her as. And her sudden death at the age of 77 made national news. Our condolences to the whole team at Adele Lucas Promotions, and of course her family and friends.  I only met Adele once – that initial scary meeting when we had to convince her that we could do the PR for the Soweto Festival. She was everything I imagined her to be: tough, sharp but also incredibly gracious. When we heard that we had the account it felt like we had ‘arrived’ – an endorsement from Adele lives on in our credential documents and is always a talking point. We all took a moment this week to remember a great lady who did great things.