When the sun sets over his home in the Johannesburg north area, Njabulo Nyawo, the group chief people executive at Momentum Group, is likely thinking about one of two things: the intricate alignment of commercial strategy with human capital, or the kilometres he needs to clock for his next ultramarathon.
A chartered accountant by training with an MBA and a deep history in the high-stakes world of finance, Njabulo Nyawo speaks about people with the same fluency he once reserved for capital models and balance sheets.
Moving from CA to CHRO was not a departure from numbers for him but an expansion of them, because for Njabulo, the real bottom line has always been people.
“I grew up and was educated in KZN. I became a CA because I wanted to be at the heart of financial services. That was the contribution I wanted to make, knowing how fundamental the sector is to the growth and sustainability of our economy. I have always had a passion to contribute to a field that meaningfully drives the development of South Africa,” he says.
“Even in finance, I’ve had very varied roles. I’ve never followed a typical vertical career path; I’ve always looked for opportunities where I could make the most impact and add the most strategic value. I developed a passion for strategy early in my career and sought out breadth of experience within finance because I aspired to accelerate my growth to a position where I could contribute most strategically. My passion has always been to play a strategic and transformational role in any organisation or capacity in which I serve.”
At Standard Bank, he was a finance executive and firmly in the succession pipeline for global finance roles. The next step, however, would not be another finance title.
The right space
“I needed to broaden my experience again and expand my exposure to the business. A head of Africa regions role became available within human capital. There were many conversations to convince me that it was the right role. It became quite clear to me how strategic the human capital function is within a financial services organisation. There has also been a shift in the skills dynamics conversation as businesses make senior executive appointments with stronger commercial understanding, rather than only focussing on traditional or specialised practice experience.”
The move, initially framed as a rotation to make him future fit, quickly became something more enduring. A year in, he knew being in the people space and bringing his commercial or technical expertise to help bridge human capital with the broader business strategy was definitely his long-term career.
For the lifelong Kaizer Chiefs and avid Manchester City supporter, that instinct to bridge, widen access and to contribute, was shaped long before executive committees. “My career has never really been a plan; it has been shaped by people stepping in and helping along the way. I always thought I would study medicine until I finished matric, but there was no funding. Accounting was never actually my intended career choice; however I’m eternally grateful for the bursary funding that I received to pursue accounting studies and qualification.”
Born in KZN and raised in a large household led by a nurse mother, contribution was never an abstract idea. “I always liked the satisfaction of contributing to the wellness of the community. Growing up, less privileged members of the family would come and stay with us. I was raised in an environment where there was always a general sense of reaching out, making sure that everybody was okay and progressing in life.”
The closed door to medicine did not close the instinct to serve however. It’s all about helping and making a meaningful contribution to the community for Njabulo. Even while qualifying as a CA, people development remained a constant thread.
Bridging the gap
“People have always been a passion of mine. Seeing people progress and impacting their growth has always been a key driver for me. I was a tutor, and even during my CA training programme I remained involved with tutoring at university and marking exam scripts for students. It’s where my passion truly meets my expertise. That alignment has been incredibly powerful.”
His belief in people and HR’s strategic weight was further forged around boardroom tables. Serving as a non-executive director, MBA in hand, he began to spot a pattern that surfaced meeting after meeting.
“The way HR was showing up strategically often revealed a gap in translating business strategy into people strategy. You would see many initiatives come through, but they were not always fully thought through from a commercial perspective. They tended to be technically focused, centred on whether they were the right things to do for people, without closing the loop on commercial viability,” he explains.
He also pushes back on the language often used to describe HR. “There’s this narrative that if you’re in human capital, you’re just an enabler. I think that’s a very disempowering way to frame it. Human capital is not merely an enabler, but a shaper of business performance. My colleagues at exco need to believe that I understand the commercial and business language. I’m not here just as human capital; I can bridge the narrative between people practices and how they drive business performance and strategic objectives.”
Njabulo is clear that the people strategy cannot trail the business strategy. “One of the first challenges I put to the team is that we need to be very agile and aligned to the group strategy planning process. We’re not going to wait until the business strategy emerges and then come in at the end. Typically, that’s what human capital functions do, wait for the business strategy and only then ask what this means for us,” he notes.
The importance of balance
“It’s really about harnessing collective wisdom to provide input early, rather than receiving a business strategy and simply translating it. In the past, we followed a traditional approach to culture, where we’d define our values. That’s a very philosophical approach because values mean different things to different people and are difficult to measure.”
Behaviours, by contrast, are more narrowly defined according to Njabulo. The difference, he explains, lies in measurability and accountability. “When we talk about our behaviours, we bucket them into three very clear pillars. The focus is on becoming an organisation obsessed with specific behaviours, not values. We ask what the behaviours are so that we know what we amplify and what we do not tolerate,” he says.
A proud father of three, Njabulo believes in the importance of balance because for him, ambition on the road reflects ambition at work.
“I’m passionate about long-distance running. That’s how I keep myself sane and fit. If I don’t do that I can feel that I’m starting to lose the balance,” says Njabulo, who was preparing for the Two Oceans Marathon when he spoke to CHRO South Africa.
“It’s a strategic way of saying I must keep my goals in sight and on track. Otherwise there’s nothing that’s pushing you to say you must get out and you must train. If you don’t have these big audacious goals you’re working towards it’s so easy just to lose momentum, especially in your busy corporate career. In the recent past I had eased into running shorter distances but it’s easy to lose training momentum and consistency. The strategy now has been to go back to doing long distance, it's working relatively better keeping me focused on the next big race.”
