Online Reporter
Rutendo Gwatidzo
Changing Perspectives
“We need a mindset shift.” This is one of the phrases that has become fashionable in Zimbabwe’s corporate world. Be it in boardrooms, strategy sessions, or town hall meetings across Zimbabwe, the statement sounds progressive. It feels motivational but, let’s be clear and honest.
Mindset alone does not fix inefficiency. Systems, structures, discipline and leadership accountability does.
You can have the most positive, patriotic, and committed workforce in the country, but if the operating model is broken, performance will still limp.
The Mindset Myth!
Mindset is important, yes but, it is not a silver bullet. When leaders over-focus on attitude while ignoring process failures, outdated systems, unclear roles, and weak governance, just to mention a few, they are effectively whiling up time as they plan to fail. Organizations should not depend on “exceptional people” to compensate for dysfunctional systems.
Organisational Status!
Let’s look at familiar corporate scenarios in Zimbabwe without naming and shaming. A financial institution with highly trained staff but customers still queue for hours because approval processes are centralised, manual, and risk-averse beyond logic.
A parastatal filled with technically competent professionals, yet projects stall due to overlapping mandates, unclear decision rights, and political interference.
A growing SME with energetic employees but constant firefighting because there are no standard operating procedures, no delegation framework, and performance dashboards. In all these cases, if management responds with motivational talks, team-building retreats, and “mindset workshops,” morale can improve briefly but, efficiency does not.
Because you cannot motivate your way out of structural incompetence.
Systems Eat Motivation for Breakfast!
Strive Masiyiwa, one of Zimbabwe’s most respected business leaders, puts it bluntly at some point. “The biggest mistake leaders make is to confuse activity with progress.”
Busy people are not necessarily productive people. Many Zimbabwean organisations are full of activity meetings, reports and approvals but, starved of outcomes. The outcome of those meetings do not match the amount and time taken in meetings.
Sadly, a good number of executives in many organisations are just busy for nothing. Some organisations spend the whole year without meeting targets and some go for years yet, the amount of meetings they do in a year are beyond count.
Why meet and continue to meet if the meetings yield no results? Isn’t it better to spend more time in the field or on the practical work leading teams by example?
What do you expect?
When employees must seek five or more signatures for a basic decision. When they navigate unclear reporting lines and work with obsolete technology. Some operate without measurable Key Performance Indicators . . . No amount of positive thinking will save the day. Leaders must pay attention to all areas that affect organisational performance.
Uncomfortable Truth!
Inefficiency often benefits those at the top, complexity creates power and ambiguity protects poor leadership. When systems are unclear, accountability becomes optional.
In corporate Zimbabwe, leaders who do not listen to operational realities end up surrounded by yes-men, while inefficiency quietly becomes culture. Many organisations are suffering high employee turnover not because of mindset, but because of frustration. Employees eventually disengage not because they lack patriotism or resilience, but because working hard in a broken system feels like punishment.
What Works?
If Zimbabwean organisations are serious about performance, the focus must shift from slogans to substance. There is need to consider some of the following:
Process Redesign – Simplify workflows
Remove redundant approvals. Empower decision-making at the lowest competent level.
Role Clarity: Every employee must know what success looks like and who owns what.
Performance Management: Measure outputs, not effort. Reward results, not loyalty.
Technology Enablement: Digitize where it matters. Manual systems breed delays and excuses.
Leadership Accountability: Inefficiency is a leadership failure before it is a staff failure. Leaders must stop the blame game and take responsibility.
As Julius Nyerere wisely observed, “You cannot develop people, people must develop themselves.” Leaders cannot outsource organizational effectiveness to employee attitudes.
They must design environments where good performance is inevitable, not heroic. Mindset should support systems, not replace them. Culture should reinforce efficiency, not excuse dysfunction. Motivation should accelerate well-designed processes, not compensate for poor leadership choices.
Zimbabwe does not lack hardworking people. It lacks enough organisations willing to do the hard, uncomfortable work of fixing how things actually function. Can leaders stop gas lighting employees with the idea that if they just “think differently,” inefficiency will disappear. That narrative is lazy and dangerous.
True transformation begins when leaders have the courage to say, “The problem is not the people. The problem is how we have built the organisation.”
Until then, mindset talks will remain what they currently are in many organisations, beautiful speeches masking operational failure. Be challenged, encouraged and inspired to go beyond mindset in 2026 and do better.
Rutendo Gwatidzo is a human capital executive and managing consultant at The HUB HR Consultancy. She is a multi-award winning leader, speaker and coach. She is also an Author of Born to Fight and Breaking the Silence books. Contact details: 0714575805/ [email protected] / Rutendo Gwatidzo_Official FB public page
