KENNY FIHLA | No-one ever makes it alone

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In the book Outliers, author Malcolm Gladwell reminds us that no one “ever makes it alone”. I accept this award as living proof of that. So, before I reflect and say a word about leadership, let me say thank you. I start with the people who made tonight possible.

To the more than 13-million Absa customers who trust us with their savings, their homes and their dreams. To all my colleagues, who serve them every day, often unseen. And to our board and leadership team, who have dared to make tough decisions for the long term. This award is yours as much as it is mine.

I have benefited from leaders who opened doors for me when they did not have to. I carry their counsel to this day. And I have learned alongside remarkable people: in the trade unions, in the public sector, at Standard Bank and now at Absa. Whatever I have achieved bears their fingerprints.

Absa CEO Kenny Fihla. Picture: Kabelo Mokoena Most of all, to my family. You have carried the unseen cost of long days, difficult moments and burdens that do not stay at the office door. You keep me grounded. You remind me that titles are temporary, but character, relationships, and the way we treat people endure.

Nelson Mandela wrote that “a good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination”. You are the reason I keep striving for both. My family, colleagues, mentors, mentees, and clients are the reason I have a story to tell at all. So, allow me a moment to share a little of it. My own path has not been a straight line. It has been a series of classrooms. Some were formal.

Most were far more demanding: the classrooms of work, of responsibility, of getting things wrong and learning to get them right. If my journey has taught me anything, it is this. Over time, one lesson has stayed with me. Early in a career, we are busy proving what we can do.

With time, we learn that leadership is less about having all the answers and more about creating the conditions for others to do their best work. For me, leadership demands clarity of purpose, the courage to make difficult choices, and the humility to keep listening, learning, and then leading. That lesson has guided decisions we have made at Absa.

That is, the work we have set out to do since I joined in June last year, namely, strengthening our leadership team, holding people accountable, and simplifying how we work across our markets. This is not easy or convenient work.

With time, we learn that leadership is less about having all the answers and more about creating the conditions for others to do their best work.

However, it is beginning to reflect in our results, and more importantly, in our people’s belief in what we can become. Ladies and gentlemen, I would be doing this award a disservice if I spoke only about the road behind me. Because outside this room, the numbers tell a harder story.

Earlier this week, Stats SA told us that 8.6-million South Africans are unemployed. That is one in three people who want to work. Nearly half of our young people who are looking for work cannot find it: around 5-million of them. Another 3.7-million South Africans have stopped looking altogether.

And our economy is expected to grow by barely 1% in 2026, far too slowly to change those numbers. But numbers can numb us. So let me put it differently. Behind every one of those figures is a name. A graduate sending out her hundredth CV. A young man who has started to believe that effort no longer pays.

A small business owner one bad month away from closing her doors. When we see them that way, the question is no longer whether this is our problem. It is what we will do about it. These are not someone else’s numbers. They are the leadership test of our generation.

No government and no single company can solve them alone. But this room, together, can move them. There is a glimmer of hope in the same report: financial services were among the sectors that added jobs last quarter.

That tells me our industry, and every industry represented here tonight, can be part of the answer. Open one more door. Every one of us is here because someone once took a chance on us.

Our institutions, public and private, are only as strong as the trust people place in them, and trust is earned through competence and integrity, every single day. Therefore, it is critical that we build trust and credibility everywhere we lead.

And as one of the many lessons taught by my hero, my late mother, I relate to others “to give advantage and not take advantage of others”.

As leaders, we must measure what matters. That is, let us judge our success by how many people we lift, not only by what we earn. Why does this matter so deeply to me?

Because I believe Leadership is stewardship. We hold responsibility for a season. Our task is to leave our institutions stronger, our people more capable, and the path clearer for those who follow.

Stewardship, in the end, is about legacy. Legacy is not built on a night like this one. It is built in ordinary days. Author Mark Batterson puts it simply: you have to win the day, and then “get up and do it all over again”.

And that brings me back to tonight. So I receive this award not as a finish line, but as a charge. Years from now, I hope no one remembers who won Leader of the Year in 2026.

I hope they remember this as the year leaders decided that five million young people waiting for a chance was a number we refused to accept.

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