There are great consultants. Then there are consultancies that, while having theoretic knowledge on how companies should comply with governance and legislation , rarely understand how business works. They offer “solutions” that are copy-and-pastes of what they’ve given their other clients as though their enterprises were indistinguishable from yours. We’d like to dare you to test our obsession with empowering and freeing you to do what matters to you and your company.

When he was younger, BEE Novation’s founder Lee du Preez was curious about how heavier-than-air metal could fly. He’d listen in via airband radio to men and women discussing flying conditions and repeating the scientific miracle started by the Wright Brothers. Naturally, he got a pilot’s license. This pioneering spirit spilt over to entrepreneurial projects that won him awards and drew other businesspeople to him for hands-on assistance with their enterprises.

While businesses can and do fail, pilots can’t. If one is going to use insights from any discipline to run a business, it would ideally be a high-stakes field. And nowhere are the stakes higher than 30 000 feet above the ground.

Lee’s pilot’s obsession with accuracy, adventure and efficiency flowered into his love for “flying” businesses. He’s found that BEE is one of the most effective tools to align everything businesses do for maximal return on their investment. A business that can comply to BEE probably has its governance straightened and is less likely to experience obstacles as it achieves its goals.

Sadly, Lee also discovered that the commercial environment in South Africa is not wholly favourable to business — it’s turbulent. So he assembled a team that would not only help clients within given parameters, but could question and confront the logic behind those parameters for business’ sake, lobbying government and other stakeholders to think through their decisions’ impact on the economy. This is a fairer, more balanced and more holistic approach to BEE than the one-sided expectation that you just comply.

Like flying, business is the art of engineering everything that would weigh you down to lift you up. The water that sinks a boat is no different from the water that helps other boats travel to their destinations. The legislation that smothers struggling companies and communities is no different from the legislation that empowers and frees other businesses and societies to grow and focus on their purpose. The volatile social and political circumstances that could crush unprepared business can catapult prepared enterprises to the peak of greatness. The team Lee assembled (see bios) is capable of using aviation’s obsession with safety and efficiency to streamline and crash-proof our clients’ BEE strategies to support their businesses’ core functions. We help you fly against the wind — navigate the socio-political moment, anticipate changes to and leverage the law, fulfil your purpose and soar.

The aeronautical engineering insights that allow metal to glide through air can be used to dovetail obstacles into wings that help your business ascend, while we monitor our interventions’ impact on “flying conditions” like time, cash flow, profitability and market positioning.

This frees and empowers you to focus on building your business into the leader of your sector.