Sasol’s Bramley Maetsa: tell me it can’t be done and I’ll find a way to do it 

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Bramley Maetsa, head of delivery enablement at Sasol, describes himself as an ideas guy with a wilful attitude and ability to garner buy-in.

A son of the soil best describes Bramley Maetsa, head of digital innovation enablement at Sasol. He was born and raised in the farmlands of Tzaneen in Limpopo, but his fearlessness found him in North Carolina in later years. 

The opportunity abroad presented itself in the most unlikely of places – at a wedding in Cape Town that Bramley attended. While on the job hunt, he looked at a couple of recruitment websites during the wedding festivities and came across an advertisement for a role in the US. He wasted no time and quickly applied.
 
“It’s almost like it was meant to be, because shortly I applied they replied and asked if I could get there immediately. However, there was a problem: I didn’t have a passport at the time!” he says.

In fact, the first time Bramley flew on an aeroplane, anywhere, was when he went overseas to work. It was an opportunity to test out the corporate waters.

Bramley is an engineer by training, but his career in IT began in his late 20s when he moved to the US to work as a techie. He explains that at some point, the team leader was transitioning out of the company to pursue entrepreneurship. This presented Bramley with the opportunity to run the company in the US. The team consisted of developers based in North Carolina and designers based in Cape Town. Under Bramley's leadership, the company grew and was eventually sold to a South African system integrator.

Bramley leans more on the side of a visionary tech leader, “I get bored easily,” he says, which probably explains why he studied engineering and then later got into  IT. “Even my CIO will tell me how I love to have multiple projects on the go, and I can contribute in different parts of the business even down to contract negotiations.”

He explains that he has an instinct as a big picture person: “I’m often described as a person with too many ideas that people can’t implement fast enough, but that also comes with its own disadvantages.” You need an eye for talent, and the ability to assemble the team at speed to execute on his ideas. This is one of his strengths.

Bramley joined Sasol through his stint with a Johannesburg-based IT integrator as managing executive, within a department that did a lot of enterprise content management work for Sasol. “When I eventually joined Sasol, my first question was, ‘What is your vision for enterprise content management?’” he explains. “It became quite apparent quickly that things weren’t working as they should’ve and change was needed. People even had names for things that didn’t work, for example, SharePoint was called Scarepoint,” he says.

It’s not about the tool, but how you use it!

He notes that it all boiled down to the team at the time using the right tools, but for the wrong requirements, which led him to introduce a workflow tool. “It gave them autonomy, moved quickly, and moved the heavy load out of SharePoint, and introduced a new concept called citizen development.

“Citizen development is built on the idea that IT will never have enough resources to solve every problem in business. The best strategy in this case was to encourage people in the business to become solution builders, and it was a success from an adoption perspective. 

“Today, citizen development is now the capability embedded in the company. We have business users build applications in operations for automation processes and in-functions for productivity use cases. Over 60 applications are in production.”

Bramley’s experience in technology development and pre-sales allowed him to have a deep understanding of who are the right people to talk to in order to get things over the line when he officially joined Sasol. This skill came in very handy when he got involved in the chemicals company’s workflow project. 

“I was told it would take months to complete the procurement of the tool, but I had a feeling it could happen sooner,” he says. “I was informed that a statement of direction document needed to be written by the enterprise architect. At that point, they said they did not have the capacity to write the document. I understood this process very well and offered to write the statement of direction myself to expedite approval, and that's exactly what I did – I don’t take no for an answer. He adds, “If you don’t ask, you won't get,” – a practice he picked up during his time in the US.

However, not taking no for an answer came as a culture shock too, especially in a South African context. It was a very western approach to doing things. As such, Bramley needed help, and that was the introduction of change management in his team. It helped him greatly in terms of delivery, tool adoption and ability to read the room. 

“A huge highlight in my digital transformation endeavours at Sasol was introducing DevOps capabilities at the company – to deliver products in a consistent way – a two-year project and well worth it,” he adds. DevOps process was introduced in the heart of IT and today delivery teams have the ability to shorten the deployment cycles from three weeks to just 60 minutes.

A series of even more successful projects followed, which positioned Bramley as the man who gets things done. 

New tech and trends

Bramley is currently driving the infusion of AI in IT operations through AIOps and the GenAI strategy. AIOps aims to ensure that automation is at the core of every interaction with customers, striving for touchless IT operations. With AIOps, the goals are to improve IT efficiencies, reduce costs and enhance user experience.

The GenAI strategy follows the successful publication of the company’s AI and GenAI policy and the accompanying playbook. The playbook serves as a guide for responsible AI usage, ensuring that solutions can scale and deliver value for the organisation.

Each one, teach one

The African-American proverb: “Each one, teach one,” rings very true for Bramley’s career. He gained valuable lessons from his mentors and it became contagious as he too developed an interest in mentorship – that’s what keeps him busy outside of the boardroom these days. 

One area that Bramley is passionate about is helping mentees to not just focus on technology for its own sake, but to understand the value it provides to the organisation and how it augments human limitations. The journey from techie to being the head of digital innovation enablement has afforded opportunities to evolve Bramley’s perspective in technology and leadership. 

He uses mentorship as one of the avenues to demystify technology and highlight uses and advancements at work and in daily life, hitting two birds with one stone: doing what he loves (mentorship) and talking about what he loves (technology). “It feels like I have come full circle,” he says.

“Some of the best leaders are those that give,” he concludes. “People tend to deliver more when they feel as if their personal well-being matters.”

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