Q&A Sessions: Google’s SA country director tells us about his first 17 months in office

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Your tenure as South African country director of Google began in April 2020, just when the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic took hold, triggering lockdowns around the world. What was this time like for you personally — coming to terms with all the uncertainty that lay ahead?

I joined Google literally a few days after the first lockdown was announced and have been working from home all this time. This means I have not set foot in the office in the past 16 months … I’m very big on friendship and relationships. So I thrive in a space where I’m working with people who I get on with and there is a sense of fun and camaraderie. Working alone in a cold study hasn’t always been great. 

First of all, it’s lonely. I mean, I changed the industry I work in. I changed organisations and I joined at the top. So there’s an expectation that I will come in and give direction, set a vision, lead, inspire, motivate. And possibly have a little bit more technical knowledge than many other people — but that’s not the case. You know, I’m learning. I like to observe before I venture to give an opinion. I like to learn about how things work and the way they are done, before I start questioning or bringing in my own fresh ideas. So that’s been tough.

Everything is happening remotely, which means it’s down to your relationship skills. It’s down to your communication skills. It’s down to strong time-management skills, because every conversation has to be scheduled. It’s also down to forcing yourself to think about the stuff that you don’t know you don’t know. Because you don’t know what you don’t know, unless you sit down and ask: “What could be critical to my job that I need to know?” So I’ve had to do a lot of soul searching and a lot of digging.

Your father is Kaizer Chiefs legend Johnny ‘Magwegwe’ Mokoena. What is your fondest memory of your father and is football still a part of your life?

My father was such a rock star: He worked hard and played hard. Unfortunately for my brothers and I, his professional soccer career ended when we were toddlers, but from all the stories we’ve heard and read he was a genius on the soccer field. He was regarded as Orlando Pirates’ nemesis because he always scored against them.  

My dad’s parents were teachers. And they kind of forced him into teaching, which he did for a little bit, but he quit because what he loved was football …  We don’t have any TV recordings from those days, but we’ve got some newspaper clippings and just lots of word-of-mouth stories. So we didn’t get to see him play professionally. We got to see him play casually. It was fun. 

But after his soccer career, he got into business. He was always kind of like a magnet — this light bulb that drew moths. People were always around him. He had a big heart and so he had lots of friends, lots of followers. We had had a pub at some point and it was always full. And there are always stories. There was always jazz music and lots of soccer war stories … I just remember him being a very happy, loving guy.

So your father was a businessman: Is that how you developed your entrepreneurial spirit?

Working in the family business was really my first exposure, at a really young age, to an MBA. And I say it was an MBA, because an MBA is supposed to teach you about all parts of business. So a small business, in my view, is a microcosm of a large enterprise, because you haven’t got the workforce of a large enterprise. There are very few of you. So you do a lot of the stuff yourself — from finance, to bookkeeping, to distribution, to customer service, to sales, to marketing. 

So I got involved in all of that stuff at a very young age. I learned a lot of lessons, but I also acquired this confidence that let me know I could make it in business; I can be an entrepreneur. As long as you know how to make money and how not to destroy money, you’ll be fine. Because business is about creating value and doing everything in your power to avoid destroying value.

Alistair Mokoena. (Image: Delwyn Verasamy/M&G)

We have heard about your father, but what is your mother like?

My mom is 68 now. She’s a retired nursing professor and a wonderful, wonderful woman. She has this great inner strength. She is driven, ambitious, self-assured, with a lot of self love and a lot of love to give. My mom raised us with love. And she has been a friend, more than an authority figure.

She got married at a young age, at 21. So she had my brother at 21 and she had me at 23. She was finishing off her honours at the time. She used to mark assignments and exam papers in front of us. And she used to take my brothers and I to the university library on the weekends. We would page through nursing, pathology and anatomy textbooks pretending we were mini-surgeons. 

She also always supported my dad with his business enterprises and his life as an entertainer of people. There was always music in our home. And it was always lovely and fun. 

Today my mom lives 20km from me, so we see each other often. And she is young at heart. You know, people who teach young people remain youthful forever. My mom knows all the music genres. She’ll even tell you about the latest amapiano song. 

You have two young children. What has that been like, especially during the pandemic?

So, my wife and I got married at 26 and for the first 10 years of our marriage, we didn’t have kids. That allowed us to build a strong foundation for our marriage and to really get to enjoy each other. But it also allowed us to build our careers. We were able to achieve in our careers and throw ourselves into our work. My wife’s a lawyer. 

When our kids came, we had many more resources to give them. We had a strong foundation in terms of our marriage. Our careers were at an advanced stage. So for me the biggest priority right now is having a good, happy family and a good, happy home … Family will always be there and that’s really important to me. So I do what I do because I really want my family to have a good life and for my kids to have a good future.

I love the experiences that my job allows me to have. I’ve worked hard to be in the position that I am and I’ve had a lot of luck along the way. I’ve had a lot of support. I’ve had a lot of God’s blessings. And all of that is for my family. It is not just for me. 

So, in your view, is there any rush for young people to choose between their careers and starting a family?

I really think there is no formula. I look at my friends who had kids in their 20s and their kids are now in varsity. As parents, they are like: “Oh, thank goodness they’re out of the house. We’re free. We can enjoy our lives and travel.” But my wife and I have been to so many countries around the world. And most of that happened before the kids were born.

The way we define success is so different now. I mean entrepreneurship has become commonplace. There are very few barriers to entry. You can start a business with a cellphone or laptop and have a world market as your audience … And the world of work has changed. Gone are the days of having to work up the corporate ladder for 20 years until you get a gold watch.

I don’t think all of us aspire to be the most senior person, or the most remunerated. There is so much more to life.