How did Wayde van Niekerk win gold at the Olympics? Talent? Yes. Hard work? Of course. Determination? Absolutely. But like all top performers he also engaged the help of a coach.

One of my bugbears is when someone asks me if we do team building – the belief that if we all go rock climbing and have a boerewors roll and a beer after, the team will be built. To me, that’s just socialising.

A few years ago, I was speaking with a white CEO who was about to leave his job. I asked him if the issue of transformation had come up in the recruitment of his successor. I’ll never forget his reply:  “I really wonder whether there is a black person who could sustain what I have done. I really don’t want my work to be undone.”

This week I found myself contemplating a TED Talk by the Hollywood actress Thandie Newton. The child of a black Zimbabwean mother and an English father, Newton reflects on what it was like to grow up as a mixed-race child in 1970s England.