Meet Our Team: Thulani Stephen Sishange


Meet Our Team: Thulani Stephen Sishange Featured Image

Meet Our Team: Thulani Stephen Sishange


Managing Executive KZN Regional Operations and Sales KZN

What three words would you use to describe yourself? Collaborative. Results-driven. Strategic.

How would you describe your day job to a child? I'm more like a captain of a big team, who moves things from where they are made to your favourite stores where you can buy them. We have big warehouses (like huge storage cupboards) where we keep things fresh, safe, some need to stay cold like your favourite ice cream, and we use big special trucks to move them around.

Why did you choose to be part of the Vector Logistics’ team? Because of the company’s values, especially value number 1. We care and champion our people – Customers, Colleagues and Communities.

What excites you about this role? Every day brings new challenges to solve, the challenge of optimizing operations, leading diverse teams through difficult situations, making tough decisions, and seeing tangible results from strategic improvements is what excites me daily.

How would you describe a high-performance organisation? Culture drives performance - people are engaged, motivated, and empowered to make decisions. Customer focus is non-negotiable - every decision considers the end customer. Clarity meets accountability – everyone understands their roles and takes ownership of their results.

How do you keep yourself/your team motivated? I always remember why I’m doing this - the complexity, problem-solving, operational excellence – reminds me what drew me to this great field when the grind feels heavy. Also, I remain a teachable student – never stop learning, new industry trends, new technologies, flexible leadership approaches, staying curious keeps the role fresh. Team motivated: I always celebrate wins, with my teams - big and small - whether passing audits, team’s hitting targets or budgets, resolving a complex delivery challenge, etc. Lead from the front – I always try to be visible on the shop floor, trade visits with delivery crew, this keeps me connected to reality.

Do you have a mentor/coach? I’m extremely fortunate to have three mentors, Elvina Maduray assists with finances, Victor Leew and Bonga Bhengu assist with Operations complexities.

Given a chance, who would you like to be for a day? President Cyril Ramaphosa – to drastically address unemployment in South Africa.

If you were the CEO for a day, what would you change or introduce? I would introduce - Talent Development Pipeline: to formalise a leadership academy that identifies and develops future senior managers from within. The logistics industry, especially food and cold chain industry faces a skills shortage, it is evidence that the institutional knowledge of best people needed is irreplaceable, takes immense time replace prudent and best fit candidates.

On a lighter note… What is your most memorable facepalm (embarrassing) moment? A distressed customer filed a complaint with our CEO office, and we needed to give immediate feedback. I gave my COO inaccurate information that I had learned from one of my team members, and I subsequently had to call my COO to apologise and provide the correct information. I've learned to double-check information before sending it to my superiors.

When was the last time you laughed so hard? I always making it a point it happens frequently, I even attend stand-up comedian shows as much as I can.

What is your guilty pleasure? I’m a sucker for those heavy delivery vehicles, when a passionate driver reverses that massive combination on the delivery bay all at once, or when pulling off that massive machine, shifting gears up to 18 and breaking it, shifting down to the lowest gears, I get goosebumps.

What is one thing people do not know about you? I was a true Introvert when I was young.

If you could invite one famous person (dead or alive) to dinner, who would it be and why? My father – I would want him to see the man I have become, and all that God has blessed me with… that I’m humbly grateful and appreciative of.