Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson is the senior partner at Cox Yeats Attorneys. Michael was born in the Eastern Cape and moved to KwaZulu-Natal at a fairly young age. After completing his schooling, he studied at the University of Durban where he completed a LLB, following which, he went to study overseas at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom.

Before he went to Cambridge, Michael’s first job was lecturing to students which he undertook for about a year. He had also worked for his father in a wholesale company selling blankets and piece goods to trading stores – a very different experience, he commented.

Michael started working at Cox Yeats in 1988 and has been employed at the firm ever since.

ACHIEVING OBJECTIVES
His purpose is to ensure that the firm achieves the objectives of the individuals within it. Importantly that purpose is focused on ensuring that the firm meets the expectations and the aspirations of all the very ambitious people who work within it. “And that’s often quite hard actually, because you’ve got young people who start at an organisation who have great ambitions for the future,” he says.

Reflecting on his achievements, Michael explained, “I think something that I realised quite early on is that particularly in a people focused profession like law you have to try and maximise the abilities of all the people who work within an organisation.”

Consequently, one of the achievements that Michael is most proud of is to successfully harness the abilities of the people who work within Cox Yeats. “There’s no point in trying to run people. People will run you. It’s really to try and guide them so that one achieves the most and allowing people to achieve their ambitions on a collective basis creates enormous success and power within an organisation,” elaborates Michael.

CREATE TRUST
Reflecting on the advice that he has received over the years; Michael says that the best advice is never to try and undermine people because there is huge strength in people. He expanded, “There is a temptation particularly in the leadership position, to dominate people, and if you dominate people, you actually stifle their ability to achieve things. I found that as soon as you take the lid off everything that people do, you get this incredible awakening of individual spirit and power. And if you can harness that in an organisation collectively, you can achieve enormous things.”

Further to harnessing the team at Cox Yeats is the importance of motivation. For Michael, the most important thing is to create trust. “People have to trust you; they have to trust the system. And once they do that and you allow them to be individuals that usually creates a recipe to almost guarantee success. I’ve found that people solve problems, but you need to create the environment in which they are able to do that.”

HUGE OPPORTUNITIES
While Michael has faced many challenges over the years, the biggest one currently is that South Africa’s stagnant economy is problematic as people feel that it is very difficult to be successful in these circumstances. “People feel despair about their current conditions. To try to shift and turn that around so that that people feel positive and believe that this environment is one where they can succeed is the challenge. I think it’s quite an easy sell to be honest, because we have huge opportunities; to let people see those is probably the challenge.”

As Michael is very positive about South Africa, he finds the people of our history inspiring. “I’m proud to be part of South Africa. I’m proud to look back on the people who have faced the challenges of South Africa and how they did that. Particularly people who were able to face things like Apartheid and discrimination and become world leaders in advancing people’s liberties. The heritage that we have is very rich and you don’t find it in other countries, so we are privileged.”

Michael believes that we have a huge opportunity to make KwaZulu-Natal what it should be. His vision is that KwaZulu-Natal should achieve what it is entitled to. To ensure that this happens we need to unlock all the barriers that exist, which are not difficult things to unlock but are actually quite simple things that need to be done. He commented, “But, perhaps we need to unlock the spirit of the people a little and allow them to achieve and then KwaZulu-Natal will achieve.”

KEEP LIFE SIMPLE
Michael says that in life he does not strive to be anything particularly special but tries to live life in a simple way. He believes that if you are true to yourself and true to the people around you that you will be happy. He added that he has found that in life you should not become burdened by people and things that are negative; it’s important to try to be surrounded by people who are positive.

In conclusion he remarked, “You want to feel at the end of the day that you’ve achieved something that is relatively good; if it’s not something that is too extraordinary then you can achieve it. So, keep life simple.”