A few years ago I moderated a series of workshops for UNHCR to help them and their implementation partners strategise about the future of the Dadaab refugee camp. Their then Deputy Resident Representative Kilian Kleinschmidt (who is now active in Syria) dreamed of seeing the hand-to-mouth refugee camp dependent on mere humanitarian assistance transform into […]
https://mike-eldon.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2014/09/mike.jpg400306artkenyahttps://artkenya.net/mikeeldon/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2014/09/logo.pngartkenya2019-02-07 16:19:312019-02-07 16:19:33Turkana County is a study in how to treat refugees
In my last article of 2018 I promised to write more about one of my favourite management gurus, Prof Edgar Schein of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). I described this 90-year old as the father of organisational psychology and organisational culture, and praised the way he was so ahead of his time when he published […]
https://mike-eldon.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2014/09/mike.jpg400306artkenyahttps://artkenya.net/mikeeldon/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2014/09/logo.pngartkenya2019-01-17 11:32:172019-01-23 11:38:02Drop the know-it-all attitude to become an effective leader
Exactly ten years ago I wrote a column on careers guidance in which I described how when I joined the Rotary Club of Nairobi in 1978 the first job I was given was to take care of the careers guidance portfolio. Like most young people making their way through their school years I had never […]
https://mike-eldon.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2014/09/mike1.jpg400306artkenyahttps://artkenya.net/mikeeldon/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2014/09/logo.pngartkenya2018-12-06 11:01:212018-12-06 11:01:21This is a must-read book for job hunters
After my last article on econocracy I don’t want my review of economists to end on a negative note (several readers wrote to tell me the field is more diverse than I had indicated), so today I celebrate the winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize for Economics, Richard Thaler, co-author with Cass Sunstein of the […]
https://mike-eldon.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2014/09/mike1.jpg400306artkenyahttps://artkenya.net/mikeeldon/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2014/09/logo.pngartkenya2018-11-22 10:31:052018-11-22 10:31:05How to nudge citizens to do good for society
A few weeks ago I wrote about the need to amplify the voice of economists in our country. In my article I spoke glowingly about my own experience as an economics undergraduate, acknowledging the way my professors opened up my powers of critical analysis and connected me so fully to the economic issues of the […]
https://mike-eldon.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2014/09/mike1.jpg400306artkenyahttps://artkenya.net/mikeeldon/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2014/09/logo.pngartkenya2018-11-08 13:06:402018-11-08 13:06:40How economists have lost touch with reality
I’m sure that like me you have been hearing about the increasing number of young people who feel anxious and depressed, even suicidal. And this is not just the poor and the unqualified. It includes many of the brightest and the best, the most educated and affluent. In a BBC programme the other day there […]
https://mike-eldon.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2014/09/mike1.jpg400306artkenyahttps://artkenya.net/mikeeldon/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2014/09/logo.pngartkenya2018-10-26 09:01:072018-10-26 09:01:07Proper way of coaching the young and anxious
By coincidence, last week not one but two of my coaching clients asked me to take time with them so they could do a better job of handling growing feelings of frustration. As a result they were becoming unduly irritable and sometimes downright angry; they were more intolerant, even shouting at those who did not […]
https://mike-eldon.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2014/09/mike.jpg400306artkenyahttps://artkenya.net/mikeeldon/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2014/09/logo.pngartkenya2018-10-11 10:19:392018-10-11 10:19:39What to do when mounting sense of frustration hits
In 1967, having graduated from university with a degree in economics, I earned the right to place BSc Econ after my name. Had I gained the equivalent qualification as an architect here in Kenya I would now call myself Arch. Mike Eldon; if I would have become an accountant I would now boast of being […]
https://mike-eldon.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2014/09/mike.jpg400306artkenyahttps://artkenya.net/mikeeldon/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2014/09/logo.pngartkenya2018-09-27 10:23:542018-09-27 10:23:54Our economists should have more influential voice
Like millions of others, I witnessed the uplifting memorial service to honour former war hero, senator and presidential candidate John McCain. Mr McCain’s daughter Meghan was the first to pay tribute to him. “We gather here to mourn the passing of American greatness,” she lamented. “The real thing, not cheap rhetoric from men who will […]
https://mike-eldon.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2014/09/mike1.jpg400306artkenyahttps://artkenya.net/mikeeldon/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2014/09/logo.pngartkenya2018-09-17 10:00:282018-09-17 10:00:28Lessons from the character of John McCain
Some years ago I wrote enthusiastically about John Kotter’s “eight steps to change” that many, including here in Kenya, have followed as a guide to transforming their organisations. Kotter laid these out in his 1996 book, Leading Change, and then 10 years later, together with Holger Rathberger, he published Our Iceberg Is Melting, that brought […]
https://mike-eldon.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2014/09/mike1.jpg400306artkenyahttps://artkenya.net/mikeeldon/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2014/09/logo.pngartkenya2018-08-30 14:40:542018-08-30 14:40:54Firms grow with systems, vision and inspiration
In the last few months I have come across numerous examples of employees who, as a result of a planned restructuring of the organisation in which they work, feel they will be losing out. They expect to suffer from woes such as diminished seniority, influence, control and prestige — even redundancy, while more practically also […]
https://mike-eldon.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2014/09/mike1.jpg400306artkenyahttps://artkenya.net/mikeeldon/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2014/09/logo.pngartkenya2018-08-16 08:27:102018-08-16 08:27:10Involve staff in layoff plan to ease feelings
A couple of weeks ago I was invited to be a panelist on NTV’s am Live Friday morning Leadership Forum, and when anchor Debarl Inea told me the theme would be “Leadership Character” I began thinking about how to fill the few minutes I would be given within the programme to present on the subject. […]
https://mike-eldon.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2014/09/mike1.jpg400306artkenyahttps://artkenya.net/mikeeldon/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2014/09/logo.pngartkenya2018-07-19 11:01:122018-07-19 11:01:26Leadership character can be used positively to empower others
https://mike-eldon.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2014/09/mike1.jpg400306artkenyahttps://artkenya.net/mikeeldon/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2014/09/logo.pngartkenya2018-07-13 08:12:502018-07-13 08:12:50Monitoring, evaluating… and then what?
https://mike-eldon.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2014/09/mike1.jpg400306artkenyahttps://artkenya.net/mikeeldon/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2014/09/logo.pngartkenya2018-07-13 08:04:572018-07-13 08:04:57Book review: NEW TOME: A journey through Ethiopian churches
When I came to Kenya in the late seventies I was struck by how very differently people here wrote from the way I had been used to in the UK. It was as though I had journeyed back in time to the Edwardian or even Victorian eras of stiffness and formality. As I wondered why […]
https://mike-eldon.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2014/09/mike1.jpg400306artkenyahttps://artkenya.net/mikeeldon/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2014/09/logo.pngartkenya2018-07-13 07:54:332018-07-13 07:55:04Write more like you talk to get the message across
In my last column I wrote about a storytelling event I co-hosted, and today I hold on to that theme in this my 300th Business Daily article. For as I looked back over the 11 years my column has been running, it occurred to me that what I have actually been doing each fortnight is […]
https://mike-eldon.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2014/09/mike1.jpg400306artkenyahttps://artkenya.net/mikeeldon/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2014/09/logo.pngartkenya2018-06-21 15:31:272018-06-21 15:31:27Marking a milestone by gleaning lessons from art of storytelling
My colleague Frank Kretzschmar and I have been hosting our story-telling Leaders Circles for 12 years. The theme for our most recent event was “The Necessary Evil of Compliance”, a topic increasingly in the forefront of our minds. Yes, we did include “necessary” before “evil”, acknowledging that, as former Deputy US Attorney-General Paul McNulty put […]
https://mike-eldon.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2014/09/mike.jpg400306artkenyahttps://artkenya.net/mikeeldon/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2014/09/logo.pngartkenya2018-06-07 11:11:312018-06-07 11:11:31The necessary evil that is compliance
Ah, new technology: it threatens and disrupts. It always has and it always will. In 19th century England a group of textile workers known as Luddites destroyed weaving machines to protest against their “fraudulent and deceitful” use that was designed, they alleged, to get round the then labour practices. Luddites feared that the time spent […]
https://mike-eldon.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2014/09/mike1.jpg400306artkenyahttps://artkenya.net/mikeeldon/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2014/09/logo.pngartkenya2018-05-24 09:54:062018-05-24 09:54:06It’s futile to stand in the way of new technology
A month ago I was privileged to attend the launch of Alice Wairimu Nderitu’s book on national cohesion and integration, Kenya, Bridging Ethnic Divides. Ms Nderitu was a founding Commissioner of the National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC), and before and since she has enjoyed a distinguished career promoting the cause of cohesion and integration, […]
https://mike-eldon.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2014/09/mike1.jpg400306artkenyahttps://artkenya.net/mikeeldon/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2014/09/logo.pngartkenya2018-05-10 08:39:252018-05-10 08:41:42NCIC does more work than what comes to surface
The Penguin Book of Modern Speeches (available at Text Book Centre and maybe elsewhere locally) reproduces a fascinating collection of speeches that have influenced history, and today I write about two among them. The first, delivered in 1960 to the South African Parliament by then British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, was about the “winds of […]
https://mike-eldon.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2016/01/mikeeldon02_280.jpg404280artkenyahttps://artkenya.net/mikeeldon/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2014/09/logo.pngartkenya2018-04-25 09:49:492018-04-26 09:57:33My selection of speeches that shaped history
Turkana County is a study in how to treat refugees
/in My Articles /by artkenyaA few years ago I moderated a series of workshops for UNHCR to help them and their implementation partners strategise about the future of the Dadaab refugee camp. Their then Deputy Resident Representative Kilian Kleinschmidt (who is now active in Syria) dreamed of seeing the hand-to-mouth refugee camp dependent on mere humanitarian assistance transform into […]
Drop the know-it-all attitude to become an effective leader
/in My Articles /by artkenyaIn my last article of 2018 I promised to write more about one of my favourite management gurus, Prof Edgar Schein of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). I described this 90-year old as the father of organisational psychology and organisational culture, and praised the way he was so ahead of his time when he published […]
This is a must-read book for job hunters
/in My Articles /by artkenyaExactly ten years ago I wrote a column on careers guidance in which I described how when I joined the Rotary Club of Nairobi in 1978 the first job I was given was to take care of the careers guidance portfolio. Like most young people making their way through their school years I had never […]
How to nudge citizens to do good for society
/in My Articles /by artkenyaAfter my last article on econocracy I don’t want my review of economists to end on a negative note (several readers wrote to tell me the field is more diverse than I had indicated), so today I celebrate the winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize for Economics, Richard Thaler, co-author with Cass Sunstein of the […]
How economists have lost touch with reality
/in My Articles /by artkenyaA few weeks ago I wrote about the need to amplify the voice of economists in our country. In my article I spoke glowingly about my own experience as an economics undergraduate, acknowledging the way my professors opened up my powers of critical analysis and connected me so fully to the economic issues of the […]
Proper way of coaching the young and anxious
/in My Articles /by artkenyaI’m sure that like me you have been hearing about the increasing number of young people who feel anxious and depressed, even suicidal. And this is not just the poor and the unqualified. It includes many of the brightest and the best, the most educated and affluent. In a BBC programme the other day there […]
What to do when mounting sense of frustration hits
/in My Articles /by artkenyaBy coincidence, last week not one but two of my coaching clients asked me to take time with them so they could do a better job of handling growing feelings of frustration. As a result they were becoming unduly irritable and sometimes downright angry; they were more intolerant, even shouting at those who did not […]
Our economists should have more influential voice
/in My Articles /by artkenyaIn 1967, having graduated from university with a degree in economics, I earned the right to place BSc Econ after my name. Had I gained the equivalent qualification as an architect here in Kenya I would now call myself Arch. Mike Eldon; if I would have become an accountant I would now boast of being […]
Lessons from the character of John McCain
/in My Articles /by artkenyaLike millions of others, I witnessed the uplifting memorial service to honour former war hero, senator and presidential candidate John McCain. Mr McCain’s daughter Meghan was the first to pay tribute to him. “We gather here to mourn the passing of American greatness,” she lamented. “The real thing, not cheap rhetoric from men who will […]
Firms grow with systems, vision and inspiration
/in My Articles /by artkenyaSome years ago I wrote enthusiastically about John Kotter’s “eight steps to change” that many, including here in Kenya, have followed as a guide to transforming their organisations. Kotter laid these out in his 1996 book, Leading Change, and then 10 years later, together with Holger Rathberger, he published Our Iceberg Is Melting, that brought […]
Involve staff in layoff plan to ease feelings
/in My Articles /by artkenyaIn the last few months I have come across numerous examples of employees who, as a result of a planned restructuring of the organisation in which they work, feel they will be losing out. They expect to suffer from woes such as diminished seniority, influence, control and prestige — even redundancy, while more practically also […]
Leadership character can be used positively to empower others
/in My Articles /by artkenyaA couple of weeks ago I was invited to be a panelist on NTV’s am Live Friday morning Leadership Forum, and when anchor Debarl Inea told me the theme would be “Leadership Character” I began thinking about how to fill the few minutes I would be given within the programme to present on the subject. […]
Monitoring, evaluating… and then what?
/in My Articles /by artkenyaThis is an article I wrote for ‘UN Special’, a magazine published by the UN for civil servants. Click here (link will open in a new window).
Book review: NEW TOME: A journey through Ethiopian churches
/in My Articles /by artkenyaAnd here’s a link to one of my book reviews which was recently published in the East African: Click here (link will open in a new window).
Write more like you talk to get the message across
/in My Articles /by artkenyaWhen I came to Kenya in the late seventies I was struck by how very differently people here wrote from the way I had been used to in the UK. It was as though I had journeyed back in time to the Edwardian or even Victorian eras of stiffness and formality. As I wondered why […]
Marking a milestone by gleaning lessons from art of storytelling
/in My Articles /by artkenyaIn my last column I wrote about a storytelling event I co-hosted, and today I hold on to that theme in this my 300th Business Daily article. For as I looked back over the 11 years my column has been running, it occurred to me that what I have actually been doing each fortnight is […]
The necessary evil that is compliance
/in My Articles /by artkenyaMy colleague Frank Kretzschmar and I have been hosting our story-telling Leaders Circles for 12 years. The theme for our most recent event was “The Necessary Evil of Compliance”, a topic increasingly in the forefront of our minds. Yes, we did include “necessary” before “evil”, acknowledging that, as former Deputy US Attorney-General Paul McNulty put […]
It’s futile to stand in the way of new technology
/in My Articles /by artkenyaAh, new technology: it threatens and disrupts. It always has and it always will. In 19th century England a group of textile workers known as Luddites destroyed weaving machines to protest against their “fraudulent and deceitful” use that was designed, they alleged, to get round the then labour practices. Luddites feared that the time spent […]
NCIC does more work than what comes to surface
/in My Articles /by artkenyaA month ago I was privileged to attend the launch of Alice Wairimu Nderitu’s book on national cohesion and integration, Kenya, Bridging Ethnic Divides. Ms Nderitu was a founding Commissioner of the National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC), and before and since she has enjoyed a distinguished career promoting the cause of cohesion and integration, […]
My selection of speeches that shaped history
/0 Comments/in My Articles /by artkenyaThe Penguin Book of Modern Speeches (available at Text Book Centre and maybe elsewhere locally) reproduces a fascinating collection of speeches that have influenced history, and today I write about two among them. The first, delivered in 1960 to the South African Parliament by then British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, was about the “winds of […]