A few weeks months I wrote an article about how toxic cultures are often created by single individuals, and about how and why they behave as they do. Then, more recently, I was invited to be the external speaker at a half-day session hosted by Corporate Staffing Services on the theme “Surviving a Toxic CEO […]
Being a member of The Blue Company’s Ethics Committee that assesses potential new members and also their qualification for membership renewal, I was delighted to be part of last Friday’s “Going Blue” event at the Serena Hotel. It was a gathering of members, potential members and others interested in the anti-corruption theme of the Blue […]
Anyone who watches the BBC television channel will be familiar with Zeinab Badawi, including through her being one of the tough interviewers on HARDtalk. But we now see she is also a very skilled writer, having this year published An African History of Africa – From the Dawn of Humanity to Independence. Reading the book […]
Last week I was invited to be one of the speakers at the launch of Manu Chandaria’s biography, From Success to Significance, and what an amazing event it was, where over 600 people were gathered to celebrate the life of this extraordinary man. I opened my talk by saying it’s nearly half a century since […]
Going through some old papers of mine, I came across a 1990 interview with me by Isaiya Kabira for the Nation. I had already been in the IT industry for 23 years, and running IT companies (then called “computer companies”) in Kenya for the last 13 of these. I was talking about my leadership style […]
It’s fifteen years ago that I was introduced to the Balanced Scorecard, and in all my consulting work on strategy since I have consistently incorporated its approach. The concepts are well known and applied by a reasonable number of organisations in Kenya, but still only a small minority. So let me take you through the […]
Almost exactly ten years ago I wrote a column here about the launch of Joe Wanjui’s book, The Native Son: Experiences of a Kenyan Entrepreneur. In it I described the enthusiasm around the event where, as I put it then, “speakers during the evening were so effusive about the author who was being fêted that […]
I hardly ever drive my car anywhere in Nairobi these days, having become accustomed to the convenience of calling up an Uber Chap Chap. I so appreciate not having to deal with the heavy and unruly traffic, and not having to worry about parking. Plus, I enjoy chatting with many of my drivers. Not all […]
My last article was about the destructive influence of toxic marauders, and today I want to explore a related phenomenon, tensions between levels in organisations. It’s tough when such relationships are made difficult by each cohort believing they’re “OK” while the others are “not OK”. Inevitably it’s a lose-lose scenario, as the negative attitudes on […]
Should leaders be the ones to eat last? The US Marines believe so, as it shows they care for their people and are prepared to sacrifice for them. It’s why Simon Sinek chose Leaders Eat Last as the title of his best-selling book, first published in 2014. We selected it as the topic for our […]
