To my grandchildren: how you can lead a happy and fulfilled life

A few weeks ago, my daughter asked me to write a letter to her children, my grandchildren, laying out what it will take for them to lead a happy and fulfilled life. Here’s what I came up with:

My dear grandchildren, all three of you are delightful young characters. Each of you is different, with your own characters and personalities, your own natural strengths, and areas where you are much less comfortable. You are lucky to have wonderful parents, who know how to get the best out of you. And they are lucky that you take advantage of all they have to offer you.

As you make your way through your teenage years, like all teenagers there’s so much exploring you do. Some of it fills you with anxiety, and setbacks occur. And some fills you with excitement, as your achievements give you the confidence to continue being bold and courageous. In among these it’s very impressive to see you are with those who have been playing leadership roles.

Who knows what each of you will end up doing after you go through your studies and enter the workplace? Any by the way there’s no rush to decide. Keep up the great variety of learning experiences you are going through, from the academic to the sport, music, dancing, community work, travel and others.

So what advice can I give you? Alongside all the skills you are getting hold of, so significant is how you behave – with yourself and with everyone around you. Those who do well in life, who feel comfortable interacting with other human beings, of whatever age, occupation, nationality and so on, will always be way ahead of those who find it harder to do so. It may be because they are shy, perhaps because they prefer to just get on with doing tasks quietly on their own, but for whatever reason they’ll really be missing out.

So what kind of behaviour is helpful, and what is unhelpful? You already know a lot about this, from your own experiences. So think about what has worked well for you, what has not… and why. This within the family, with school and other friends, and beyond. What lessons have you learned? How have you got better? Where can you still improve?

I remember quite some years ago when your mother and I were with you two brothers in London, and as we were walking along the street you started nagging each other. As I was watching you I decided to help you stop. Here’s how I suggested you go about it.

Each of us has a sense of whether we are “OK” or “Not OK”. What does that mean? If I think I am “OK”, I feel comfortable with myself and don’t need to go around making others feel uncomfortable. But that is if I also think that you are “OK”. And surely between the two of you, both are very much so – as the years since then have shown you to fully accept.

The next bit, which works together with this, is you get on with those who are younger or older, more senior or more junior – as it is between you elder and younger brothers. Do the older and more senior ones treat the younger or more junior ones, as “parents” treat “children”? Or, never mind these differences, do they treat them as just another good person?

The way this can be described is that they behave neither as “parents” (never mind “stern parents”) nor as children (never mind “naughty children”), but as “adults” – sober, mature characters who have good conversations that lead to good results.

The “So what?” of this behaviour should be that everyone ends up in a good place. To put it simply, they get to “Win-Win”. This is what emotional intelligence is all about, a vital skill to develop. If you do, then people will be attracted to you – you will be a great team member, and a great leader of teams. And if you don’t, as many do not, you will find it very much harder to live a happy and fulfilled life.

I also wrote about the need to be humble, while enjoying one’s competencies. I urged them to be curious, asking questions and not just spouting their own views. I’m happy my grandchildren have a strong sense of humour and enjoy plenty of laughter. Where there is this lightness, it so reinforces emotional intelligence, making it much easier to work and play together.

I asked my grandchildren to think about it all, to chat with each other, and to get back to me. The way it worked out was that my daughter read my letter to each of her children separately, and this led to good conversations between them. As I hope it does between you and relevant relatives.

Shell report 1967

Going through my archives, I came across a report from November 1967 produced by Shell that my father Bruno had passed down to me. At that time he was Shell’s Head of Worldwide Management Training, based in London, and this fascinating document must have acted as a powerful guide to him and his colleagues.

What was I up to at that time, now nearly half a century ago? A couple of months earlier I had obtained my undergraduate degree and I had just joined the British computer multinational that ten years later brought me here.

Here’s how Shell’s Group Personnel Coordinator (as such folk were called then) H.W. Atcherley opened his foreword to the report:

“We talk a great deal these days, and necessarily so, about more effective utilisation of manpower. In the course of this dialogue we will probably concede that management knowledge of motivation, attitudes and other factors which influence staff morale, job performance and personal satisfaction lags some way behind knowledge of the technical, financial and other aspects of the business.”

He went on to appreciate the increasing role being played by social scientists in building up a body of knowledge about human behaviour and the requirements for organising people to carry out a task. This knowledge was largely unfamiliar within the company, and so they brought in Dr. Hollis Peter to design and carry out a survey.

Atcherley then mentioned their reference to Douglas McGregor’s in his The Human Side of Enterprise, and also to the work of an MIT colleague of McGregor’s, Prof. Edgar H. Schein. These were the founding gurus of culture in the workplace and of organisational development, and I know they were a great influence on how my father put his management development programmes together.

I was delighted to see reference to one of my favourite frameworks, Blake and Mouton’s Management Grid, where they drew up a matrix between managers who focused on tasks versus those who focused on people – where the ideal of course is that it should not be either one or the other but both.

Survey participants were selected from 25 countries around the world (with over half of them expatriates), and included ones from the head-office functions in London and The Hague.

The following statements were laid out, for them to agree or disagree with:

  1. Leadership skills can be acquired by most people, regardless of their inborn traits and abilities.
  2. Generally speaking, people prefer to be directed, and wish to avoid responsibility.
  3. The use of rewards and penalties is not the best way to get subordinates to do their work.
  4. A good leader should give detailed and complete instructions to his subordinates, rather than depending on their initiative to work out the details.
  5. If subordinates cannot influence their superiors, then they lose some influence on them.
  6. Group goal setting offers advantages that cannot be obtained by individual goal setting.
  7. A superior should give his subordinates only that information that is necessary for them to do their immediate task.
  8. The superior’s authority over his subordinates is primarily economic.

It also identified four different management styles from among which the respondents were invited to select their preferred one: autocratic, paternalistic, consultative and participative. Sounds familiar?

I was introduced to these emerging management theories in an academic context when I was going through my Sloan Masters programme in the mid-seventies at the London Business School, and my whole point here – not for the first time in this column – is to provide an objective time-perspective on the evolution of management knowledge over the years. In particular to stress that whereas it is so commonly assumed that our preferred contemporary styles only emerged in this 21st century, that is clearly not the case – at least not for ahead-of-the-game organisations like Shell.

As I read through the report, I was not surprised to see that explicitly only men were involved, 100%. No mention of women at all. I also noted that computers were just entering the scene, with reference to this emerging technology.

I could write much more about the contents and conclusions of the survey. But suffice it to say that it made a big impact on me, recognising that when I was still in my twenties there were management thinkers and doers who would have fitted into today’s organisations as well as their succeeding generation counterparts.

I hope that what I have selected here makes you also reflect on the development of knowledge flows over time, and on how to get a feel for the relationship between an organisation and its staff.

The Dunning-Kruger effect

I’ve been reading an article by Carmine Gallo from the January 2020 edition of the Harvard Business Review (HBR) about how the best CEOs are the ones who know they can improve their skills further, not least their communication skills, particularly through coaching.

Exactly what I have found in my work as a consultant.

The HBR article refers to the Dunning-Kruger effect, and explains it by stating that “people who are mediocre at certain things often think they are better than they actually are, and therefore fail to grow and improve. Great leaders, on the other hand, are great for a reason – they recognize their weaknesses and seek to get better.”

The Dunning-Kruger effect is described as a “cognitive bias”, in which people with limited competence in a particular domain overestimate their abilities. It was first described by David Dunning and Justin Kruger in 1999, and it has since become very well known. It is usually measured by comparing self-assessment with objective performance. For example, participants take a quiz and estimate their performance afterwards, and this is then compared to their actual results.

The original study focused on logical reasoning, grammar and social skills. But other studies have been conducted across a wide range of tasks, including from business, politics, medicine, driving, aviation, spatial memory, examinations in school and literacy, and they all found this over-estimation phenomenon exhibited by significant numbers. I should add that under-estimation is also present in some, leading to the “imposter syndrome” narrative, about which I have also written.

In earlier articles of mine here I have explored various aspects of this subject, including ones about the relationship between competence and confidence. Here, I have suggested, it is particularly politicians – in Kenya and around the world – whose confidence greatly exceeds their competence, and I selected former British Prime Minister Liz Truss as a fine example.

I quoted an article in the London Times about her, whose headline read: “Truss proves talent-free bluster isn’t just for men”. And its opening paragraph told us she broke one of the last glass ceilings – not as the first female Prime Minister in her country, for she was not, but as “the first woman to reach the highest office propelled by gargantuan self-belief alone”.

Why is there this bias to over-estimating one’s capabilities – or indeed in others to under-estimate them? The simple answer is lack of self-awareness. Such people lack an objective view of their strengths and weaknesses, and do not seek feedback from those with whom they interact to align their perceptions with reality. And who would be particularly well-placed to open them up to such gaps? Coaches.

Coaching is at the centre of my consulting work, where I seek to create a safe space in which the person being coached feels comfortable revealing vulnerabilities they had previously kept to themselves or had not even been aware of. My role is to help them identify areas for potential development, and then work with them to fill the gaps and so to be at their best.

What I have observed over the years is that those most in need of coaching are likely to least want it, imagining they just don’t need such support. They have a false sense of both competence and confidence that anyway would render them uncoachable. Those who reach out to me for support are overwhelmingly the ones who are already ahead of the game, as Gallo also found. They expect to be able to continuously improve and to do so, seeking ongoing feedback that it is actually happening.

So let me ask you how self-aware you are. Indeed, how sure are you that your perception of the extent of your self-awareness aligns with that of those around you, whether in the family, socially or professionally? At whatever age and level age you are, I urge you to carry out a “health-check” on where this stands between very low and very high.

Wherever you are, as Gallo and I have both found, there is most likely to be scope for being coached to rise further. There may be good coaches within your organisation, including your immediate boss, a board member or others, but there may be benefits to seeking an external coach – who will have no axe to grind within the organisation.

Finally, just as it’s helpful to be coached, surely you could and should also be a coach. Indeed contemporary leadership requires a coaching mindset as a key component in how one operates in that capacity.

Please seek a quiet space in which to reflect on what you have just read, and decide what action to take.

Upward appraisal Dan

I recently came across this short note from my son Dan at the time he was in America at college in around 1990. Even though we weren’t then living together, he wrote, he felt my presence around in his head, and this in the form of good memories of long talks, lectures, skits and jokes over dinner. He went on to say that the things he had learned from me have given him more real-life information and a way of clear thinking and problem-solving than any college course or person ever could.

Why did I decide to share with you what he wrote to me all those years ago? It’s because it occurred to me that he was offering me what one might call an “upward appraisal”. My performance as a father was top of the scale, he reckoned, in both the closeness and warmth of our relationship and in my helping him to develop as a young man.

Well, as a parent I was so fortunate to have two children who never went through rebellious times, and who were trustworthy. OK, it was much to do with how we treated them, but that isn’t guaranteed to lead to happy outcomes. They were easy to support in whatever they wanted to do without us having to act as stern, curtailing parents, and we enjoyed our cheerful friendship.

The big bonus for me, as I explained when I was giving my talk at the Engage 14 event in 2017, was that my “leadership style” with Dan and his sister Amy strongly influenced how I emerged as a leader in my professional life.

So now let me ask you to what extent your children share with you how they assess the way you behave with them. Is there sufficient openness for them to identify areas where they would like you to act differently? To ask more than tell? To appreciate more than criticise? To support rather than inhibit? While for you, are you skilled at communicating to them what it would take for such changes to indeed take place? I often talk and write about the importance of exchanging offers and requests, and here’s such an important place for that to occur in, so that agreements are reached and changes for the better take place.

It might be that someone else can become involved, an uncle or a grandmother, a sibling or a non-relative, who first listens to both sides’ “appraisals” separately and then brings parent and child together. (For me, it was my Uncle Alex, my father’s elder brother.)

Sadly, as many of my readers are aware, my son Dan died in 1993, at the age of 22, so our relationship on this earth was forced to end. His spirit lives on though, and just like he told me I inspired him as he was growing up he continues to inspire me. He would have been in his fifties now, as his sister Amy also is, and so now let share how she and I sometimes interact.

The term that immediately occurs to me is “mutual mentoring”. Just like I have continued mentoring her over the decades, she and I have been relaxed about what’s become known as “inverse mentoring”, as she is permanently concerned about my wellbeing. Usually, it’s to reinforce that how I am approaching some issue is very OK, but sometimes it’s to offer an alternative perspective.

That requires some boldness, but happily Amy’s emotional intelligence is such that she knows how to express her views in ways that are least likely to simply generate pushback from this old man. The more the differences between us on a particular issue, the more we are likely to laugh about it and, well, sometimes I cave in and sometimes I hold firm.

Readers of mine also know only too well that I love what are called Adult-Adult relationships over Parent-Child ones, as these are much more likely to be constructive and solution-oriented, resulting in both being better off as a result.

Let me now therefore invite you, as a mother or a father, to reach out to your children and ask them how they feel about the way you interact with them. See what they like about your attitudes and behaviour and should continue the way they are, and what they would wish to be different. Let me also ask the sons and daughters who are reading this to reach out to your parents in a similar way.

Rebellious teenagers: generational overgeneralisations

The way people are examining Gen Z mindsets these days one would imagine that the term “rebellious teenager” was coined just the other day. But no. It came about in the Post World War II 1950s, by when a new category between childhood and adulthood had already been identified. Beyond that surely this is a timeless and global phenomenon, with a whole spectrum from the over-compliant to the over-resentful along the centuries of mankind.

For me generational generalisations have always been overstated, as are others between genders, levels of education, national and regional cultures and elsewhere. Surely, when you look back on your teenage years you relate at least somewhat to the contemporary teenage phenomenon? Weren’t you considered over-ambitious by your elders, unduly impatient to get ahead? Didn’t you enjoy music and fashion that were in ostentatious contrast to those your parents found appealing?

My generation is too old to be among the “baby boomers” who emerged following the Second World War and are renowned for their stability and structures. No, I am one of the “Silent Generation”, who apparently just did as we were told as we worked in factories and farms and were restrained conformists. Really? Me? I don’t think so. Surely I too wanted to be included and to have my voice heard. So that when it was I felt motivated and engaged and when it was not I retreated and under-performed.

Having entered the IT industry in 1967 at the launch of my career I was exposed to a sector that enjoyed much flatter and more fluid organisational pyramids than most. For with the rapid succeeding generations of technology, many disruptively replacing their predecessors, there was no room for insufficient respect downwards or excessive respect upwards. We all had to just deal with the challenges, accepting that some did so better than others.

When I read about Millennials and GenZs in the workplace and how impatient they are with so many of their bosses, I recall clearly how early in my career I knew by leadership style would be dramatically different from that of some of my much more instruction-giving bosses, relics of earlier eras – and often former army officers from during the Second World War.

Then there’s the whole onset of digitisation, with the transformation of relationships and now living one’s life through one’s phone. But does that mean we analogue oldies are stuck back in our antiquated silos? Do I not upload these columns to LinkedIn and Facebook, and chew away at my WhatsApp messages 24/7?

And what about the consequences of Covid, leading to the acceleration of the virtual world? Did I not get aboard the Skype and the Zoom and the TEAMS buses to survive in this 2st century? Of course I did. Like everyone around me of all generations I must be ever mindful of my e-traffic, knowing I am expected to be highly responsive. It’s very challenging, yes, but there’s no choice unless I am to just retire to the village and look after my goats.

Having said all that I must accept that digital natives – and in particular my grandson Githuku – play the role of inverted mentors to me, guiding me and sorting out my sticking points. What comes to him with easy intuition is often a struggle for me, but continuous learning by doing is the name of the game, keeping calm and assuming I will find my way through.

Have I been ahead of my times as a leader? I guess so. I was fortunate in that my father led Shell’s worldwide management training division in London as I was growing up, and this exposed me to the emerging styles of collaborative and adaptive leadership. It was the norm for Shell, and it became the norm for me. I have also always been a protocolophobic, insisting on just being called Mike and wanting to just call others by their first name too.

We must accept, however, that there are still so many tut-tutting baby-boomers and others who feel quite frustrated by the attitudes and behaviours of their juniors. And much of this is to do with how these juniors have also not learned ways of dealing with them by applying emotional intelligence. That’s what’s needed on both sides, so that we all get to win-win, rather than indulging in “I’m OK – You’re not OK” tussles.

Please keep a sober perspective on all this, assuming there are enjoyable ways of coexisting and realising the benefits of each background.

Mark Carney, no populist

Some months ago, I was sitting at Mombasa airport waiting for my flight back to Nairobi when my eye caught the cover of a book someone near me was carrying. Its title was “Values”, not at all unusual, but the word was printed upside down, and I wondered why. I asked the gentleman with the book to let me see it more closely, and read that it was “An Economist’s Guide to Everything That Matters”, published in 2021. And who was the author? Mark Carney, the former Governor of the Central Banks of Canada and England… and now the Prime Minister of Canada. I immediately bought a copy of the book.

Why was the word upside down? Because Carney was so concerned about the poor values we are living with these days, and this made his point. His 456-page book opens with his 10-page preface, and just on the first page of that we really get to know the man. He writes about how privileged he was to benefit from all the advantages he did, including with his elite education at Harvard and Oxford. He was with Goldman Sachs for 17 years, and then – and he goes out of his way to say it – it made him very humble as he tried to build a better world for all, while turning challenges into opportunities.

On to the second page, where he tells us he wrote the book because radical changes are needed in the world to overcome the crisis of values – this thanks to the inequalities we are witnessing. It’s all to do with inequalities of wealth, education and health opportunities, with climate change, and with too many valuing the present over the future.

Let me now jump to page nine, where he summarises that the success of an economy is contingent on a set of immutable, fundamental, common values and beliefs, which he lists as:

  • dynamism – to help create solutions that channel human creativity
  • resilience – to make it easier to bounce back from the shocks while protecting the most vulnerable in society
  • sustainability – with long-term perspectives that align incentives across generations
  • fairness – particularly in markets to sustain their legitimacy
  • responsibility – so that individuals feel accountable for their actions
  • solidarity – whereby citizens recognise their obligations to each other and share a sense of community and society
  • • humility – to recognise the limits of our knowledge, understanding and power so that we can act as custodians seeking to improve the common good.

Carney has a whole chapter on leadership, which he describes as key, but not in the heroic form of “follow me”. He writes: “In my experience, behavioural and participative forms of leadership underscore the extent to which leadership is less about what leaders achieve themselves and more about both the sense of purpose they impart to their colleagues and the actions they catalyse in pursuit of that objective”.

For him, they must assess the landscape to determine how their organisation can plan the future: “Ambitious leadership means helping to shape the future rather than just reacting to it.” Good leaders combine personal humility, self-knowledge and the ability to learn. This means “admitting mistakes, seeking and accepting feedback and sharing the lessons.

Being… and doing

Before I start let me correct an error in my last column, where I stated that it was 275th. No, it was the 475th. Then, I want to pay tribute to Sunny Bindra, who at the end of last month informed us in his Sunday Nation column which had been running weekly for over two decades that this one, his 1,146th, was to be his last. What an achievement, Sunny, and what great articles. Thank you.

Now to today’s. We are all so busy going about our daily responsibilities, and then one day a health issue hits us, putting us completely out of action. Our world is turned upside down as we must interrupt ongoing obligations and take on no new ones. What a mindset shift that requires, one for which we are quite unprepared but where we are faced with no choice.

It’s happened to me from time to time over the last couple of decades, including in the pre-vaccine days of Covid, when I was hospitalised for eight weeks and almost faded out completely. I learned so much about my inner self in those days, contemplating my total inactivity as I worked to keep up with the essentials of life – the sleeping and breathing, the eating and washing… was there anything else? My appetite was so low, but I forced myself to imbibe adequately; I tried hard to carry out basic exercise; and I reached out to engage with the staff at the hospital.

I wrote about it at the time, focusing on what I learned was my “conscious discipline”, where I knew what I needed to do to overcome my zero-energy inertia so as to get back on the path to recovery and action. Happily it happened, and to my delight I managed to resume my active life.

Recently I was captured by another health issue that laid my energy flat, and so I have again been reflecting on how I have been dealing with it and how that in turn may help readers here who are also having to face such performance-halting setbacks.

It’s that very low-energy level which is so frustrating, preventing one from concentrating on whatever one had been doing. It’s even hard to read for more than a little while, and watching the news about Trump and his tariffs certainly won’t fill the gap.

The natural state for me at these times has been to just be, to do nothing. Just to breath, to sit or to lie down, and to hope that after a while I’ll find if not the energy then at least a way to defy its absence and do something – like write an article such as this on my laptop. I challenge and defy my apathy, knowing that even in my lowest of conditions I still want to be and am active in my mind and to share what I am going through.

I can be at my desk for not too long, but leave it feeling I have not completely wasted my day with nothing to say about it other than that I made it through to the evening. I have evidence of initiative, feeling proud that I have exceeded any reasonable expectation of accomplishment.

Having said that, it is equally important to simply accept what is absolutely not possible at such times, and to be calm and patient about the path to recovery and reactivation. I know I cannot rush, and so saying “No” is an everyday mantra. Happily, everyone around me easily understands this necessity, and I have been so appreciative of all the good wishes being offered to me. “Maybe later in May,” we say to each other, as we hope for an adequate Eldon by then.

So as I open up about all this to you, if you are experiencing some significant health issues or if someone you know is, I urge you to be very realistic and practical about it all. Be empathetic and compassionate to yourself, accepting fully the vulnerability it’s OK to display. Somehow find the strength to go beyond what could normally expected to be possible, defying flatness and breathlessness. Pick small acts that are just about possible to undertake, however brief, and then feel good about the micro-achievement.

Another aspect of the normal me that I somehow never lose, however weak I may feel, is my sense of humour. It’s something that lives deep within me, mixed around with an intrinsic cheerfulness. What I have found is that even at the hardest of times – whether to do with health issues or in work-related or other crises – such a spirit nicely dilutes the negatives and helps me and others on our way.

Please reflect on you and your health. Appreciate it while it’s in good shape, and if it is not apply a healthy mindset to its hopeful restoration.

Boards and culture

I’ve been asked to run another session on the importance of boards focusing on the culture of the organisations where they are directors. So as I sat down with my blank screen I decided to concentrate my mind on the subject in poetic form, boiling it down to its essence. Here’s what emerged.

Too often as I sit on boards
I hear my colleagues silent on this topic
of culture.
They’re so concerned with
compliance, oversight and risk,
as stern parents expecting to slap the wrists
of their irresponsible children.

Their time horizons are limited
to the last and next quarters –
OK, at a stretch to a whole year –
and they focus on hammering
weaknesses and threats,
with not enough attention paid
to opportunities and aspirations,
passions and strengths.

They sub-optimise to the short-term,
not bothering about longer-term sustainability,
while proudly imagining they are
champions of good governance.

People tell us that
“culture eats strategy for breakfast”,
But no – it’s not either/or,
not a zero-sum game.
There must be a culture strategy
within an overall one,
where they integrate together and synergise.

But what is culture, anyway?
It’s “the way we do things round here”.
It’s the way we behave,
as a reflection of our attitudes
and beneath that of our values.
And how we behave either makes us
more or less happy, engaged… and productive.

So how do we influence behaviour patterns,
ones that have long been the norm?
How do we celebrate uplifting behaviour
and keep it going?

Much more challenging, how do we
get rid of dysfunctional behaviour,
knowing that comfort zones will be exceeded?
We must expand those comfort zones,
fill them with excitement rather than anxiety
about that new future,
allowing it to shine.

We must nurture both
competence and confidence,
having them in balance
within themselves and with each other.

Are we humble enough,
but not excessively so?
Do we align our confidence with our humility,
knowing we are not a
know-it-all,
asking much more than telling?

So let’s get going with change management,
shall we, aware that most such initiatives fail dismally?
Why do they? So many reasons!
Lots are top-down,
led by those shielded from reality
through their iceberg of ignorance.

They rush in without getting to root causes,
without hearing from the ground.
They don’t focus enough on what the purpose is,
then all-too-quickly fade out,
as everyone gets too busy once again.

So be prepared to invest good time.
Go both top-down and bottom-up,
relentlessly keeping to the “why?”,
to the “so what?”, the consequences.

Make sure there are quick-wins to encourage you,
while accepting that other battles will take longer.
Celebrate the champions,
nudge the resisters to catch up,
and above all be role models yourselves.

Keep reviewing, keep reviewing
at all levels – horizontally and vertically –
with standing agenda items at meetings.
Share good stories,
adapt the change as needed,
see how others do such work.

Make the new culture the new enjoyable norm
that attracts good stakeholders to you
and holds them on to you,
so that they in turn attract
other good ones around them.

Do you ever write poetry? If not, try it, and if it exceeds your comfort zone, relax and expand it. I find it concentrates my mind and makes me smile – not least if I have used it to vent about something or someone awful that has happened, or to celebrate some good news. Have a go!

Before closing let me mention that this is my 275th column in this paper, and also that I understand I’m the longest running writer here. It’s the first article I’ve written as a poem, and very likely the last!

Nurturing NGO board members

I drove up less than half a mile along Kabarsiran Avenue to Kibondeni College, where Lisa Issroff, the CEO of the Issroff Family Foundation, was facilitating her session at the NGO Directors’ workshop jointly hosted by them and the Women On Boards Network. In the meeting room were seated around fifty bright young men and women from around Africa, some already board members, others aspiring ones. Lisa was faciliting them through what it takes to be an effective board member, and next was our panel session, where Caroline Armstrong, Wambui Mbesa and I had been asked to speak along the following lines:

  • Introduce yourself – Share a brief background on your professional journey.
  • Introduce your organisation – Provide context on its mission, work, and impact.
  • How and why did you join the board? – What motivated you to take on this role?
  • Describe your board experience – Share notable challenges, successes, and key responsibilities.
  • Your biggest learnings – What insights or advice would you give to current and aspiring board members?

I started by mentioning that I live just down the road from there, and shared two things in common with this Opus Dei Kibondeni College: I am an adjunct faculty member of Strathmore Business School, and in 1961 my wife Evelyn Mungai was the first African student at Kianda Secretarial College – the first multi-racial college in Kenya. And both Strathmore and Kianda are Opus Dei institutions.

I came to Kenya in 1977, I shared, and that is when I joined my first board, having arrived here to be the General Manager of the Kenya subsidiary of British-based multinational ICL, and hence a member of its Kenya board. A year later the British Business Association of Kenya (now the Kenya Chapter of the British Chamber of Commerce) was formed, and for some reason this very young British expatriate, quite new to Kenya and to Africa, was invited to become its founder chairman.

More chair positions followed, from the Kenya ICT Federation to the Kenya Institute of Management to KCA University to the Rotary Club of Nairobi to Occidental Insurance, plus other directorships, including of KEPSA, The Blue Company, AFIDEP, Davis & Shirtliff and Hotpoint Appliances. In answer to the question of how and why I joined these boards, in each case it was simply because I was invited to. I was not a domain expert in any of them, and my skills lay largely elsewhere.

The words that describe me are integrator and energy aligner; mediator and consensus builder; mentor and coach – not least in the development of emotional intelligence. I encourage strategic thinking, and indeed two of my directorships came about as a result of me having facilitated the development of the relevant organisations’ strategic plans. This requires being driven by an uplifting purpose, and so to living the vision and values of the entity, aligned with one’s own.

My default position is to communicate with a light touch, including in moments of crisis. In my directorships and my consulting I expect to be “having a good time doing good things”, with colleagues, clients and others.

I described my years leading IT companies that then led to me to launching my management consulting firm The DEPOT, as a memorial to my late son Dan. And I referred to my Business Daily column, in which I have written several articles about being an effective board member and leader. Here I have described how I apply my consensus building skills – creating unity among board members and with the CEO and other staff, plus external stakeholders.

The main challenges and learnings I have experienced pretty much relate to why I was selected for the various positions I have occupied over the last nearly fifty years, reinforced by writing about these in my column.

My two fellow panelists told us about what it has been like to rise through the ranks as women. “Don’t allow a chip to develop on your shoulder”; “do it your way”; sometimes doors open that you didn’t knock on – decide if to go through them”; “be adaptable, step forward, and step up”, we heard from Caroline. And tech entrepreneur Wambui “never felt the gender thing” on boards where she has served, so did not suffer from “imposter syndrome”. “Be prepared”, she strongly advised, and “follow your passion”.

I was so impressed by the thoughtful and lively participants at this workshop, confident they will return to their workplaces inspired to perform at yet higher levels. As I always say, those who really needed to be in the room may well have been the least likely to be present.

Writing a Business Daily column for 18 years

Ten years ago, on the eighth anniversary of my first column in this newspaper, I wrote one about what it’s like to be a columnist. With Business Daily celebrating the 18th anniversary of its birth a couple of weeks ago, my editor and I thought it would be good for me to go back to what I’d written in 2015, now having published over 470 articles here.

I wrote then about how founder managing editor Nick Wachira twisted my arm into becoming a regular contributor, and it was good to see his as one of the articles that appeared a couple of weeks ago about how Business Daily came to life and how it struggled through its early days to the prominence and influence it soon started enjoying.

As I spoke to Nick and to my present editor Allan Odhiambo about this 18th anniversary, they both pointed to the transformative impact of the online version of the paper, of social media, and of younger readers generally, on how contributors communicate these days compared to when Business Daily started.

A very tangible change came when a few years ago the paper went through a redesign and my word limit was chopped from 1,000 to less than 800 – a real sign of the times.

What about the topics I’ve been writing about? For me, the domain that has moved centre stage in the last few years is the one about compliance, sustainability and everything around the Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) trio.

As for my writing style, it has always been rather conversational, and mainly I tell stories about what I experience in my professional life. This enables my readers – very much including my younger ones – to enjoy the ride and not need too much time to absorb my messages.

In my 2015 article, I wrote that as I thought about possible topics I fully assumed I would run dry within a year of starting, maximum eighteen months. Yet there I still was, churning out my twice-monthly thoughts, with little prospect of writer’s cramp setting in, I acknowledged. As I went about my business, as I read an article or a book, heard a talk or participated in a board meeting or a workshop, or just engaged in a casual conversation, I explained, I was constantly scanning for ideas. And that is exactly how it has remained.

It has been very satisfying, and it became a normal part of my life, I wrote, while now I actually think of it as my hobby. “It’s a great feeling when an idea for a piece suddenly strikes me, and then I can hardly wait to hit my computer and get going,” I wrote. “It was George Bernard Shaw who described inspiration as ‘a blank piece of paper’ and other than now replacing the paper by a screen he might have added the need for a deadline. For necessity is indeed the mother of invention, with the columnist’s deadline un-negotiable.”

Now, as has always been the case, quite often as I start hammering away I have little idea of where my story will take me or how it will end. Sometimes, I revealed in the earlier article, I feared that what I have to say would consume considerably less than my word quota, so I would have to force myself to create the balance – and this without waffling. Then on other occasions I overflowed my limit, so I was forced to chop precious phrases and sentences – a painful exercise I still endure.

It was an article I’d read in the New York Times that gave me the idea for my first one on this subject. The author challenged his readers to list all the original ideas they had, and then to write an article about one of them. “Perhaps you’d be very successful at this,” he accepted. “But now imagine doing it for four weeks,” he continued, “then for two months, then six, then a year, then five years. And all this while pursuing your other activities. How do you think you’d fare?”

The writer wouldn’t go so far as to say his readers would be sure to fail. But he admitted being left with a grudging respect for columnists. “It really is a lot harder than it looks,” he concluded, adding that he couldn’t imagine how he’d cope with the demands of staying fresh for a regular column. You can imagine how good that made me feel.

I ended my last article noting that I was approaching my 1,000-word limit. And here I am now reaching the 800 mark. Gotta stop.