Posts

The Others

Late last year Frank Kretzschmar and I co-hosted another of our Leaders Circles, where we gather a small group of leaders to share stories. Its theme was “The Others: respect requires honouring the dignity and rights of others”, and as often before I am writing this article about the highlights.

Frank and I always seek inspirational quotes on our theme in advance, and write them on flip-charts that we then tape onto the walls of the room where we are meeting. On this occasion Frank sought the assistance of AI, and here’s one of those it came up with: “Respectful dialogue can bridge divides by fostering mutual understanding and respect. It provides a platform for individuals and groups to express their views, listen to others, and find common ground.”

He then asked for quotes by Africans, and these are among those that immediately appeared:

“Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” – Chinua Achebe

“To be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.” – Nelson Mandela

“Most people write me off when they see me. They do not know my story – the pride I have in my rich culture and the history of my people.” – Idowu Koyenikan

I opened our afternoon by talking about its theme, drawing the contrast between interacting with others only to defend one’s position, and listening openly to allow oneself to be influenced into compromise. This is the difference between going for win-lose and assuming the possibility of win-win.

Then the stories launched. One participant adopted a pessimistic tone: “We have lost common ground,” he noted, explaining that we who are of a generation with “objective reality” now see subsequent generations locked into echo chambers through social media, where the host platforms reinforce what is clicked on with selective data, facts and video. How can one generate common ground in such a setting? Never mind that the average attention span has been declining dramatically, generation after generation, with it now being down to the just seven minutes required to view a Tik-Tok video or read a Twitter message.

I went into my background, where my Romanian parents found themselves in Palestine with many other Jewish people who had fled there from their European countries thanks to the Nazism and Fascism of the Second World War. Not only were they with so many similar Others, but in the liberal city of Haifa where they lived and where I was born several of their best friends were Arabs.

In 1948, when I was three, we moved to England, and here we definitely were The Others, speaking English with foreign accents and enjoying very different kinds of food. But the welcome of the host nation was wonderful, leading immigrants like my parents to become great British patriots.

While an undergraduate I was fortunate to have enjoyed three internships in France, and it was while living there with The Others’ in their culture and speaking their language that I learned so much about my own British culture and about the English language I otherwise normally spoke.

My final big move was when my family and I came to Kenya in 1977, where I was seen as the expatriate Other with an assumed neo-colonialist mindset – despite there being none of that within me.

Frank went into the power of alignment, asking if people of our generation can align with Gen Z. In our work as facilitators, can we facilitate such young ones? I’m pretty sure I can – just as I am able to relate so nicely to my grandchildren. In our lives Frank and I act as energy aligners, as mediators, so that different Others do not waste energy on useless conflict that prevents engagement, decision-making and progress.

Another storyteller was concerned about how the government and the private sector indeed see each other as Others, with us in the private sector viewing ourselves as victims, while neglecting the power we actually have to change the look of Kenya. One introduced the subject of spirituality, and we agreed that different religions actually share the same spiritual values.

My final point was about my wife Evelyn Mungai, who was the first African student at Kianda College, and who became the first lady member of our Rotary Club and our first lady president. She never saw herself or men as The Other. She just was who she was, with her own competencies and confidence.

What are your thoughts on this topic of Others? Do you enjoy a win-win mindset in how you interact? Are you sufficiently open to be influenced by Others and to benefit from what they have to offer?

In school but not learning

In my article today I’m going to share with you how Prof. Olubayi Olubayi cried on my shoulder about the terribly low pass rate for the Kenya National Examinations Council’s (KNEC’s) Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examinations. It’s been bothering him for a long time, and he has now shown me the evidence which, with his academic scrupulousness, he has been compiling.

The KCSE pass mark is C+, which is usually less than 50% of the score in a subject. Prof Olubayi has been studying the KNEC website and media reports on the issue, and here’s the sad reality: since 2016, 80% of Kenyan children fail their KCSE after twelve years of schooling, meaning only two out of ten students pass. This with the exception of 2017 and 2018, when only one out of ten passed.

“Imagine a business that manufactures products,” Prof Olubayi lamented, “but where only two out of ten are good enough to sell. How long would such a business last?” That is the situation in Kenya, despite our hugely expensive public education system. The Government spends approximately 20% of its annual budget on this broken system, with the amount allocated for 2023/2024 being Shs.628 billion.

He went on to explain that there are many reasons for this mass failure – while adding that solutions do exist. Kenya has achieved near universal school attendance, but not universal learning, which reminded me of how the difference between diversity and inclusiveness has been described: diversity shows an invitation to the party, while inclusiveness sees you being invited to dance.

Prof. Olubayi concluded that the country is funding failure, where the victims are the majority of children, inevitably resulting in lowered development potential for the country.

If you ask Kenyans, whether well-educated professionals or ordinary citizens, to guess the pass rate for KCSE – as Prof Olubayi has been consistently doing – most suggest 70% or 80%. But as we see, the reality is very different. Sadly, most of the 20% who pass went to private primary schools or academies for their foundation primary schooling of Grades 1 to 3. Almost all the children of the truly poor, who cannot afford private primary schools, simply fail after attending school for twelve years. They attend, but they do not learn.

On January 20th 2023, the Nation ran the headline “The majority of 2022 KCSE students get low grades”. It was referring to the results that had just been officially announced by the CS Education, who stated that only 173,345 out of the 881,416 students who’d sat the Grade 12 (Form Four) national examination had passed with a C+ or above. This translates to a 20% pass rate, where C+ is the minimum Grade 12 national examination score that qualifies one to study for a degree programme at a university.

The low pass rate of only 22% for 2023 is the highest in the last 8 years. By comparison, in Mauritius – which has the best education system in Africa – the pass rate for the school certificate examination in 2022 was 78%. The pass rate in Malaysia is 55%. The percentage of students passing GCSE in the UK with a grade of C or higher was 73%, and those attaining a grade of A or A+ was 26% – which is higher than those passing with a C+ or higher in Kenya. In France, the pass rate for the baccalaureate is usually around 80%.

It is for these reasons that in 2012 Prof Olubayi created Kiwimbi, an NGO learning centre focused on interventions to raise the pass rates in primary and secondary schools in Kenya.

There they use the “Teach at the Right Level” (TaRL) method of the Indian NGO Pratham, in combination with “spaced-repetition”, a learning technique typically performed with flashcards, and they are obtaining excellent results. In the 2023 KCPE results one of the primary schools next to Kiwimbi in Amagoro had more than half the students score more than 300 points – a performance as good as that of our best private primary schools. The same methods are being deployed elsewhere in rural western Kenya, with similarly encouraging results in secondary schools.

Other interventions include persuading principals of selected boarding schools to respect the science of learning by allowing students to sleep for 8 hours, removing calculators, promoting general reading, and tutoring students in small groups.

Learn more about how kiwimbi operates and the impact it has been achieving by going to their website, www.kiwimbi.org. And beyond just browsing it, how can you help it to go to scale in its mission of transforming our pass rates? Surely together we can do so much better.

African History of Africa

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 has further reinforced my long-held perception that while those in Europe, America and elsewhere need to hear from other than their own about the continent’s history, above all it is Africans who should do so. For there is so much more to this history than most people anywhere are aware of, knowledge of which would transform self-respect and dignity among Africans, as well as significantly change the perception of Africa and Africans by others.

For too many the history of the continent launches with slavery and colonialism, assuming that before the Europeans, OK and maybe the Arabs, arrived it was all “primitive” hunter-gatherers… well, except for the Egyptians, who weren’t perceived as being really “African”.

I remember visiting the remains of the medieval city of Great Zimbabwe some years ago, marvelling at the grandeur of the sophisticated Shona civilisation it reflected. Yet when the first Europeans came across the site they just couldn’t imagine it was the work of local Black Africans. I have also been influenced by my exposure to the amazing spread of ancient African rock art through my friend David Coulson, who has dedicated so much of his life to preserving and protecting it. This art shows how extraordinarily advanced many African societies were over so many centuries – at times when elsewhere it was just hunter-gatherers who roamed around in their small groups.

But back to Zeinab Badawi and her book. Zeinab is herself of African origins, having been born in Sudan, and in her book she devotes a chapter to the country of her illustrious ancestors. The ancient civilisations of Sudan predate those of ancient Egypt, she is keen to point out, and were of great influence on the Egyptians. Indeed at times it was the Kush who ruled over the Egyptians. But conventional history brushes that aside, Zeinab notes, with infinitely more emphasis being placed on the glories of ancient Egypt.

This eye-opening book took Zeinab ten years to put together, during which time she visited more than thirty countries in Africa, “in pursuit of a first-hand experience of Africa’s history from the perspective of Africans,” she writes. She interacted with dozens of people, from academics to ordinary citizens, learning about their culture and history and visiting significant sites.

She begins with the birth of humankind itself, which at least many of us East Africans appreciate took place here, and then takes us through “narratives of warrior queens, kings, chiefs, priests and priestesses; of mighty civilisations blooming on the banks of rivers or in the shade of sacred mountains; of lavish buildings hewn out of rock, exquisite libraries bursting with discovery, bustling caravan routes and market squares thick with the voices of traders, travelers, farmers and entertainers”.

We move from ancient Egypt to Sudan and then to Ethiopia and Eritrea, before migrating to North Africa, then to the west and finally to the south of the continent. She ends her journey through Africa’s history with another tour of the continent – including Kenya – that describes the struggles for independence from colonialism.

Finally, in her epilogue Zeinab spotlights today’s African youth as she looks to their future – about which she insists they should feel optimistic. “They will create a new Africa,” she writes. They are less attached to ethnic affiliations than their elders, and many move around the world as confident global citizens, bringing with them the enthusiasm of being digitally savvy. Not surprisingly she was particularly impressed by the Kenyan scene, with our MPESA, our technology hubs and our renewable energy, all enablers for our energetic youth.

While acknowledging the difficulties Africans face, these must not obscure the vibrancy she has observed, and the hunger for progress among the young people as they demand a better and brighter future – including through protesting against authoritarianism and conservative social mores. Sounds familiar, yes?

As I read Zeinab’s book about Africa’s magnificent past I appreciated her journalistic style of writing through which she took us on her journey, and I was left wanting to learn so much more about it all.

Why board voting comes last

A while ago I read an article about boards and voting by Roger Hitchcock, a senior partner at the Sirdar Global Group which guides boards to become more effective. I met Roger when I was a participant in his Sirdar Applied Directorship Programme some years ago, and as always in this article he was full of common sense, leading me to completely agree with his line of thinking.

While board voting can serve as a mechanism to resolve conflicts and make decisions, he writes, it should be approached cautiously and used as a last resort. This, I may add, applies equally to all kinds of organisations.

The reasons board voting should be the last resort are fairly obvious. By its nature, suggests Roger, it pits directors against each other, potentially leading to divisions within the board.

An “us-and-them” mentality can undermine the overall cohesion and effectiveness of the board, hindering its ability to function as a united entity. Indeed where I am a board chairman I work hard to avoid situations where there are winners and losers — even without that ultimate victory— and defeat outcome that results from voting.

Beyond sustaining cohesiveness among directors, avoiding contentious voting lessens the likelihood of straining relationships between board members, which would create a negative atmosphere within and beyond the boardroom.

This can have long-term implications for collaboration, trust and open dialogue, all crucial for effective board governance.

But it’s not just the soft relationship issues. Avoiding voting improves the quality of decision-making, asserts Roger. When a vote becomes necessary, it signifies a failure to reach a consensus through open dialogue and deliberation.

In such cases, the decision made may not be the result of a thorough exploration of all perspectives and alternatives, comprehensive analyses, and robust debate with the best interests of the company. Yes, voting offers a speedy approach to decision-making, but the lack of these key elements too often leads to sub-optimal outcomes.

So, Roger insists, we can avoid the need for voting by allowing for robust discussion and debate. Encouraging open and constructive discussion among board members is vital, I have seen in my many years as a director and chairman, going back to the late seventies.

By fostering an environment that values diverse perspectives, the board is relaxed and open enough to explore alternative viewpoints, identify common ground, and uncover innovative solutions without having to resort to voting.

This approach involves finding agreement among board members through compromise and negotiation and ensures that decisions that are in the best interests of the organisation are made with support from all board members.

This cannot be accomplished merely within board meetings, I have found. Where I am the chairman I frequently engage with individual directors prior to the formal board meeting to seek the spread of views and build towards consensus. Some may call this manipulation, but given that it is always pursued in the best interests of the organisation I do not hesitate to invest time in such activity.

Boards should establish clear decision-making processes, recommends Roger, like designing appropriate reports and dashboards, or using the normal board committees or temporary task forces to thoroughly analyse and vet proposals and come up with recommendations.

These processes and structures enable boards to engage in deep discussions, gather relevant information, and seek input from subject-matter experts before bringing issues to the boardroom.

Roger identifies a further benefit of boards consistently seeking consensus and making decisions based on that togetherness, which is that it leads to stakeholders gaining confidence in the board’s ability to navigate complex challenges, thereby enhancing the company’s reputation and its stakeholder relationships.

So, seeking consensus fosters a culture of collaboration and teamwork among board members. It promotes shared ownership of decisions, leading to a more cohesive board and stronger boardroom dynamics. Consensus-based decisions tend to be more comprehensive and well-rounded. All those in favour, please vote “Aye”.

This is my last article of the year (my 440th ), so I wish you a happy and relaxing time in the coming days and look forward to re-engaging with you in January.

Board hand in culture change

A while ago, I facilitated a session with the board of a major Kenyan organisation, where I had them reflect on what they were proud of as a board and as individuals, and what additional aspects they wished to be proud of later.

The team is undergoing a review of its culture so as to take it to the next level, and as the directors reflected on the initiative they felt they could and should be more involved.

This is very much the norm at the director level. They are typically far more concerned about the numbers, the financials, which is what led the two Harvard professors, Kaplan and Norton, to come up with their Balanced Scorecard.

Through this framework they had company leaders place equal emphasis on the factors that deliver the numbers: the products and customers; the systems and processes; and the people – the element they described as “learning and growth”.

It is of course the people who define and live the culture, perceived through how they behave, which reflects their attitudes, these being a function of their values.

How many directors feel competent, and hence confident and comfortable dealing with such soft issues? Not many. “Leave it to the HR people,” they may well say, as they return to their easy-to-measure revenues, profits and suchlike.

I have written before in this column that few people at any level possess the expertise needed to enhance a culture.

At best they may find ways of defining the existing one, with all its ups and downs, and of sketching out the aspirational one, with the usual words to describe it: trust and openness, innovation and collaboration….

But as for how to migrate to that better world and overcome present challenges, don’t ask them. Indeed some will tell you it’s a waste of time, as most culture-change programmes fail to make a difference.

Then, as I read what others write on this subject – not least at the national level – too often I again see descriptions of how awful the present culture is or how wonderful living Utopian values would be, calling for a transformation to that ideal world but without in any way guiding us on how to travel along the journey towards it.

Yet while it is true that many culture-change initiatives fall way short of what they were intended to achieve, some do deliver both significant and sustained impact. What differentiates the two?

First, it’s investing time in bringing people together for open conversations that generate what I call “purposeful reflection”, where participants discuss and agree on what they will do more of and less of, start doing, stop doing and continue doing.

This requires the presence of a safe space, or as it is now sometimes described, one of “psychological safety” – which, allow me to state, is more readily created by external facilitators skilled in creating such a space and conducting such activities.

Without going into other critical success factors for culture change, let me jump straight to the need for enthusiastic support from the board.

Everyone must know that at the top level, it is accepted that culture does indeed eat strategy for breakfast – or, as I put it, that there must be a culture strategy component within the overall strategy.

The directors must be part of the strategy development and then participate in the conversations about culture, adding value to them and being role models for the desired culture.

They must also appreciate that changing a culture is much more than a one-off event but a continuous journey, one that requires focus and time, plus the relevant specialised skills and experience among those driving it.

And the performance management system must be such that those who embrace the desired culture are recognised and rewarded – which is why “Change Champions” are often identified as part of the process.

These days it is expected that directors undergo training, and this is now indeed the norm. But beyond programmes that relate to governance issues of oversight, compliance and risk management, how many cover the softer areas of leadership, like culture?

Happily, the organisation that invited me to spend time with their board appreciated this need, and I am confident that their directors will now ensure that matters to do with culture remain firmly on their radar.

Iceberg of ignorance hurts firms

I was recently asked to be a panelist at an event hosted by Hofstede Insights Africa and its Kenya partner, Priority Activator Consulting.

Its theme was Aligning culture and strategy – leveraging culture to drive organisational performance, a topic where I feel very much at home.

With us were around 30 CEOs who had been invited to engage with our panel, and the keynote speaker was Hofstede’s Group CEO Egbert Schram, who described culture as “the oil that lubricates strategy”.

His early background was in wildlife management, examining their behaviour patterns, which he subsequently applied to humans – always focusing on gathering and analysing data.

This led him to quote from a study which revealed that only 15 percent of CEOs feel their corporate culture is where it should be – as a result of which their organisations underperform.

One of the big causes is the “iceberg of ignorance”, where CEOs lack awareness of problems lower down in their organisations because they only engage with senior colleagues.

So the cascading downwards of what they perceive to be needed behaviour change fails to connect with the actual needs on the ground.

Culture is about how we relate to our colleagues, our work, and the external environment, he explained.

And he asked what excites us: enjoying life? Striving for the best? Something else? And where do our incentive schemes lead us: to achieving financial results? To deal with people issues? Then, who gets promoted, and why?

An expatriate CEO shared that in his home country, he was used to a much smaller power distance between levels. He has an open door, but too few of his people are relaxed enough to enter his office and express their views.

In hierarchical organisations, Mr Schram said there’s too much upward delegation – more so if the bosses are approachable.

And an emotional dependency on them may develop, including on non-work-related issues. So unless one empowers lower layers this becomes a bottleneck, preventing the company from growing.

Fellow panellist Catherine Musakali quoted Peter Drucker’s “culture eats strategy for breakfast” line, saying it surprises her how few boards include culture as a topic on their agendas.

This led me to describe my tweak of Drucker’s quote, where through the Balanced Scorecard approach I use in my strategy development work with clients I have them devise a culture strategy that feeds into the overall one.

Having said that, we find that companies which enjoy a healthy culture but lack a robust strategy do better than those with a great strategy but without a healthy culture.

Erick Ngala, the managing partner of Priority Activator Consulting, reinforced this point, emphasising that organisational performance is a consequence of its culture plus its strategy.

A lady CEO worried that women in leadership still have a hard time, with some of her people considering her to be “bossy”, to which she did not relate.

And another CEO felt he shouldn’t get too close to his people, otherwise, he would find it too hard to take disciplinary action when needed, or to deal with poor results and bad news.

My comment: when I arrived in Kenya in 1977 I was expected to be bossy and serious, to be feared. I defied that, with my default position being a cheerful one.

But people had to know that if the need arose I did have a big stick available. It took a while for my staff to come to terms with this “situational leadership” style… and some probably never did.

What is the role of the CEO in all this? What works and what does not? Does it vary depending on the size of the organisation? Is it different when going through a period of disruption?

These were the questions for this event. For me, CEOs are at the centre of a 360-degree ecosystem.

Above them are the shareholders with their values, represented by board directors; then other independent directors, among whom hopefully the chair.

It is the chair who should bring together a collective board perspective on culture, which is shared with the CEO and the senior management team – noting that the CEO is a board member too.

Critical to all this is the alignment between the chair and the CEO. Not forgetting the head of HR.

In negotiations, go eye-to-eye

How do you get to win-win? By exchanging offers and requests, and indulging in give and take – maybe upfront simultaneously, or maybe over time – now us, then you. Each side is prepared to be “generous” to the other, to make “sacrifices” for the greater longer-term mutual good.

Ethical, responsible vendors look beyond simply maximising short-term revenue. They equally expect to deliver on customer satisfaction, for it is this that leads to repeat business and referrals.

Just like purchasers who look to the future go beyond merely trying to slash the price at which they buy and to extend their credit terms. They know the suppliers too must cover their costs and make a living, so as to be there for them tomorrow.

In leading up to the negotiation the vendor should adopt the mindset of an adviser to the buyer, helping them make the business case for their solution. Yes, solution (not just the product and its features), with its cost-benefit analysis to show it makes sense.

This requires gaining a good understanding of the needs of the buyer – bearing in mind that what they think they want does not necessarily align with your perception of their need. Reaching alignment here in itself can become an important aspect of negotiation.

Are prospects too focused on short-term cost-minimisation? If so how do you move them to look at the broader context of value-for-money? This kind of negotiating is particularly important for suppliers who don’t expect to be the cheapest but to offer the best product/solution with a good return on having invested in it.

This requires preparing a document that goes way beyond a statement of product features and price (a “quotation”) to showing a full understanding of the need and how it is being met, maybe with alternatives and recommendations (a “proposal”).

With capital goods, where installation, maintenance and other ongoing services are provided, one of the biggest challenges is avoiding the blame game when problems arise, which all too often they do.

This requires investing time up front to agree on a code of conduct should such issues emerge. The objective is to keep calm and be solution-oriented, accepting that no one is perfect. That’s negotiating and building robust win-win relationships at the outset.

When I launched my early career as a key account manager of large IT clients, I was much younger than those with whom I was interacting on the customer side.

The challenge for me was to hold my own despite the great age difference, and I found that due to my understanding of the essence of the business case for our solutions I was confident enough to engage with such people as adult to adult, as equals. I respected them, and they respected me; we listened to one another and co-created the way ahead.

There are plenty of confident young people, and not least here in Kenya. Equally though, I have found many who feel intimidated by elders, not least in our society where the older you are the more respect you expect, and that your way will prevail.

(Now well into my third age I push back whenever I feel I am being offered excessive respect purely as a result of being a mzee… or, for that matter, a mzungu.)

So when it comes to negotiating, at whatever age – or whichever gender, it is vital to overcome feeling inhibited merely because of being younger or being a woman. No, enjoy interacting with prospects and clients eye-to-eye. Yes, enjoy.

Chat about other things; laugh together; commiserate. Treat them as partners, where both you and they will do well from the relationship and where you look forward to interacting. That’s how your first contract with such a customer will be far from your last.

Navigating national cultural differences for best outcomes

In my last article, I promised I would write further about the influence of cultures on how consultants like myself must adapt so as to engage effectively with our clients. I mentioned that beyond national cultures, sub-cultures within countries are equally diverse.

Anyone who has visited the United States will quickly see how different people are in New York (frantically energetic and brutally straightforward) from the “Deep South” (much more measured and formal) and the Mid-West (so friendly and appreciative). And that’s just three examples.

In much smaller countries like England – never mind the overall United Kingdom – regional differences in attitudes and behaviour are equally pronounced, and if one is not sensitive to such contrasting cultures one risks offending people and diminishing one’s ability to relate to them.

Another dimension of diverse cultures is revealed in multinational organisations, whether corporates, NGOs or multilateral agencies such as the UN and the World Bank. Let me tell you about an experience in Ethiopia, where in 2012 I facilitated a culture integration retreat for the staff of a multilateral development agency, a mix of over a hundred local and international staff.

The local staff felt disrespected by their expatriate colleagues, but their culture held them back from expressing such feelings. Meanwhile, the international staff felt frustrated that if they criticised an Ethiopian colleague the reaction would be negative, thanks to their pride being hurt. So they just held back too.

On the second morning of the workshop by Lake Awasa I felt the participants were sufficiently relaxed to engage in an open conversation about the subject and to launch the session I read them a pair of poems I had written the night before which laid out the feelings of each group – one from the perspective of an Ethiopian and one from that of an expatriate.

I’m happy to report that as a result of the two-hour conversation I facilitated, those in the room not only obtained a good sense of the nature of the problem and its root cause of differing cultures, but that it enabled the issue to fade away – indeed for people to laugh about it. Here are my two poems…

An Ethiopian reflection

I am a proud Ethiopian.

I respect others, and I respect myself.

I respect quiet too, for we are told that it is gold.

But quietness and respect need a little time,

time for elegance, politeness and refinement,

time not everyone feels they need to make.

Some rush through life in different ways,

ways I find uncomfortable.

So to protect my feelings I withdraw somewhat,

not wishing confrontation, not wanting stress.

How can we make life better for us all?

What if you invest a little time, just a little,

to honour how we Ethiopians expect to interact?

And in return I’ll try to be less sensitive

to your more Western style of frantic rush.

Reflections of a visitor

It’s sometimes very hard for me, frustrating actually.

I’ve never felt like this before,

never thought of me as harsh or disrespectful.

I see myself as just a straightforward kind of character,

demanding yes, but not unreasonable.

Yet here in Ethiopia I often find myself in trouble.

I wish I could be freer with what is on my mind,

but I know I must be really careful with how I speak

for fear of giving grave offence.

I often anguish over how to make things better,

wish my work to help, improve and strengthen others

would be received in better spirit.

But as I’ve observed reactions to my initiatives

I’ve learned to be unusually restrained,

holding back from offering what otherwise I could.

Please, therefore, my Ethiopian friends,

help me to engage more easily with you.

I certainly don’t seek to give offence,

but know I sometimes end up doing so.

I love my life in this most gracious place of yours;

I love your culture and its oh-so noble traditions;

I want to love my interactions with you just as much.

There are so many other factors that define an organisational culture: ah, those PhD dominated ones, where complexity is the order of the day; those government ones, where smiling is prohibited and protocol rules the roost; those family businesses, where the founder’s every wish must be indulged. These are the territories into which we consultants enter and seek to influence.

How people adapt to national cultures

In my last article I wrote about the four elements that, according to the Adizes Institute, make a fully functional manager or, more likely, a functional management team: Producer, Administrator, Entrepreneur and Integrator (PAEI).

Today I follow up with an article I was sent by Rufat Jahangirov, a senior member of the Adizes Institute team, in which he reflected on the influence of national cultures in designing and delivering their programmes on organisational transformation in ways that are compatible with countries’ national values.

It led me to think about how and to what extent I adapt the way I engage with organisations depending on where I am doing so.

I am privileged to have been exposed to a wide variety of cultures, from my Jewish Romanian background to my upbringing in London, with time in France and the US, to my life here in Kenya since 1977. Plus my travels to many other countries around the world, usually as a tourist but sometimes also as a consultant.

Jahangirov refers to the work of Geert Hofstede on the interactions between national and organisational cultures. Hofstede first examines Vertical Power Distance, the extent to which the less powerful members of organisations expect and accept that power is distributed unequally.

He then looks at Horizontal Distance, the degree to which people in a society have an independent versus interdependent concept of self.

In societies with high Horizontal Distance – individualistic societies – people’s goals are generally independent from their ingroups; their social behaviours are driven by attitudes, values and beliefs; and they emphasise rationality in evaluating and choosing their social relationships.

On the other hand, in low Horizontal Distance – collectivistic – societies, people are born into extended families or kinship systems that protect them in exchange for giving them loyalty.

Hofstede also studies Uncertainty Avoidance, which defines the degree to which people in society feel threatened by ambiguous or unknown situations.

Not to be confused with risk avoidance, members of an Uncertainty Avoiding culture take risks as long as they believe they know them. People in Uncertainty Avoidance societies usually prefer clear rules as to how one should behave.

Next Hofstede examines Masculinity versus Femininity. Masculine cultures are ones where men should be assertive, competitive, tough and focused on material success, while women should be focused on the quality of life, maintaining warm personal relationships, offering service, and caring for the weak. Feminine cultures are ones in which emotional gender roles overlap.

Finally, he contrasts Long-term versus Short-term orientation.

Jahangirov notes that it is easier to generate “energy for change” in countries with low vertical distance, high horizontal distance, low uncertainty avoidance and high long-term orientation. He also correlates Hofstede’s culture differentiators with the values and characteristics of the PAEI Adizes management roles and styles.

P and A are short-term oriented roles, whereas E and I are long-term oriented, they have found. Additionally, P and A are the attributes of autocratic management, displaying high Vertical Distance, while E and I preferences lead to more egalitarian decision-making, which suggests low Vertical Distance.

P and E are both independent and individualistic styles, typified by high Horizontal Distance, whereas A is mechanically collectivistic and I is organically collectivistic, reflected in low Horizontal Distance. The A style is characterised as Uncertainty Avoiding, while E is its opposite: Uncertainty Accepting… actually, seeking.

There appears to be no correlation of Uncertainty Avoidance with either P or I management styles. And finally, P is a predominant characteristic of a Masculine culture, while I is the one of a Feminine culture. Both E and A can be either Masculine or Feminine.

It’s hard enough to change cultures even in one’s own back yard, Jahangirov has found, and reflecting on his wonderfully thought-provoking article has filled me with further ways of describing cultures and helping them develop to better places.

What is my experience with how different cultures have led me to adapt my interactions with others? Like Jahangirov, I am at least as aware of sub-cultures, within both countries and organisations, requiring yet more sensitivity on the part of consultants. But you’ll have to wait for another fortnight before reading more about that.

Before closing, let me mention that this is my 400th Business Daily column, and that next month will mark the 15th anniversary of my first one. More later on that too.

Passage through Palestine in eyes of my grandfather

In my last article I explained why it’s a good idea to keep a journal. I’ve been doing so for quite some years, at least hoping that my grandchildren will find something of interest in what I have written about.

I say this aware that in the 1940s my grandfather Robert Bischoff kept a meticulously written record of how he and his wife, plus their two children – one of them my mother Gaby – left their lovely home in Bucharest, Romania, in January 1941.

They decided to depart as anti-Semitic Fascist dictator Ion Antonescu had seized power there, and German troops were already present in significant number.

My grandfather wrote his journal in Romanian, and many years ago I took it upon myself to translate it into English. His text filled 38 typed foolscap pages, with very long sentences strung together in paragraphs that were also unusually long.

While Romanian was the first language I spoke after I was born, I never studied it formally and from when I arrived in Britain at the age of three I switched to English.

But I was fluent enough to take on the task, even with no dictionary and no Internet to consult at the time. What a labour of love it was.

For long, my grandfather – like many others at the time – was hesitating over whether the Romanian scene would increasingly make life unbearable for Jewish families like theirs.

At first he was more with the optimists, but eventually the situation deteriorated to such an extent that the decision to emigrate was made.

He worked under great stress over many weeks to obtain the necessary paperwork for the departure, not least the transit visa for Turkey and the entry visa to their final destination Palestine (before it became Israel), and finally they were ready to leave.

They travelled by train from Bucharest to the Black Sea port of Constanta; by boat from there to Istanbul; then on trains across Turkey and Syria; and next through Lebanon – by bus from Tripoli to Beirut and from there by car into Palestine, to Haifa and on to Tel Aviv, arriving on 19th January, eight days after leaving Bucharest.

The last entry in the journal is from November 1946, by which time Robert’s daughter Gaby had met and married my father Bruno, who had left Romania a few months after the Bischoff family, to rejoin Shell – for whom he had been working in Romania.

His journey was infinitely more precarious, in a small and flimsy yacht that for over 52 days took him and his fellow crew members to Cyprus and from where he managed to transfer to Palestine. (My father, as captain of the boat, kept its log – also in Romanian – so I have the full details of his adventure too… a story for another day.)

Robert found my father to be “a courageous young man and sure of himself”, and he was happy to see him marry his daughter. Now let me jump to March 1945, when I was born.

“I had the feeling that this would be an exceptional child, from all points of view,” my grandfather enthused.

“This feeling, and our exaggerated sentimentalism, make us see in him all that can be most beautiful in life. I could speak in detail about him, and there would be many pages to fill. If I were to do it I would have to devote a chapter separate from all the others, though sincerely speaking, I don’t even know if I would be able to put in writing what I feel in reality.”

He wrote about so much else in his journal, about the threat of a German invasion following the arrival of its army in Alexandria and the withdrawal of the British from Egypt – making him wonder if they should perhaps have remained in Romania; about the fragmented nature of local politics, with so many political parties – as is the case in Israel today; and about the poor state of education and nutrition.

Reading the journals again – thanks to my grandchildren having developed an interest in the holocaust – makes me wish I would have engaged more with both my parents and grandparents about their earlier lives. So you know how this is going to end: do so while yours are still around.