Articles Tagged Leadership

Dear Kenyan Chief Executives Last week I wrote to you to point out that if your company’s customer service sucks, there’s only one real culprit – the person you greet in the mirror every morning. Some of you may have taken umbrage at that suggestion, so do allow me to elaborate in this second part […]

Dear Kenyan Chief Executives As we launch deeper into 2011, and as many of you sit down to plan your strategic priorities, I thought it apt to plant some ‘thought seeds’ in your magnificent minds. You will know, I am sure, that the core of your business is your customer. Business is an ecosystem, but […]

“A study conducted by Jennifer S. Lerner with Julie H. Goldberg of the University of Illinois and Philip E. Tetlock of UC Berkeley documented the psychological effects of residual anger. The study found that people who saw an anger-inducing video of a boy being bullied were then more punitive toward defendants in a series of […]

“Until last week, I had always thought that it was the worst CEOs that had so much in common with two-year-olds. Both groups tend to swagger round with a wide-legged gait. Both say “mine” a lot and are exceedingly bad at sharing. Both have short attention spans. Both lack common sense and have issues with […]

Isn’t it time we Kenyans gave Barack Obama a mid-term report? We take a special interest in his presidency, after all. Two years ago I waxed entirely lyrical about Obama’s ascendancy to the world’s top job. That a black man, with Kenyan origins to boot, had made it so high was indeed cause for celebration […]

“If you think about how you steer a boat, it’s always from the back, and I’ve moved toward the back of the boat. Initially, my sense of leadership was to be the military general out in front of the troops and the first one rushing into battle. You have to be a leader. You have […]

“Managers are repeatedly urged to practice what they preach so others will take their preaching seriously and try to implement it in their own work. Hypocrisy is the culprit here and to exorcise it, managers are told to “walk the talk”… Part of the reason people fail when they try to walk the talk is […]

“How do owner-managers know when and by how much to loosen the apron strings? And how do they choose who should take over responsibility for their precious offspring? Mayank Patel, founder of Currencies Direct, a UK-based foreign exchange and international payments business with turnover of £1.2bn ($1.8bn, €1.4bn), says he knew from the start in […]

“Clement Attlee, Britain’s leader in the era of postwar austerity, was once approached by a BBC reporter who adopted the deferential style then thought appropriate. “Prime minister, do you have anything to say to the nation?” the journalist asked. “No,” said Attlee, walking on. Attlee had never heard of a focus group, and it is […]

“The true leader is a manager who works with people and considers them to be unique and unrepeatable, and seeks their excellence on all levels…Leading means being capable of directing people in such a way that you get the best out of them, unleashing their full potential by being a good coach and mentor. This […]

“The latest revised UK code…states: “There should be a dialogue with shareholders based on the mutual understanding of objectives. The board … has responsibility for ensuring that a satisfactory dialogue with shareholders takes place.” But how hard companies find this basic task to be. Drowning in technical measurements – total shareholder returns, earnings per share, […]

“When Jack Krol became the lead director at Tyco International, in 2003, he developed, in conjunction with CEO Edward Breen, a document specifying his own role. With input from the board, the governance committee then developed some general characteristics of the role for whoever would succeed Krol in the future. Krol said three competencies or […]

I have been watching the unfolding oil spill drama with a mixture of horror and amazement. As someone who believes in the power of corporations to do good, and in the power of leadership to transform, I am dumbstruck by what I see and hear. The facts you know: toxic oil is spewing from a […]

Last Sunday Kenya changed for the worse. As we know, grenades were thrown at a rally held as part of the current constitutional review campaigns. The resulting explosions killed six Kenyans and injured scores of others. The numbers mislead us. They turn the people who died into mere statistics. Note and turn the page. But […]

The most successful deals…are those where the strategy is clear and integration is quick, allowing the acquirer to realise synergies and recover the premium it paid to buy the business. Retaining key employees is also critical, otherwise bidders can see much of the value of their purchase walk out of the door.” Lina Saigol and […]

“The first step in ‘getting on a board’ is to ask why you want to be on a board. If the answer is for self-aggrandizement or prestige, the reputational risks today far outweigh any such benefits. Similarly, if it is for financial reward, there are easier, less risky ways to make money. If it is because you have […]

The McKinsey Quarterly: “In your recent American Psychology article, you asked a question that should be interesting to just about all executives: “Under what conditions are the intuitions of professionals worthy of trust?” What’s your answer? When can executives trust their guts?” Gary Klein: “It depends on what you mean by “trust.” If you mean, […]

“Any leader needs frank advice, and the biggest obstacle to receiving it is often the leader himself. Even a polite and level-headed boss will be tempted to cut naysayers out of the loop. Knowing this, sensible juniors will avoid expressing criticism or grim tidings if at all possible. “If you deliver bad news, you’re disempowering […]

Here we go again. The headlines say it all: the coalition government is crumbling, the principals have fallen out, the shilling is sliding, investors are nervous, we are facing another meltdown. But I ask you: what exactly has changed since last week? What cyclone has hit Kenya that our prospects look so suddenly bleak? Have […]

“Because starting a business is a huge amount of hard work, requiring a great deal of time, you had better enjoy it. When I started Virgin from a basement flat in west London, I did not set out to build a business empire. I set out to create something I enjoyed that would pay the […]

Picture the scene. The former leader of a global power is summoned to a commission of inquiry. He spends a full day there, in front of the world’s cameras. He is grilled by the commissioners on every aspect of certain decisions he made: why he did and said certain things; what he knew and did […]

“Look in the mirror. If you really don’t want your potential successor to get the job, don’t kid yourself. There is a very strong probability that this person will never get the job. You will just look for problems until you find a reason to disqualify him. Don’t jerk around potential successors. This is not […]

“The number of female directors on FTSE 100 boards has stalled at 131 over the past year, a report has said. Furthermore, the number of firms with female executive directors fell from 16 to 15, the Cranfield School of Management report found. There was also a “disappointing” drop in the number of boards with multiple […]

“All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers came, thither they return again. All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. The thing that hath been, it is […]

It’s not easy to be optimistic in Kenya these days, and most conversations about the future are laced with gloom. But last week brought us probably the most positive development seen in Kenya in recent times. You may have missed it, though. President Kibaki, when he left to attend a conference in Nigeria, reportedly travelled […]

“Jack Welch’s tenure as CEO of GE was, by any measure, phenomenally successful. But even the most remarkable CEOS are mere mortals, and bound to err from time to time. In Welch’s case, one notable blunder was his ill-fated attempt to acquire Honeywell in 2001. It was a deal fraught with risk, undertaken with little […]

“Consider the “cookie experiment” reported by the psychologists Dacher Keltner, Deborah H. Gruenfeld, and Cameron Anderson in 2003. In this study, teams of three students each were instructed to produce a short policy paper. Two members of each team were randomly assigned to write the paper. The third member evaluated it and determined how much […]

Those are just two of the current and previous participants in Fast Forward, along with Linus Gitahi, Jane Karuku, Zeph Mbugua, Norah Odwesso, Frank Ireri, Winnie Ouko, Polycarp Igathe, Jeenal Shah, Martin Miruka, Karim Anjarwalla and many more. The intake for Fast Forward 2010 is now open. FFWD is the region’s most talked-about leadership development […]