Articles Tagged Leadership

“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 […]

This has been a time of being lectured and hectored by foreigners, and not many of our leaders liked it. Prime Minister Raila Odinga took umbrage at the tone and message of the American ambassador at the opening of the AGOA conference last week. He said, in no uncertain terms, that Kenya does not need […]

“Despite everyone knowing that nothing stays still, there are countless examples of no natural successor being in place for when the time comes, especially when the leader has an air of invincibility. Most potential successors will not hang around long if they do not feel there is any chance of the boss moving on. Consequently, […]

“…Today, no meeting of the high and the mighty is complete until someone polishes the conventional wisdom: “Our big trouble today is getting enough good people.” This is crystal-clear nonsense. Your people aren’t lazy and incompetent. They just look that way. They’re beaten by all the overlapping and interlocking policies, rules, and systems encrusting your […]

“No country is going to create wealth if its leaders exploit the economy to enrich themselves, or police can be bought off by drug traffickers. No business wants to invest in a place where the government skims 20 percent off the top, or the head of the port authority is corrupt. No person wants to […]

There seems to be a bit of noise in the country about the proposal to build a walkway connecting Parliament Building, Continental House and County Hall at a proposed cost of Sh 61 million. This is to allow our members of parliament to cross the road with ease as they walk between their primary workplaces. […]

“Team titles might be what matter to them most, but football fans are also generally pleased if a player in their team wins an award. Publishers rarely object when their authors win Booker or Nobel prizes for literature. So how should shareholders in a company feel when the company’s chief executive wins an accolade such […]

I saw last week that it is possible to begin a day in exasperation and end it in exhilaration. I was travelling to Mombasa to attend a board meeting, and found an inexplicable traffic jam near the Nyayo Stadium. I had allowed enough time for Nairobi’s absurd traffic problems, but this was a little more […]

“Whether it’s called buttering up the boss, brown-nosing, sucking up or managing up, experts say ingratiating behaviour is bound to be on the rise in the workplace as workers fret about keeping their jobs in tough economic times. But such behaviour can be bad for business, they said. “People who tend to ‘manage up’ anyway […]

“Coote got me in as a director of something or other. Very good business for me – nothing to do except go down into the City once or twice a year to one of those hotel places – Cannon Street or Liverpool Street – and sit around a table where they have some very nice […]

There is a prominent new sign on Nairobi’s Uhuru Highway, just after the University Way roundabout. It says: “No stopping for buses and matatus”. Rightly so: it is very dangerous for vehicles to stop on a busy fast-moving highway – the chances of a pile-up are big. And guess what? That is exactly where buses […]