Articles Tagged Management

“The world’s largest insurance company, AIG, spent $440,000 on a lavish corporate retreat at one of California’s top beachside resorts a few days after accepting an $85bn emergency loan from the US government to stave off bankruptcy. Details of the week-long getaway enraged legislators at a congressional hearing yesterday where AIG’s former bosses were accused […]

“Many employers ask job applicants for personal references. Justification for this practice is beyond me. There’s no valid reason to believe that these references will help you to identify potentially high-performing employees. The reality is this: We all have friends who will say or write positive reviews of us. If every job candidate can provide […]

“…surveys show that business leaders around the world are deeply concerned about the intensifying competition for talent, (yet) few companies make it an integral part of a long-term business strategy, and many even try to raise their short-term earnings by cutting talent-development expenditures. Other factors compound the difficulties of recruiting enough appropriate talent: minimal collaboration […]

“Executive expatriates are expensive, as many multinational firms have learned. Moving a manager to a factory or corporate office in Dubai, Russia, or India can be a costly experience after providing relocation dollars, tax equalization, and housing allowances. For that reason and others, Western and non-Western companies competing in emerging markets are dramatically reducing the […]

“In the late 1920s, a German psychologist named Max Ringelmann compared the results of individual and group performance on a rope-pulling task. He expected that the group’s effort would be equal to the sum of the efforts of individuals within the group. For instance, three people puling together should exert three times as much pull […]

“A bitter rivalry between two Indian billionaire brothers has scuttled negotiations to combine two of the developing world’s largest mobile-phone carriers. South Africa’s MTN Group Ltd. and India’s Reliance Communications Ltd. called off talks Friday over a potential multibillion-dollar deal that would have created a wireless giant. Behind the collapse of the talks is the […]

When at a certain stage in my life I finally managed to generate some surplus cash (it took a long time), I immediately decided to invest in some stockmarket shares (as many do). I started reading the financial press trying to seek out a real winner of a company to back. I noted that many […]

“So the summit ended as such summits always do. The delegates agreed on the importance of the problem, the urgent requirement to spend more money: they emphasised the need for co-ordinated action, and resolved to meet again in future to reach the same conclusions. If you have no substantive analysis or common principles beyond acquiescence […]

The amazing success of the Safaricom IPO confirms that we are on our way to becoming a shareholder democracy, does it not? Hundreds of thousands of new shareholders have been brought into the bosom of capitalism, and are basking in the promise of the new wealth that will follow – yes? Anyone who thinks we […]

“…In a 2005 Australian study published in the British Medical Journal, researchers interviewed, during a 27-month period, 456 hospitalized cell phone users who had each been involved in a crash. The scientists combed the drivers’ call records to see how cell phone use affected their driving. Whether they talked hands-free or with a phone clasped […]

1. You learn 20% faster immediately after exercise than after sitting still. 2. If our ancestors sat still in the savanna for eight hours straight…they became somebody’s lunch. Our brains developed while we walked about 12 miles a day, seven days a week, for several million years. 3. The brain’s executive functions – higher-order capacities […]

“The gleaming 3.4bn pound new terminal at Heathrow Airport was opened to the public…and immediately went into meltdown when its baggage system failed. Over the course of five days, more than 250 flights were cancelled, and 20,000 pieces of luggage were separated from their owners. The chaos was a serious embarrassment for BAA, the Spanish-owned […]

“It had taken me some time to see the obvious, that talent is a country’s most precious asset. For a small, resource-poor country like Singapore, with 2 million people at independence in 1965, it is the defining factor. …To get enough talent to fill the jobs our growing economy needed, I set out to attract […]

Having given the matter sufficient thought, I now conclude that we need even more ministries than we think we do. That is my position and it will never change, not ever. It is clear from the justifications being bandied about for 40-odd ministries that whatever is important in Kenya must have a ministry in charge […]

“A sticky idea is one that people understand when they hear it, that they remember later on, and that changes something about the way they think or act. That is a high standard. Think back to the last presentation you saw. How much do you remember? How did it the change the way you make […]

THE WORLD’S TOP 10 MOST ADMIRED COMPANIES: 1. Apple 2. General Electric 3. Toyota Motor 4. Berkshire Hathaway 5. Proctor & Gamble 6. FedEx 7. Johnson & Johnson 8. Target 9. BMW 10.Microsoft Fortune (March 24 2008) Fortune magazine and Hay Group give us the World’s Most Admired Companies list every year. Only companies with […]

“A potato buyer at the supermarket group Sainsbury’s has been arrested on suspicion of accepting bribes of up to 3 million pounds from a supplier. John Maylam, a senior buyer at the supermarket chain who has been with the company for more than 10 years, was arrested last week after police raided residential and business […]

If you didn’t know where “Muthurwa” was in Nairobi, I guess you do now. Recent goings-on around that part of Eastlands have all of Nairobi in a spin – and a completely unnecessary one. First we had the fiasco of the new hawkers’ market. The people who perch on pavements and alleys in the city’s […]

“Companies increasingly accept that crises, in whatever form, are inevitable. While there is a variety of theories and opinions on how best to manage a crisis, some fundamentals are common. First, accurate information is essential. Any attempt to conceal relevant facts and to manipulate the situation ultimately backfires. Second, the company must react as quickly […]

“Each and every day, we unwittingly cage (and enrage) ourselves with old-fashioned thinking rooted in a bygone Industrial Era. Behind the modern corporate veil lurks old fashioned “hierarchical planning”: those Dilbertian cubicles where we partition ourselves from one another and where space is reduced to its leanest and meanest economic essentials. With time, any sentient […]

How long do family businesses last? Most make it to the second generation, and then the problems start. Once the visionary founder has handed over the reins to his son/daughter/nephew/brother, an inflection point occurs. What happens in that second generation decides whether the business has a future. Either the company makes necessary changes and undertakes […]

“…Almost all of today’s companies, from the mediocre to the superlative, were built primarily to mobilise labour and capital, not the intangible assets that generate profit per employee. Trying to run a 21st-century company with organisational models designed for the 20th limits how well it can perform and creates massive, unnecessary, and unproductive complexity, which […]

“…Educated people do not rely exclusively, or indeed even primarily, on the instruction they receive, but seek to satisfy their insatiable intellectual curiosity by their own means of self-improvement. Yet, in the business-class section of long flights to geographically and culturally remote places, typically the business passenger will be seen watching silly videos that require […]

Would you care for this job? This is one of the top positions in the country, commensurate with excellent pay, status and perks. Ah, you ask: that probably means there’s a lot of stress and responsibility attached. Not at all! Any idiot can do this job (and many do). Responsibility and accountability are minimal. Qualifications: […]

I last wrote about harassment of businesses and citizens by the authorities in December 2005. I am forced to revisit the topic, because those in charge appear to have their heads deep in hot sand. I wrote then: “This country of ours still demonstrates an alarming propensity to shoot itself in the foot, regularly and […]

“If I kick my dog (from the front or the back), he will move. If I want him to move again, what must I do? I must kick him again. Similarly, I can charge a man’s battery, and then recharge it, and recharge it again. But it is only when he has his own generator […]

I’m pleased to confirm that I will be starting a new weekly column for Kenya’s new Business Daily, every Friday starting 3 August. ‘Thought Leadership’ is designed to feed Kenya’s growing hunger for high-quality management knowledge. Every week, I will take an excerpt from a classic management book, article or paper – new and old. […]

The Nation recently carried a two-page spread on the traffic congestion that is bedevilling us all. The news is that 5,000 new cars are, on average, now being registered every month, while the road network is barely expanding. Too many cars, too few roads. And so we read the tales of the poor folks who […]