Articles Tagged Success

I saw Phil Rosenthal attempt to learn dancing in Buenos Aires, in an episode of Netflix’s Somebody Feed Phil. When he later spoke to his parents back in the US on a video call, his father gave him this advice: “Your dancing was a little klutzy. Maybe leave that alone and stick to what you’re […]

Do you find it hard to say no? You’re not alone. We are conditioned to say yes to things. We find ourselves bounced into socials, meetups, one-on-ones and the like all the time. Many of those time-sinks we had no desire to say yes to, but social and peer pressures won the day. Professionally, there’s […]

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Liverpool seemed to be an unstoppable football club, clinching trophy after trophy and blowing other teams away season after season. But that era came to an end in 1990, and the club didn’t win a league title for the next thirty years. Enter Manchester United. Under Sir Alex Ferguson, they […]

We find ourselves in photographs all the time these days. Even diehard introverts like me can’t escape the lens and are constantly dragged into photos by family, friends, and even colleagues and clients. Ever since the smartphone camera landed in billions of hands, photography exploded. It’s as if every moment now needs its stamp. I […]

When was it clear that BlackBerry was on its last legs? Around 2013, when its top line had already halved. Yet it had clocked its record revenues just two years earlier. When Apple launched its first iPhone in 2007, quickly followed by the first Android phone in 2008, BlackBerry still had reason to feel secure. […]

Why is innovation so difficult? Is it because coming up with brilliant new ideas is so hard? Not really. Innovation is a team sport. Put some talented folks together under the right conditions, and the ideas will flow. The real problem with innovation comes well before the team gathers to generate ideas. Lech Walesa once […]

Customer complaints are a modern phenomenon, right? Nope. They’ve been happening for as long as humans have traded with one another. The oldest known written complaint was sent nearly four millennia ago, from the southern Mesopotamian city of Ur, in what is now Iraq. The complaint is etched on a tablet now housed in the […]

Most of the people reading this column right now are billionaires. Don’t believe me? That’s because you naturally assumed “billions” are about money. Jade Bonacolta, a writer on personal growth and productivity, has a different way of looking at it. One billion seconds equals 30 or so years. If you have that much time available […]

Today I want to share a magic number, a target that you should aim for: 60 per cent. School plants strong ideas about what a winning grade is in all of us. The way we get marked tells us that 80 and 90 per cent are the great numbers, the ones that give you ‘A’ […]

Let’s talk about the letter ‘S’ today. Picture it lying on its side. That’s a curve you should be paying attention to—the S-curve. If you’ve never heard of it, it’s high time you did, because once you see the S-curve, you start seeing it everywhere—in business, education, social movements, and even biology. So, what is […]

Would you seek life advice from a money-man? Not as a rule. Those fixated on the accumulation of wealth tend not to have too much general wisdom to impart. There are some exceptions, though. Jim Simons passed away recently. He’s not the best-known name, but he probably made more money than virtually anyone else on […]

For a while it looked like this year’s Paris Olympics were going to be painfully disappointing for Kenya, but in the end our women athletes came through. Two women brought us three of our final tally of four gold medals. Beatrice Chebet pulled off the remarkable feat of double gold in the 5,000 and 10,000 […]

So many hopeful souls start new businesses every year. Whether it’s a tiny single-person venture, or a well-funded startup, new firms come teeming into existence. Some studies suggest that at least 100 million new businesses are created annually around the world. That’s good, right? These businesses should meet genuine needs in the market; make the […]

“Don’t ask the barber whether you need a haircut” is folksy Warren Buffet at his best. This little bit of wise advice has more layers than a wedding cake, and it’s really about incentives and the distortions they bring into our lives. The barber’s livelihood depends on giving you haircuts, whether you need them or […]

As an educator focused on leadership, I am constantly searching for good metaphors. This is because leadership is one of the most misapplied concepts of our time. Those who are given the privilege and the honour to lead others mostly do it very, very badly. They lead through coercion, through inducement, and through a mistaken […]

The outgoing British government is throughly surprised. It came in on a landslide in 2019; it exits on an even stronger landslide in 2024. In 2019 the opposition Labour Party looked like it could be marginalised forever, so bad was its defeat. This time round it has a super-majority. Surprise! Life is a capricious beast. […]

Paul Auster passed away recently, and I went back to his breakout book, The New York Trilogy, as a form of homage. The first novella begins with Daniel Quinn, a writer. Quinn uses a pseudonym, William Wilson, to write detective novels. The investigator in these novels is called Max Work. Quinn reflects that in this […]

“I will miss him a lot. (He) has been a really important part of my life. He brought me to another level as a manager. I think we respect each other incredibly. He helps me so many times.” The person who said that was Pep Guardiola, manager of Manchester City Football Club, soon after winning […]

When I was starting off in my career decades ago, I really wanted to be a strategy consultant. But there was a problem: how does one learn strategy? There was certainly no subject by that name at universities. It was not taught to any depth in management programmes. So what to do? Naturally, I taught […]

I never thought I would resonate with a book about money. All my life I have had a sceptical mistrust of matters mammon. I have observed the derangement it causes in many: individuals, corporations, even entire cultures. And as I have written here many a time, a manic obsession with money leads to nothing good […]

Let me return to the subject of “fru-fru” today. Regular readers will recall that fru-fru (or frou-frou if you prefer the original French) refers to empty embellishment—frippery for the sake of ostentation, having no substance behind it. In communication and branding terms, fru-fru is feel-good look-good messaging, devoid of meaning. We all communicate, all the […]

The croissant is a commonplace food these days, made all over the world. But a great croissant, it must be said, is difficult to find, even in the capitals of Europe. The best examples of the delicacy have a lightness in the hand, a fineness in the texture, a fluffiness in the mouth that only […]

What keeps us going? What makes us keep striving to be more, do more, have more? Is it a necessary human trait, to hanker and to grow? We could call it ambition or aspiration. But I also have other words to for you to consider: greed, obsession, and sickness. The need to have and be […]

A few years ago I was having a chat with a Japanese female executive in Nairobi. She worked for a large multinational organization headquartered in Tokyo. The Kenya operation was undergoing restructuring, and her job was one of those affected. “I guess you’ll go back to HQ in Japan,” I asked? “No,” she said with […]

The first book I wrote was an angry one. Crown Your Customer emerged from personally experiencing ridiculous customer treatment, but also from observing customers being treated like cattle all over the place. It was a call to arms both to the providers of customer care, and their victims, to stop the nonsense. In those days […]

The renowned actor Michael Caine was once rehearsing a play scene as a young, aspiring thespian. In the middle of the rehearsal, a chair unexpectedly got stuck in the door of the set, blocking his path. Young Michael froze and didn’t know what to do. He told his fellow, more seasoned actor he couldn’t get […]

Picture yourself on a dark stage, delivering the central performance of the day. A spotlight is shining right on you, staying with you as you move. All else is dark. There are hundreds of people in the audience, but you can barely make them out. All their attention is on you: how you look, and […]

Childhood is a place of magical memories—once we have left it. Our first tastes and other sensory pleasures tend to stay with us for life. We develop deep loyalties and could potentially consume our favourite products from our tender years for our entire lifetimes. But there’s a problem. Do those products and businesses still exist? […]