Articles Tagged Success

Hoarders seem to attract universal opprobrium. We are all scornful of what we imagine the hoarder to be: a scheming shopkeeper who amasses essential foodstuffs while people are starving. But is that really what hoarding is? How much wealth are you, specifically, sitting on that could be serving the world around you? The BBC has […]

Once upon a time there was a teacher of business at a famous university far, far away. This teacher was troubled by the question: what makes a company truly great? Why do some stay mired in mediocrity for decades, yet others are able to outperform the market for many, many years? Why do some companies […]

To succeed in business, you have to be a bit crooked. Or, at least, you have to be willing to cut a few “corners”, make a few “friends”, enter into some “arrangements”. That is the received wisdom about business in Kenya. It is wrong. Business does not have to be shady in order to be […]

There is a widely accepted model of business prevalent in Kenya today. It involves some or all the following practices: evading the payment of duties and taxes wherever possible; obtaining raw materials and equipment from the cheapest sources, “no questions asked”; falsifying costs in order to justify absurdly high prices; and colluding with public officials, […]

Have you heard about Mr. and Mrs. Arrowsmith of Hereford in the United Kingdom? They have been married for 80 years. Yes, eighty. Percy Arrowsmith, 105, and Florence Arrowsmith, 100, married on 1st June 1925 at their local church in western England. The Guinness Book of Records has reportedly confirmed that the couple holds the […]

Do you ever wake up in the morning and think you’ve arrived in a world gone completely mad? A place where the ridiculous is very real, and the idiotic is the norm? What is a “sane” person to make of some of the developments taking place in our modern world? China recently held the first […]

Are we a very poor country or a very rich one? I only ask because I find it very confusing most of the time. Read the statistics books and you will be left in no doubt: a country with one of the lowest per capita incomes in the world cannot be described as anything other […]

We are all getting very excited again. Kanu’s elections, political realignments in Narc, shifting alliances, third forces…Kenya is abuzz again, just like in 2002. The air is filled with new possibilities. Can Uhuru Kenyatta now revamp and revitalise Kanu again? Can there be an emphatic change of guard, and will the youngsters finally make their […]

What is achievement? When should we recognise people’s accomplishments? As a society, what do we appreciate in the work of our people? The notion of achievement in Kenya has taken on some rather strange shapes and colours. We clearly value the acquisition of great wealth, position and status above all other things. The need to […]

Dear Young Kenyans, It’s good to be young, isn’t it? The skin is vital and the eyes bright, and raw energy courses through your veins for 24 hours a day. Hope lights the road of life ahead, like a spectacular flare in the darkness. You can be anything, do anything! What is it you actually […]

We’re all very busy, aren’t we? At least those of us with jobs and businesses are. This is the paradox of modern Kenya: a large number of citizens sit idle, unemployed or under-utilised; simultaneously, a small number of workers are buzzing around like deranged bumble bees, seemingly carrying the weight of the entire economy on […]

What does the word “globalisation” mean to you? In the minds of most people these days, a host of negative connotations emerge spontaneously. We think about “exploitation” – that we are being stripped naked by the rich countries and their storm troopers, the multinational corporations; about “volatility” – that we are being sucked into the […]

Imagine this: some prisoners sit in a cave, chained by the neck, hands and legs. They have been this way since birth and so have no conception of any other way of life. Shadows keep appearing on the wall in front of them. The shadows are caused by jailors who stand behind the prisoners, unseen. […]

We must grow! There is only one solution to entrenched poverty such as ours, and that is economic growth. It has been proved again and again: growth has to be the principal strategy for raising the incomes, consumption and living standards of the poor. Consider this: a recent study by Xavier Sala-i-Martin, a Columbia University […]

It is now widely acknowledged that waiting for the government to do anything for you is an epic waste of time. If you are a rural Kenyan waiting for services to reach you, you may well be required to wait until Kingdom Come. The government, you see, has many more pressing things to preoccupy itself […]

Here’s a story often told in management circles when discussing culture and change. It concerns an experiment involving some chimpanzees in a cage, a bunch of bananas and a hosepipe: Five chimpanzees were put in a cage. In the middle of the cage was a step-ladder with a bunch of bananas placed on top of […]

Reading Kenyan newspapers these days tends to be distressing pastime. Consider the following news items that appeared over the past few weeks: Forty-one people were injured, two seriously, when a train rammed into a speeding bus in Athi River town. How did this happen? Because the bus driver approaching the railway crossing, in a mindless […]

Successive governments since independence have, in varying degrees, been devoid of vision, devoid of ethics and devoid of competence. In other words, as they took charge of the bus called Kenya, they drove us round in circles, failed to maintain the vehicle until it collapsed, and ran away with all the passengers’ money. Given this, […]

Last week I wrote about the remarkable progress India is making in transforming its economy. India is attracting the attention of economic commentators around the world; most agree that the country has come out of an economic ‘Ice Age’ and is going into a dramatic ‘takeoff’ stage. What can we in Kenya learn from this […]

This is my 50th article since I started writing this column nearly a year ago. To mark the milestone, let me take you on a trip beyond our borders. When I was a schoolboy in Nairobi in the early 1980s, we would often compare our economy with that of India. Kenya was growing at a […]

Most of us are unlikely to achieve true enlightenment in this lifetime. By and large, we will remain ordinary folk striving to make a decent living and extract some meaning from this brief and unpredictable existence. We will have jobs to hold down, mouths to feed, and obligations to meet. Money will naturally loom large […]

If you still believe that the pursuit of material wealth should be our guiding light, both as individuals and as a nation, then you are putting yourself up against some of history’s most enlightened thinkers. This week I take you on a little tour of what the good and the great of this world had […]

Why does everyone in Kenya want to be rich? Why do we look at rich men and women and envy them? Why do tycoons and magnates hold us in their thrall? Why do we fall at the feet of the wealthy and hang on their every word? The value that we place on material wealth […]

Last week I wrote a mock ‘travel advisory’ for Kenyans travelling to the UK. Baiting the British in this way is great sport, particularly because they are so smug and self-righteous in their dealings with Kenyans of late. But having fun does not really take us anywhere. Every time we find ourselves turning on outsiders, […]

Why are we so fixated on money? It appears to be the measure of everything we do. It is the reason we get up every morning and start working. It seems to make our world go round. Even the Leader of the Opposition was in full flow recently, attacking the former vice-president. He dismissed him […]

Are we serious about becoming a ‘performance-orientated’ nation? Do we mean it when we say we’re looking for results? The president has taken a strong lead in the matter: he’s exhorted us to roll up our sleeves and get working. He’s warned us that there are no more handouts. He’s asked us to take charge […]

Do you understand the following words? “The government is committed to developing innovative, proactive and goal-focused policies that reflect the aspirations of all Kenyans and meet the expectations of key stakeholders. We will focus on efficient and effective service delivery in an environment of transparency and accountability.” Or consider the following typical ‘mission statement’ from […]

In 1963, two countries in different parts of the globe emerged from turmoil and entered a new era of hope. Country A had just freed itself from the yoke of colonial rule and was breathing the fresh, heady air of self-determination. Country B was coming out of a debilitating war with an aggressive neighbour. Both […]