Articles Tagged Sunday Nation

I was flicking TV channels a while back and came upon the spectacle of assorted GoK bigwigs flagging off something. They weren’t launching a race or opening a road; they were flagging off a convoy of relief food. For the long-starving people of Turkana. I tweeted at the time: you don’t flag off relief food […]

This column often highlights the various technological disruptions that will change all our lives – for better and for worse. As I have written before, this is a time of phenomenal economic and technological change, and the ramifications will be felt far and wide. One of the issues we will have to deal with in […]

During the recent holiday season, I took a taxi from the hotel where I was staying, to go and visit a nearby shopping mall. The driver was courteous and polite. He maintained a very clean and pleasing vehicle. He was solicitous and considerate, and did everything possible for his customer’s convenience, such as driving carefully, […]

How many times do you want to be wrong before you’ll accept you’re not infallible? I often watch some of the more cocksure folks amongst us strut from one bad decision to another – while never once acknowledging their own mistakes and errors of judgement. The blame is passed swiftly, scapegoats are found quickly, and […]

I hate spam. I always have. If you send me spam, it will have the reverse effect to what you intended: after receiving your unsolicited communication, I will never even consider buying whatever you’re selling. I tweeted this sentiment recently, and got an odd reply: “But Mr B, what’s really wrong with this practice? Isn’t […]

In my first year at university, I was like most students around me: finding my way in the world; straining to understand my own identity and place; yearning for experiences, the more the merrier. My budget was tight, though. Like most of my fellows, I spread my money as far as possible, seeking the cheapest […]

To succeed in the world to come, you won’t be boarding trains with tickets; you’ll be jumping off planes with parachutes. These are fast-changing, enormously disruptive times. Success is no longer about playing safe, being predictable, or following schedules. That’s how it was when I was growing up. Children were told to pick safe subjects; […]

As another year draws to a close, many of us will be sitting down to reflect on the months that passed, and those to come. Kenya is fifty years old now, and we should use this milestone to engage in deep introspection, not just frenzied celebration. It is not the number of years that matter, […]

Here’s a scene from one of my favourite comic strips: Dilbert’s ‘pointy-haired boss’ walks in looking sleepy and bedraggled. He tells everyone that he’s started sleeping very few hours every night, because he read that some of the most famous geniuses in history slept just four hours per night. That’s ridiculous, right? But what if […]

Three years ago it seemed a no-brainer: the e-book would kill the printed book. I joined the revolution early, buying dozens of books both on an e-reader and for mobile apps. My conversion looked complete. Early this year, though, I pulled the brake and did a u-turn. I am back to print with a bang, […]

Nelson Mandela is no more. You have read gushing tributes, noble quotations, effusive obituaries. Bear with me here; I come to bury the great man, not to praise him. Great he undoubtedly was. For one man to have demonstrated the resolve, patience, dignity, forgiveness and unselfishness that he did is a most unusual occurrence, one […]

I run a leadership programme. One of the key aims is to help leaders, current and future, develop a deep understanding of strategy. I have been a strategy advisor for much of my life, and love the subject deeply. Nonetheless, I always end the strategy module with the following quotation from US General Norman Schwarzkopf: […]

There is a piece of writing that has been on the wall in front of my computer for a decade. It is a succinct poetic depiction of the inter-connectedness of things. Every bit of life depends on every other bit. The piece of paper (or device screen) on which you’re reading these lines contains everything […]

Early in 2010, I wrote here that the future of your business might well lie in the palm of your hand. I was referring, of course, to the unstoppable rise of mobile computing. Since then, the smart, mobile, connected device is in more than a billion hands globally – and is expected to be in […]

As we all know, we live in a peculiar country. A very peculiar country. There are so many confusing questions that bedevil us every day, and precious few answers. So I have decided to occasionally become an “agony uncle” in this column, to tackle some of your more thorny conundrums. Here’s the latest instalment. Q: […]

“Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Ancient wisdom from the Bible, and a phrase we are fond of repeating in Kenya. Why, I don’t know, as we have steadfastly avoided the truth for decades. Most belief systems around the world revere the truth. The wise have always told […]

I’ve always liked taking photographs, so I’ve always had a camera. My wife prefers moving images, so she’s always in the market for a video camera. We both hate talking on the phone, so we carried mobile phones more out of necessity than choice. Here’s the thing. Those three consumer items – camera, videocam, phone […]

I like Alain de Botton. Ostensibly, he’s a philosopher. But unlike most people who tag themselves with that description, he is a very interesting man. The focus of his work is not abstruse concepts, but the practical realities of life. He also keeps up a barrage of erudite tweets. One of those is the reason […]

If you want to develop a nation, what do you do? Several essentials must be in place. You need your people to be free from hunger and have access to primary health facilities, so that they can do the work they need to, in good health. You need to have the rule of law, so […]

There comes a time when an entire nation needs to pause. Two weeks after the Westgate atrocity, this is such a time. That savage terrorists could plan such a complex attack with such ease, and execute it with such disdain, should give us pause as a nation. For that cannot be done without willing internal […]

For once, I don’t know what to write in this column. I’m not normally at a loss for words, but last week’s Westgate atrocity confounds analysis. That we can come to this leaves me wondering what more needs to be written or said. So heavily armed people can walk into a shopping mall and start […]

Last week we agreed: most employment is mostly awful. It requires you to park your humanity at the door and walk in as a human ‘resource,’ and exchange unwilling labour in return for monetary compensation. Why is it like this? Because our attitudes towards management and work are rooted in a long-dead past: a past […]

Here’s the deal. We offer you employment in our organization. You will provide your labour, and we’ll pay you in return. But please note some basic points very carefully. The organization belongs to us, not you. It exists to fulfil our purpose and push our agenda, not yours. You are a hired hand, a cog […]

Our enterprise culture is one of Kenya’s greatest assets. Kenyans have a ‘can-do’ attitude, often overcoming great odds to establish businesses small and large. The rate at which we start businesses and sustain them is the envy of our neighbours. It is the engine that drives economic growth and creates employment, formal and informal. What’s […]

When I was applying for university, my target college had no website. This was not because it was an inferior institution; it has produced no fewer than sixteen Nobel laureates. The point is, at that time no one had a website. So I had to rely on a small brochure with a handful of photographs […]

I’ve just come back from another bout of travel (hence the brief holiday from this page). Regular readers will know that I’m a most peculiar traveller. The highlights of my holidays tend not to be great tourist sites or memorable meals. Instead, interesting processes, interesting individuals or interesting technologies are more likely to linger in […]

I want to be my own boss. I want to work for myself, not for others. I should be enriching myself, not a bunch of strangers. A common echo, seductive in its simplicity. Who wouldn’t want to be self-directing, not answerable to others, keeping all the fruits of one’s labour? The answer is this: YOU […]

It’s all the rage these days: how are you managing your brand? Not your company or product brand, please understand: your personal brand. You, as a person and individual, now have to worry about how your brand is looking to the world. You will even be told to manage multiple sub-brands: your leadership brand, your […]