Articles Tagged Sunday Nation

My wife has an interesting word she uses to describe many aspects of life: “fru-fru.” Today’s column is written not with the help of my new friend, ChatGPT, but a longstanding one, Mrs B. What is fru-fru? A superficially frilly, misleading appearance. It can be used to describe people or offerings that emphasize sweet, empty […]

A recent experience at a hotel made me pause and reflect. I had looked over the wide array of desserts available in the lunch buffet, and chosen a nice looking mousse in a long-stemmed glass. After carrying the sweet dish back to my table, I noticed that the dessert spoon already laid out there was […]

Employee engagement is a very big deal. Much of what differentiates mediocre organizations from excellent ones is this very simple thing: do the people who work there care about their work? Will they give of their best, and will they go the extra mile? High employee engagement, though, is very rare! The people at Gallup […]

Gary Vaynerchuk, serial entrepreneur and digital marketing evangelist, begins his new book, Twelve and a Half, with an interesting anecdote. GaryVee, as he is known on social media, runs VaynerMedia, a creative agency. He tells us he once had to attend a very difficult meeting with a leading client. This stemmed from a bad mistake […]

Arthur Ashe was a true trailblazer. He was the first black player to win tennis’s grand slam tournaments. He won Wimbledon in 1975, and became the world’s number-one ranked player in that year. Ashe’s life reflected some very famous words: “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” So much said, […]

Disruption, says Scott Galloway, is more about the incumbents than the disruptors. What does the Stern School of Business professor mean? In his words: “Disruption is driven by stasis and the incompetence of incumbents.” We have seen this again and again. Take the taxi rides business. Sure, Uber arrived with a game-changing business model and […]

The alarm bell rang in my head, but I did it anyway. I was trying to order dinner using a home delivery app, from one of my regular, favourite restaurants. For some reason the app was showing “restaurant not available” on that day. We decided to call the restaurant directly, to ask what was wrong. […]

Flying over our continent recently, I noticed an interesting place name on the map that was tracking my journey on the screen in front of my seat. Chad, it turns out, has a town called “Ati”—a sizeable place with its own airport. What an excellent name for a habitat of humans, I thought. “Ati/Eti” in […]

Kenya’s road carnage continues unabated. It has always been thus, since I was a child. Thousands die every year in unnecessary road crashes. Innocents—passengers, pedestrians, roadside vendors—have their lives cut short year after year. A survey run by the Kenya Red Cross a decade ago told us that most of those who die are vulnerable […]

I learned with sadness of the unexpected passing of Sir Ivan Menezes recently. I only met Ivan, Diageo’s global chief executive, once—last year, during East African Breweries’ 100th year celebrations. I sat next to him at dinner and we shared many interesting reflections on business, leadership and strategy. I left that dinner thinking: aha, so […]

I read this hilarious tweet a while back and bookmarked it. It is from Andrew Wilkinson, an entrepreneur, characterising entrepreneurs giving advice thus: “Here’s the number I used to win the lottery.”  I’ve stopped laughing now, enough to think and write about that excellent sentence.  Young folks lining up to listen to successful entrepreneurs talk […]

A reader of this column sent me a pointed question recently, which went something like this: Many of us are full of dreams; we have high hopes for our futures, most of which end up unfulfilled. What then separates those who achieve from those who just dream? Great question! Let me have a go at […]

When I was young, cars all looked different. The first car I ever drove was a Datsun 120Y—my mother’s—and it had a cutely weird boxy shape. It could not be mistaken for any other car. Similar Japanese makes—Toyota, Honda, Mazda—all had distinctive shapes and styling.  In those days, a Peugeot looked distinctively like a Peugeot; […]

In Ernest Hemingway’s famous novel, The Sun Also Rises, a character is asked how he went bankrupt. “In two ways,” he answers. “Gradually and then suddenly.” A famous sentence, one that aptly describes how businesses go down. We get fixated on the sudden events that occur at the end of the trajectory—banks calling in their […]

Last week I discussed the problem of leadership transitions in family firms. Many founders are unable to make meaningful handovers to new leaders, from either within or outside the business. This problem of refusing to let go of the reins, however, is not confined to family businesses. Let’s take a wider look at the issue […]

I want to tell you about a certain gentleman today. This person lived in a lower-middle-class estate back in the day, where there were many houses and children packed together, but little by way of recreational facilities for the kids. As a result, the children played mostly on the road—marking out “goals” with chalk to […]

I have a lot of time for James Daunt. He is the man trying valiantly to rescue the bookselling trade, against all odds. As a reader and writer I look on, gripped by the hope that bookstores can withstand the onslaught of online sellers and e-books. James Daunt was once an investment banker. In his […]

You’re familiar, I’m sure, with the guest feedback survey that hotels send out to those who have stayed with them. You click a link, provide some ratings based on your experience of the hotel, and perhaps some more detailed points if you have the time or inclination. That opportunity, however, is typically provided soon after […]

More than a decade ago, before Nairobi had governors, I wrote here that we need a governor that makes rain the blessing it is supposed to be, and not a curse. Many governors have come and gone, but the rain still beats us. I wrote then: “In this city, rain is anything but a blessing. […]

Last week I discussed the Netflix series Street Food Asia. The foodie in me loved looking at the origins and excellence of various dishes: chaat in India; tom yum in Thailand; jajan pasar in Indonesia; putu piring in Singapore. But the student of human endeavour in me was even more impressed. Street food, you see, […]

Have you watched Street Food Asia on Netflix? If you’re interested in the human being at work, this series is worth a peep. It’s only ostensibly about food; more about the human hustling to eke out a living—and about what it takes to survive and thrive in very difficult environments. One episode, set in Delhi, […]

We all know about bullies at school. They seemed to be ever-present when we were being educated. The kids who were bigger and more aggressive than others, who then intimidated and tormented their smaller and milder-mannered schoolmates. Bullying was rampant when I was in school, and it led to some severe issues in those unfortunate […]

I am always very interested in long-lived companies and brands. It is not easy to live long as a business, and most do not. What special things do the venerable ones do? This week I cast my eye on a set of products that are always in our kitchen and pantry shelves, and never seem […]

Is artificial intelligence (AI) finally coming of age? If computers start reasoning and working more like humans, what should we be excited—and worried—about? The world is currently agog trying out ChatGPT, the newest kid on the block. ChatGPT is generative AI: it isn’t intelligent as such, but it has a huge trove of data that […]

There is something my father once told me that has never left me. I was a big book-reader as a boy, and much of my meagre pocket money would go towards buying books, often from Nairobi’s two second-hand bookshops of that time. I was once worried about the spend being incurred, and wondered out loud […]

It is a rare person who can enjoy a degree of success and still stay grounded. Many will start displaying an ugly braggadocio even after making modest progress in life. So what can we say about someone who gains it all—professional acclaim, fame and renown, material comfort, strong familial relationships—but stays humble? Many years ago, […]

For as long as I can remember, some Kenyan editors have insisted on calling essential government deliverables “goodies.” They are fond of telling us that some high-ranking functionary “announced goodies” for a particular region or group of citizens. What are these “goodies”? Oh, just things like feeder roads, port facilities, schools, clinics, and the like. […]

A question that keeps popping up: what are the secrets of success in business? Every new generation seems to ask it—these days on social media. I am asked the question often, and I wonder: why do people think it’s about “secrets” in the first place? I guess because true business success is rare rather than […]