"CEOs can't wait to read Sunny Bindra's articles every week."

I listen for a living. Good counsel begins in the ear, not the mouth. All useful advice starts with deep listening. If an adviser, coach, or mentor rushes to tell you what to do without first understanding your world—how it looks and feels to you—they’ve missed the plot. If they lead with instructions rather than […]

There are people who look at Zohran Kwame Mamdani and see only one thing: a Muslim. But New York City’s new mayor is much more than that. Many in the world can lay claim to him. Ugandans can, because he was born there. Africans can, because his middle name signifies pan-Africanism. Indians can, because their […]

I visited a bank branch recently. That’s no longer a feature of my life; digital acceleration in banking has been real, and like most people I happily transact online and through mobile apps. Most of the time. Once in a while the need for an in-person visit to a physical location, after battling traffic and […]

A and I. Two letters that are on everyone’s lips these days. Artificial intelligence, we are told, is the greatest opportunity in the history of humankind. It will free us all from drudge work and lead to an unprecedented productivity boom. Artificial intelligence, we are also told, is the greatest threat to the future of […]

A voice rises across the dining room. One customer is clearly furious, the server is flustered, other diners are watching. The temperature is rising. You’re the manager. What now? Here are three options often seen in the wild. One: Storm in, shove your server aside, apologise like mad, blame your staff, and promise heaven. Later, […]

Today I want to introduce you to a gentleman called Tancredi Falconeri. He’s not a real person, but he uttered one of life’s enduring wisdoms. Tancredi is a character in Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s novel, The Leopard. The novel came out before I was born, but it has great modern relevance. I keep pointing this […]

In the days of yore, currency was in the form of silver or gold coins. If you allowed bad currency (debased, or even counterfeit) to be treated as equal to proper currency, guess what happened? Yep, the proper coins disappeared. People spent the bad money (because—why not?) and hoarded the good money. Eventually, the good […]

I track Gallup’s State of the Global Workforce report, every year. I don’t really know why. It’s the same depressing reading every damn time.  That’s not Gallup’s fault, but if you’re an employer, it might be yours. So what did the 2025 report, recently released, reconfirm? That the pattern remains clear. Here’s an excerpt, using […]

We all respect thinkers. Well, most of us, anyway. Thoughtful people are of immense value in a world running on shallowness and the absence of critical reasoning. They go deep, and they re-emerge with insights, wisdoms, and solutions that regular people cannot. Many folks like to hang out with proper thinkers, at least some of […]

Do you know this word? ENSHITTIFICATION. It’s ugly and accurate. Cory Doctorow coined it. It describes what happens when tech platforms, once useful, go bad. Not all at once, but gradually—and then completely. The pattern is simple—and sadly predictable. When we start a great business, we try to be amazing for our customers. Then, we […]

Like many around the world, your business might be staring into a fog of extreme uncertainty. Perhaps your government keeps slapping on new taxes—suddenly, haphazardly. Maybe looming trade wars are giving you sleepless nights. Or it could be that new tech and fresh competition have arrived in tandem to feast on what used to be […]

“Flight 123 to XYZ is delayed due to operational reasons. We regret any inconvenience caused.” How many times have you heard this? How many times have you sighed, rolled your eyes, or muttered in frustration? This phrase, uttered in monotonous tones over crackling airport speakers all over the world, is one of the great corporate […]

The year began for me with a series of setbacks. Life is often like that; the challenges come thick and fast. It has always been thus, and there is nothing to be done except deal with it. But when the season of setbacks is upon us, we need to step up, focus, stay calm, and […]

UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot dead outside a Manhattan hotel in early December. A suspect was arrested a few days later, and revealed to be Luigi Mangione. The alleged perpetrator now faces charges including murder as an act of terrorism. Mangione is Ivy-League educated, and the scion of a well-to-do family. Upon his arrest, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

What is a nation? What makes it what it is? Is a nation its borders, the lines on a map that define its boundaries? Is that what we think of when we think of a country? Is a nation its physical features, the mountains and lakes and rivers that are its hallmarks? Or is a […]

“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 […]

Asma Khan is quite a phenomenon. A Bengali Muslim immigrant in the UK, she is a trained lawyer with a PhD in constitutional law. Yet her accomplishment is not in the field of her training. Asma is famous simply for cooking the dishes of her childhood. She had never learned to cook when she got […]

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 […]

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 […]

What kind of 2024 are you expecting to have? Across the world, the prognosis is grim at best. Economies are ailing; costs of living have rocketed; business failures are looming; debt burdens are onerous. It’s not going to be an easy year to navigate, even for the most fortunate. But there is something that a […]

Picture this scenario: The board of directors of an iconic organisation decides to fire its well-known CEO, without warning, issuing a cryptic announcement to that effect and appointing an interim CEO from within the organisation to hold fort. That stuff happens often, so nothing too extraordinary thus far.  All hell breaks loose, however. It turns […]

I have been saying to businesses large and small for decades now: there’s an affection button that you must press. It’s the button that, once activated, creates the emotion: “I like these people.” That is one of the most potent feelings in business, yet it’s also the most ignored. Last week I showed how small, […]