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

It is customary as the year begins to wish everyone a “prosperous” New Year. Why so? Why is being “prosperous” more important than being just “happy”; and why will “wishing” it make it happen? So I thought I would kick off 2013 with something more tangible: a guide to what might make genuine riches come […]

This is my last column of 2012, and what better way to bring the year to a close than to make some wishes for the year to come. I gaze at 2013 with a mixture of hope and fear, as it is that most potentially catastrophic Kenyan annum, an election year. So first and foremost, […]

“The reason we did Maps is we looked at this, and we said, “What does the customer want? What would be great for the customer?” We wanted to provide the customer turn-by-turn directions. We wanted to provide the customer voice integration. We wanted to provide the customer flyover. And so we had a list of […]

A few years ago, I used to cross one of our now defunct Nairobi roundabouts on my way to work. Every day I would watch most drivers ‘overlap’ by arriving in the wrong lane to turn right, then cut in by force on the roundabout itself. Mostly in full view of traffic police stationed on […]

“Over the summer I invited a few friends and colleagues to my house for lunch. When they arrived, hugs and greetings were exchanged and my guests headed for the dining room while I finished up in the kitchen, mixing the homemade potato salad, and, well, let’s say “supervising” the grilling out on the patio. While […]

Rain is a blessing. From childhood, we denizens of Africa are made to understand that adage. Rain is a gift of the gods, a nourishing of the parched earth beneath our feet. It causes a sudden and mysterious splashing of green all around us. It causes our food to grow and our spirits to soar. […]

“Ask for the keys to career success and you’ll get logical explanations, recommendations, pathways and approaches. Then ask someone how he or she became successful and suddenly it becomes a story of serendipitous encounters, unexpected changes in plans, and random consequences. It does not make sense to ignore this basic fact about success any longer. […]

Kenya, we all know to our cost, has some of the worst driving habits and most dangerous roads in the world. Every single day, we lose many lives and many livelihoods to road incidents. You notice I did not call them road “accidents.” Accidents happen unintentionally and unexpectedly. Our incidents are both intentional and expected. […]

“The Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) has ordered courier firms to raise their prices to the regulatory minimum in a move seen as meant to protect the troubled State-owned Postal Corporation of Kenya (PCK). The industry regulator has established Sh150 as the minimum fee chargeable by courier companies for parcels weighing under 350 grammes. …According […]

I sat next to a leading Kenyan at a recent visit to the SOS Kenya Children’s Home in Buru Buru. We were told that the organization has a burning goal: to reduce the proportion of support it gets from foreigners versus locals. So far, it’s an uphill task. I discussed this with my neighbour in […]

“Hewlett-Packard’s $9.7 billion acquisition of Autonomy seemed like a bad idea long before Tuesday’s allegations of an accounting scandal made clear it was a deal that should never have happened. It’s the latest in a cavalcade of costly blunders at HP. The Silicon Valley pioneer has squandered billions of dollars on ill-advised acquisitions, compounding the […]

As Greece’s economic implosion continues, a worrying trend is emerging: the growing popularity of neo-Nazi groups and attacks on immigrants. The increasingly popular Golden Dawn party has been repeatedly implicated in racial violence, though it denies involvement. Its hostility towards African, Asian or Arab immigrants, however, is overt, as it reportedly champions slogans such as […]

“It is the rare person who has a single employer for a whole career, and employers understand this. So it follows that it is unreasonable to expect employees to accept becoming useless to other potential employers, however invaluable they may have become to their current employer. If your skills and knowledge are valuable only to […]

New roads. New railway stations. New ports. New connectivity. That’s the Kenya We Want, right? We know infrastructure is at the heart of development, right? We know that infrastructure investments will power the economy to Vision 2030 and Middle Income status, right? Wrong. Do you wonder why we build a new ‘super’ highway only to […]

“Prior to Sandy’s landfall, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie had brutally attacked President Obama’s leadership credentials in his keynote address at the Republican convention. And President Obama was focused on his re-election campaign, increasingly attacking Republican positions. But a crisis makes strange bedfellows, and this week, these political enemies together toured the damage, comforted victims, […]

Do what you love. That is the exhortation commonly heard these days. Every motivational speaker urges you to find your passion; every pushy tweet pushes you to discover your true aptitude – that is how you will do your best work. The late Steve Jobs, in his now legendary address at Stanford University, told us: […]

1. The organization behaves like a community, not a hierarchy. 2. Management does not “broadcast” directives but is open and listens to employees. 3. Communications aren’t codified, rigid and ritualistic but flexible and spontaneous. 4. Obedience is not a highly valued quality. Innovation is. 5. Information is open. Management is transparent. 6. The company does […]

Listen to a truly great singer singing. Note the effect the song is having on you. Now listen to the same song rendered by a more ordinary artiste. Note the difference in what you feel. The first singer probably invoked deep emotions in you, heightened your senses, made you feel better, even euphoric, about the […]

“…the overwhelming majority of my media consumption these days is digital, and magazines in general are beginning to seem a bit slow and uninspired. I go to the airport newsstand because I know I’ll be asked to turn my electronic devices off — and even then, more often than not, I end up buying nothing. […]

Trees and development don’t go together? Of course they do. As I discussed here last week, sustained development does not take place at the expense of the environment. Ask Haiti, which in a frenzy of slashing forests for wood fuel, reduced forest cover from more than 60 per cent to under 2 per cent in […]

“Air carriers may be flying through rough weathers, but their top executives have got handsome pay hikes, including the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of crisis-ridden Kingfisher Airlines, who has emerged as the second-highest paid among all his peers at the Vijay Mallya-led UB Group. Among the country’s three listed airlines also, Kingfisher CEO Sanjay Agarwal’s […]

This is the time of year when Nairobi becomes Jacaranda City. Everywhere you look, the famed trees are in blossom, painting the skyscape a vivid lilac, and precipitating our well-known ‘purple rain’ as they shed their flowers and create beautiful natural carpets all over the city. But look around, and you will see that this […]

“Frustrated by the 40 minutes she spent on hold with Citibank customer service, Stacy Small tweeted her displeasure. To her surprise, a Citibank agent tweeted right back. “Send us your phone number and we’ll call you right now,” read the message. Within minutes Ms. Small, who owns a luxury-travel company in Los Angeles, was on […]

This is my 500th column on this page. To commemorate the occasion, let me take you on a little journey. Let us go back to the Kenya of a decade ago, when I first started writing in the Sunday Nation. In 2002, this country was broken. It had been plundered dry. It was in the […]

“Whether it was a looming deadline, an understaffed development team, or missing information, Apple–despite being a company that has historically exceled at delighting its end users–wasn’t able to deliver on its customer requirements with Apple Maps. And this particular case illustrates the outcomes that can result when companies choose to embark on strategies that are […]

It must be easy to starve the education sector of funds, if your own children are not affected by the decision. If your offspring invariably go to private educational institutions, here or abroad, I imagine it is not difficult to wield the axe and say, “We can’t pay, won’t pay.” Your kids will be just […]

“There is no conclusive empirical evidence that outside succession leads to more favorable corporate performance, or even that good performance at one company can accurately predict success at another,” …In short, executive skills cannot pass the most basic test of generality: transferability.” CHARLES M ELSON and CRAIG K. FERRERE, “Executive Superstars, Peer Groups and Over-Compensation […]

There is a simple, widely observable incongruity in the higher planes of business life. Where are all the women? Specifically, where are all the women when it comes to decision-making and direction-setting? Look at the upper echelons of corporate life, and you will see only a few token feminine faces. This situation is found even […]