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

“Is too much of your time spent in unnecessary or ineffective meetings? If so, you’re not alone. Most managers consider meeting fatigue and meeting failures as two of the most significant drains on their productivity. As a result, an entire industry has sprung up over the past twenty years focusing on “meeting management.” Every company […]

Dear Kenyan Chief Executives As we launch deeper into 2011, and as many of you sit down to plan your strategic priorities, I thought it apt to plant some ‘thought seeds’ in your magnificent minds. You will know, I am sure, that the core of your business is your customer. Business is an ecosystem, but […]

“A study conducted by Jennifer S. Lerner with Julie H. Goldberg of the University of Illinois and Philip E. Tetlock of UC Berkeley documented the psychological effects of residual anger. The study found that people who saw an anger-inducing video of a boy being bullied were then more punitive toward defendants in a series of […]

Every weekday I watch hired ‘school vans’ take little children to and from their schools. Every weekday I watch these vans with their precious cargo overlap other cars, mount pavements to get a few feet ahead in the traffic, and speed recklessly when the road opens up. Every weekday I wonder: this is the example […]

“Until last week, I had always thought that it was the worst CEOs that had so much in common with two-year-olds. Both groups tend to swagger round with a wide-legged gait. Both say “mine” a lot and are exceedingly bad at sharing. Both have short attention spans. Both lack common sense and have issues with […]

Isn’t it time we Kenyans gave Barack Obama a mid-term report? We take a special interest in his presidency, after all. Two years ago I waxed entirely lyrical about Obama’s ascendancy to the world’s top job. That a black man, with Kenyan origins to boot, had made it so high was indeed cause for celebration […]

“If you pull out your smartphone and click the button that says “locate me” on your mapping application, you will see a small dot appear in the middle of your screen. That’s you. If you start walking down the street in any direction, the whole screen will move right along with you, no matter where […]

I listened to a rendition of our national anthem at a school Christmas production the other day. The anthem was played, unusually, using piano and violin – and it was utterly enchanting. I am not ashamed to state here in print that it brought a tear or two to my eye. And why not, when […]

“What could be more valuable than having a goal? From our earliest days, teachers, coaches, and parents advise us to set goals and to work mightily to achieve them – and with good reason. Goals work. The academic literature shows that by helping us tune out distractions, goals can get us to try harder, work […]

“BlackBerrys on or off while on holiday? Definitely on, Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive of communication services giant WPP, told this newspaper recently. Off, said Tamara Mellon, founder and chief creative officer of shoemaker Jimmy Choo. When it comes to e-mails, Ms Mellon said, “holidays are a no-go zone”. Sir Martin suggested that those squinting […]

It’s that time of year, so “A Sunny Day” announces its annual Sunshine Awards, to record the scene-changing events and organizations of 2010. This is the 3rd year of these awards; I ask you to remember, however, that they are entirely personal and not subject to any known auditing process. The Achievement of the Year […]

“The signature of my first book, In Search of Excellence (written with Bob Waterman), was a six-word phrase: “Hard is soft. Soft is hard.” As Bob and I examined the problems besetting US corporations circa 1980, we believed they and their advisers had got things backwards. We said that in the end it was the […]

I can’t really avoid discussing Wikileaks this week, can I? It’s the big international story of the year, and has the whole world buzzing, divided, outraged, delighted – depending of your point of view. Here in Kenya we are also waiting, some with bated breath, to know what those pesky US diplomats really thought about […]

“If you think about how you steer a boat, it’s always from the back, and I’ve moved toward the back of the boat. Initially, my sense of leadership was to be the military general out in front of the troops and the first one rushing into battle. You have to be a leader. You have […]

A few weeks ago, several Kenyans died in the most unnecessary manner. They were trampled underfoot by a stampeding mob. I refer to the Nyayo Stadium tragedy of October, which left many families grieving and dozens in hospital. Do you remember what I’m talking about? Is the event beginning to reappear through the mists of […]

I will be on Citizen TV with Jimmi Gathu on Thursday 2 December from 8.00 am, discussing ‘The Peculiar Kenyan’.

“Managers are repeatedly urged to practice what they preach so others will take their preaching seriously and try to implement it in their own work. Hypocrisy is the culprit here and to exorcise it, managers are told to “walk the talk”… Part of the reason people fail when they try to walk the talk is […]

Suppose you go into a shop to buy a drink. You notice that instead of saying “1 litre” on the carton, it says “up to 1 litre” instead. You buy the drink, go home and empty out the contents and measure them. You find there was only half a litre in the box. How do […]

My new book, THE PECULIAR KENYAN, is now available in most leading bookshops and Uchumi. It is a collection of my more lighthearted Sunday articles over the years, particularly the ones lampooning (and celebrating) our very Kenyan peculiarities. I have added new commentaries, and there is a foreword by Michael “Peculiar” Joseph. Read it to […]

“Successful strategies are compelling and persuasive in the eye of the beholder – put more vividly, they are seductive. The real power of any strategy is the power it affords to entice people into sharing an image of the future. Notice that I said entice – not delude or manipulate. That is not an easy […]

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 first instalment. Q: […]

“Most companies, regardless of their sectors, have a mission statement. And most are awash in jargon and marble-mouthed pronouncements. Worse still, these gobbledy-gook statements are often forgotten by, misremembered, or flatly ignored by frontline employees. To combat this, (Kevin) Starr insists that companies he funds can express their mission statement in under eight words. They […]

It rained in Nairobi last week, and so there were traffic jams everywhere. Study that statement again: it is a non sequitur. The “and so” conclusion does not follow from the first part of the sentence. Yet in Kenya it is a statement of fact, banally true: when it rains, there are traffic jams. Why […]

The 2009 Fortune Global 500: 1. Wal-Mart Stores (US) 2. Royal Dutch Shell (Netherlands/UK) 3. Exxon Mobil (US) 4. BP (UK) 5. Toyota Motor (Japan) 6. Japan Post Holdings 7. Sinopec (China) 8. State Grid (China) 9. Axa (France) 10. China National Petroleum Fortune (August 2010) Fortune’s Global 500 List is usually worth a look […]

I have two degrees in economics, but I have never really known what to do with them. I never became an economist, you see – I didn’t quite grasp the arcane niceties of the subject. Or rather, I was too much of a simpleton to become an economist. Over the past few days I have […]

“…three financial economists — Itzhak Ben-David of Ohio State University and John R. Graham and Campbell R. Harvey of Duke — found that chief financial officers of major American corporations are not very good at forecasting the future. The authors’ investigation used a quarterly survey of C.F.O.’s that Duke has been running since 2001. Among […]

When I was a boy, the world seemed a simple place. According to pretty much all the books and comics I read, and the TV shows and movies I watched, there were some self-evident truths about the world. These were some of them. All the action was in the world was in the rich countries […]

“The owners of the Boston Red Sox have completed a £300 million ($480.1 million) deal to buy Liverpool Football Club, bringing an end to a fractious fight for control of the storied English soccer franchise. New England Sports Ventures LLC, which owns the Red Sox, announced Friday it had completed its purchase of the Premier […]