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

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 […]

And so we celebrated our first Mashujaa Day. A nice idea by the constitutional review team – de-personalize the Kenyatta and Moi days, combine them into one holiday, use it to celebrate all heroes, not just politicians whose ‘heroism’ is debatable in any case. A nice idea, but we have some way to go before […]

I am finally, reluctantly, on Twitter, as sunnysunwords I will be posting new articles (and some older ones) from this website, as well as occasional tweets when something worth saying overwhelms my deep fear of banality…

“Microsoft made its final roll of the dice in the global smartphone market today, launching a new mobile operating system which the software powerhouse hopes will rival iPhone and Android devices. The Windows Phone 7 marks a complete break from its past efforts – and the suppression of internal politics in favour of the man […]

William Ruto, Minister for Higher Education, did us all a favour recently. Not quite in the way he intended, but never mind. Mr Ruto penned an opinion piece questioning the investment of scarce resources in seemingly unproductive educational disciplines, specifically the arts, humanities and social sciences. There was a predictable brouhaha in the land, with […]

“…organizations are communities of human beings, not collections of human resources. As human beings, we engage with our communities. Indeed, we cherish the very sense of community, since it is the social glue that bonds us together for the social good, and so allows us to function energetically. Organizations thus work best when they too […]

This is my 400th article for the Sunday Nation, and to mark the milestone I want to return to a favourite theme: education. A confession first: I was beaten, disciplined and detained many times at school. Not that I was a serial miscreant, please understand. I was punished for multitudes of minor offences: questioning the […]

Henry Mintzberg, McGill University’s renowned professor of strategy and management, will be in Nairobi for a rare visit, courtesy of Kenya Red Cross. Strathmore Business School be hosting a unique session with Prof Mintzberg, moderated by me, on Wednesday 13th October from 3.30 pm. Details here Please contact SBS to book places for yourself and […]

“Do you get into the office without a plan of action for the day? Are you not being rewarded for your efforts? Does your boss often pull you down and embarrass you in front of colleagues? If any or all of these ring true, it might be time to shake things up.” PRERNA SODHI, India […]

India’s shame is nearly complete. You will not have failed to notice the utter mess the country has made of the preparing for the ongoing Commonwealth Games. “Shining India” was meant to showcase its newly acquired global prowess by holding an event to make the world sit up and take notice. Well, the world did […]

‘The Peculiar Kenyan’ is launching soon. Come and listen to me discuss Kenyan peculiarities with journalist Pauline Odhiambo this Saturday, 2 October, at 2.00 pm. This is part of the Storymoja Hay Festival, Kenya’s leading literary event, at the Railway Club grounds, Tandaa ICT tent. The festival will have many attractions. For further information see […]

“Does your organization have an overly complex presentation culture? If you’re not sure, ask yourself the following questions: How often are meetings dominated by long presentations with dozens of slides? How much time do people spend preparing, revising, and emailing different versions of slide decks? To what extent are managers assessed by the depth and […]

Last week I asked you to think differently about Kenya’s population numbers and demographic profile. Half our population is aged under 18. Good or bad? Consider this: would you rather have the Japan problem? Japan’s population has peaked and is expected to decline for decades. That means fewer workers paying fewer taxes to support an […]

Nokia, the leading maker of mobile phones, replaced its chief executive, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, on Friday with the head of Microsoft’s business unit in a bid to turn around the company’s struggling smartphone lineup and stop a decline in American market share. Nokia said it had appointed Stephen Elop, a 46-year-old native of Ancaster, Ontario, to […]

This is an article I’ve been waiting to write for a year. We completed our population enumeration exercise a year ago, and watched the results being delayed many times due to, we are told, “data complexity.” Make of that what you will. I know you are more interested in the numbers your tribe clocked, but […]