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

“All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers came, thither they return again. All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. The thing that hath been, it is […]

A board member with whom I was discussing his company made me laugh out loud recently. When I asked him how effective his board’s policy formulations were, he told me, with refreshing honesty: “You know, sometimes I wonder whether the steering wheel is really connected to the tyres…” Hilarious imagery: a bunch of important personages […]

“Sign No. 1: Conspicuously posted vision or value statements are filled with vague but important-sounding words like “excellence” and “quality.” Sign No. 2: Bringing up a problem is considered as evidence of a personality defect rather than as an observation of reality. Sign No. 3: If by chance there are problems, the usual solution is […]

This column doesn’t do film reviews. Every so often, however, a film experience comes along that requires you to break your own rules. Michael Jackson’s “This Is It” is one such experience, and one that I am happy to ask you not to miss, if you have any interest in the nature and experience of […]

“…by far the biggest workplace taboo is the truth – or at least any truth that punctures the self-importance of work. A friend tells me that she was recently on a global conference call and each person in turn introduced themselves and said where they were. One person said she was in a meeting room […]

Your holy war, your northern star / Your sermon on the mount from the boot of your car. …September, streets capsizing / Spilling over down the drains Shard of glass, splinters like rain / But you could only feel your own pain. Please / Get up off your knees. Please / Leave me out of […]

“One of the most common and ambiguous terms in business today is “client-centricity” or “client focus.” Many businesses claim to have it. But if the essence of a relationship is a willingness to earn and deserve what you want by first focusing on the other party in the relationship, few companies are really client-centric. Many […]

Legendary French football striker Thierry Henry handled the ball illegally last week, and set up his compatriot to score against the Republic of Ireland in a crunch qualifying game for next year’s World Cup. The referee did not notice. France went through as a result of this gross injustice, and the Irish were bundled out. […]

“At last the phoney war is over. For months it has been clear that Britain’s fiscal mess is Augean. Poll after poll has shown that voters know big spending cuts are unavoidable. …So Mr (George) Osborne had much to prove when he stood up on October 6th to give a taste of what his policy […]

I was an angry man last weekend. The ill temper was sparked by a football match. I watched Kenya lose 2-3 to Nigeria at Kasarani, and in the process fail to qualify for both the World Cup and the Africa Cup of Nations. That in itself was not news, and should not have made me […]

“The current job market reminds me of a story about a church committee assigned to hire a new pastor. Numerous well-qualified candidates applied, but none seemed to meet the committee’s requirements. Frustrated with this perfectionism, one of the committee’s members submitted an anonymous résumé with the accomplishments of a certain priest who had lived and […]

Have you had your annual performance review? For anyone working in a large organisation, it’s that part of the year. It’s time for the age-honoured ritual of sitting down with your immediate superior and going through your performance for the year, step by step. Are they not a fine thing, these performance appraisals? Certainly the […]

“A good leader sees the best in his people, not the worst; he is not a scapegoat hunter. He sees winners, and he uses “the rule of 50 percent,” which makes him high on promoting from within. The rule is that if you have anybody in your organization who looks like 50 percent of what […]

It’s not easy to be optimistic in Kenya these days, and most conversations about the future are laced with gloom. But last week brought us probably the most positive development seen in Kenya in recent times. You may have missed it, though. President Kibaki, when he left to attend a conference in Nigeria, reportedly travelled […]

“Howard Schultz (returned) in January 2008 to run the firm he had made great but which had by then entered a seemingly inescapable spiral of decline. Investors approve: having fallen below $8 last November, down from an all-time high of nearly $40 in 2006, shares in Starbucks have risen above $20, a bit higher than […]

It behoves every society to look ahead, to peer through the mists of time and see what might happen to it tomorrow. We often wait for bad events to occur before addressing them, yet a little anticipatory thinking might allow us to foresee them and avoid them. There is a very serious problem brewing in […]

“Jack Welch’s tenure as CEO of GE was, by any measure, phenomenally successful. But even the most remarkable CEOS are mere mortals, and bound to err from time to time. In Welch’s case, one notable blunder was his ill-fated attempt to acquire Honeywell in 2001. It was a deal fraught with risk, undertaken with little […]

I want to tell you about “my” music this Sunday. My distant forebears emerged from the Punjab region in India and Pakistan, the land of the five rivers. The farmers living in this fertile land had plenty of time in which to develop their folk music, and they did a fine job. The music of […]

“When I talk of corporate personality, I mean just that: the company, not the individual. The law created the concept of corporate personality over a century ago, distinguishing the company from the individuals who run it, own its shares, or work for it. I think corporate personality is a useful idea, as a commercial as […]

Justice Aaron Ringera, erstwhile head of the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission, quoted Shakespeare extensively during his tenure and elaborately during his prolonged departure. He is a lifelong devotee of the Great Bard, and with good reason: any lover of English must of necessity be a lover of the works of William Shakespeare. Such is his influence […]

“Suppose you went to a doctor who said: “I’m going to do an appendectomy on you.” When you asked why, the doctor answered, “because I did one on my last patient and it made him better.” We suspect you would hightail it out of that office, because you know that the treatment ought to be […]

This week I want to stick a steak knife into the restaurant industry. Running a good eatery should be simplicity itself. Entry barriers are low, if you’re willing to start small; many a world-beating restaurant chain started life as a single food stall somewhere. Yet in Kenya we are running this most important industry very […]

Welcome to Sunwords.com. Feel at home, look around, browse, sit down and read, leave a comment. Best wishes, Sunny

“Managers build their plans and strategies on the assumption that people in their firm are ready and willing to be team players, acting collectively to create or achieve something in the future. The truth, however, is that these attitudes cannot be assumed to exist. In fact, they’re notably scarce. In many firms – even in […]

I read a news report from India recently that left me thinking I had been flung back in time. Apparently farmers in Bihar, one of India’s most backward states, are forcing their unmarried daughters to plough their fields naked after sunset. This is in an attempt to “embarrass” the gods into sending rain to the […]

“Sometimes innovation comes from funny places. For insight into how to balance creativity with the practicalities of commercialisation, we turn to a somewhat surprising source: the Marx Brothers, one of the world’s most famous comedy teams. Each one of the Marx Brother’s acts was developed in small pieces in the creative marketplace. “It was developed […]

On Nairobi’s Nyerere Avenue, you will find a most intriguing sign. It says “Children’s Traffic Park”. Inside, on this most prime of prime real estate, you will see a large, elaborate operation. It looks like a most commendable initiative: a simulated road model, complete with battery-operated cars and other road vehicles, to teach children good […]

“Consider the “cookie experiment” reported by the psychologists Dacher Keltner, Deborah H. Gruenfeld, and Cameron Anderson in 2003. In this study, teams of three students each were instructed to produce a short policy paper. Two members of each team were randomly assigned to write the paper. The third member evaluated it and determined how much […]