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

“P&G’s unbroken sales and profit growth under (AG) Lafley has brought great rewards to his investors and to him. He was paid $23.5m last year, with $6.6m in cash, and he holds a huge amount in P&G stock. Yet there are no discernible trappings of wealth on his person or hint of hubris in his […]

Icarus flew too close to the sun, and came crashing down into the sea. He became giddy with excitement at his ability to fly, and was punished for his over-confidence. That is a Greek fable, but all societies have their tales about the phenomenon of hubris – the excessive pride or arrogance that so many […]

“It is easy to see that life is the cumulative effect of a handful of significant shocks. It is not so hard to identify the role of Black Swans, from your armchair (or bar stool). Go through the following exercise. Look into your own existence. Count the significant events, the technological changes, and the inventions […]

We are now getting very excited about the arrival of the various undersea fibre-optic communications cables in Kenya, are we not? I certainly am, probably more than most. The internet is a great tool for me: it is the medium through which I communicate most often; where I conduct most of the research I need […]

Vision: To be a leading provider of quality products and services in the region. Mission: To deliver quality solutions and excellent returns and service to all our esteemed stakeholders through consistent best practice. Values: Excellence Teamwork Quality Customer Focus Professionalism Social Responsibility Do your vision, mission and values statements look anything like what I’ve put […]

Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta tells us that we are going on a national belt-tightening exercise. Government is going to cut out unnecessary foreign trips, workshops, and conferences by its leaders and functionaries; we are going to cut out all unnecessary hiring of cousins and sycophants; and we are going to suspend all spending on luxuries. […]

“During the bursting of the tech bubble, our management developed a set of principles, or objectives, which would guide it through the downturn, however long and deep that might be. The principles are probably somewhat generic, but perhaps could be tuned for each situation. Our principles were: “We will attempt to remain cash flow neutral […]

“Behind every successful man is a woman” is the well-known saying. Noted wit Groucho Marx added some words to this: “Behind every successful man is a woman; behind her is his wife.” That certainly rings true in Kenya… But I would like to disagree with the original statement. I think it should say: “In front […]

The Edge is a quarterly management knowledge journal, carried as a free pullout in the Business Daily. This Friday (20 March), The Edge will focus on the business model that drives the Kenya economy: the family firm. Please make sure you get your copy. It will contain a compendium of articles by those who study […]

“Those are said to be the most expensive words in the English language, by the way: it’s different this time. You can’t have a bubble without good explanations for why it’s different this time. If everyone knew that this time wasn’t different, the market would stop going up. But the future is always uncertain—and amid […]

This week we were treated to one of those depressing spectacles that make many of us wonder about the kind of society we have become. Two NGO leaders were shot dead in the city in open view, by assailants unknown. University students then clashed with police, trying to prevent the dead bodies from being removed […]

“At the end of 2007, Marks & Spencer was lauded as Britain’s Most Admired Company, ranked as the best among 220 companies in a survey conducted by Management Today. Not only did it receive the highest score overall, Marks & Sparks was rated best on five of the nine survey categories… Marks and Spencer’s triumph […]

One thing we seem to sorely lack in this country is linguistic intelligence. We are acutely unaware of the power of words, and how to harness and use that power. As a result, we use the same old cliched phrases every day. These phrases are so overused that they actually cease to have meaning. We […]

“There is nothing like a crisis to clarify the mind. In suddenly volatile and different times, you must have a strategy. I don’t mean most of the things people call strategy – mission statements, audacious goals, three- to five-year budget plans. I mean a real strategy. For many managers, the word has become a verbal […]

Jam today, jam tomorrow. Jam in the morning, jam in the evening. Jam at midday, jam at midnight. Jam in the city, jam in the suburbs. Strawberry jam on your toast, traffic jam on your road. I got out of my house in the morning to go to work earlier this week, and found a […]

“Gateway Broadcast Services announced today that its Board of Directors has unanimously approved a plan to liquidate the Company. The current financial and global crisis has severely interrupted the company’s ability to secure further funding for the continued operation of the business. Gateway Broadcast Services, suppliers of the GTV service to subscribers across Africa has […]

News that our public examination papers may be getting leaked to candidates on a systematic basis probably came as no surprise to many. Exam leakage is becoming a chronic problem, and we are now realising that it may be a well-organised activity. What is alarming, however, is how unalarmed we are by this. This one […]

“Chelsea have sensationally sacked manager Luiz Felipe Scolari. The club’s website revealed the dramatic move had been made “to maintain a challenge for the trophies we are still competing for”. World Cup winner Scolari had only been in the job since June 2008, when he became Chelsea’s third boss in a year. Chelsea are fourth […]

We are in the middle of an oil crisis, in which Kenyans periodically look for petrol like scavengers. This is unprecedented in this country, but we still can’t explain why it is happening. It’s corruption at the Kenya Pipeline Company that has caused the crisis, say some: officials conspired with racketeers to make oil stocks […]

Hi All. We are in the process of upgrading this website. While that is happening, a certain amount of functionality may be lost for a few days. Please bear with us, and hopefully everything will be back to normal by next week. Regards, Sunny

“One thing this crisis has proved is that the herd instinct is alive and well and global. It led Bear Stearns and Citigroup and Lehman Brothers and AIG to believe that risk was a thing of the past, that housing markets could only go up and that unregulated mortgage-backed securities would forever yield unprecedented returns. […]

I was supposed to roast our restaurants this week. But the state of the nation demands that our eating-out joints will have to wait a little before they receive their basting. At a time when the air is thick with the stench of burning Kenyans and high-level scams, and when starvation stalks the land, perhaps […]

“I believed that I would win kudos for my contrarian view when the (internet) bubble burst. But people who had not wished to be told they were talking nonsense before the bubble burst did not wish to be told they had been talking nonsense after the bubble burst either. Indeed they did not recall that […]

I remain stunned by the experience offered to customers by our supposedly excellent entrepreneurs. I am particularly appalled by our retail shops, most of which are woefully, bafflingly bad. I am in the market for a couple of computer printers. A relatively straightforward issue, you might think, since we seem to have a large number […]

AIESEC Nairobi is holding a Youth Leadership Forum at the University of Nairobi on Friday 30 January. I will be speaking on “The Challenge of Leadership” from 1.30 – 2.30 pm. The venue is the Jomo Kenyatta Memorial Library, at the Exhibition Hall. All are welcome, entry is free. I hope to see you there. […]

“We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of […]

After watching America’s presidential inauguration this week, I wanted to cry. Not because I was overjoyed, although I was. No, the tears, had they come, would have been of sheer frustration, summarised in one thought: will I ever see such a person take charge in my own country? Barack Obama, I have stated here many […]

“This idea – that excellence at a complex task requires a critical, minimum level of practice – surfaces again and again in studies of expertise. In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is a magic number for true expertise: 10,000 hours. “In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice-skaters, concert […]