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

Surely it’s impossible for a company listed in three stock exchanges to falsify its accounts for years on end? Surely you cannot put a fictitious $1 billion in cash on your balance sheet, and get it past your auditors? Surely you can’t just keep recording fake profit margins? Actually, you can. Satyam Computer Services, an […]

“The past year has been full of big surprises, particularly for banks. One minute it was 85-year-old Bear Stearns that collapsed, the next it was 158-year-old Lehman Brothers, and then the whole financial system needed bailing out as confidence in free-market capitalism itself all but evaporated. Who would have thought, at the start of 2008, […]

Nothing in this world creates more wealth than private companies. And that wealth is spread around – to shareholders, employees, governments, suppliers and customers. The interconnected micro-world around the private company is the world’s most powerful economic ecosystem. Those at the top of the corporate world tend to have a halo around their heads. We […]

“Each morning you start with a clean sheet of paper, the hours ahead of you are opportunities to grow – to do something better, to develop your ideas further, to improve your own capabilities, or to grow your business faster. Every activity, every meeting, every decision is an exciting opportunity. Somehow, it doesn’t often feel […]

The New Year is a time for predictions, but not everyone likes them. England’s favourite man-child footballer, Paul Gascoigne, said: “I never make predictions, and I never will.” This paradoxical sentence must have deranged him: he was eventually sectioned by the authorities for drink-related mental problems. So predictions are never to be taken too seriously. […]

This is the time of year that we look back on the days and months that have passed, and reflect on what happened. Another year is recorded in the history books, and it is appropriate to reconsider, to reassess and to revisit. In this spirit, ‘A Sunny Day’ has decided to inaugurate the annual Sunshine […]

“It’s clear that sleep deprivation can lead to disastrous workplace mishaps, with some of the worst accidents on record, including the meltdowns at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, occurring between 2 and 4 a.m., when the effects of sleep deprivation are most pronounced. But what happens to team dynamics and problem-solving capabilities when one or […]

I should have the right to write anything I choose to on this page. Provided, of course, I don’t write lies, ask you to attack anyone, or cause other types of harm. And you should have the right to disagree with anything I write, and take me to task for my errors or flawed arguments. […]

“To trust a leader, it is not necessary to like him. Nor is it necessary to agree with him. Trust is the conviction that the leader means what he says. It is a belief in something very old-fashioned, called “integrity”. A leader’s actions and a leader’s professed beliefs must be congruent, or at least compatible. […]

They say travel broadens the mind. But often I find it just heats it up. I have just returned from South Africa, a country that receives 8.5 million international visitors every year. I stayed at the V&A Waterfront, which is the country’s biggest tourist attraction, drawing over 20 million foreign and domestic visitors annually. Kenya […]

The Edge, the Business Daily’s quarterly management series, is out today. The Edge is a free pullout in today’s Business Daily, and is produced jointly with Strathmore Business School. I am the Consultant Editor for the series. This issue focuses on the new challenges of people management: recruitment, retention, motivation and reward. It is a […]

“Even though everyone can now afford books, still no one reads. It is not just the factory workers who don’t read: managers don’t either. And what they don’t read in particular is novels. I have just asked two senior executives what it is that puts them off. Both said the same thing: I don’t have […]

We were told in the middle of last week that 9 out of 10 Kenyans think our members of parliament should pay taxes on all their income. I was stunned by this finding; I did not know what to think. Are you trying to tell me that 10 per cent of us actually think MPS […]

“Since the dawn of time, man’s demand for products and services has been driven by a deep desire to keep up with the Joneses. This desire has made mankind crave certain products and services, and despise others – no matter what the intrinsic value of those products and services. If you want to build a […]

I touched on a subject before being interrupted by the US poll. I wrote in early November that we cannot advance as a society until we learn to respect rules, and that most of us only behave well when we are compelled to do so. I termed the phenomenon ‘moral entropy’: if you don’t force […]

“A company can outperform rivals only if it can establish a difference that it can preserve. It must deliver greater value to customers or create comparable value at lower cost, or do both. …Operational effectiveness means performing similar activities better than rivals perform them…in contrast, strategic positioning means performing different activities from rivals’ or performing […]

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it […]

“Andy Cole has finally confirmed he has retired from football, but in doing so launched a broadside at Nottingham Forest and their manager Colin Calderwood. The former Manchester United and England striker left his hometown club two weeks ago after failing to make an impression and growing disillusioned with restricted appearances. Cole made just 11 […]

Last week we all flew high on the Barack Obama victory in the US presidential race. This week, we need to make a hard landing. For the nonsense that is being spouted from all corners about what this win means for Kenya is not only irritating, but is now giving cause to worry. If some […]

The Top 10 most influential business gurus: 1. Gary Hamel 2. Thomas L. Friedman 3. Bill Gates 4. Malcolm Gladwell 5. Howard Gardner 6. Philip Kotler 7. Robert Reich 8. Daniel Goleman 9. Henry Mintzberg 10. Stephen R. Covey The Wall Street Journal, 5 May 2008 Academics might be expected to dominate the Wall Street […]

I am feeling rather emotional as I write this, on the morning when Barack Obama has been elected president of the United States of America. This is my 300th article for the Sunday Nation, and the milestone could not have come at a better moment. So you will forgive me if I stray from the […]

“A chief executive was beaten to death as he tried to pacify a group of workers sacked from his manufacturing plant, Indian police said today. Lalit Kishore Choudhary, 47, bled to death inside the car parts factory yesterday after being attacked by more than 130 men. Police have arrested 63 former employees of Graziano Transmissioni […]

After spending decades observing myself and my fellow human beings, I am forced to come to a somewhat cynical conclusion: most of us only behave well when we are compelled to do so. When left to his own devices and untrammeled by the demands of morality and legality, the average person will do all the […]

“For many of us, it’s decision time. What do we do with our investments? Do we sell our stocks? Rethink our retirement? With the warning lights flashing, our natural instinct is to react. But that very moment, when the need to make a decision feels strongest, might very well be the time to do nothing […]

The 2009 intake for my private leadership development programme, Fast Forward, is now open. Fast Forward takes 20 or so current and future leaders every year and puts them through a varied programme of learning and dialogue to develop WISDOM in leadership. What is the measure of leadership? What is the relationship between leader and […]

At first I thought Justice Waki and his team had put the cat amongst the pigeons. Now I’m beginning to wonder whether they merely released some pigeons which are being devoured quickly by the cats. There is no doubt that the Waki team did a commendable job. It went where few officially sanctioned commissions have […]

“…suppose you imagine yourself and a group of experts who seem to have converged on an enlightened opinion which has arguments to support it, and it has prominent influential people saying that. It can be difficult for someone to stand up in that room and air what seem to be half-baked or half-formed doubts about […]

Positive thinking has been the mantra of the modern world for quite a while now. Spiritualists, life coaches and business leaders all agree: there is nowt to be gained from negativity. We must all think positive, be positive and do positive – and all positive things will happen to us. No-one likes a doomsayer or […]