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

Scene from The Godfather: To set the scene, Michael Corleone (played by Al Pacino), the don’s war-hero son who was not ordained to enter the family business, nonetheless finds himself tapped to avenge the attempted assassination of his father (played by Marlon Brando). His mission is to shoot Sollozzo, who engineered the gunning down of […]

How long do family businesses last? Most make it to the second generation, and then the problems start. Once the visionary founder has handed over the reins to his son/daughter/nephew/brother, an inflection point occurs. What happens in that second generation decides whether the business has a future. Either the company makes necessary changes and undertakes […]

“Where is (success) coming from? It’s coming from having, within a company, difficult-to-replicate and usually intangible resources. Things that can generate and sustain competitive success – things like reputation, a good customer group, network externalities, experienced and competent people performing your processes. …we know that companies get good at something by doing it. Now that […]

Fast Forward is a new leadership development programme, launching in Kenya in 2008. It has a specific aim: to develop the leaders of ‘business unusual’ and take them on the final leg of their learning journey – developing WISDOM and GOOD JUDGEMENT in leadership. The programme will select a small group of participants every year […]

I have been fortunate enough in my life to have visited many of the world’s great cities. When I was younger, that was great fun. These days, I just get angry when I travel. Why angry? I get angry when the plane approaches a new city at night, and I can see a dramatic display […]

“The rule of the market economy,” this Communist official explained to me, “is that if somewhere has the richest human resources and the cheapest labor, of course the enterprises and the businesses will naturally go there.” In manufacturing, he pointed out, “Chinese people were first the employees and working for the foreign manufacturers, and after […]

I am delighted to announce the launch of my new book: CROWN YOUR CUSTOMER. CYC is a short polemic about the state of customer service in Kenya – and what to do about it. Click here to read an excerpt. The book is available in Kenya from the end of October, and is published by […]

One man and a small child dead; another child in the intensive care unit. That was the net effect of last week’s Diwali celebrations in Nairobi. Diwali is the Hindu festival of light, and is meant to signify humanity’s evolution from darkness to light, from the forests to civilisation. An apt metaphor for where we […]

“The strong global economic tide has lifted the boats of most South-East Asian countries, but perhaps the most impressive performer is Singapore. Its national income per head is already higher than Spain’s and New Zealand’s, and five times that of its nearest neighbour, Malaysia…since the 1997 Asian Crisis, it has fared markedly better than its […]

Football pundit Alan Hansen, when surveying the new-look Manchester United team of 1995-96, famously stated: “You can’t win anything with kids”. Those words have probably haunted him every day of his life subsequently. Manchester United went to win the English Premiership title that year, with a team whose average age was 24, and 6 of […]

“During 10 critical days of (one of the worst crises) in (Bear Stearns’) 84-year history, Bear’s chief executive wasn’t near his Wall Street office. James Cayne was playing in a bridge tournament in Nashville, Tenn., without a cellphone or an email device. …In summer weeks, he typically left the office on Thursday afternoon and spent […]

A few days ago we were being asked to stand up and shout. In Kenya, we are always shouting about something or other – so no news there. What was different, however, was that this was an organised campaign to get people to express their concerted outrage over a particular issue. That issue? Global poverty. […]

“…Almost all of today’s companies, from the mediocre to the superlative, were built primarily to mobilise labour and capital, not the intangible assets that generate profit per employee. Trying to run a 21st-century company with organisational models designed for the 20th limits how well it can perform and creates massive, unnecessary, and unproductive complexity, which […]

I will be signing copies of Crown Your Customer on Saturday 3 November, as follows: Simply Books, ABC Shopping Centre: 10am to 12pm Bookstop, Yaya Centre: 1pm to 3pm Muthoni Garland will also be there, signing Tracking The Scent Of My Mother. Please come to chat and buy a signed copy.

President Kibaki dissolved the ninth parliament this week, and asked the media and historians to judge its performance. So, let the evaluations begin. I think the ninth parliament was a disgrace to the country. To be fair, though: this parliament came in with a different set of public expectations. During the last years of the […]

“Worldwide, boards of large corporations are dismissing four times more CEOs today then in 1995, a trend that raises an important question: Are boards undermining the chief executive’s ability to lead for the long term? …Booz Allen Hamilton’s decade-long study of CEO turnover at the 2,500 largest companies in the world points to a different […]

I am the Consultant Editor for THE EDGE – a new management knowledge series that will come as a free pullout in the Business Daily. Each issue of THE EDGE will feature a specific management topic, and will appear approximately quarterly. This launch issue is on LEADERSHIP, and features the work of thinkers from Kenya […]

This general election campaign sometimes sounds like the innumerate in conversation with the illiterate. The level of discourse is plunging fast, and we have yet to find the bottom. Half-truths are tossed around with abandon; myths and stereotypes rule the day; brainless accusations are made daily. We know the electorate is mostly unschooled (that’s the […]

“…Educated people do not rely exclusively, or indeed even primarily, on the instruction they receive, but seek to satisfy their insatiable intellectual curiosity by their own means of self-improvement. Yet, in the business-class section of long flights to geographically and culturally remote places, typically the business passenger will be seen watching silly videos that require […]

Media Focus on Development has put up a special website for the general election campaign in Kenya. I have provided a piece on who’s responsible for the lamentably low level of discourse. Click http://www.mediafocusondevelopment.com/

China and India are undoubtedly the economic phenomena of this generation. Both are in the midst of an economic transformation that is startling in its scale and scope. Both are criticised – China, for still being an autocratic, undemocratic regime, India for not doing enough for its poor people – but there is no doubt […]

“Every year, companies spend more than $2 trillion on computer and communications equipment and services. Underlying these enormous expenditures is one of modern business’s most deeply held assumptions: that information is increasingly critical to competitive advantage and strategic success. …I will argue that IT’s strategic importance is not growing, as many have claimed or assumed, […]

What is the coffee business? What is the football business? What is the athletics business? What is the flowers business? For us in Africa, the answers to those questions are very simple indeed. The coffee business is BEANS. The football business is PLAYERS. The athletics business is RUNNERS. The flowers business is GREENHOUSES. In all […]

“In a single day, on July 16, 2005, the American and British economies delivered nine million copies of the sixth volume of the Harry Potter children’s book series to eager fans. Book retailers continually restocked the shelves as customers snatched up the book. Amazon and Barnes & Noble shipped preordered copies directly to customers’ homes. […]

Silly little armies wearing shukas and carrying bows and arrows. People being attacked simply because they dare to stand for election. Rent-a-mob tit-for-tat protests. Idiots clapping and jeering as they burn effigies. Threats and counter-threats. Banned rallies. Insults and abuse. What a childish general-election campaign we seem to have in store. It is extremely worrying […]

“In a meeting convened to explore opportunities, I asked my client’s managers how they intended to grow faster. The sales & marketing manager confidently replied they would destroy smaller competitors. My client, the leader in their industry, held a dominant share of the market. Small regional companies had been nibbling away at their heels for […]

In education lies our future. We won’t take off as a nation until we learn to learn, and keep learning. Education bestows discernment; discernment allows us to make good decisions and good choices; decisions and choices drive performance and growth. So far, so good. But all of that is hogwash if we don’t understand what […]

“Consider…the evolution of Wal-Mart. Most people think that Sam Walton just exploded onto the scene with his visionary idea for rural discount retailing, hitting breakthrough almost as a start-up company. But nothing could be further from the truth. Sam Walton began in 1945 with a single dime store. He didn’t open his second store until […]