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Karibu!

Sunny Bindra — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 04:02:42 +0000

Welcome to Sunwords.com. Feel at home, look around, browse, sit down and read, leave a comment. Best wishes, Sunny Related posts:BooksAbout this siteProgrammes & Courses Related posts:

Stifling dissent and debate on your team is not leadership

Sunny Bindra — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 11:02:52 +0000

“Any leader needs frank advice, and the biggest obstacle to receiving it is often the leader himself. Even a polite and level-headed boss will be tempted to cut naysayers out of the loop. Knowing this, sensible juniors will avoid expressing criticism or grim tidings if at all possible.
“If you deliver bad news, you’re disempowering yourself,” says Professor David Sims of Cass Business School. “You’re less likely to be listened to in the future.” For some ambitious subordinates, this is a far worse fate than the threat of being thumped.”

TIM HARFORD, Financial Times (24 February 2010)

Whenever I meet a new CEO, I look around at his team and say: where’s the contrarian? Where’s the pesky fellow who keeps raising unnecessary questions, always has a different view, invariably fails to agree with the rest? If such a person exists on the team, I rest easy. If not, I warn of impending danger.

If you are a leader, it is way, way easier to populate a team with clones of yourself. We all spend our lives looking for like-minded friends, kindred spirits, birds of a feather. People who are like us are comforting; they validate most of our views of the world; they make us feel connected.

But therein danger lies. Recognise, please, that the real learning and growth in your life has come when you’ve been challenged, when you’ve been forced to rethink your assumptions, when someone you dismissed as ridiculous turned out to have a point after all.

Management teams are not social clubs or intellectual circles where it is necessary to have a common point of view. In today’s hyper-speed world, management teams need to be high-tension pools of energy where ideas emerge unchecked and diverse points of view are considered and debated. Who knows what tomorrow’s landscape will look like anymore? In such an environment, nurturing multiple options is vital.

The reverse is highly dangerous. As Tim Harford pointed out in his recent FT piece, UK premier Gordon Brown is now at the centre of a “bullying” row – allegations that he physically and verbally abuses and intimidates his staff and associates. The danger with that is that he is not listening to advice that could help him and his country – it’s his way or the highway. Many of his closest associates are reportedly unable to voice any dissent in his presence, for fear of a foul-mouthed rebuke.

The same happened with US foreign policy when Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were ruling the roost: the US made a series of disastrous moves in Iraq, simply because no dissent was being brooked. Rumsfeld would not even allow the use of the word “insurgency,” preferring to pretend there was no real opposition to the US occupation in Iraq.

We are in a similar place in Kenya. There are few management teams of diverse opinion and perspective. Sycophancy and timid alignment with the boss’s position on anything and everything is the norm. Bosses intimidate and shun contrarians, and people soon learn to toe the line. But there’s a problem: if you are all always in perfect agreement with the leader’s views, you’re all going to fly off a cliff together.

I know what you’re thinking: surely lack of unity of purpose is a problem in organisations, and we must always seek alignment and consensus? Certainly, but at the right time. When constructive debate is stifled from the outset, many avenues are closed down. At the end of the day it is still the leader’s job to make a final decision. But it is vitally important that the decision is informed by all shades of opinion. Leaders who listen only to the bleating of sheep they have beaten into submission over the years should not kid themselves that they are getting the right advice.

We have a long way to go in product quality

Sunny Bindra — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 08:32:08 +0000

The other day I reached for a box of tissues. As I pulled a tissue out, another five came out of the box. I had not encountered this recently, and wondered what the problem was. It turned out my household has been using imported tissues for a while, which are soft and detach easily. Those were out of stock, so we reverted to a Kenyan brand. Hence the problem.

I decided to test several Kenyan-made brands. Same problem everywhere: the tissues are coarse, and never detach cleanly. As there is not a substantial price difference between the local and most imported brands, the choice becomes a no-brainer for most people. But in which advanced country are those excellent tissues made? Malaysia. Which, I seem to recall, had the same GDP per head as Kenya not so long ago.

When it comes to products, the spirit of inquiry fills me every day. Delighted with the performance of my desktop printer – a leading international brand – I looked behind it to check the country of manufacture. Made in Malaysia. And I wondered: is it truly impossible for Kenya to make printers of this quality, even under international license?

The problem of product quality assails us every day. In my office there is a fridge that contains chocolates for sale. There are two brands on offer, a locally manufactured international chocolate, and one made elsewhere. The imported one is more expensive. Yet every single day I observe the imported chocolate selling out, while the locally made one is only taken if there is no option. Why? Because the one made here is coarse, lumpy and tastes vaguely of soap.

Let’s move on to ice-cream. Kenyan ice-cream is not bad, right? Right, until you try a high-end international brand. That’s when you realise what ice-cream should really be like. Kenyan manufacturers have indeed raised their game here in recent years, but there is a long way to go before we produce a Haagen-Dazs. At its worst, Kenyan ice-cream is lumpy, develops ice crystals rapidly, and fails the taste test.

I realise I’m making sweeping attacks on Kenyan products, but I am fed up with consuming the shoddy outputs that so many Kenyan manufacturers are routinely churning out. I realise many companies are making valiant attempts to produce world-class products, and I don’t wish to discourage them. But there is an essential truth we simply have to face up to: we have a long, long way to go before we are known as a quality manufacturing base.

Think about it: if we can’t make high-quality tissues, ice-cream or chocolate, how are we ever going to make printers? And if we can’t do printers, then microchips, cars, phones, lasers, routers and the like are just pipe dreams.

There is a standard reaction Kenyan manufacturers have to complaints of this sort: they roll out a long list of scapegoats. Here we go: erratic, high-cost power supply; corrupt officials; harassment; import tariffs; high taxes; awful roads; poor raw materials; low-quality labour. The list is long. I don’t even argue with most of it: this is a difficult environment for manufacturers, and many multinationals packed their bags long ago. But looking for scapegoats misses an important point: quality is fundamentally in the mind.

When you open a business, how good do you want your product to be? The answer, quite frequently, is not very. Many manufacturers have a basic Kenyan consumer in mind, one who is driven more by price than quality, one who has not been exposed to too many international products, and one who settles easily for whatever is on offer. When you have a low target in mind, naturally your entire business model will be affected.

Too many of our manufacturers buy second-hand, dated equipment – and kid themselves they are being shrewd. They employ the most basic labour and don’t invest in managerial talent – and kid themselves they are making efficient use of human capital. They use the cheapest raw materials they can find – and kid themselves they are good deal makers.

This may all be very well for the income-challenged average Kenyan consumer, but have you noticed what happens to shopping baskets once affluence is achieved? They are stuffed with foreign-sourced products. Does that not ring alarm bells?

Where is the person who wakes up every morning wanting to produce the best products in the world? Where is the person who sees the world’s top brands and wants to better them? Where is the person to whom “Kenya quality” is an insult? Where is the person who is obsessive and a little insane about product quality, and for whom a defective product is a slap in the face? For whom “good enough” is nowhere near good enough?

We need those people, for they are the ones who overcome barriers and the limitations of environment and create world-beating products and companies. Our competitive future demands that they emerge.

No company can be all things to all customers

Sunny Bindra — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 12:06:56 +0000

“”It is very true that we do not have the high-end ‘mind share’ product, as we speak, but of course we are working to get there,” said Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, Nokia president and chief executive.
At its investor day late last year, Nokia hinted it would produce major new devices this year. Analysts reckon it is hard at work on a so-called ‘iPhone killer’.
But Kallasvuo said it is not just about one expensive handset. “We are going for the consumer market, we are going to the business market, we are going to the low end, we are going to the developing markets.”
Nokia has seen its commanding lead eroded by the likes of Apple, Blackberry maker RIM and devices sporting Google’s new Android software.”

The Guardian (15 February 2010)

Uh oh, Nokia – bad idea. Very bad idea.

Nokia’s boss, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, effectively said in a recent interview that he wants the company to be all things to all consumers. The mobile-phone giant, he says, intends to aim for high-end and low-end handset markets simultaneously. It wants to cater for the business market and the consumer market. It wants to dominate both advanced-economy and developing markets.

Whenever I hear a CEO spouting that kind of ambition, alarm bells start going off in my head. All my experience as a strategy advisor suggests a simple truth: the company that tries to be all things to all customers in all markets, fails.

Until quite recently, banks were all talking about the ’supermarket’ approach to banking: the idea that customers want to satisfy all their financial needs – retail banking, investment banking, insurance and brokerage – in one, trusted, mega-institution. Citibank pioneered this approach ten or so years ago, and it became received wisdom for a while. Well, the credit crunch put paid to that idea. Now, both regulators and boards of directors are recognising the futility of the concept. Regulators have forced megabanks to break up into their consituent parts. And customers have voted with their feet.

Why so? The supermarket approach sees a company with a strong customer connection as a shopfloor, a channel into which many products can be stuffed. Unfortunately, the quality of products suffers. Customers soon realise they would get better insurance and brokerage advice from dedicated specialists, not from the one-size-for-all approach of the huge institution.

Another company tried the all-things-to-all-people approach. It is called Toyota. It lost the lower end to the Tatas and Hyundais, who can focus intensely on very-low-cost vehicles and have done so in key markets like China and India. Its forays into the upper end, via its Lexus brand, never really worked. The Lexus may have appealed to Toyota buyers looking for a status upgrade, but it never really enticed high-end buyers away from their Mercedes and BMWs.

Back to Nokia. I had a Nokia phone, and I was reasonably happy with it. Unfortunately, Nokia missed two important boats. It failed to appreciate the growing use of mobiles as e-mail devices – and Blackberry took that market. It also failed to see that the phone would become an all-in-one consumer gadget used from everything from video to music to navigation to gaming. Apple got that, and its iPhone stormed away with that market.

So when Nokia now talks about reclaiming the high-end smartphone market, I can only shake my head. That battle is being fought by others. Only a massive technological breakthrough would whack the current leaders.

The essential point is this: customers respond to products that match their specific needs. Competitive advantage is a devilishly difficult thing. Achieving it for one set of customers in one socioeconomic group is hard enough; achieving it for all is all but impossible.

Reflections on our roads and their users

Sunny Bindra — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 08:41:04 +0000

There’s nothing like a quiet drive to aid the reflection process. Or so I thought. I embarked on a family trip to the great mountain in the heart of our country recently, and was able to think a little about the land we live in.

My first set of thoughts were about our drivers. These were stimulated by a man in a blue vehicle whom I will call Mr Pea Brain. Mr Pea Brain was a man in a hurry. He thought he needed to get to his destination way ahead of others whose time was less important.

Mr Pea Brain drove his car at high speed very close behind mine, and attempted to overtake twice. He was thwarted by oncoming traffic both times, and fell back behind me. Losing patience, he finally overtook me on a blind turn, having no idea what was around the corner. A large truck loomed before him suddenly, and he escaped certain death by millimetres.

You might imagine that would be enough to tame Mr Pea Brain and convince him to go slow on the kamikaze mission. Not at all. I observed Mr Pea Brain repeating his moronic feats several more times, each time placing himself and many others in mortal danger.

Now, you might imagine that Mr Pea Brain is a man of modest social standing, a deranged matatu driver, perhaps. Not at all: his blue car was a new Mercedes. What gave me most pause was the thought that off the road he might be a leader and decision-maker of sorts, a mover and shaker, a role model and exemplar. And perhaps doing all that with a brain, quite evidently, the size of a pea.

All that insane risk-taking, you see, doesn’t actually get you anywhere. All the cars on the road doing similar speeds tend to arrive at the same destination at approximately the same time. This is because the average speed achieved depends on the volume of traffic and the condition of the road, and those factors are the same for all. So with all his crazy weaving and heaving, Mr Merc Pea Brain might arrive, say, 15 minutes ahead of the driver who maintains a steady speed and does not take any dangerous risks.

Clearly we are not going to get anywhere by appealing to the higher thought processes of Mr Pea Brain, because he does not have any. But in a sane society he and his ilk would be contained by law enforcement: they would be removed from the roads and prevented from posing the daily danger to society that they do.

Which brings me to the second set of reflections, concerning our law enforcers. Between Nairobi and Mt Kenya I probably encountered no fewer than a dozen police roadblocks. Did even one of them notice Mr Pea Brain and try to stop him, as the biggest danger on the road that day? Not at all. The guardians of the law are way too busy extracting road rents from public service vehicles, and ensuring that mild-mannered families are hassled about first-aid kits and reflectors, to worry about anything as trivial as a life-threatening lunatic.

We’ve covered drivers and regulators, now let’s move on to a third area: the road itself. A year ago I drove to the same mountain, and was pleasantly surprised to find that Kenyan rarity, a smooth road all the way to the destination. A year later, the section around Sagana is already pockmarked with potholes. Perhaps it rained a little in the interim; as we know, that is usually enough to put paid to our roads.

But I did observe Chinese contractors busy at work on the new, much-heralded Thika Road highway, even on a Sunday, and hoped against hope that these people would give us a road that lasts 30 or 40 years without needing major maintenance, the standard enjoyed by most countries. That is a little-known fact in Kenya, with our culture of shoddy roads laid by shadowy contractors approved by shady officials – with annual patching up.

Yet I couldn’t help thinking: what exactly are we going to do with our new highways when they finally appear? What is the point of a multi-carriageway if you have done nothing about the behaviour of road-users? If the average driver remains as moronic as Mr Pea Brain what exactly will we have achieved by giving him a faster road to drive on? And if basic lane discipline – such as driving on the left – remains a mystery to Kenyans, what is the point of adding more lanes? Three idiots hogging all three lanes at similar speeds can cause a jam from the mountain to the capital.

A footnote: during the return leg of this journey it rained heavily. As a result, there was not a single police roadblock anywhere on the highway. Our policemen also make hay only when the sun shines.

Why this culture of layoffs hurts good business

Sunny Bindra — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 12:32:40 +0000

“Companies have always cut back on workers during economic downturns, but over the last two decades layoffs have become an increasingly common part of corporate life – in good times as well as bad. Companies now routinely cut workers even when profits are rising. Some troubled industries seem to be in perpetual downsizing mode…
…But even if downsizing, right-sizing, or restructuring (choose your euphemism) is an accepted weapon in the modern management arsenal, it’s often a big mistake. In fact, there is a growing body of academic research suggesting that firms incur big costs when they cut workers.”

JEFFREY PFEFFER, Newsweek (15 February 2010)

The excellent Professor Pfeffer (don’t try saying that after a few drinks) has made it a crusade to debunk management myths and hokum, and to force us all to look at the evidence before we come to crucial decisions.

In his recent Newsweek cover story, the professor took aim at the culture of layoffs that is infecting every industry. And he is right to do so. My experience as a management advisor over two decades suggests that this culture has taken root everywhere. We have rightly moved away from the notion of protected employment, but we have moved too far: these days the ability to be ruthless when it comes to downsizing is a badge of honour, a sign of macho credentials in a CEO. And we are paying a price.

What is so wrong with having the right number of employees in your organisation at a given time, you ask? Nothing at all. The problem is that we get carried away when times are good, and recruit too many; and then we get carried away at times of trouble, and sack too many. “Right-sizing” is a fluid and dishonest term, because we never know what the right size is.

“People are our biggest asset, our greatest competitive advantage, the source of our success.” Yes, tell it to the birds. The minute there is a downturn in demand and the CEO feels the heat from the board, you can rest assured that many of those biggest-asset people are going to get a kick in the backside. They will have to go so that the CEO doesn’t have to go.

I have observed organisations in all sectors , here and elsewhere, for the better part of my life, and I can confirm that layoffs are never pretty. Suddenly cutting people adrift does many bad things in a company. It shatters morale; it creates uncertainty in those who stay; it impairs corporate spirit; it breaks the emotional bond between employer and employee. All those things are very damaging, and we should not invite them on ourselves.

But surely we improve the bottom line when we downsize? Consider the costs, tangible and intangible: severance pay; accrued leave; outplacement costs; rehiring costs; morale costs; potential sabotage or lawsuits or violent behaviour; loss of institutional memory and knowledge; diminished trust; reduced productivity. Still looking obviously attractive? In fact, you may not even just get rid of those you wanted to leave; your best performers may lose faith in the company, and they are the most likely to find alternatives quickly.

It remains true: people ARE the greatest source of competitive advantage. But we have to be true to that truth, and manage our organisations accordingly. We must neither hire nor fire lightly. Downsizing is often just a cover-up for recruitment mistakes. If we were more diligent in getting the right people on board in the right quantities, we would not have to prove our machismo during downturns.

What separates great from good organisations? The feeling that people have in working there. People who feel honoured and trusted give their best work. Those who feel they are on a temporary economic contract do not. That simple insight should inform all our hiring and firing.

Why don’t we all just give politicians a blackout?

Sunny Bindra — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 03:30:16 +0000

Here we go again. The headlines say it all: the coalition government is crumbling, the principals have fallen out, the shilling is sliding, investors are nervous, we are facing another meltdown.

But I ask you: what exactly has changed since last week? What cyclone has hit Kenya that our prospects look so suddenly bleak? Have we lost hundreds of thousands of people, like Haiti? Are we impossible to govern, like Somalia? Are we perpetually at war with ourselves, like Congo?

No, none of that applies in Kenya. Yet the transformation in public opinion is dramatic. That is how fickle our opinions are. The economic fundamentals, as pointed out last month on this page, are exactly the same. We are a strong, resilient, diversified economy in an enviable location, powered by enterprising people. None of that has disappeared. So what exactly has happened?

The two sides of the coalition have had a spat, that’s all. For that we are back on international TV screens, the subject of much analysis and debate across the globe, not least in our own barrooms. Most worryingly, Kenya’s angry young men are being marshalled and are giving warnings about protecting “their own.”

Do you not have better things to do, Kenyans, than discuss the internecine and infantile arguments of politicians? How does getting involved in these squabbles advance your own life one inch forward? So leaders’ egos are bruised and they are issuing ultimatums and warnings. So what? When are we going to realise that our personal development has nothing to do with these things, and everything to do with ourselves?

The current machinations are about both sides of the coalition manoeuvring for power. Each side wants to be rid of the other and free to govern on its own. Neither side is appreciating that the deep political divisions in the land would not allow one side to rule unchecked. In other words, our leaders need to learn to get on, collaborate, share, consult – just like most of us do in our lives. But that is alien to their natures, and so they are about to throw us all into turmoil yet again.

But I ask again: is it so difficult for you to ignore these people? Why are you so fixated on reading every pointless headline, relishing every inane ultimatum, following every accusation and counter-accusation? Do we not have children to educate, personal development to worry about?

Some of you may be tiring of reading it in this column – but what the hell, I’m going to say it again. Most of the personal success you achieve in your life is going to come from within you – not from the outside world. It is your personal character that is the biggest driver of sustained success. You could do so much better, for yourself and your country, if you invested time and effort in yourself rather than in politicians.

Look around you in the world: who attracts your admiration and respect? It is not these politicians, certainly: you may follow their every deed, but it is only a macabre fascination. The people who truly influence others and who leave a legacy of respect are different. Their character shines through. Real success is only available in life to those who work relentlessly hard, who build their skill sets with great determination, and who position themselves to stand out in a crowded world.

So, if you want a modicum of success for yourself and your children, does that not give you plenty to be getting on with? Can you really afford to be distracted every day by the antics of others?

I have an idea for you. Why don’t you make a resolution to ignore politicians? Why don’t you deny them the “oxygen of publicity”, in Margaret Thatcher’s words? If newspapers are filled with political intrigues, stop buying them. If news bulletins highlight rabid politicians, switch them off. If a politician, any politician, holds a rally in your area, ignore it completely. When friends want to discuss the latest machinations in mind-numbing detail, tell them it doesn’t educate anyone’s children.

If we all give politicians and their intrigues a blackout, we will force them to follow our agenda, not theirs. Their agenda is personal power. Our agenda is personal and national development. Let them understand that we only give them power if they use it to do all the things we want and desperately need: unite the country, build its infrastructure, and terminate grand corruption. Anything else is a sideshow we are not interested in.

The second step is to give most sitting politicians a kick in the teeth during the next election. Refuse to give them your vote, and resolutely vote for someone new or fresh. Of course, the new person may be no better, but that is not the point. The point is to penalise non-performance, and to create a perpetual people-led agenda and a tradition of bowing to what the people want. That will transform this country like nothing else will.

The key to success: enjoy yourself throughly!

Sunny Bindra — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 12:04:17 +0000

“Because starting a business is a huge amount of hard work, requiring a great deal of time, you had better enjoy it. When I started Virgin from a basement flat in west London, I did not set out to build a business empire. I set out to create something I enjoyed that would pay the bills.
There was no great plan or strategy. The name itself was thought up on the hoof. One night some friends and I were chatting over a few drinks and decided to call our group Virgin, as we were all new to business. The name stuck and had a certain ring to it. For me building a business is all about doing something to be proud of, bringing talented people together and creating something that’s going to make a real difference to other people’s lives.”

RICHARD BRANSON, NYT Syndicate (1 February 2010)

Richard Branson, the world’s favourite maverick businessman, is telling us one of the keys to success: enjoy what you do. And if you can’t enjoy it, then follow the advice of another famous name, Kahlil Gibran, who asked people to beg rather than work with distaste!

Branson, leader of the Virgin Group, epitomises enjoyment. He beams enthusiasm wherever he goes, and infects others with it. The philosophy of creating something you enjoy, which also pays the bills, is something I wholeheartedly agree with.

Most people do the reverse, unfortunately. They go for the work that maximises their income, and then try to enjoy that work. The rabid pursuit of money is never going to make you happy; but the determined pursuit of enjoyment in what you do may well yield great financial reward, as it did for Branson.

The reason is very simple. When you enjoy something, you make every attempt to do it well, to make it better, to excel at it. When you dislike something, you try to get by rather than to be the best. We make time for things we enjoy, we prioritise them, we devote our attention to them. Way too many of us end up in careers we hate. I come across this phenomenon repeatedly in my leadership programme. The reasons people usually give for doing things they hate vary from doing it for the money; to following misguided advice from parents.

More should pay attention to Richard Branson. This man hates offices so much, he doesn’t even have one! He spends most of his time meeting people, which is what he really enjoys. In his own words: “A good leader does not get stuck behind a desk. I’ve never worked in an office–I’ve always worked from home–but I get out and about, meeting people. It seems I am travelling all the time but I always have a notebook in my back pocket to jot down questions, concerns or good ideas.”

Most of us are brought up to think of enjoyment as a sideshow, something you do away from work, something which is even vaguely sinful. It is not any of those things! Enjoyment is the cornerstone of success. Take a look at any truly successful persons you know, and then observe how much they obviously love what they do.

Unlock yourself. Release the person you were meant to be. Do what you really love doing, whether that is balancing books or playing the saxophone. The greater the overlap between what we love and what we do for a living, the greater the chances of outstanding success. Out of necessity we often find ourselves in jobs we have no love for. I’ve been there myself. Bide your time, make a plan, gather your resources – and then take off. It is criminal to waste your life working with distaste. Find the thing you can truly excel at, and make your mark.

This minor drama in Haiti reveals much

Sunny Bindra — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 03:01:45 +0000

Amidst the carnage of Haiti, a quiet little drama is playing itself out. Baptist missionaries from the USA were arrested trying to take 33 “orphans” out of the wrecked country, ostensibly to a better life in an orphanage in the neighbouring Dominican Republic.

Except that many of the children were not orphans at all, and none of the necessary papers had been filed to allow them to leave the country. The 10 Americans have now been charged with kidnapping and criminal association. The Haiti government suspects them of being involved in child trafficking.

The do-gooders protest their innocence, saying they were doing “God’s work” and “God will free us.” They claim they only came to help a devastated country after its recent earthquake. They thought they were taking poor orphans to a better life.

This little sideshow, on the fringes on the mass tragedy of the Haiti disaster, reveals so much about the state of our world that I scarcely know where to begin. I won’t comment on the case at hand – that is for the courts to decide (there were indications at the time of writing that the Americans would be released). But I do know that this drama reflects badly on the world we live in.

For one thing, what is all this do-gooding in the name of God? People doing the most misguided things on this planet will confidently assert they are agents of divinity. This includes mass murder and needless warfare. There were two reactions from the God-squads after Haiti broke: one, a wringing of hands and loud lamentations about needing to help the wretched. Two, a wrathful instant judgement which decrees that the Haitians brought misfortune on themselves because of their past sins.

Both are lamentable. To place yourself in an imagined divine mission is the height of pretentiousness. To condemn so casually is just as malign. What “sins” are little children paying for, crushed beneath the rubble? And what makes those casting stones so holy? Indeed, US newspapers revealed that the missionaries’ leader has a history of failing to pay debts and employees. She has been the target of eight lawsuits and 14 claims for unpaid wages.

The second thing that annoys me is the do-gooding instinct itself. What is this patronising nonsense that reduces able people to child status? Why is the “advanced” world imagining that it has to uplift, lecture and mentor the misguided minions of poor countries in the first place? Not to put too fine a point in it, why does the white world perpetually think it has to save the black world? Hardly anyone is rushing to spend their own money doing this – there are way too many NGOs ready to cash in on the unintended largesse of anonymous taxpayers.

And the last thing: why are Haitians (and indeed many Africans) so ready to consume this largesse, lap it up, live off it, depend on it, and become even more enfeebled by it? Those Haitian children seemed to think they were going on some sort of outing. Many were apparently sent by their own relatives. Why are so many of us ever-so-willing to be cast in the role of eternal supplicant, whose master lives elsewhere?

I hate to be discussing these issues in the aftermath of an awful disaster in which so many have perished and hundreds of thousands are left bereft and hopeless. But these things are deeply troubling, and they occur even in normal circumstances. So much of the world seems ready to play the role of patronising master and teacher; and so much of it is willing to play the helpless clown who needs handouts and sermons every day.

We are not going to move forward like this. Haiti will not save itself on the back of the other people’s largesse, genuine or otherwise, and neither will Africa. Do-gooders and relief-givers and aid-donors can help during disasters (sometimes) but in the long term they only weaken their targets even more.

If the weak countries of the world are going to be saved, it will only be through their own efforts. Haiti, like many African countries, allows a handful of elite leaders to corner most of the wealth in the land. Haiti was blessed with abundant natural resources but blew them all away, unlike its Dominican Republic neighbour whose economy is seven times larger. Haiti is wallowing in its role as the western hemisphere’s problem child, instead of being insulted by it and rising above it.

There are lessons to be learned from those nations that have developed rapidly. They used external help as the exception, not the norm. They ensured that they installed the correct leadership and governance models. They matured beyond charismatic individuals towards effective institutions. They instilled a relentless work ethic in their people. And most importantly, they took pride in themselves and their own ways of doing things, and they just got on with it. That is the only development model that works. Everything else is eyewash.

Toyota’s communication lapses are compounding its woes

Sunny Bindra — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 12:13:54 +0000

“When Toyota told the world of the recall of its cars in January, one of its first public statements was made by a Japanese executive who faced television cameras wearing a surgical mask.
Masks are common during Japan’s cold season. However, crisis management experts are seizing on the image as a metaphor for a company that has bungled aspects of its communications with customers in the crisis.
No one faults Toyota for its technical handling of the recall, but most give it at best middling marks on how it spoke to customers.
Some say it has handled the job poorly, at a potentially high cost to a company that has built its reputation on reliability.
Robbie Vorhaus, founder and chief executive of Vorhaus Communications crisis reputation consultancy says: “Toyota has gone from a family friend to a stranger””

JOHN REED, Financial Times (3 February 2010)

This column highlighted the recent woes of Toyota a few weeks ago, and since then the company has spiralled even further down. It subsequently announced the recall of 8 million cars in the US and Europe, and halted production and sales of certain models until its quality issues are sorted out. Toyota now faces an estimated bill of $2 billion – from the costs of the recalls as well as lost sales. $30 billion has been wiped off its market value. It may even lose its prized number one status in the US.

As John Reed pointed out in the FT last week, no one doubts that Toyota is handling this recall in a technically correct manner. What is dubious is how it is communicating the news to the world. Toyota has engaged in drip-drip revelations for several weeks now, seemingly playing a cat-and-mouse game rather than coming completely clean on the matter. It is giving the very unfortunate impression that it is either still in the dark itself about the extent of its quality problem – or is keeping its customers in the dark. Neither is acceptable.

The technical side of Toyota’s damage-control exercise cannot be faulted. Modern corporates have learned the hard way how to handle company crises and product recalls. Companies from Firestone to BP to Cadbury have had to deal with very serious reputational issues in recent years. Even motor vehicle manufacturers, like Audi and Mitsubishi, have had to make very uncomfortable revelations. These things happen, and they can happen to the best, as Toyota has discovered.

But the point is to learn from history, not to repeat it. In this sense Toyota has been a very bad student. True, it bit the bullet quickly and recalled cars and halted production lines. Those things are necessary, but they are not sufficient. Far more serious than the financial cost is the emotional cost suffered by the brand. Toyota’s brand promise was simple: quality and reliability, coupled with an affordable price. It has been true to that promise for decades, and has used it to drive its phenomenal rise to becoming the world’s number one automaker.

But now that promise lies in tatters, and Toyota is thus far failing a vital test: message management. Its chief executive, Akio Toyoda, has been conspicuously absent, leaving it to underlings to pass on the bad news. The company has never come clean and revealed the full extent of the damage, instead allowing bad news to build up. Those are real no-nos, and can partly be explained by a very Japanese reticence to air bad news in public, instead getting on with the more serious job of putting the problem right.

I’m afraid that just doesn’t fly these days. Managing your brand and your message is as important as managing your production lines. I have little doubt Toyota will weather this storm, but it has things to learn about brand promise.