The Peculiar Kenyan

If it’s just about you, nothing will outlast you

5 December 2011

“The I.B.M. lesson, Mr. Palmisano said, is never become wedded to what you make, but to the values the corporation stands for. After all, I.B.M. started out making clocks, scales, punched card tabulators, and cheese slicers (“the world’s fastest at the time,” he noted). “The history of business is a bone pile of companies that [...]

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A big thank-you to all the decent people out there

4 December 2011

Let us take some time this Sunday to be thankful for certain types of people. Let us thank those who are polite and courteous, even when everyone around them is rude and obnoxious. Those who maintain etiquette and decorum even though that doesn’t get you anywhere in this increasingly ugly world. Those who say “please” [...]

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Is business really a force for good?

28 November 2011

“Japanese police, prosecutors and securities agencies in Japan, the United States and Britain are investigating Olympus after the firm admitted this month that it hid losses on securities investments for decades, disguising some as acquisition payments and fees. The scandal at the once-proud firm has rekindled concerns about lax corporate governance in Japan and revived [...]

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Organizations, be very afraid of social media

27 November 2011

Once upon a time, businesses could get away with being bad to customers. They could neglect them and abuse them and not face any real consequences. What could a customer do in that world, anyway? Throw a fit on the company premises? Only a few employees, and possibly a handful of other customers, would observe [...]

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Is there a skill every leader must have?

21 November 2011

“”We hired a new CEO, but had to let him go after just seven months,” the chairman of an East Coast think tank complained to me recently.” His resumé looked spectacular, he did splendidly in all the interviews. But within a week or two we were hearing pushback from the staff. They were telling us, [...]

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Taxpayer, you’re footing all the bills all by yourself

20 November 2011

I feel I need to write something this Sunday that some of you may dismiss as a statement of the bleeding obvious. But here goes anyway. A government’s only real source of revenue is taxpayers. That’s it. I said it would be obvious. Yet it needs restating nonetheless, for I fear in the modern economy [...]

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How many employees would like to leave your organization?

14 November 2011

“Employee loyalty is dropping around the world, according to new global analysis of Mercer’s What’s Working™ survey. The research, conducted among nearly 30,000 employees in 17 geographic markets between the fourth quarter of 2010 and the second quarter of 2011, shows that the percentage of workers seriously considering leaving their organization has risen since the [...]

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Why I stopped watching cricket

13 November 2011

When I was a very young boy in Nairobi, watching wrestling on TV was all the rage. Every week, whole families would sit down and be regaled by the antics of the likes of Big Daddy, Johnny Saint and Giant Haystacks. Not to mention evil incarnate, Kendo Nagasaki (those of a certain age will remember [...]

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Consumers, not corporates, are now driving tech innovation

7 November 2011

“The rise of tablets and smartphones also reflects a big shift in the world of technology itself. For years many of the most exciting advances in personal computing have come from the armed forces, large research centres or big businesses that focused mainly on corporate customers. Sometimes these breakthroughs found their way to consumers after [...]

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Another dose of Agony Uncle Sunny

6 November 2011

As we all know, we live in a peculiar country. A very peculiar country. There are so many confusing questions that bedevil us every day, and precious few answers. So I have decided to occasionally become an “agony uncle” in this column, to tackle some of your more thorny conundrums. Here’s the latest instalment. Q: [...]

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Don’t rush to join that board

31 October 2011

“Female executives packed the room as former Xerox CEO and Chairman Anne Mulcahy took the stage at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit to share her best and worst practices on building boards. Throughout her career, Mulcahy has sat on boards of six public companies, three non-profits, and one privately held international company. “Sometimes, I did not [...]

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The shilling is weak. So where are our exporters?

30 October 2011

Last week I discussed the manic dance of the Kenya Shilling in this column. I wondered whether our economic “fundamentals” are as sound as many claim, and whether this phenomenon of low-currency-high-interest-rates-high-inflation will go away any time soon. I also wondered why we have accepted a persistent trade deficit for so long. Kenya exports way [...]

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The Peculiar Kenyan is now available on Amazon Kindle

25 October 2011

The book is finally on sale as a Kindle e-book, for just $10. Download it here

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Should your next CEO be an insider or an outsider?

24 October 2011

“On the face of it, scouring the world for a superstar makes perfect sense. Surely a great manager can make all the difference to an ailing firm? Jack Welch boosted General Electric’s market capitalisation by 4,500% at a time when its old rival, Westinghouse, was disintegrating. Surely management skills are portable? What other justification is [...]

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To fix the shilling, fix the fundamentals

23 October 2011

The Kenya shilling is at record lows; interest rates are rising to crippling levels; inflation is bedevilling the common mwananchi; the IMF are back in town; everyone’s pricing in dollars. Did I just wake up in the Nyayo Nineties? We are supposed to be done with the voodoo economics of our past. The post-Kanu era [...]

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5 warning signs of a horrible boss in the making

17 October 2011

1. Kisses-up and kicks-down: “How does the prospective boss respond to feedback from people higher in rank and lower in rank?” 2. Can’t take it: “Does the prospective boss accept criticism or blame when the going gets tough?” Be wary of people who constantly dish out criticism but can’t take a healthy dose themselves.  3. [...]

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Make the deaths of these greats matter

16 October 2011

So many good people are dying in quick succession. First, it was Wangari Maathai, our very own iron lady of legendary courage. Next Steve Jobs passed on, leaving an army of bereft customers in his wake. And now another man goes leaving a gaping hole in so many lives: Jagjit Singh, India’s renowned singer and [...]

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