“Oh ya,” the boy went. “You see, at home, Dad and Mom, pay me Ugx. 2.5m monthly. They give me an allowance. Now if I am to come and start working, they will no longer pay me this money. This means I can join you only if you are paying me more and above what I currently get. The difference of Ugx. 500,000 is my transfer price.” A friend told me a story that was fascinating. She was invited at an interview at a financial institution to help recruit an assistant manager for a city bank branch. After interviewing…
How government is letting the country down!
Whereas the Government of Uganda is ‘innovatively’ taxing every penny out of Ugandans, it continues to waste taxpayers’ money in poor procurement processes. Most MDAs pay for services directly to foreign companies. In other countries, our firm is required to have a trading license, VAT and National ID for team leader! When we get a consulting project in a foreign country (including regional ones), our firm is required to provide documentations which one can get only if they are a local company. In the end, we seek for partnership. At the end of the day, we spend over 40% to…
The Power of Perseverance
When the going gets tough …. In the world of the business, the road to success is littered with so many business wreckages of ideas that never made it. They say that out of every 5,000 businesses started, only 4% will make it to beyond the 10th year. Out of the surviving 200, only 0.01% will grow into large corporate brands. With all the information about financial management, technology and markets out there, why do businesses fail at such a tremendous rate? In this second edition of our power series, we examine the power of perseverance or resilience. Many businesses…
The Power of Consistency
What does it take to succeed? There are many motivational books on success and they all contain great ideas on how to become a millionaire, how to beat the herd, and so forth. Stephen Covey’s ‘The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’ is one such book you are likely to find gracing the libraries of many wells to do peoples homes. The ideas in all these books are marvelous and if we can follow them, they sure will lead to success. But what most of these manuals do not explicitly say is that success is a process and the only…
The power of repetition: How to make a billion dollars!
Once upon a time, there lived a man called Earl Dennison Woods (March 5, 1932 – May 3, 2006). Earl Woods joined the American army because there were very few opportunities for blacks. In the Army, he served in Vietnam where he did two tours of duty. Woods had met his second wife while stationed in Thailand in 1966, while serving in Thailand. She was Kultida Punswad, who is half Thai and half Chinese. They married in 1969 in Brooklyn, New York. Their son Eldrick Tont “Tiger” Woods was born in 1975. The nickname, “Tiger,” comes from Earl Woods’ wartime…
The Power of Value for Money
The story is told of how the executives of one big company’s executive committee convened a retreat to assess how their business was doing. During the retreat, it emerged that because of the sheer size of the firm, top management did not seem to have clarity about what business they were in. Some of the top executives thought the company was in exploration, others thought it was in logistics and others thought it was in marketing! After a lot of soul searching, the executive retreat agreed that the company was in the business of energy. That company is Shell™. Once…
