If you drive a car or use a taxi, you have seen the driver looking ahead through the main driving screen or looking tilting the head to see what is behind through the side or rear-view mirrors or the overhead mirror. When the driver looks in the rear-view mirror, s/he is trying to take note of what is coming from behind. When the driver looks through the main driving mirror, they are looking ahead of the road – to see where she or he is heading. A great driver knows that both mirrors are critical for a safe drive. To…
Never surrender your control
Never surrender your control. The biggest challenge as an entrepreneur is trying to lose control over the critical aspects of your business like talent acquition and retention, customer relationships and quality service delivery. Any business leader must identify areas where they must win. Thereafter, invest to win. And then protect the win so that it is sustainable. In your family for the example, if you are the husband or the head of the family, you must identify the top 2-4 things which you must control. Once you lose control over those areas, you lose your family, and everything will fall…
Why your team building retreats are usually a waste of time
In the last five days, I have received several requests for proposals for team building facilitation at the management team retreat. Some have been requesting for motivational talks. Around this time of the year, many leaders are planning for off-site strategic retreats and team building events. When I receive some requests for proposals, I respond to the sender asking for two clarifications: Why do you need team building and motivational talk? What would you say is your #1 strategic challenge today? Most procurement officers who send the requests for quotations often don’t answer the questions in which case, I don’t…
Cyber security as a service (Csaas)
Blockchain hacked. Once hailed as unhackable, blockchains are now getting hacked. That was the headline of an article by Mike Orcutt that was published on MIT Technology Review online, on February 19th, 2019. Here is an extract from the article: “Early last month [January – Editor], the security team at Coinbase noticed something strange going on in Ethereum Classic, one of the cryptocurrencies people can buy and sell using Coinbase’s popular exchange platform. Its blockchain, the history of all its transactions, was under attack. An attacker had somehow gained control of more than half of the network’s computing power and was…
In your life, who are you benchmarking against?
In your life, who are you benchmarking against? Your achievements will be average if you compete against the average. Take an example of marathon runners. To win the run, one must have pace setters strategically positioned within the runners. And they all know each other. You have, A, the key runner (the one who wants to win the race). And you have person B and C, the pace setters. And you have competitors D, E, F, G, H, etc. Only A, B, and C know who is who. The rest of the runners do not know. Runner A will look…
How do you attract and retain donors and strategic partners?
No donor has too much money to just give away. The key words are value for money, accountability, transparency, and innovation. How do you position your organization at the forefront of good governance? You need to demonstrate a strong stance against fraud and corruption in action and words. Nothing eats stakeholder value like fraud and corruption. Unfortunately, many organizations like yours are exposed to “small” frauds, for example, using WhatsApp or Facebook on the company Internet during working hours which affects daily staff productivity. With time, this costs the entity lots of losses. Some staff understands that such acts constitute…
