This is a season of happiness and dreaming while awake. You need to receive calls from people who energize by leaving you happy or challenged? If someone inspires you to reach for the moon, why not receive their calls often as well as call them? “Is this Mustapha?” A caller on the other side of the line asked. I replied, who is this? I am xx, I attended your talk about team cohesion through frank communication with interest. I particularly loved your insights about the daily rituals that build trust among team members. How is your next Friday morning so…

It is that time of the year of strategic planning retreats. You can be brilliant by asking your colleagues a simple question: what is our captive market and how do we plan to leverage from it? A captive market is that niche of clients that are already yours, all you need is to provide new service offerings to optimize them. A telecom company, for example, have mobile phone subscribers on their network. The nature of the telecoms gives it access to all contact details of all its subscribers. One of the reasons Uganda telecom lost the market was the inability…

It is that season of the year of multiple reality tests – poverty, friendship, and family. Once I followed a family after a shopping spree with three shopping carts full to the brim! Another fellow in the line was just looking. The till fee was in excess of Ugx. 1,300,000. The lady shopper did not even bother to claim the royalty units on offer by the supermarket. When one cannot even afford a kilo of meat at Ugx. 1,200, witnessing this in action makes one suddenly realize how they have terribly failed the poverty test. In this season of giving,…

A meeting is a forum for face to face team member interactions to find a common position on an issue and decide the next steps. The quality of any meeting is defined by its agenda. It is 2019, but many people still run their meetings with Agendas of the 1960s. Such an agenda goes as follows: Opening prayer Introduction from the Chair Reactions Review minutes of the last meeting Reactions Reports from finance Reports from HR The CEO report Adjourn The first item depends on your company values. If you are Christian or Moslem founded Institution, this item is critical.…

How many times have you been rejected? Never take a rejection personally. We all get rejected. Just like there is no road without bumps, corners, and steep slows, life is full of these too. In your work, you will be rejected. The secret is to learn from the rejection. I have always been an adventurer. In 2010, I applied for a project in South Africa to facilitate a strategic retreat for one of the manufacturing companies. Looking back, I overestimated my skills. For some reason, I passed the preliminary assessment stage. This earned me an invitation to travel to Jo’burg…

Are you driving a car on a flat-tyre? Much as the car may continue to move, it cannot go as fast as it should. The car cannot run on at high speed on a flat tire. The best decision is to get the tire fixed. The same thing happens when a stone accidentally enters into your running shoe. It becomes a bottleneck. However fast you may try to run or walk, you just cannot go faster. It is a bottleneck you must stop and fix first. When you have productivity leakages, what do you do at the workplace? You must…