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…

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…

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 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…

When you give your word to yourself or to others, keep it.  Do not break it, period. That is the secret of success. Keep Your Word  From as far back as the mid 1980’s, Ugandan businessmen and women have been traversing the globe looking for the ‘deal’ of their lives. From Kenya to Dubai, to India to China, to London and onto Tokyo, many a hopeful Ugandan businessperson has traveled to fix that deal.  Many have cast their lot but very few have been chosen. The irony is that very few business people know why they have not been chosen.…