The era of rigid policies and procedures is long gone. It is now about self-drive, understanding the people you have on your team, creating clarity of the vision and expectations to win. Once this clarity is well cascaded to the entire team, it becomes the leader’s role to challenge the team on how to deliver. What do you bring to the table and how do you deliver the outcome? Traditionally, companies relied on policies and procedures because the environment required that setting.  The workers on a factory floor, for example, for one to deliver value, must be physically present at…

To become a close ally of your boss, follow the rules of trust: rule number 1 is never to surprise the boss. Most leaders have what is called the inner circle. The inner-circle rule states that every leader has a close-knit group of people who s/he confides in for the most key secrets of the job. These are the people who do the errands of the boss for the success of the organization and the “close knit-group”. In politics, it is called the ruling team. These are people privy and close to top secrets. The next course of action. The…

Most of the time when leaders invite me to facilitate their strategic retreats, the first thing to do is to encourage self-discovery, break the boundaries to create team cohesion. To achieve this quickly, we do a simple exercise called the ‘trust game.’ In 2019, I was invited to facilitate a strategy retreat for the Board and EXCO. The CEO had earlier briefed me about one of the challenges the company was facing; poor board relationship due to trust issues.  As part of the retreat, the CEO asked me to help deepen bonding and trust among members for team cohesion. At…

The era of research paper strategy documents is long gone. You need an actionable, crystal-clear strategy for a fundamental shift. A research paper strategy is one with lots of literature review, generic SWOT analysis, etc without direct linkage to strategic choice and objectives. You have a document in which you can remove a company name and replace it with another, and surprise, it becomes a strategy for another company, just like that. Such plans fail at execution. If the rate of change of the external environment is faster than the rate of change of your internal environment, what will happen…

The lived experience is the best teacher. In 1998, my brother returned from the City. He told us great stories of City life and one which challenged my understanding was a front door thatopened itself for him when he went in front of it. With my limited exposure, I could not believe it. “You mean there is magic in Kampala City?” I asked him to which he simply replied, “technology, my bro. Technology.”  Two years I got the opportunity to visit the City and my request was “first take me to that door that opens itself for you by just going in front of it.” And he…

In the good old days, before COVID19, the easiest way to keep children from online dangers was to not give them Internet access. As someone who has investigated several cases of cyberbullying, online identity theft, cyber harassment and of course cyber ransoms against kids nudity and threats, I know first-hand why irresponsible online access could lead to long term suffering to victims. However, the lockdown made online learning a must. Now, all children must access the Internet to attend virtual classes.   In addition to whitelisting the acceptable sites, the kids now know about the virtual private network (VPN) thanks…