Edwin's Corner

China retraces its interaction with Africa to the slave era when the Kunlun (or dark skinned people) were brought into the Chinese Peninsula by Arab traders during the Tang Dynasty era and also from tales based on Zheng He’s travels to coastal East Africa. A few centuries later, the Opium Wars seared a certain mental caricature about western hegemony, which was further exasperated by the military dominance of the Japanese Empire who aped Western methods in their control of Chinese Machurian territory. It is imperative to note that the China we know today is not the China of the 1940’s -1950’s when the mind set then was of a common enemy i.e. poverty and a Western colonial influence. In retrospect, this “common” past has aided China in forging an impressive relationship with Africa. While the West and Bretton Woods institutions have taken a big brother approach of giving stringent political and economic conditions in order to turn on the aid taps in ...

A lot has happened since Fredrick Winslow Taylor stated in his monograph The Principle of Scientific Management , “the principal object of management should be to secure the maximum prosperity for the employer, coupled with the maximum prosperity for each employee”. For one, we have had two world wars, which essentially polarized the world into the divergent East-West dichotomy during which millions died protecting either viewpoint. Capitalism is no longer what it used to be in the days of Andrew Carnegie. It softened, gained integrity and its pure state became offensive.   More so, corporate leaders nowadays defend and agitate for green initiatives despite the fact that they rarely have a foreseeable return on investment.   While Taylorism failed when it was tried and tested in various companies, in the early 20 th Century, due to its utopian expectations, it successfully became the precursor to a universe of current management theories whose epicenter is powered...

The 17 th century was a watershed period for North America as European immigrants boarded ships and crossed the Atlantic Ocean in order to escape the servitude, abject poverty and hunger that was prevalent in Europe at that time.  A principle that travelled these many miles was one borne out of the need to bring the working classes together while dragging them out of poverty through commerce. More than 200 years later, with many unsuccessful attempts and subsequently the unearthing of the “Rochdale Principles” the cooperative movement is firmly entrenched around the world. There is nowhere this movement has found such success as in North America, with more than 45% penetration and figures exceeding 1 trillion dollars in savings and shares. It almost seems like the cooperative was invented in America and not in the Scottish City of Aberdeen. Why so much success in North America and where does Africa sit with all this? According to the 2012 statis...

We are living in a world where rhetoric is rife especially around women empowerment. It's a world where women only hold 4.4% of the CEO positions in Fortune 1000 companies. This contradiction was clearly evident recently at Davos 2014, a World Economic Forum meeting of world leaders, where there was a clear underrepresentation of women. This is despite the forum investing in programmes to promote the participation of women leaders in its activities. The male leaders at the event, in response to this inequality, gave a standard well rehearsed response pledging to empower and give a better standing for women in their communities in the coming days and years. There are a number of questions that need to be asked about the empowerment quagmire. Are there instances in history where women rose as a corporate body of people and became equal to their male counterparts in society? Does it benefit women to be given a footing in society so as to rise and be equal? Are there...

People are known to achieve exceeding levels of success when faced with adversity. The Helots, a subjugated group of people in ancient Greece, caused the collapse of the revered Spartan nation when they eventually rose up against their masters who habitually tortured and slaughtered them.   Creating and managing a super team, can be a daunting task that requires extreme patience. In pursuit of the best, there is need to define what great means and who an ideal team member should be.   Steve Jobs famously quipped "It's too easy, as a team grows, to put up with a few B players, they then attract a few more B players, and soon you will even have some C players....A players like to work only with other A players, which means you can't indulge B players. From the onset what this means is ensure that all the required skills are known, and have a blend in the team of different backgrounds, perspectives and personalities. Not everyone should be modeled in the leader’s image. ...

Adversity has a sure way of bringing about progress and advancement. The UK SAS regiment recruits its members exclusively from the UK military and takes candidates through such a dire selection process, that only 15% succeed and transfer to the regiment. The result is that the SAS regiment is arguably the best in world. UK SAS The Jewish State of Israel has 95% of its landmass termed as arid or semi-arid; it has no natural resources and is surrounded by hostile Arab neighbors. The result; it has extensive inventions in agro-technology that have transformed its arid areas into fertile sources of food for both Israel and the rest of the world. Israel, one of the most innovative and entrepreneurial country in the world, has more companies listed in the NASDAQ than Korea, Japan, Singapore, India and all of Europe combined.    There are lessons to be learned from both Israel and the UK SAS regiment that can be used by any CIO who wishes to create and lead super teams that ...