Blog

COVID-19 is forcing us to change our daily routines, including the shutting down of many workplaces. Like vast numbers of professionals across the globe, you may have been asked to work from home instead of coming into the office. Going from a bustling workplace to the solitude of your home can be a difficult transition. Fortunately, about half of workers around the world, i...

Research has consistently shown that having more women on the board and in executive positions benefits the financial performance of a business. In Africa, companies with at least one-quarter female board members demonstrate an average of 20% higher earnings. While Africa has more women in the executive committee, CEO, and board roles than the worldwide average, we’ve still ...

You may not spend much time thinking about your workspace, but how it looks and feels really matters. A clean and well-organised desk can boost your mood and productivity. A cluttered workspace, on the other hand, has multiple negative impacts. According to organisational experts, the average person loses one hour a day to disorganisation. And cluttered spaces inevitably lea...

Simple Strategies to Incentivize Your Team All managers want to get the best performance out of their team. If we’re fortunate, we may be able to build a team of self-motivated superstars who always excel. But far more common are employees who, despite their best intentions, need some encouragement to perform better. According to business guru Dale Carnegie, “People work for...

Most organisations spend too much time determining their activities rather than their focus and direction. Plenty of organisations fall into the trap of confusing strategic planning with strategic decision-making. Planning your future activities can be a good practice, but it isn’t the same thing as determining the direction or focus of your company. In fact, business expert...

The strongest leaders excel at winning people over to their perspective using a thoughtful and deliberate process. As a leader in your organisation, you have probably had to change a process, launch a new project, or shift resources around at some point. And, more likely than not, you encountered resistance from your team. Change and adaptability are necessary for companies ...

The new year is the perfect time for new ideas and new innovations. And while we would probably all say we support innovation in our organisations, few companies know how to do this well. Part of the challenge is that we tend to focus too much on highly disruptive innovations. We think innovation means we must create a new product category, revolutionize an industry, or tran...

A Practical Way To Assess & Grow This Key Skill. It’s consistently rated as one of the most important soft skills that employees need. But most managers think job candidates don’t have it. Universities don’t know how to teach it. On top of that, few can even agree on how to define it or measure it. What is it? Critical thinking. In Engage the Fox: A Business Fable About Thin...

They want to be seen as holistic individuals, not just worker bees. No matter how you feel about millennials, those born between the early 1980s and early 2000s, you can’t avoid them. In Kenya, millennials make up more than 20 percent of the total population, according to the Population Reference Bureau. They are one of the largest generations in the workforce, and more of t...

How to spot one of the essential traits more and more hiring managers consider essential. So, you’re looking to fill a key position in your organisation. You want a standout, someone who will take this role and your company to the next level. Perhaps you find some candidates with strong experience and an excellent skill set. In-person, they are knowledgeable and personable. ...

You can’t make more time, but you can make the most of it. At one point or another, we’ve probably all felt like we didn’t have enough time to do everything. Unfortunately, time is the one resource we can’t create more of. We can only learn how to use it better. Managing time well, it turns out, is one of the hallmarks of successful leaders. In a recent Harvard University st...

Here are the best strategies from business experts around the world. Even the best job can become difficult if you have a challenging boss. Working for someone who is a bully or a micro-manager, or someone who lacks professional competence or emotional intelligence, can be taxing and exhausting. Studies have consistently shown that employees with a difficult boss are more pr...

Attractive Benefits That Won’t Break The Bank Every hiring manager has probably encountered this situation before: You’ve found the perfect candidate to fill an important role in your organization. But you can’t afford the salary they want. What can you do to convince them to join? Fortunately, most professionals are not motivated by money alone. In a survey by Glassdoor, 60...

Your closest relationships, health, and job performance can all benefit from boundaries. There’s something that tends to happen as we advance in our careers: the time and space available for a personal life shrink. The stress of the job, on top of long hours, can easily take its toll on your health and closest relationships. Not surprisingly, CEOs and entrepreneurs have high...

How to turn meetings into a springboard for productivity. We all need meetings. But we probably all dread meetings too. Meetings can seem time-consuming and inefficient, interfering with our work rather than helping it. If you feel this way, you’re not alone. Research shows that a vast majority of employees daydream or do other work during meetings. Executives can spend up t...