Through her past executive and non-executive board positions, Carol brings a wealth of corporate governance theory and practice received over the last ten years. She is able to design distinctive corporate governance trainings for boards as well as undertake board evaluations as an independent evaluator.

Carol currently sits on the boards of East African Breweries Limited and British American Tobacco Ltd both of which are Nairobi Stock Exchange listed companies. She also chairs the board of the Business Registration Services, a newly formed semi-autonomous government agency that oversees the registration of companies, partnerships and insolvencies in Kenya. She has previously served on, and retired from, the boards of the NSE listed BOC Gases and Trans-Century Ltd., Enablis East Africa (sponsored by the Canadian International Development Agency), Institute of Economic Affairs, SOS Children’s Villages, Opportunity Kenya, WEDCO and the African Legal Support Facility of the African Development Bank. She has also been an executive director at both Barclays Bank Kenya and K-Rep Bank.

You can read more about her satisfied clients in our testimonials.

Eleven and a half years ago, I lay flat on my back in rapidly growing terror as my obstetrician revealed to me every expectant mother’s worst nightmare: “The fetus is in distress, and we have to do an emergency caesarean section surgery.” Being my first pregnancy, it was my first time in my life that I was in hospital for any procedure and my terror level went from moderately high to stratospheric levels. I must have started hyperventilating because the obstetrician, who had at least 30 years of experience under his senior belt, shouted at me: “Ah stop it, don’t be a baby,” in a very terse manner as the nurses started preparing to wheel me into the theater. I’ve never forgotten his words till this day, largely because he had been the most genteel, soft spoken and caring pre-natal provider up until that moment in the labor ward. My brain has thankfully shut down any memories thereafter because I was catatonic with fear rather than consoled by the fact that this was a very experienced surgeon who in whose hands my life as well as my unborn child would be in.

That experience led me to understand the term “bedside manner” from a medical perspective. You may have the top notch surgeon or specialist treating you, but if they do not have the capacity to calm you down and build your confidence from their professional demeanor as you lie on your hospital bed, then you might as well be treated by Dr. Google. Needless to say, I moved to another practitioner thereafter, and after five surgeries, I now always ask him whether he is going to use Dr. O, as the anesthesiologist. You see, your anesthesiologist is the last person you see before you go into the land of the unknown, and his bedside manner is absolutely critical in your mental state as you say goodbye – temporarily – to the world as you know it. Dr. O has the best bedside manner on this earth: he cracks jokes, has twinkling eyes above his masked face which are the last thing I see and he genuinely displays an interest in me as a patient, rather than as another body lying on the surgical table. There’s a point to this rambling medical history soliloquy. Going for surgery has to be the most traumatic experience for any individual, short of driving in Nairobi’s traffic at peak time on a rainy day. In my professional working life over the last sixteen years, I have met only 3 people who are the equivalent of Dr. O in the workplace.

These three (surprisingly all are female) have provided for me a steadying and extremely calming buffer when there is a state of total flux and chaos. They have the perfect bedside manner for the chaos that some workplaces present. Last Tuesday, one of the three buffers was called by a Higher Power to execute her role in a far more glorious office. JC, as I will refer to her here, was fiercely private and assiduously guarded the fact that she was terminally ill. When I was told that she had transitioned, I was in total shock. How? I had worked with her on an assignment where she had been running around making sure that all the logistics were going smoothly. “She was going through chemotherapy at that time, actually,” was the response. What? But she was always the first in the room before training started and the last in the room when participants left, were my unspoken thoughts. “She never wanted anyone to know that she was sick, coming to work helped keep her mind off her medical condition,” I was told. For those who follow the television show “Scandal” or “The Fixer” on M-Net, JC was Olivia Pope: everything was “handled” and it was “handled” with speed, efficiency with only one set of instructions given. JC was the fixer.
She never raised her voice, but she had a way of tilting her head ever so slightly when something didn’t meet her approval and only those who knew her well would realize that she disagreed with what was being discussed. Small in stature but big in spirit, JC would quietly go about her business preferring to melt into the background rather than bluster her presence.

As a result, I knew that even if things were falling apart in the background of an event, no one would ever know. She would silently crack her whip with the service providers letting her down in the background while displaying a calm demeanor to anyone who looked, never letting on that things were thick. I have spent the last 24 hours since I heard the news racking my brain as to whether I ever told her how much I enjoyed working with her. I know I did not tell her that things were not the same when she was absent from an event that she was supposed to be part of two weeks ago, and that her absence was louder than a million church bells chiming at noon. I wish I had sent her a text message to say as much, but I didn’t. My last communication with her was exactly two weeks before she transitioned. Her words: “Keep me in your prayers please” as she headed out to India for treatment. The outpouring of grief, shock and sadness from people who’ve known her has been phenomenal. She clearly was not in the background as much as I thought. She was invisible, yet visible, quiet yet loud. At 34 years, JC left a legacy that will endure and a bedside manner that cannot be replaced.

Heaven is a richer place for having JC there, and I have no doubt that she is “handling” any crisis that may arise up there. My lesson from all this: Appreciate a colleague today who is doing a phenomenal job, it may be the last thing they ever hear from you.

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Twitter: @carolmusyoka

Sam walks into his boss’s office and says “Sir, I’ll be straight with you, I know the economy isn’t great, but I have over three companies chasing after me, and I would like to respectfully ask for a raise.”
After a few minutes of haggling the boss finally agrees to a 5% raise, and Sam happily gets up to leave. “By the way,” asks the boss, “Which three companies are after you?” “The electric company, water company, and phone company!”

I have always found human resource practice a fascinating aspect of organizational management. To the inexperienced eye, HR is that department at the corner of the building that deals with salaries and disciplinary matters. But it’s much more than that and many organizations often get it wrong much to their painful regret. A good HR department will actively segregate compensation and benefits from talent acquisition and management, organizational design, learning and development, employee relations as well as diversity and workforce planning. These are specialist areas that a good CEO should ensure are effectively represented within his or her HR department. A key strategic and specialist area is that of workforce planning. The CEO through the office of the HR manager has the tripartite role of forecasting employee needs, identifying potential sources of employee supply and, finally, balancing demand and supply throughout the organization’s lifetime.

Thus it was with great fascination that I happened to have 3 separate conversations last week that generated an interesting conclusion: HR management is a key strategic objective of any CEO regardless of business size. The first conversation was with a business owner of an extremely large distributorship of fast moving consumer goods. After enduring a long and painful cycle of hiring and firing sales representatives, she came to the conclusion that the fundamental mistake she was making was in hiring university graduates for that role. As the goods required to be transported by lorry, a sales representative was required to primarily be in the lorry at all times since the goods were simultaneously sold and delivered. The business owner eventually realized that university graduates would find a lorry as their main office demeaning and would quickly quit the job after a few sales cycles. She has now found her optimal balance: up skilling lorry drivers with sales and negotiation skills. Since she landed on this model her attrition rate has reduced, her lorry drivers are better motivated as their job descriptions have an enlarged scope and her staff costs have reduced since some graduate level jobs have been eliminated.

The second conversation was with a business owner of a security company with over 5000 employees.
Due to the large unemployment rate, it was inevitable that university graduates would show up at their doorstep seeking any job including those of security guards. The business owner, over time, has found his optimal staffing model. The firm now employs staff over the age of 28 years with a maximum educational level of a diploma. The firm has arrived at this model after realizing that university graduates (who having “tarmacked” for a while will take any job they find) are naturally ambitious and will ditch the security guard job at the first chance. They also observed that employees aged between 21 and 27 years were prone to theft and bribery more often than not as they had not settled down to family responsibilities. The firm has found that women are best suited at middle management, as they tend to be highly focused and productive. The reason for their higher productivity levels, the CEO mused, was that women know that they have limited time to get their work done as they want to leave at 5 p.m. sharp to go home and take care of their children. “We have never had an incident of complicity in theft cases where a woman was involved,” was his final observation. Age, gender and educational level were clearly defined parameters for the success of this security firm.

My third conversation was with the director of a customer-facing department for one of Kenya’s leading corporates. At the department’s inception, they adopted a model of only hiring university graduates with upper second class degrees. “The model backfired on us,” she humorously recalled, “as the graduates wanted to be promoted every two years and were very picky.” Apparently if there were no promotions occurring, the number of disgruntled employees would rise. But she made a startling observation: students who had received a “C” grade at the KCSE level, followed by a diploma were the best employees in her department. These students, who were marked for life by the Kenya National Examinations Council, were determined to shed off that image of being average students and would invariably work twice as hard as the “A” grade graduate students. Now this was an interesting observation from a large employer. The “A” grade graduates had also been marked for life by KNEC as being the best. That mark led to a sense of entitlement for deserving the best in the workplace thus making them very difficult to work with. Diploma level, with a large emphasis on average students has now become the parameter for success for this customer-facing department.

It wasn’t difficult to draw my conclusions after these three random conversations. Once you have defined your optimal human resource model, you are halfway on the route to the success of your organization. Balancing the demand for employees and the supply of the best-suited people to fill those roles is not an easy task by any definition, nor should it be left to a HR manager to decide. Monitoring productivity and attrition rates of staff should be a key deliverable of the HR function that is actively overseen by a CEO as a strategic tool for driving the organization. As a CEO, if you have the wrong backsides warming employee seats in your organization, you only have yourself to blame if your front door spins faster than a helicopter’s rotors.

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Twitter: @carolmusyoka

A father who is very concerned about his son’s bad grades in math decides to register him at a catholic school. After his first term there, the son brings home his report card: He is getting “A”s in math. The father is, of course, pleased, but wants to know: “Why are your math grades suddenly so good?” “You know”, the son explains, “when I walked into the classroom the first day, and I saw that guy on the wall nailed to a plus sign, I knew one thing: This place means business!”

The Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) last week set the first pricing of the Kenya Banks’ Reference Rate (KBRR) placing it at 9.13%. The media followed with the usual tantalizing lead-in headlines: “Loan pricing set to come down in Kenya” and “Cheaper loans for Kenyans”. Our roads started to shudder in collective trepidation at the mere thought that more cars would trudge a traffic laden path, as cheaper loans mean more Kenyans would flock to roadside dealerships to buy the ultimate sign of prosperity – a reconditioned car. Last week’s announcement of (yet another) government attempt to bring down the cost of borrowing was met with the typical enthusiasm that cheap credit starved Kenyans reserve for any sign of relief.

The Central Bank began flogging this non-starter of a rate setting horse back in June 2006 when they launched the Central Bank Rate (CBR) at the rate of 9.75%. One of the objectives for the CBR was to create a transparent mechanism for commercial banks to set a base rate for their commercial loans. An independent body – the Monetary Policy Committee of the CBK – would set a rate that was reflective of the Kenya shilling rather than the profit motivated banks that were never quite transparent in how they arrived at the amorphous base rate. But commercial banks ignored it and continued to set their own base rates. After all there was neither an implicit nor explicit consequence for not using the rate. The CBR has garnered more success in reducing volatility of short-term interest rates particularly in the interbank lending rate space.

According to CBK data, commercial bank average lending rates moved from a high of 18.13% in January 2013 to 16.99% in December 2013. However, your average retail borrower does not enjoy these rates since about 60% of commercial bank lending in value terms sits in the large and medium corporate space and these borrowers are able to negotiate personalized rates for their corporate loan books. These ‘personalized’ rates are based primarily on their borrowing and repayment history, strength of their balance sheet, income statements and cash flows, majority shareholding ownership, as well as ability to make loan repayments in the future. In essence it is a specific internal credit rating that will guide the pricing for these corporate entities and will ensure that their perceived risk premium is uniquely priced. The rest of the “watus ” borrow at bank base rates plus a standard premium. That standard premium does not in any way differentiate between a new borrower or one who is borrowing his fifth or sixth unsecured loan and who has faithfully repaid his loan, or perhaps even prepaid some of his loans, in good time.

The role of the Credit Reference Bureaus (CRB) thus becomes critical in ensuring that such differentiation lowers the price of loans to the good consumer. However, the CRBs were initially set up to allow for information flow regarding bad bank customers who didn’t repay their loans, wrote bouncing cheques or failed to fund their accounts on time leading to debit balances due to overdrawn accounts. The Treasury Cabinet Secretary Henry Rotich apparently gazetted rules earlier this year requiring the sharing of positive information by the banks to CRBs. It’s about time. The bigger and more effective step is to require the banks to use credit rating history on individuals and institutions to arrive at the risk premium above which the banks will price customer loans. Setting a new base rate for banks to price loans is like putting lipstick on a pig. It remains a pig nonetheless. Fact: 12+9 is also equal to 20+1. The difference in the above equations is the same and that’s the lipstick on the pig.

What the government and the samosa-munching “Taskforce To Reduce Interest Rates” brigade need to do is to get Kenyan commercial banks to price on differentiation. The banks should be able to demonstrate to the CBK banking supervision chaps that retail customer A’s loan pricing is benchmark rate + risk premium where that risk premium is calculated as that appertaining to a specific credit rating.

But perhaps that’s just too much admin. Differentiation of customers means that the bank can’t benefit from the upside of standard pricing that captures the good borrowers and the bad. The standard pricing enables the bank to hide its inefficiency in controlling bad loans by having a blanket rate that will ensure good loans cover and bring in the profitability that the bad loans are dragging down. The retail loans are managed on a portfolio basis rather than on an individualized basis allowing for the bad apples to be covered by the sweat and blood of the good ones.

By driving a differentiated pricing agenda, the Central Bank will ensure not only actual lowered credit pricing for consumers including better uptake on mortgages, but it will also drive a more disciplined approach to bank account management by the Kenyan banking consumer wishing to build a positive credit rating for their future borrowing. Creating yet another benchmark rate is playing with numbers. No matter how low you set the give-it-whatever-name-you-want benchmark rate, the premium above it is what will determine if the true cost of credit is coming down. Currently the CBK has no control over that. Driving a differentiation agenda is the nail on the proverbial cross that we need.

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Twitter: @carolmusyoka

A man went to his bank manager and said: ‘I’d like to start a small business. How do I go about it?’ 
’Simple,’ said the bank manager. ‘Buy a big one and wait.’

Last week I had the good fortune to attend a workshop arranged by the Capital Markets Authority. Other than the free coffee and samosas, the primary purpose of the workshop was to engage stakeholders (read Chairman and CEOs of listed companies) and receive their feedback on the Draft Corporate Governance Code of Practice for listed companies. Most listed companies were represented by their compliance, legal or company secretarial teams. A few directors and even fewer chairmen made an appearance. Let me say this off the bat: The Chairperson, Catherine Musikali and her steering committee have done an excellent job of researching and putting together a draft code that encompasses global best practice as well as local circumstances that have driven the improvement process for the capital markets regulatory regime.

The workshop got interesting when participants were asked to give their feedback on the proposals. Two particular requirements generated significant excitement. The first requirement was that executive directors of listed companies be given fixed term contracts not exceeding five years. The explanation from the CMA team when this was tabled is that companies need to be injected every now and then with fresh ideas and innovation. The fatal assumption being made by the CMA steering committee is that company boards lack the impetus to kick out a non-performing, non-imaginative or geriatric CEO and need help from the regulator in the form of term limits in order to make that happen.

However, this requirement to set term limits (which CMA hastened to add does not mean that said term cannot be renewed) is in contradiction of the same document which sets fiduciary duties of directors (Section 1.3.) and evaluation of the CEO (Section 1.8).
Section 1.3 and its Recommendation 1.3.1 thereunder clearly states that the board of directors have a raft of fiduciary duties to observe one of which is to act in the best interests of the company and, further, to at all times exercise independent judgment. If a CEO is not performing it is as clear as mud that I as a director need to exercise my independent judgement and replace him or her as it is in the best interests of the company. After all, I will be dragged through the coals by very unsatisfied shareholders at the AGM baying for my blood for the poor performance by the company. The second contradiction arises from section 1.8 which requires evaluation of members of the board. Recommendation 1.8.1 specifically provides that the board should evaluate the role of the Chairperson, the CEO and the Company Secretary on an annual basis. If the board has formed the practice of evaluating the performance of the CEO, it would take a highly imaginative and spineless group of directors to fail to recommend the removal of a CEO whose performance has declined over a period of time. As the same code requires that boards undertake succession of a CEO, the period of annual evaluation would be the best time for board members to assess the need to replace an aging CEO, or the need to get fresh ideas from someone else as the company is being wiped on the dusty floor of irrelevance by the competition.
We don’t need term limits for executives as the travails of nature and aggressive (majority) shareholders in turn will take care of the executive’s tenure.

The second requirement that generated some discussion was the term limit on independent directors. The Draft Code in Recommendation 1.4.2 sets a limit of nine years for an individual to sit on the board as an independent director. After nine years, the individual is not precluded from serving on the board; rather they have to be designated as a non-executive director. I have to commend the Steering Committee as they have anticipated board mischief by clearly defining that it is not only a continuous term of nine years that counts, but also a cumulative term of nine years in the event that there have been intervals in the service of the member. I have to say that I fully agree with this recommendation. Having served as an independent director on a few boards, I can honestly say that the longer I serve on a board the more I get attuned with the challenges that management faces in driving the business agenda of the company. Time takes its southerly toll not only on my waistline, but also on my ability to take a tough stand on yet another sob story of why something cannot be done due to the vagaries of the business environment. I will more than likely accept that sob story because I have been on the board long enough to have seen the institution weather similar storms, rather than take a decision in the best interests of the company which may be to sell a non-performing asset or to sweat the balance sheet more despite the politico-economic environment. I will have grown fond of a team leader whose life I have come to know as we munch cookies during tea break at the company’s annual director’s retreat and whose unit needs to be jettisoned off to the competition as it is no longer a strategic fit with the company. However the challenge would typically be that there would be no room on the non-executive director’s bench as boards have specific number limits for directors and the majority shareholder would have placed their representatives on those seats.

The requirement to specifically replace independent directors is a healthy and hygienic way of churning turnover on the independent director’s bench. There is a very thin line between alignment of shareholder interests and alignment of company interests and nine years is a good time to ensure the lines get renewed just when they are beginning to fade.

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Twitter: @carolmusyoka

“Is that your final decision, Mr. CEO?” the Chairman of the Board asked as he leaned back in his seat and crossed his legs. The CEO looked around the room. Before him sat a board of directors that had completely lost sight of their oversight role. At the last board meeting, they had requested for management to buy each director an iPad. The CEO had refused citing both lack of budget and non-existence of an iPad policy for non-executive directors. In today’s meeting, they had spoken about amending the delegation of authority for the day-to-day management of the institution. The CEO had reminded them that such amendment could not take place without the knowledge of the majority shareholder. Words were exchanged, with the directors alluding to insubordination on the part of the CEO. As he looked round the room, he could not see a single sign of support from any of the board members. They were united in their stand that more administrative power should be put in the hands of the board, through the office of the Chairman. The board had, minutes earlier, resolved that the signing mandates for all purchases in the organization were to be given to the Chairman and the resolution was defined to start retroactively by a month. The CEO realized, with a cold shudder, that his board had gone completely rogue.

“Yes, it is Mr. Chairman,” responded the CEO. “What you are asking me to do is not only illegal, but is also impossible to implement. I will not agree to implement this resolution to give signing mandates for all purchases to you, Mr. Chairman.” “Then I will have to ask you to step out of the room, Mr. CEO, as the board deliberates this issue.” The CEO stood up quickly, gathering his board papers in an untidy pile. He started to speak, as if to make a last minute appeal to the last vestiges of sanity that might exist on the Board. But the stony glares that he received from the directors around the room made him still his tongue. He walked out of the room, with his back ramrod straight and head held high. He was on the right side of the ethical battle lines that had been drawn and he would be damned before he let them think that they had defeated him. The meeting ended without any update given to the CEO, but the very next day he received a letter suspending him from office for alleged “insubordination, disobedience and related acts of misconduct as well as refusal to execute resolutions of the board of commissioners, failure to “acknowledge or recognise” the board at a public event and alleged disrespectful behaviour towards the board members”.
This Nollywood drama is not a fiction of imagination. It is a dramatized version of a true story of a parastatal board in Namibia. The CEO subsequently fought a disciplinary hearing held to verify the reasons for the suspension. In what took almost a year to resolve, his stand on integrity finally earned him a vindication. The issue was highly publicized in the Namibian media for no other reason than the very salacious headline that it produced: “CEO suspended for refusing to buy board members iPads.”

The line minister eventually fired the board and took over their role as the disciplinary process over the suspended CEO took place, chaired by an independent lawyer. The line minister later quoted a figure of approximately US$300,000 as the cost of the whole debacle, citing board sitting allowances during the hearings, legal fees paid on behalf of the beleaguered CEO as well as fees for the independent chairperson for the hearing. A key finding of the independent chairperson, after recommending the reinstatement of the CEO, was that communication between the board and the CEO had irretrievably broken down – a situation that could well have been rectified through the appointment of a mediator. “In my opinion, relying on the evidence presented at the enquiry, all the issues formulated in the six charges broadly described as ‘gross insubordination’ could have been resolved by the Board and the executive officer, preferably with the assistance of a third party,” said the independent chair of the enquiry.
It is incomprehensible that a Board would collectively decide to usurp the role of the CEO by taking on management duties simply because the CEO has refused to breach company policy and budget. It is even more inconceivable that this would occur in the 21st century, in the year 2012 to be precise. It makes our own sordid parastatal scandals look like child’s play. One point is crystal clear: the most basic requirement of communication was clearly absent between the Board and the CEO. But given the less than noble intentions of the directors, it is inconceivable that any level of communication would have resolved this issue, nor would a third party mediator have helped the situation. Was this board doomed to fail from its inception? Was the CEO the stumbling block to what looked like an initial attempt to slowly start fleecing the organization? The CEO could have agreed to the board’s ridiculous demands, and set the organization on a course of ridiculously numerous director demands that might have led to the collapse of the parastatal. After all, a fish rots from the head.
The Namibians were lucky. They had a CEO of a parastatal who had the gumption to stand up on the right side of ethical leadership. They had a line minister who was ready to fight the good fight to get rid of the board and face the political fall out that was bound to follow. Scandals are still rocking the Namibian parastatal landscape, but a great precedent has been set with this particular case that has helped to generate widespread conversations on what good governance at parastatal level should look like.

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Twitter: @carolmusyoka

Once upon a time, an organization was formed with a CEO and a Board. Part of the mandate of the board, as clearly articulated in the formative documents, was that the board would constantly review the performance of the CEO in discharging his CEO duties and in ensuring that the organization achieved its objectives. Well, the CEO undertook his role judiciously. The Chair of the board, however, had great difficulty ensuring that an agenda item of reviewing the CEO’s performance appeared in the Board’s last quarterly meeting. Why? Primarily because the Chairman and the CEO were the same person as stipulated in the formative documents of the organization. As a result, the formative documents created a governance weakness of significant proportions. The CEO could never be questioned or held to account. He could make difficult issues disappear off a meeting’s agenda. He was, in simple terms, a demi-god.

The Central Bank of Kenya, created by Cap 491 of the Laws of Kenya, is that organization. Section 10 of the Act provides for management of the organization through a Board whose duties are well established through subsections (a) through to (g). Thus the Board is responsible under S. 10 (d) for keeping under constant review the performance of the Governor in discharging the responsibility of that office while S. 10 (e) for keeping under constant review the performance of the Governor in ensuring that the Bank achieves its objectives. Let’s call a spade a spade. The Kenya Shilling debacle of 2011 where the currency hit an all time low of 107 to the dollar should have been the current Governor’s career waterloo. At that point, an independent Chairman would have initiated a difficult conversation at board level along the lines of “Prof: What the heck do you think you are playing here, monopoly?” and a visibly agitated group of non-executive directors would have been bobbing their heads in vigorous agreement making clucking sounds of disaffection. As we all know, that never happened and I’d give a month’s salary to be a fly on the wall during the Central Bank board meetings that year and listen to what kind of challenge the five non-executive directors and the Treasury Permanent Secretary at the time gave their Chairman about his “performance in discharging the responsibilities of his other office of Governor” especially when the entire banking industry was up in arms about the reckless statements and irrational actions being made and taken by the irreverent Professor.

Needless to say, the draft Central Bank of Kenya Bill 2014 has now attempted to correct this corporate governance failure. It provides for separation of roles between the Chairperson of the Central Bank of Kenya Board and the Governor. Quite interestingly, the drafters of the Bill have made a notable oversight in that they provide for two appointing authorities for the Chairperson. After the usual convoluted process of interviews and shortlisting of candidates, Section 35 (9) provides that the President shall nominate a chairperson and submit that name to the National Assembly for approval. But skimming further down the Bill, Section 38 (2) provides that the Chairperson of the Board shall be elected from amongst the non-executive directors for a non-renewable period of two years on a rotational basis.

So is the Chairperson to be a Presidential appointee or to be elected by the Non-Executive Directors themselves? The disparity becomes even more glaring as Section 33 (5) provides for presidential intervention again in the event of the death of the Chairperson while in office, wherein the President shall appoint another person.

Confusion aside, the Bill now provides for a formal process of evaluation of the Governor’s performance driven primarily by the Chairperson of the Board. Section 43 (2) (g) provides that the Chairperson shall formally initiate and oversee the annual performance evaluation of the Governor and Board members. It is noteworthy that the Central Bank, which requires banks under its supervision to perform their own annual Board self-evaluations, is practicing what it is preaching by requiring the same of its own board.

The composition of the Central Bank Board requires some review. Under the current Central Bank Act, the Board consists of the Governor, the Deputy Governor, the Principal Secretary Treasury and 5 non-executive directors. Thus, as currently constituted, it has 5 independent directors. The Central Bank Prudential Guidelines require that Financial Institutions should have not less than three fifths of their directors as non-executive and at least one third of the directors should be qualified independent directors. The draft Bill matches this requirement by allowing for a Chairperson, a Governor, two Deputy Governors, the Principal Secretary in the Treasury and five non-executive directors. Counting the Chairman, seven out of ten board members are non-executive directors. It is also notable that at least six members of the board or two thirds, if well appointed, will be independent directors.

Will all of this corporate governance drive some level of transparency and accountability in the country’s bastion of monetary policy? The composition of the Board as envisaged by the Bill speaks to this. But recent events at a Government owned bank where the proposed Managing Director seems to have passed the Central Bank’s Fit and Proper test yet he allegedly has loans in default with the very institution he is supposed to be heading has left a lot of egg on the faces of both the Treasury Cabinet Secretary and the Central Bank Governor. The draft Central Bank Bill does require that proposed directors to the Bank’s Board should be fit and proper, but as recent events have shown us fit and proper is a matter of interpretation despite being clearly defined. Knowing full well that the Treasury Cabinet Secretary will choose the non-executive directors, his recently botched handling of the above mentioned Managing Director recruitment doesn’t engender confidence in his selection criteria. Neither, for that matter, does the subsequent validation process by the National Assembly provide hope that any selection mistakes will be corrected.

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Twitter: @carolmusyoka

The Master of the house was comfortably installed in an armchair in the library, reading a newspaper. Suddenly, John, his butler ripped the door open and shouted, “Sir, the Thames is flooding the streets! “The Master looked up calmly from the newspaper and said, “John, please. I have already told you before, if you do have something important to tell me, first knock on the door, then enter and inform me, in a quiet and civilized manner, about the issue. Now please, do so.” John apologized and closed the door behind him. Three seconds later, the Master heard a knock on the door. “Yes?” John partially entered the room and with a gesture one would make when welcoming and ushering in somebody and, with water flowing over his shoes, he announced, “Sir, the Thames.”

I spent the last two weeks with a select group of management trainees who were taken through various lessons around the nature of the business. A key component of the first session was interpersonal skills as well as social and business etiquette that is required of someone working on in a professional organization. It dawned on me that many of us – myself included – learnt these skills on the fly, as we groped about climbing our respective career ladders. We either had the presence of mind to be self-aware and watched what people around us were doing, or we were called out after performing a social faux pas that left us cringing in embarrassment once pointed out. I envied the young team before me as they had the amazing, and rare, opportunity to get critical insights before entering the formal workplace.

I have thus decided to highlight my top four picks of social and business gaffes that are regularly perpetuated.

1. The Dangling Toothpick :
You go to lunch, which is never complete without a good, self-enabled dental exploration of your choppers, more often in full view of your fellow diners. To begin with, covering your mouth with your free hand while your other hand is deep at work is usually the polite thing to do. Thereafter dispose of the offending instrument using a serviette and do not use that time to take a good long look at what the outcomes of your dental exercise have yielded. But, and a big but at that, please leave the toothpick behind. Inserting it into your mouth and walking out while twirling it around with your tongue is absolutely manner less, horrifying to watch and smacks of that person who wants to show off that he ate a lunch that warranted teeth picking as a final exercise, that is to say, he ate copious amounts of meat. Years ago, I met a team of sales representatives that were selling bank products in the institution that I worked for. They were coming for an afternoon training session and three of the young men strolled in with the ubiquitous dangling toothpick. As representatives of the institution that we worked in, it was a perfect example of brand non-compliance as they looked tacky and extremely unprofessional both terms of which I brought to their shocked attention. Needless to say I am sure they muttered profanities under their breath when I was done explaining myself.
2. The Unrepentant Suit Label:
Look, I get it. I know you’re excited to be wearing your first Hubo Goss or Jojo Ahmani suit or whatever Chinese imitation suit your first paycheck has gotten you. (In many instances, men who’ve been working for over five years also perpetuate this styling gaffe) However you need to bear in mind that the label that is on the suit jacket’s sleeve is to be removed upon purchase of the suit. It is not, nor should it be, an outward acclamation of who the designer of your suit is. If it were then you should leave the labels of your socks and shirts on as well, so that we give you the appropriate recognition you seek of your styling prowess. Leaving the label on screams out, “Look everyone, I have a new suit bought from a shop and not from sunshine boutique.” Get over it. If the suit fits right, you’ll be recognized as the well dressed individual you are.
3. Tear your eyes away from your screen when talking:
You are a human being, not a stone wall. If I am talking to you, I would like to see your eyes, which signals to me that we are communicating up a two way street. Looking at your computer screen and grunting “uh-huh” as I talk sends me the signal that I am disturbing you and you really can’t be bothered to pay attention to what I am saying. The same applies to looking at a text message or email that has just pinged its entry into your phone as I’m talking. That said, if in a meeting you choose to surreptitiously check out your latest message and you burst out laughing or let out a loud exclamation of disgust then be prepared to explain what the interruption is all about otherwise just excuse yourself and pretend you’re going on a bathroom break if you need to check your messages.
4. Shower Power:
The grave assumption being made here is that one takes a shower on a daily basis before coming to work. The graver assumption made by the clean professional is that her body odour beast will be tamed throughout the course of a frenetic workday. It cannot. That’s why anti-perspirant was manufactured to tame that beast. Anti-perspirant should never be mistaken for, nor substituted with perfume or cologne. They serve completely different purposes. The former prevents your colleagues from being assaulted with the aftermath of a day in the perspiring life of a human being. The latter, if applied well, maintains a pleasantly scented environment when you walk past or sit near your colleagues.

Good manners, just like common sense, are not so common to everyone. Have an informed week.

[email protected]
Twitter: @carolmusyoka

Imagine that the chairman of your bank is arrested on “drug supply investigations”. Following the arrest, revelations emerge that the chairman, who also happens to be a church minister, quit as a councilor in one town two years ago after “inappropriate but not illegal material” (read into that what you will) was found on his computer. It may sound incredible – or not – but this is what Co-Operative Bank in the United Kingdom endured in the summer of 2013.

In a pun-filled article on the BBC’s online news portal headlined: “How did Flowers bloom at Co-op Bank”, it was revealed that Reverend Paul Flowers, the chairman of the Co-Operative Bank and vice chairman of the Co-operative group was caught on camera trying to buy cocaine and crystal meth from the front of a car in Leeds. The bigger question posed both by the article and the public in general was how the financial regulators ever allowed Flowers to chair the bank in the first place. “To state the bloomin’ obvious”, the article continues, “regulators at the defunct Financial Services Authority (FSA) and its successor body, the Prudential Regulation Authority, have a few questions to answer, about why they gave the thumbs up to Mr. Flowers. “

Flowers was a political animal in the co-operative movement and had pulled himself up by the bootstraps through rank and file to a senior position which helped him get the appointment to the movement’s flagship investment, the Co-operative bank. He had absolutely no banking experience as he chaired the board of a bank with £50 bn of assets (Kshs 7 trillion), £36 bn of customer deposits (Kshs 5 trillion) and 4.7 million customers. The same BBC article notes that his appointment as chairman came more than two years after the worst British (and global) banking crisis in 2008 which caused the regulator – the FSA – to pledge that they would take extra care to make sure that those appointed to chair banks had the appropriate skills and knowledge. But apparently Flowers did have an FSA interview when he became chairman in 2010 and he admitted to the FSA that he did not have the applicable experience in the financial services industry. However the FSA felt that Co-op Bank would compensate for this shortcoming by appointing two deputy chairmen who were also senior independent directors, which the bank did. The FSA apparently believed that Flowers’ political skills would be useful in managing the large and unwieldy 22-member Co-op Bank board.

And really that is where the gravity of the matter lies. Board members are recruited primarily for the skills that they bring to the table, which skills should bring diversity and widespread knowledge to the complex oversight and monitoring that a bank board is required to undertake. Co-op Bank satisfied itself (and the FSA) that it had sufficient independent directors with the requisite financial knowledge to provide the balance required on a board managing a significant amount of financial assets and liabilities. The fact that Flowers was not a financial wizard gave the media and the public enough ammunition to put the bank to task as to its choice of chairman. But as anyone who has chaired a board will tell you, managing internal and external stakeholders as well as the various interests represented on a board is a skill that requires political acumen and an unlimited amount of emotional intelligence.
The bigger governance issue that the scandal brought out was how a small group of powerful co-op movement political activists were allowed to control the commercial aspects of the movement. While the group publicly stated that it was looking to review this governance hiccup, it will be much easier said than done.

The scandal only exacerbated the bank’s problems following revelations earlier in the year that the bank required a £1.5 billion (Kshs 210 bn) capital injection following a merger with Britannia Building Society in 2009. Following the merger, Co-op Bank had to absorb losses on commercial property loans made by Britannia as well as write off an expensive IT project at the bank, both of which led to Co-op seeking a rescue agreement with creditors. The rescue by the bank’s creditors saw 70% of the bank’s equity move to its bondholders and an overhaul of management.

Several investigations have subsequently been launched into the operations of the bank including senior management members, and Flowers himself, appearing before a Treasury select committee in November 2013. The chairman of the Treasury Committee, Andrew Tyrie said that the regulator’s decision to put a “financial illiterate” in charge of its board was a “negligent decision, a very poor decision”. But the problems within the bank were more deep-seated than poor choice of a chairman. It had a moribund IT system and an IT system – described by the Telegraph newspaper – as one that could barely run a corner shop let alone a bank with nearly £50 bn of assets.

Flowers’ mistake was in getting caught with his pants down (figuratively of course). You cannot be a high profile executive of a high profile bank and expect that your nefarious predilections will not bring you into serious disrepute if ever exposed. Key lesson for Flowers: the higher your profile, the deeper the grave where your secrets have to be buried. Key lesson for the Co-operative movement in the UK: You can’t mix politics with business as the two are diametrically opposed. The bank’s board was quite likely populated with the co-operative movements’ senior membership rather than qualified and well-rounded individuals who brought knowledge diversity on the table, hence the need for Flowers’ skills in controlling the rabble that was likely to be a typical board meeting. The Co-op Bank debacle provides interesting food for thought for many of our own board dynamics in East Africa.

[email protected]
Twitter: @carolmusyoka

“The world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation. The hand is the cutting edge of man.”
― Jacob Bronowski

Twitter is an interesting social medium. Its unfolding role as a communication tool for central and county government leadership in Kenya has been fascinating to observe over the last twelve months. Two governors in particular: the Nairobi County Governor and the Machakos County Governor have been active twitter comunicators. The Nairobi Governor has used the medium to often inform what meetings he is about to have or has just come out of, or what new fangled plans the county administration is planning to undertake. The Machakos Governor on the other hand, often uses the medium to inform of the actual changes he has effected in the county which is then followed by all manner of comments on why Commentator X or Commentator Y needs to move to Machakos County in the very near future.

Last week was no different. The Machakos Governor, who honed his skills as an effervescent media content provider in his days as Government spokesman, released several pictures of the 120 patrol vehicles, CCTV cameras and a Machakos County Call Centre. A picture is worth a thousand words. And a media expert such as the Machakos Governor knows how to leverage on that. No shaking hands with some random folks who mean nothing to his constituents, just action at work. 10-nil was the public relations score.

The problem with good PR though, is that this action will have to be followed up with more action. The call centre will have to be manned 24-7. The second hand patrol vehicles will have to be serviced regularly, fuelled and, most importantly, driven by actual law enforcers. The CCTV cameras will have to work 24-7 and manned by human beings who can get in touch with law enforcers that have, you guessed it, a well serviced and fuelled patrol car to get to the scene of crime quickly. Hopefully the Machakos Governor has figured all of this out and has put plans in place. But what he is quite deliberately doing is generating interest from Nairobians as to how Machakos County can be a viable option to live in and commute to the ghastly crime riddled and traffic filled capital city. If successful, this will quite obviously lead to demand for housing as people want to live there. This then drives developers to start building housing units, the land values begin to appreciate which generates more revenue in terms of rates to the county since most of the surrounding land in the county is under agricultural use. Residents bring in businesses which want to supply goods to potential buyers, which means more revenues from business licenses. Since well educated professionals are most likely the target of the expanding modernization in the county, local corporates will quite likely consider setting up base in the county as its proximity to Nairobi and availability of talent is a clear attractive factor. The economic growth potential therefore becomes exponential IF the Machakos county government delivers on its pictorial promises.

If you have driven down Mombasa road to the Machakos town turn off, you will have noticed the daily cleaning crew that keep the roadsides clear of garbage and overgrown bush. You will also have noticed the beautiful flowerbeds that have been planted on the roadside as well as the street lights, quite rudimentary but effective, that have been installed and snake an illuminating path between the Mombasa road turnoff and Machakos town. You can actually spot the difference between pre-devolution and post devolution Machakos County.

The low hanging fruit is clearly being harvested in terms of cleaning up and presenting a welcoming front. The immediate challenge is working with central government resources such as the Lands ministry in facilitating faster land transactions and the Roads ministry in construction of feeder roads to what is largely an agricultural and rural locale. Electricity and running water are unquestionable imperatives for the success of the Machakos metropolis. To his credit, we have not had the displeasure of seeing the Machakos Governor preening about in political party shenanigans nor in council of Governors machinations. Perhaps in our limited lifetime we will watch the birth of a functioning city under our very noses.

In other completely unrelated news, the Nairobi County Government last year published a highly transparent Finance Bill 2013 with very clearly articulated fees for numerous activities that go on within the county. It now costs Kes 200 to sell aquatic fish that is 6-10 cm long, Kes 300 if it’s 11-15 cm long and Kes 500 if its longer than 16 cm. I want to see that City Inspectorate agent who tries to first catch and then measure the slippery fish at the pet shop over in Sarit Centre. The finance bill also describes some prices with regards to sale of plants but it is unclear whether these are the prices relating to sale of plants at the City County nursery or licence fees per plant at a private nursery. Anyway the prices as follows: Kes 500 for a plant in a container of 45 cm diameter, Kes 300 if the container is 15 cm in diameter and Kes 200 if the container is 10 cm in diameter. No guesses for what private nurseries will do forthwith: remove all plants from round containers and encourage the City Inspectorate chaps to go and check each and every one of the plants in the nursery. I jest though. What I seriously request is that the Nairobi County government gets to work. Enough of the kissing babies pictures and plans for eventual purchase of fire engine trucks. Put some rubber on the road and show us what the whole “Singapore dream” rhetoric was all about. You’ve increased the rates and the business licenses so give us some (not lip) service. After all, the hand is the cutting edge of man.

[email protected]
Twitter: @carolmusyoka

I fought the good fight. I finished the race. I kept the faith. I became a Member of the Kenyan Parliament as a result. It has been a rollercoaster ride in the last eight months. We have passed so many bills that have affected the lives of Kenyans. Fine, some might argue that none of the bills have positively affected the ordinary mwananchi, but people must understand that it’s not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. (I read that somewhere, while I was studying for my English competency test, and it sounded good) Wananchi must realize that they have to contribute to the country’s bottom line through VAT and through 6% of their input at their employer’s organization.

I mean let’s face it. The National Social Security Fund (NSSF) is a wonderful way of setting aside one’s savings for the future. It may not have a CEO right now, (or any CEO who can stay beyond a year of service) and it may not necessarily send members annual individual statements showing how their individual portfolio has grown, but that doesn’t matter. It is a national institution that needs the mwananchi’s support. The money raised by the NSSF is a great source of funds when the government needs to borrow money on the domestic market to fund government expenditure which includes my very good salary. The board of the NSSF makes sure that member contributions are invested well which will ensure that the mwananchi lives a very prosperous life once he retires. My fellow parliamentarians and I know what’s best for Kenyans and people should just let us do our job. The performance of the NSSF should not worry people. Ever. It is here to stay, just like the Ngong Hills and the Masai Mara, right?

Talking about staying power, these media folks need to understand that things don’t always stay the same. They are shouting from the rooftops about how the Kenya Information and Communications (Amendment) Bill will gag media freedom. What do they know about freedom? Was the media fighting in the bush for Kenya’s independence? No! All they know is how to publish scandals that never were and trash the performance of our sacred serikali. They must be stopped at all costs and made to report good things that lift the spirits of Kenyans. Kenyans want to read the proper truth of what a good job the executive and parliament are doing to uplift their lives. The performance of the executive and parliament should not worry people. These institutions are here to stay just like the Ngong Hills and Masai Mara, right?

But you know what? I really love my job. I spend a lot of time in parliament debating matters of national importance and I am constantly reminded how much I am personally contributing to the economic growth of this great country. Last week, I personally contributed to the debate about the renaming of Moi Sports Stadium Kasarani. I mean, how in the name of all that is heavenly, can anyone think of changing that veritable landmark’s name? Ati the new sponsor will improve the facilities? That stadium is in tiptop condition and doesn’t need anyone’s money. If they insist on getting an outsider to put their name on the stadium then they should be made to pay er……ummmm….Kshs 1 billion for it! Yes 1 billion sounds about right, since some of those funds can be used to pay for the supply of catering services which my wife provides and computer equipment which my brother does very well. The debate about the naming of the stadium was definitely meant to improve the economic growth of individuals in Kenya and was a worthwhile use of parliamentary time. That stadium and all the contracts that go with improving it are here to stay like the Ngong Hills and the Masai Mara, right?

I also spent a long time with the party whip being convinced on how to vote for the NGO Bill. To be honest, I never get to read all these confounded bills; we are usually spoon fed what position to take on a bill, as it is quite tedious breaking down the impact assessment of these bills on the ordinary mwananchi. You see, many of us have hardly passed mathematics let alone English, so trying to understand clause by clause of all these numerous bills is positively exhausting. So we just ask our whip to tell us what to do because he is quite an educated and bright fellow. If he really wants us to do something urgently, he motivates us in ways that are, well, quite imaginative I must say. Which is why I totally love my job, as the more controversial the proposed bill, the more imaginative the motivation.

It has been a great last eight months in the eleventh parliament of Kenya. During my induction I was informed that the role of a member of the august house during parliamentary sessions was to talk very loudly and then sleep very soundly. We were reminded the basic tenets of arithmetic that 1+1=11 and 9+9=99. We were advised to always take a narrow view of anything the media said as the whole world was out to get us. It was an excellent session that prepared me for what I have experienced. I am the guardian of the mwananchi’s intellect and the protector of the mwananchi’s wallet. I am here to stay like the Ngong Hills and the Masai Mara, right?

[email protected]
Twitter: @carolmusyoka

It’s about that time of the year when performance appraisals for the full year 2013 are about to be done. You probably have reams of spreadsheets full of excel data running macros showing your actual performance versus what you think your boss’s data will reveal. Well here’s something you need to know, there’s three sides to every performance appraisal: Your side, your boss’s side and the truth. So here are some few hints on what you should put in your self-appraisal and the most likely response from your boss:

Managerial skills:

Employee self appraisal: I exceed expectations as I rarely have to use formal disciplinary action on my subordinates.
Boss’s response: You are below expectations as your subordinate turnover is higher than the organization’s average. Actually, they don’t wait to be disciplined, they simply leave.
Employee self-appraisal: I exceed expectations as I delegate effectively to my staff.
Boss’s response: You are below expectations as you micromanage many of your staff’s activities. As a result, they get frustrated and they leave.
Employee self-appraisal: I exceed expectations as I have an open door policy for my staff.
Boss’s response: You are below expectations. An open door is what I always find when your team walks out of the office.

Communication skills:

Employee self-appraisal: I exceed expectations as I have excellent written and verbal communication skills
Boss’s response: Are you kidding? I’m still trying to rewrite your last three status reports and we all fell asleep at your last presentation.
Employee self-appraisal: I exceed expectations as I use resources when unsure of proper spelling, punctuation or grammar.
Boss’s response: I suggest you stop using a Chinese dictionary as a resource for your English emails.

Planning and analytical capability:

Employee self-appraisal: I exceed expectations as I have demonstrated first class planning and analytical skills that exemplify my detail-oriented nature.
Boss’s response: I can’t say this enough, you frequently draw wrong conclusions from hastily gathered data and send everyone down the garden path to nowhere as a result.
Employee self-appraisal: I exceed expectations as I was directly responsible for analyzing the root cause of four production failures this quarter and designing a process to ensure that those failures do not recur.
Boss’s response: You were directly responsible for the four production failures as you “forgot” to order for the production materials in good time despite being aware of the customer’s order. You designed a process to prevent recurrence after I yelled at you for two hours straight. That process was simply a cut and paste job of what the production manual states and what you should have applied at the first instance.

Customer service:

Employee self-appraisal: I exceed expectations as I am graceful and tactful under pressure from customers at all times.
Boss’s response: Incredible! Your last customer interaction ended up with someone lying flat on their back on the ground. It took every ounce of goodwill and networking to ensure the story didn’t end up on social and print media. I swore I would never……forget it. You are way below expectations on this one.
Employee self-appraisal: I exceed expectations as I solve customer problems with speed and accuracy.
Boss’s response: You are consistently below expectations on this. A snail’s pace is not the definition of speed.

Initiative:

Employee self-appraisal: I exceed expectations as I do not shy away from taking risks.
Boss’s response: I agree. Entirely. You do not shy away from risks; in fact you embrace them wholeheartedly. Risk and trouble seem to follow you everywhere you go.
Employee self-appraisal: I exceed expectations as I quickly make decisions to solve customer complaints.
Boss’s response: Again, I agree entirely. You made a decision to solve a customer problem very quickly. Someone ended up flat on their back on the ground. I swore I would never….forget it. There is no doubt that you do not fear making decisions.

Conclusions:
Employee self-appraisal: I am a self-motivated, well rounded individual who motivates his team to perform to their best and who consistently delivers on targets. I therefore rate myself a 1 which is equivalent to an Outstanding rating in the company’s performance ranking system. I realize that we may have had our differences of opinion every now and then but we have constantly engaged in two-way communication, which has generated a net positive working relationship between us. You have been a great inspiration and mentor to me and I dedicate this rating to you.

Boss’s response: You are a back-stabbing, uninspiring turncoat who drives his team members to near suicidal temperaments. You have consistently missed your targets for no other reason than failing to ensure the supply chain for production is followed meticulously. You are a stain on this organization and have only been allowed to survive because of your ties to an influential director. I am quite likely to get fired for putting this in writing but I’ve honestly reached a point in my career where it is much easier to write the truth than to swallow its unpalatable contents anymore. You should not be allowed to breed neither should you be allowed to lead anything more than a picket line at a kindergarten strike. You are indeed outstanding. You are an outstanding liar. I wish you nothing but the best wishes for your future endeavours if they are outside this organization.

[email protected]
Twitter: @carolmusyoka

Dear Mr. Nameless Government Official,

I have 304 billion reasons to write to you today. My friends told me to calm down, that I was making a mountain out of a molehill, getting my knickers in a twist and creating a storm in a teacup. My friends clearly got an A+ in English grammar drama. But I can’t calm down. Not as a long-suffering, taxpaying Kenyan I can’t. You see, Mr. Edward Ouko the Auditor General, sensationally announced last week that there was Kes 304 billion that could not be accounted for out of the 2011/12 Kes 920 billion government expenditure.

I couldn’t blame him for his sense of drama. I mean, it’s only 33% of the total government expenditure right? It is only 9 billion short of Kes 313 billion of income tax collected by Kenya Revenue Authority in the same financial year, right? In other words, the equivalent of 97% of the entire income tax that was collected from tax compliant individuals and organizations in FY 2011/12 has allegedly gone up in smoke. Poof!

Poor chaps over at Kenya Revenue Authority; they hit the tarmac every morning, knocking on doors of companies and undertaking tax audits to ensure that what is Caesar’s is given unto Njiraine. Then some forgetful Joes in government ministries forget to submit their imprest reconciliations, others forget to ask for authorization before spending money, others misallocate their expenditure and others just simply forget themselves. Whatever the case, these absentminded Joes in government very efficiently manage to misappropriate 97% of what the hard working chaps at KRA have collected in income tax. Wow! Talk about singing from the same hymn sheet.

So my dear Nameless Government Official, this is my take of the status quo. You are all one big Government of Kenya family beginning with forgetful Joe and ending with the hardworking KRA chaps. Family forgives family. The KRA chaps essentially have to take one for the team as it would appear that the forgetful Joes over at the ministries fritter all of KRA’s hard work away. In the spirit of sharing, I would like to humbly request that all the innocent, tax compliant individuals and organizations also be given leeway to forget as well. Let’s put a number to this forgetfulness. 304 billion. I will explain. The tax regime allows individuals and organizations to deduct business related expenses against revenue generated in order to arrive at taxable income. If, in the spirit of shared forgetfulness, these individuals and organizations misplace the expense receipts or are unable to allocate the source of such expenditure, they will be standing shoulder to shoulder in inefficiency with the forgetful Joes. They will also save the KRA chaps the trouble of knocking on thousands of office doors to audit or collect tax.

Instead, what these individuals and organizations will do is to sweetly request the KRA chaps to apply their efforts to auditing and collecting the missing funds over at their brothers in the ministries. All Kes 304 billion of it. What are the benefits, you ask? Firstly, the KRA chaps don’t have to spend long, hot and dusty days knocking on thousands of tax compliant doors. They will just criss cross Harambee Avenue and Community Hill which is a smaller area of jurisdiction to do their work. Benefit: less energy used, less wear and tear on leather shoes.

Secondly, less paper will be generated in this beautiful environmentally friendly country of Kenya. Individuals and organizations will not require to print reams of paper for receipts and expenditure reports to justify why they should offset that expenditure against the income that they generated. Benefit: less printer toner used, less wear and tear on the wily brains of accountants. Thirdly, corporates operating within the tax jurisdiction of Kenya will see a significant reduction in their operating expenses under the line “professional services”. This is the line that is charged when expensive tax consultants have to be used to advise on efficient ways to avoid tax such as transfer pricing or use of tax havens for registration of holding companies. These corporates would rather their hard earned funds find refuge in a safer jurisdiction than be frittered away by forgetful Joes who received government allocations that were sourced from income tax. With less expenses generated by the corporates, and no tax paid due to our forgetfulness theory, we will receive higher salaries, better benefits and more mandazis during our tea breaks. We might even achieve the lifestyle of our erstwhile members of parliament. Benefit: inconceivable, these are dreams of my forefathers.

I see your obvious consternation. Don’t fret. Kenyans will not stop paying taxes. Why should they? They receive great service from their government. Their police are the best paid in the world and provide unrivalled protection over the 40 million citizens. Their hospitals are the best equipped with world-class facilities, limitless drugs and phenomenally motivated doctors and nurses. Let’s not even talk about the deliriously happy teachers. Kenyans love that their hard-earned tax shillings are put to efficient use and are accounted for down to the last cent. Kenyans love that they now pay more to get by in their daily lives because the VAT bracket was widened. Kenyans know that even those VAT funds will be put to excellent use and nary a shilling will ever be “lost”.

No, Mr. Nameless Government Official: Kenyans will roll over and play dead. They will pretend that the Auditor General was suffering from a trifling spot of something and must have been delusional with dengue fever when he made his sensational claims. They will accept that your colleagues over at the named ministries are not inefficient. They are just forgetful, 306 billion kilowatts of forgetfulness. My friends have told me not to complain. Kes 304 billion can possibly shut down an economy like ours if it goes missing. It’s not missing though, you say. It’s just misplaced. In someone else’s pocket.

Yours faithfully,
A Forgetful Citizen.

[email protected]
Twitter: @carolmusyoka

A bus load of politicians were driving down a country road one afternoon, when all of a sudden, the bus ran off the road and crashed into a tree in an old farmer’s field. Seeing what happened, the old farmer went over to investigate. He then proceeded to dig a hole and bury the politicians. A few days later, the local sheriff came out, saw the crashed bus, and asked the old farmer, “Were they all dead?” The old farmer replied, “Well, some of them said they weren’t, but you know how them politicians lie.”

Last week, I started a brief lesson for the 349 members of parliament who were out of office when Tornado VATA hit Kenya, leaving behind catastrophic destruction of the ordinary mwananchi’s cash flow in its wake. Just in case you missed it, Tornado VATA was the VAT Act 2013 that blew through parliament completely unnoticed by its most honorable occupants a few weeks ago. So to my dear parliamentarians, here is another thing you missed while you were away. You significantly hurt the Kenyan farmer and consequently hurt the ordinary mwananchi as you snoozed during the passing of the Act.

I’ll start with the basics. A farmer rears animals that are converted into food -fresh meat- or that produce milk or eggs for example. In order for those animals to create the end product, the farmer has to feed the animals with animal feed especially where he is into commercial production. That animal feed usually consists of about 80% of his production costs. Let me make it a little simpler. That chicken drumstick, T-bone steak or pork sausage that you are going to eat in the parliamentary restaurant today originally came from an animal and not from a supermarket. There are various costs that are borne by the producer of the meat you are about to eat which you need to know about. One of those costs is VAT which is discussed in terms of output and input VAT to those who are in the production of goods and services.

There are three kinds of VAT outputs. Remember that an output is what you charge your customer for purchasing your goods. (ermm when I say “You” I mean the person selling the goods and not you Mr. MP, as you clearly do not sell anything other than your dashing good looks and incontrovertible charm both of which certainly do not attract VAT).

Firstly, your goods can have a 16% VAT output, which is simply 16% charged over and above what the price of the goods is. Secondly, your goods can have a zero rating VAT output, which means that your goods attract a zero rate of VAT. However, zero rating allows for you the seller to claim back from KRA whatever VAT you have paid in the raw materials or input used to produce your goods, known as input VAT. KRA, in its undeniable generosity, allows you to make this claim and then spends the rest of your uncertain life assuring you that you will be paid the refund claim. In the meantime, your buyers get to enjoy your zero rated goods without paying for the 16% input cost which you endured when you purchased the raw materials because you are an honest business man who won’t pass that cost through to your customers and you await your KRA refund fervently. Thirdly, your goods can be VAT exempt. This means that you do not charge VAT for your goods (Amen to that!), but neither can you claim the input VAT that you paid for the raw materials that you purchased to make your VAT exempt goods (Ouch!). Of course, the result is that you include that input VAT into your total cost of production. Tornado VATA shifted a whole bunch of items from zero rated status to exempt status such as medicaments, fertilizers and sanitary towels, so guess where the input VAT costs for the manufacture of those items will go? To the shelf price of those items.
Let me take a break from all the technical gobbledygook before I lose you entirely. The chicken that you will have for lunch today will cost more to buy simply because the price of the animal feeds that were used during the chicken’s ill fated and very short life have increased therefore making for a more expensive production process. The animal feeds costs have gone up because the main raw material in the feeds which comes from millers is now being charged 16% VAT, which was previously not the case as the millers products were zero rated. The cherry on top of that cake is the fact that animal feeds, which were previously zero-rated now attract 16% VAT. So there’s a double whammy for the farmer: The raw material cost of the feed has gone up, as has the final product – the animal feed- gone up as it now attracts 16% VAT.

And since the farmer’s output is unprocessed meat and unprocessed milk – both of which are VAT exempt – the farmer cannot claim the input VAT that she has paid on the raw materials such as the animal feeds which make up about 80% of her costs. So she has to pass through the incremental costs to her buyers. The result, more expensive unprocessed meat and unprocessed milk. The more expensive unprocessed milk is purchased by the dairy producer who processes it and – drum roll please – sells it to us as processed milk with the new added tag of 16% VAT.

Look, I know your eyes are glazing over at this number 16 that I keep thrusting before you. Snap out of it. Life got very expensive while you were away Mr. MP, and you can never ever deny that you were not aware it would happen. I know what kept you busy though: 16 more cars in your garage; 16 more fuel allowance requisitions to submit and 16 more committee sittings to attend to. What’s that? I’m talking lies? I’m not the politician, you are!

[email protected]
Twitter: @carolmusyoka

A businessman on his deathbed called his friend and said, “John, I want you to promise me that when I die, you will have my remains cremated.” John responded, “And what do you want me to do with your ashes?” The businessman said, “Just put them in an envelope and mail them to the Kenya Revenue Authority. Include a note that says, “Now, you have everything.”

Last week a renowned tax guru from Deloitte provided a stream of critical but very informative tidbits on the VAT Act 2013 on Twitter. I engaged this virtual source further and by the end of our discourse, I was certain that the 349 members of parliament were fast asleep when the VAT bill sailed through parliament some weeks ago. Actually, no, they weren’t asleep. They were simply not there. Only because no one in their right mind would have allowed that bill to sail through all its readings without raising a right royal ruckus unless they were incentivized to look the other way, which of course never happens in Kenyan parliaments. So – and I take in a deep breath as I say this – here’s one interesting item you folks over in the national assembly missed while you were away.

According to the tax lessons from the guru, VAT is now payable on sales of commercial buildings. Yeah, I know you don’t really care do you? Business people do, though. They buy commercial buildings or commercial space within buildings for business use. Before the tornado that is the VAT Act 2013 (VATA) made landfall, a purchaser of a property would contend with paying 4% of the property’s value as stamp duty and not less than 1% of the property’s value in legal fees. So total cash outflow would be not less than 105% of the property’s sale price for such a transaction. Tornado VATA touched down and the total cash outflow now required for such a transaction is not less than 121%. Here’s a basic example. John wants to buy a floor in a recently completed commercial property development. The sale price is given as Kshs 10 million. He has to fork out 4% stamp duty – Kshs 400,000 – and legal fees of about Kshs 100,000 bringing his total extraneous costs to Kshs 500,000. Following Tornado VATA, he now has to add Kshs 1.6 million (16% VAT) to the cost of the purchase bringing his total extraneous costs to the not so trifling amount of Kshs 2.1 million

But wait a minute. VAT paid is recoverable right? Of course Mr. MP, glad to see you’re awake. By paying the Kshs 1.6 million VAT, John pays what is termed as input tax and can recover it. KRA allows John to net off what he has paid in input tax against the VAT that he charges his customers, called output tax. You see John is a businessman and sells goods that require him to charge 16% VAT. He promptly remits this tax to KRA by the 20th of every following month. The net off system allows him to deduct whatever input tax he has already paid to KRA. So technically speaking, if he sells goods worth Kshs 10 million and raises output tax of Kshs 1.6 million he can net off the amount against the input tax he paid when buying the property and essentially get his money back simply from the cash his business is generating daily. (Oh and by the way, he now has only 3 months within which to make that input tax claim)

But Mr. MP, I said IF he sells goods worth Kshs 10 million. The assumption here is that he is a prosperous trader whose goods are flying off his shelves and whose customers pay him in cash on the spot. Not all businesses operate on that cash flow model. Goods and services are often sold on credit and your typical SME entrepreneur will not be making sales that can offset the 16% VAT that he has just paid on the purchase of a commercial property. So John will have to wait to generate enough sales to offset the VAT and hopefully recover that much needed cash that his business is now starved of. And Mr. MP here’s something you can take to the bank: no financier will provide financing to pay VAT. Ahh, I forgot, you’re already at the bank screaming blue murder now that you have discovered that they are levying 10% excise duty on your transactions right? Well, join the queue boss, we’re already ahead of you.

The American Revolution in the 18th century, which eventually led to America’s independence, was started for a number of reasons. A key driver was the clarion call by some activists for “no taxation without representation.” The British who had colonized America were levying all manner of taxes on the colony but there were no American representatives in the British parliament to essentially ensure that their taxes were being used efficiently for their benefit. This clarion call forms the basis of many a democratic tenet. You as the people’s representative are supposed to ensure that the taxes endured by the populace you represent are fairly levied and efficiently utilized to pay for car grants, salaries, sitting allowances – oh sorry that’s yours alone. The taxes should be used to pay teachers, doctors, nurses, infrastructure development, healthcare and all the other goodies that the government is supposed to provide to the rest of us citizens. The taxes are certainly going to hurt, but that’s what you are there for: to ensure that they don’t unreasonably hurt business or raise the general cost of living to the detriment of the people who exercised their democratic right to elect you.

I haven’t even touched on the impact of the other items that were removed from the previous zero rating into the 16% standard rating. I’ll tell you what though: I guess we can send you our ashes once we burn ourselves to death from paying all our taxes.

[email protected]
Twitter: @carolmusyoka

“Public officials in dire straits” was the headline in The Times newspaper of South Africa last Wednesday, August 14th 2013. As I read the story that followed I went through alternating bursts of manic laughter and picking my shocked jaw off the floor. The article highlights a report presented by the province of Gauteng’s Department of Finance to the province’s Finance Portfolio Committee the day before. Gauteng Province is the home to South Africa’s financial and administrative capitals Johannesburg and Pretoria so no prizes for guessing the importance of the province on the overall South African economy. The report states that most of the province’s officials are belabouring under the following conditions a) drowning in debt with garnishee orders (orders to attach property of an individual) averaging six per employee b) suffering from high levels of stress and depression c) employees have a high mortality rate and d) employees are often absent from work on Mondays and Tuesdays on unscheduled sick leave.

The province pays these employees R 42 billion (Kshs 369 billion) a year in salaries to its nearly 182,000 employees. Scientific research presented showed that the most vulnerable were employees in lower salary levels who were also generally less qualified, more vulnerable to HIV/AIDs and more likely to be conspicuous consumers living far beyond their economic means. But the problems don’t end there. The Auditor General Terence Nombembe also released a report on the same day (clearly Tuesday August 13th was release-a-gobsmacking-report-day in South Africa) stating that most of the country’s 278 municipalities battle to function with officials that can’t do their jobs. So the auditor general made the traffic stopping discovery that chief financial officers, municipal managers and supply chain mangers are in short supply. The consequence of these vacancies is that 71% of the entities audited were dependent on consultants to assist with financial reporting, which of course comes at a cost. Outsourced services, the report found, cost more than R 378 million (Kshs 3.3 billion) in 2011/12. Nombembe found that many officials realised that they did not have what it takes to produce financial statements required of local government, but only acted close to deadlines by calling in consulting firms. Now hold onto your seats, this ride gets even rougher. Only 17 municipalities (6%) obtained clean audits last year, which apparently has been the trend over the last three years.

First off, I made a promise to myself that I will no longer make any commentaries about our county governments. I broke it within a week. I made another promise. I can’t seem to keep it either. So I have thrown two promises in the dustbin where they’ve been joined by any sense of credibility that the counties of Mombasa,Vihiga, Siaya, Kisumu, Meru, Nakuru and their 17 other budget deficit county cousins ever had. You’ve got to give it to these guys though; it takes serious gumption to send in a budget with a deficit the first time that you ever have to do so. Then the counties get surprised when the budget is thrown back in their egg painted faces for not being balanced. It takes even more gumption to promptly retort, as the Vihiga governor Moses Akaranga reportedly did, that he will generate new revenue by opening up a county television and radio station. Right. We now have a Rupert Murdoch wannabe governing the unwitting residents of Vihiga. After all, television and radio stations have been defined in the Warren Buffet lexicon of moneymaking ventures as the quickest win in the quest for low hanging profits. Who knows what the chaps in Siaya or Nakuru have up their sleeves, perhaps it will be canned tilapia in brine or bottled water from the untapped aquifers of the Eburru escarpment.

It has been reported that the government is pondering over the fact that devolution has had little or no impact on the high public sector wage and is considering an audit to weed out ghost workers. Let me throw in a little crumb of a clue here. There are no financial officers in 23 out of 47 counties. There are ghosts there, as no finance professional who purports to hold an accounting degree from a credible institution could possibly append their John Hancock to a deficit laced county budget on its maiden submission. And the ghost of mediocrity stalks the floor of those 23 county assemblies infecting those assembly representatives with delusions of grandeur and hopelessly misplaced priorities.

Sadly, in the insidious race to the bottom that many of our county governments have girded their loincloths for, the South African archetypes are bound to snake their way north to our own devolved governments. Poor financial planning, demotivated work forces and recurring audit failures are bound to follow. Far be it for me to prescribe a solution, for it will most certainly fall on vaporized ears. But we elected them. An unseen wicked hand did not impose them upon us. They are as much a reflection of us as the municipalities in South Africa are a reflection of that society.

We have propelled the it’s-our-turn-to-eat mentality to dizzying heights and it has morphed into the DNA strands that course through the veins of our evolving society. We will rely heavily on the few heroes and heroines that will emerge from the Commission on Revenue Allocation, the Controller of Budget, the Salaries and Remuneration Commission as well as all the other unsung heroes (or villains depending on what side of the budget deficit you’re standing on) who will try and give guidance or keep in check the excesses of the novice counties.

But the silver lining in this cloud is that perhaps there is scope for private sector growth here. Can I hear an Amen from the accounting professionals who are bound to be hired as consultants in the very near future to help county governments undertake financial planning soon?

[email protected]
Twitter: @carolmusyoka

You have to give it to the National Social Security Fund (NSSF); they keep their communications department extremely busy. All the time! If it’s not some scandal related to procurement (yawn!), it is the board having issues with the line ministry (double yawn!) or some proposal to raise minimum contributions (triple yawn and double take!). So last week, NSSF took pride of place in the headlines with the news that Tom Odongo was sacked as the managing trustee. According to the media reports he was apparently the sixth chief executive in five years. Right! Perhaps the next job advertisement for the role of managing trustee should read as follows:
Exciting opportunity to lead a volatile institution that is crying out for stable leadership and which dabbles in real estate with mixed results now and then. The role has a 5-year contract term, but due to the fluid nature of the organization, a month can be a lifetime around here so no guarantees for completion of a term are provided.
Specific duties are as follows:
1. Strategic Planning: Take a pen and paper and design how the billions of shillings raised money from worker remittances can be used to make even more money for everyone through clever investments that generate tenders. Ensure that the board of trustees are aligned to the strategic plan otherwise the unhappy ones will let out little snippets of (mis)information to parliamentarians and the media in equal measure.

2. Resource Development: Take another pen and paper and design a process to develop higher resource mobilization from the innocent workers and their useless non-remitting employers. Engage the PR department to begin a media campaign putting the fear of God into any employer who does not register their workers. It is imperative that the process of registration is as painful as possible in keeping with our legendary institutional inefficiency. An excellent method would be to provide online registration capability while still requiring documents to be physically submitted into only one location in Nairobi thereby defeating the purpose of having an online process; a surefire winner for the most ineffective process prize at the Company of the Year Awards 2013.
3. Staff Management: Motivate NSSF employees to be the best at whatever it is they do. Even if they do nothing.

4. Build, Build, Build: You see, the NSSF raises billions of shillings that are scorching the lining of the institution’s bank accounts. The banks have therefore complained that our funds are too hot to handle and need to be redeployed into other areas of the economy. The board of trustees have keenly followed this advice and approved all manner of pie in the sky initiatives to build cities in Mavoko, skyscrapers in Nairobi and whatever else requires a tender, sorry, evidence of effective fund utilization. A core component of your role therefore will be to be a builder. We love builders here as they make us money proud.
5. Establish Reforms: We operate in a changing environment and have attended enough leadership courses to know that we are expected to establish reforms that you will be expected to spearhead. However, if you wish to maintain the status quo, we will not hold it against you.
Qualifications and Experience:
The ideal candidate should have a diploma, bachelors or master’s degree in the art of sweet talk. The candidate needs to demonstrate the ability to effectively design strategic plans using a pen and a paper. The candidate should have at least ten years experience managing a complex organization that deals with the government, the Central Organization of Trade Unions and numerous other faceless stakeholders all at the same time. Ability to make each stakeholder feel as if they are the most important entity since the invention of monarchies will be essential.
In addition, the candidate should be a strong team player who should be willing to take one for the team when the board is hauled before whichever parliamentary committee is interested in poking its nose around our business. The candidate should be able to work with maximum supervision as we don’t believe in giving you enough rope to hang yourself with alone. The candidate should demonstrate competencies in word processing (with a pen and paper is quite sufficient for us by the way), managing databases (of a variety of suppliers and building contractors) spreadsheets (we’re not sure what those are but we are just cut and pasting an old application we found in a drawer) and presentation programs (Death by power point strongly encouraged as it makes the meetings longer and allows us to get bigger sitting allowances). It goes without saying that the candidate should have excellent interpersonal, facilitation, negotiating and influencing skills, as all good builders do.
Salary
The job attracts a salary that is commensurate with experience and qualifications plus unquantifiable benefits. You can draw whatever conclusions you want from that.
The National Social Security Fund is an equal opportunity employer offering employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, or physical handicap. (At least that’s what we are on paper). If you are interested in applying for this job please send your CV, cover letter and professional references to: [email protected] and please mark on the subject line: “Lamb to the Slaughter ” “Managing Trustee Application”.
We strongly discourage you from dropping off documents at the NSSF reception as we are highly doubt that insiders will ever allow any job applications past the door.
For more information, please google the word NSSF in your internet browser. We urge you not to be discouraged when you see the results and forge ahead with your application. It will be the ride of your life!

[email protected]
Twitter: @carolmusyoka

A September 2011 article in Time magazine by Maia Szalavitz titled “One in twenty five business leaders may be psycopaths” makes for interesting reading.
The findings are a result of research by psychologist and executive coach Paul Babiak who studied 203 American corporate professionals that had been chosen by their companies to participate in a management training program. He evaluated their psychopathic traits using a version of the standard psychopathy checklist developed by Robert Hare, an expert in psychopathy at the University of British Columbia in Canada.
Psychopaths, who are characterized by being completely amoral and concerned only with their own power and selfish pleasures, may be overrepresented in the business environment because it plays to their strengths. Where greed is considered good and profitmaking is the most important value, psychopaths can thrive. They also tend to be charming and manipulative — and in corporate America, that easily passes for leadership. But, as the U.K.’s Guardian reported:
“The survey suggests psychopaths are actually poor managerial performers but are adept at climbing the corporate ladder because they can cover up their weaknesses by subtly charming superiors and subordinates. This makes it almost impossible to distinguish between a genuinely talented team leader and a psychopath, Babiak said.”
In fact, it can be hard spot the psychopath in any crowd (according to Robert Hare, psychopaths make up 1% of the general population). They’re not all ruthless serial killers; rather, psychopaths who grow up in happy, loving homes might end up channeling their energies in a less violent way — say, by becoming a CEO. The interesting conclusion of Babiak’s research is that 3% of managers are psychopaths versus 1% of the general population. But do we have the ability to discern whether psychopaths can be found within our own general population? A psychopath is defined as a person suffering from chronic mental disorder with abnormal or violent social behavior. In the book Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go To Work, Babiak who co-authors the book with Robert Hare takes a thorough look at how psychopaths operate effectively in the work place. They state:
“Several abilities – skills, actually – make it difficult to see psychopaths for who they are. First, they are motivated to, and have a talent for, ‘reading people’ and for sizing them up quickly. They identify a person’s likes and dislikes, motives, needs, weak spots, and vulnerabilities… Second, many psychopaths come across as having excellent oral communication skills. In many cases, these skills are more apparent than real because of their readiness to jump right into a conversation without the social inhibitions that hamper most people… Third, they are masters of impression management; their insight into the psyche of others combined with a superficial – but convincing – verbal fluency allows them to change their situation skillfully as it suits the situation and their game plan.”
Thus, while we are conditioned to think of psychopaths in a criminal setting performing vile acts and engaging groups or cults even to perform viler acts, the fact is that psychopaths are seemingly normal, well heeled individuals who are charismatic, charming, and adept at manipulating one-on-one interactions. In an organization, one’s ability to advance is determined in large measure by a person’s ability to favorably impress his or her direct manager. Unfortunately, certain of these psychopathic qualities – in particular charm, charisma, grandiosity (which can be mistaken for vision or confidence) and the ability to “perform” convincingly in one-on-one settings – are also qualities that can help one get ahead in the business world according to Forbe Magazine’s Victor Lipman.
Conversely, however not all psychopaths in the work place are charmers. The book Snakes in Suits goes ahead to explain:
“Some do not have enough social or communication skill or education to interact successfully with others, relying instead on threats, coercion, intimidation, and violence to dominate others and to get what they want. Typically, such individuals are manifestly aggressive and rather nasty, and unlikely to charm victims into submission, relying on their bullying approach instead. This book (Snakes in Suits) is less about them than about those who are willing to use their ‘deadly charm’ to con and manipulate others.”
Firstly, this book should be made mandatory reading by all Human Resource managers in the world. What it brings to fore is that people managers should have a heightened awareness of the ability for employees to create a façade of good work place behavior that is completely at odds with what their respective subordinates are experiencing. The findings in the book also lead one to conclude that a well-established system of internal succession planning is an excellent way of observing the behavior of identified talent over a period of time. After all you can fool some people some of the time, but it becomes increasingly difficult to fool all the people all of the time.
The challenge then for any organization recruiting senior management is what to do when hiring an outsider for a role, where there is very little opportunity to observe their leadership style and ethos. Remember your average psychopath is extremely manipulative and will probably charm the socks off the interviewing panel and will have a long list of accomplishments typed up in boldface on his résumé. A comprehensive reference checking process which includes both social and professional contacts will be critical in identifying the behavioral traits of a potential senior hire. One headhunter that I know undertakes a very rigorous reference checking process that probes the social side of the individual from peers within and without the workplace. As a result, that headhunter has uncovered an incredible amount of damaging information about potential hires that would never surface in an interview, formal reference check or well-written résumé. This is not to say that all business leaders are psychopaths, on the contrary, this is to serve as a notice to you that they-the psychopaths- walk amongst us. The question is: do you have an effective system of identifying them?
[email protected]
Twitter: @carolmusyoka

Last week I wrote about different office cultures and their ability to become entrenched to the detriment of the organization’s health. One common cultural aspect within organizations is a meetings-for-the-sake-of-meetings habit. There are “small” meetings (which is never really the case as the only thing small about them are the size of mandazis served with the tea) or “serious” meetings (where the most serious item of discussion is the fact that revenue is declining, costs are going up and therefore the training, tea and team building budgets are going to be slashed in that order).

So you strut around the office, feeling very important that you spend your day in three face-to-face meetings, two telephone conference calls and one Skype videoconference meeting. You are needed by absolutely everyone, you are a key part of the office network and collaborative system and essentially you are required by all to do absolutely……..nothing! You cannot seriously believe deep within yourself that you are working, can you? Surely what can you be contributing by the time the third meeting rolls by and your cognitive capacity is so low that it can’t be jumpstarted by an espresso shot, secret nip of vodka or whatever your choice of poison is? At which point you start becoming fidgety and irritable and constantly glance at your blackberry expecting it to morph into an F-5 fighter jet that will whisk you out of your misery into the stratospheric oblivion of office email.

So take a step back and ponder thus: Either I am the most important person to exist since Thomas Edison invented the light bulb or I am a total halfwit dunce who exists to make other people look important. Once the answer has lit up a bulb in your rapidly diminishing grey matter, put your hand on your heart and promise to ask the next meeting convener a set of three questions. Please note that you can ask the three questions as strictly posed or as you honestly interpret it. Here we go.

Question 1 as strictly posed: Who will participate in the meeting? Question 1 as you honestly interpret it: Which cretins need to spend time with you in your miserable existence as a person-important-enough-to-convene-meetings? Question 2 as strictly posed: What purpose will all the meeting attendees have achieved when the meeting is over? Question 2 as you honestly interpret it: Who needs to know that you are clever, important and that you rule their lives? Question 3 as strictly posed: What do you want to happen after the meeting that will be helped by having the meeting? Question 3 as you honestly interpret it: How do you want to be remembered as a clever, important person who rules the lives of his colleagues?

Now you must be prepared to take serious flak for asking the three questions in whatever format (strictly posed or honestly interpreted) primarily because the meeting convener has never really had to think about the answers to those questions. You see, in the rat race that is called the white collar professional life, one is bombarded by so many demands on one’s mental faculties via email, work deadlines, work updates, stakeholder reports blah, blah, blah that one can rarely differentiate what really needs to be done from what seems to need to be done. Meetings give great comfort to procrastinators who do not want to make critical decisions that have far reaching consequences. Meetings allow the convener to cover their backsides as a hard-hitting decision can be said to be consensual. Meetings also give great comfort to procrastinators who can’t make easy decisions with little or no consequences. They simply give the procrastinator the legitimacy to delay a decision until the “meeting to discuss” is held. Meetings are a procrastinator’s nirvana.

Look, don’t get me wrong. There are good meetings being held out there. These are categorized into three types: information sharing which last not more than 15 minutes, provide an update on an event happening within the organization and are held while standing, brainstorming which are typically free format and aimed at resolving a stated problem or creating a concept and, finally consultation meetings which provide status reporting and present new information. The latter meetings start with an agenda and any pre-reading required circulated in a meeting pack beforehand. The attendees come to the meeting having read the pack and ready to make a decision based on their understanding of the issue and leave with concrete actions, owners for those actions and timelines for resolution agreed upon by the action owners. There is both accountability and consequences for non-completion of actions.

You can take control of your time and start to ensure that meetings are categorically defined upfront and their motives adhered to. You can ask the meeting convener the three career limiting questions posed above and be prepared to receive a career limiting response. Or, to keep sane in an increasingly insane office world you can do the following top ten tips on how-to-keep-sane-at-a-boring-office-meeting and hope against hope that you will survive your office meeting culture.

1. Give a broad wink to someone else at the table.
2. In time, wink at everyone.
3. Sometimes shake your head just a little, as if to indicate that the speaker is slightly crazy and everybody knows it.
4. Complain loudly that your neighbour won’t stop touching you.
5. Demand that the boss make your neighbor stop doing it.
6. Bring a hand puppet, preferably an animal.
7. Bring a small mountain of computer printouts to the meeting. If possible, include some old-fashioned accordion-fold paper for dramatic effect.
8. Every time the speaker makes a point, pretend to check it in one of the printouts.
9. Pretend to find substantiating evidence in the computer printout.
10. Nod vigorously, and say “uh-huh, uh-huh!
[email protected]
Twitter: @carolmusyoka