My Grandpa always warned me about never confusing noise with progress. Every time we heard the cows mooing, dust rising, and goats bleating, we assumed things were moving. But when we checked the kraal, it was usually chaos, goats had entered the cow shelter, calves were stepping on feed, and the workers were shouting without doing much. That was not an order. It was just noise.

Many years later, I see the same thing in boardrooms.

During a strategy facilitation session at a client, the CEO walked us through a 67-slide presentation showcasing departmental reports, weekly dashboards, monthly reviews, customer complaints, and staff appraisals. I listened patiently. We all did. When he finished, I asked him one question, one-on-one: “If you left this company today, would it collapse, stall, or grow faster?” He stared blankly. That silence told me everything. Read more >>

"Real vision should make your competitors uncomfortable and your people excited. ”

Last year, I met a CEO whose leadership reminded me of a blindfolded boda-boda rider in the middle of Kampala traffic, full throttle, dodging potholes, trusting the wind to take him somewhere useful. His team was working hard, his board was impressed with PowerPoint slides, but the company was going in circles. Why? Because their vision, the one that was meant to provide direction, was a fancy sentence no one remembered and no one followed.

That’s your leadership issue this week: You are working hard, you have good people, but you can not scale. Because your vision, the thing meant to anchor your decisions and inspire your people, is vague, lifeless, and meaningless.  Read more >>

Six years ago, during a performance review at a retail company in Kenya, I met a regional manager who smiled throughout the strategy presentation, nodded respectfully at every slide, and then pulled me aside during lunch. “Mr Strategy,” he said, “those KPIs they have put on us? They look nice in Excel, but here in Kisumu, they don’t work. We shall just hit what we can and let head office fight with the reports.”

That moment taught me something brutal: strategy doesn’t fail in the boardroom. It dies quietly in the corridors and is killed by middle managers who pretend to believe but privately disengage.

Let’s be clear: If your middle managers don’t believe in the strategy, your strategy is already dead. They don’t need to sabotage it actively. All they have to do is smile, sit through meetings, and do nothing differently. Read more >>

Your workplace may be broken. It’s time to fix it.

Most organizations struggle with the same problems high turnover, low productivity, disengaged employees, and leadership that feels stuck. You think the issue is strategy, hiring, or motivation. It’s not.

The real problem is your culture.

Introducing the Culture Mastery Series by Mr Strategy, the author of “7Tools to Get to the Board and Add Value”, and “Execution is the Strategy” Newsletter series on LinkedIn.

This is not another leadership seminar. It is a culture transformation program designed for CEOs, HR leaders, managers, and employees who are ready to fix what is broken and build a workplace where results matter.

No theories. No generic advice. Only proven frameworks, practical solutions, and tools you can apply immediately. Read more >>

This thought-provoking book offers an incisive examination of corporate governance from both a historical and contemporary point of view…I highly recommend it for your useful and sustainable leadership benefit” – Michael Mugabi, Former President, Institute of Corporate Governance of Uganda.