My cũũcũ passed away today.
I’m told she died peacefully in her home and felt no pain.
My story began with my cũũcũ. Her story was one of will power, persistence and principle. She pushed herself beyond her point of endurance so her children would have hope, a future. She worked day and night on her farm so she had enough to provide for her children, enough to share, and enough to sell. She had her children out of bed working before dawn and made sure that was never a reason to cut out school. Late at night they all studied by the light of a kerosene lamp with their feet dipped in cold water to focus and ward off sleep. She instilled in them the value of service, sweats and smarts, discipline and delayed gratification and they in turn passed these values on to us.
As I spent time with her in her latter years, arthritis had stolen the spring in her step and age had mellowed the intensity in her eyes. It was hard to believe she was the same lady who tore through the fields with a hoe or a sickle, carried bales of Napier grass on her back and taught women in the village zero-grazing so they too could provide for their children.
Still, she carried herself with grace and the determination that rang in her voice spoke to her pioneering spirit. My grandmother was the first lady in her country to cycle to the dairy and drive to the market. She was the woman who saved her scarce pennies for a sewing machine so her children would not go naked. She is the only Kikuyu grandmother I know who can talk to her grandchildren intelligently about Martin Luther King and Caesar Chavez, revolutionaries who fought for freedom many miles from her East African village.
I hope that my life is a tribute to my grandmother, who showed me the love of life and the people along the way who have given me joy and a meaning to it all. I hope that my life says I had a generous attitude towards people. That I worked hard, loved much and learned from my mistakes, that I had a vision and lived with a mission and that my perpetual optimism was a force multiplier.
Hope you are all keeping healthy!
I’d like to celebrate contributions of members of the Alliance4ai Africa community to tackling the COVID-19 pandemic, and ask if there’s anyone here with a knack for PR and creative writing who’d like to volunteer on telling this story so we find them more resources? Please contact me.
Natalie (South Africa) – her team at Robotscanthink is using their five 3D printers to produce 100 masks a day to distribute to 5 local hospitals. We are preparing an appeal for other South Africans to donate them more 3D printers, and to raise a fund to buy more
Darlington (Ghana) – his team at MinoHealth has built the most comprehensive map of Coronavirus spread across Africa. He has put out a call for volunteers to help with data labeling to allow him to continue to provide real-time updates on the current situation to aid decision-making
Prof Amo-Boateng (Ghana) – Well I call him Elon Musk of Africa. He’s got his students working on 6 incredible solutions. A few worth noting are Rapid Diagnosis with a mobile phone, novel drugs from Physics (new method), drugs from existing molecules. If any of these are of interest, there are always opportunities to help.
Others are Bayo (Nigeria) of Data science Nigeria, Getnet (Ethiopia) of Icog Labs, and Celina (South Africa) of Zindi.Africa
When it is dark, you can see stars.
Epidemics of the past have changed the way we lived and inspired innovations in infrastructure.
For example, Tuberculosis was the leading cause of death toward the end of the 19th century. I in 7 people around the world had died of the disease ranked as the third. While the medical community recognized TB was caused by bacteria, most people in the general public gave little attention to the behaviors that contributed to transmission. It was common for family members, or even strangers, to share a drinking cup, even when it was clear one coughed and expectorated.
The “War on Tuberculosis” public health campaign discouraged cup-sharing. States banned spitting in public spaces including inside public buildings, transit, sidewalks, and other outdoor spaces. Soon spitting in public spaces was considered uncouth, and swigging from shared bottles frowned upon too. These changes in public behavior helped successfully reduce the prevalence of tuberculosis.
Many infrastructure improvements and healthy behaviors we consider normal today are the results of past health campaigns that responded to devastating outbreaks.
In many large cities, rot and horse waste were commonplace. For example, city streets in London and New York overflowed with filth. People tossed their trash, chamber pots, and food scraps out their windows onto the streets below. The horses pulling streetcars and delivery carts also contributed to the squalor, putting pounds of manure and urine on the streets every day. When a horse died, it became a different kind of hazard. Children would play with dead horses lying on the streets. A carcass would be left to rot until it had disintegrated enough for someone to pick up the pieces.
There were also no sewer systems. When people would come to live or work in the city you had 25 to 30 people sharing a single outhouse. The privies frequently overflowed and folks would damp barrels dripping with feces into the nearby harbor. The frequent outbreaks of typhoid and cholera made cities recognize the need for organized systems to dispose of human waste. Filtration and chlorination systems were introduced to clean up municipal water supplies. Water closets became popular, first among the wealthy, and then among the middle-class. This led to plumbing and house reform.
Builders started adding porches and windows to houses as physicians said good ventilation and fresh air could combat illness. This fresh-air “cure” partly incited the study of climate as a formal science. People began to chart temperature, barometric pressure, and other weather patterns in hopes of identifying the “ideal” conditions for treating disease. Today ventilation, access to outdoor spaces, and parks still entice homebuyers.
For example, during the 1793 yellow fever epidemic, there was no formal crisis plan. Philadelphians selflessly stepped up to create a makeshift hospital, and build a home for 191 children orphaned by the epidemic. Volunteers collected clothing as well as food and monetary donations. Members of the Free African Society were particularly altruistic, providing two-thirds of the hospital staff. They also transported people, buried the dead, and performed numerous other medical tasks.
The diphtheria outbreak hit Nome, Alaska, in January 1925. This small region inspired national support and innovation. While there was an antitoxin serum available to combat the disease, the region was in short supply and the town was inaccessible by road or sea in the winter. This led to the creation of the Iditarod, the famous dog sled race. The dogsled teams and mushers carried a supply of the serum 674 miles from Fairbanks, in record time, facing temperatures of more than 60 degrees below zero. The challenges of delivery by dogsled also sparked an investigation into the possibilities of medical transport by airplane.
The polio epidemic of 1952 sickened more than 57,000 people across the United States, causing 21,269 cases of paralysis. In response, the National Foundation of Infantile Paralysis (NFIP), which had been founded in 1938 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt distributed around $25 million through its local chapters. The March of Dimes, as it later came to be known, provided iron lungs, rocking chairs, beds and other equipment to medical facilities, and assigned physicians, nurses, physical therapists, and medical social workers where they were needed. The success of this campaign has served as the gold standard in public health education and fundraising since its heyday in the 1940s and 1950s.
Disease can permanently alter society. Public health emergencies have inspired innovations in education, information circulation, and civic debate. The cycle continues today, as media powers and regular citizens flock to social media to discuss COVID-19—disseminating information and collaborating to create solutions.
What will we create in this pandemic?
For many people, life was so hard before this pandemic.
My heart breaks imagining the stress, dismay, and anxiety that some are feeling right now. I’ve received notes from single moms losing jobs, folks battling illness (physical, mental, emotional) while navigating all this, physicians in the frontlines fearful even as they make deep sacrifices to keep our communities healthy and people who are just straight anxious about everything.
Now, many people are feeling understandably alone and afraid.
Remember, we are in this together. In San Jose, we just received the order to shelter in place. Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be researching resources available for people seeking help. Please message me if you have suggestions.
In the meantime, here are some ways you can help small businesses in your local area:
I’m 100% certain that if we pull together as a global family, we’ll make it through. In fact, I believe that within this crisis lies an opportunity for us to grow stronger, wiser, and more resilient as a result.
With so much ❤️
Wandia
Global leaders often want to have their products and services in as many parts of the world as possible.
Despite applying an approach that has been validated in the market of origin, many fail within a few months of market entry. In fact, I was surprised to learn that a whopping 85% of internationalization efforts fail.
What is going wrong?
A crucial step in preparing to go global is a localized marketing strategy. Companies do an in-depth analysis of the market, the demographics, needs and opportunities, and then try to push their product out if they see a fit. It all seems straightforward, but something’s missing.
In most cases, cultural context is a blindside.
Intercultural elements are not taken into consideration or are only touched upon superficially.
In order to overcome this, I’ve adopted this principle: direction from the center, decisions on the ground.
Think about it like this – the global team builds the plane but must rely on the regions to fly it. I’ve found that culture context awareness is key to the success of global campaigns. Regional teams need the freedom to adopt campaigns to their local markets. Regional teams can also provide valuable feedback on shared context that ultimately enrich the brand. For example, “are campaigns getting ran alongside unfavorable news content?”
At a practical level, for example, we build centralized, shared worksheets for all paid and owned tactics across markets, to capture and learn from what is being decided locally. Every team around the world has access to this worksheet in real time. The local nuance has helped us make better strategic decisions, particularly around scale.
Africa has a lot to offer – just another reason to take off our blinders.
Here are some myths that keep us from truly connecting.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution is initiating immense change, driven by digital forces which are expected to shape the next decade – artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things (IoT), network-based logic, augmented and virtual reality, quantum computing, etc.
The unprecedented speed of change will bring more advancements in the next ten years than in the last 250 years.
With a surplus of workers, more stability, and technology transforming many nations’ economies, Africa is now an attractive destination for investments, fast-growth startups, and the high-tech companies driving these technology trends.
By 2030, Africa will be home to more than 25% of the world’s population under 25. The continent is poised to reap a demographic dividend over the coming decades as its labor force grows to be the largest in the world by 2035 and its dependency ratio declines. With that, there’s an opportunity for the continent to drive inclusion, economic growth, and rapid expansion in the pool of highly-skilled professionals in cognitive STEM-based skills (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics).
There’s an opportunity to develop not just an inclusive future of work, but new transformative ideas that add tremendous value to the evolving world. Unleashing our full potential is essential and requires diverse, inclusive collaborative models that take into account the colorful tapestry of our common humanity on both local and global levels.
For anyone interested in business, understanding what is going on in Africa is essential. The opportunities on the continent are immense.
6 of the 10 fastest-growing economies are located in Africa, according to the world economic forum. This fact serves as a testament to its ambition.
Africa is the world’s second-largest population. It has one of the largest workforces from the ages of 18 to 30 slated for 2030. While many other continents are reporting declining populations, Africa still has a high growth rate.
70% of the population is under age 30 and sub-Saharan Africa will soon be the only place with birth rates at replacement level or higher. The continent is also increasingly urban, with more than 50 cities with populations greater than a million people. Thus Africa is well-positioned to support the workforce of the future. The young age demographic, coupled with the urbanization of Africa, is a recipe for further innovation and development.
Over the past decade, Africa’s growth has continued to accelerate.
Long-term trends show that African countries are now more attractive investment destinations.
The contribution that Africa could make to the world’s economy over the next 20 to 30 years is enormous. Also, the need for Africa to contribute to certain global problems like climate change and transition to a low carbon economy is absolutely critical.
Mobile data usage in Africa is expected to grow 20 times by 2025 – a statistic that is double the projected growth on a global level. Mobile technology has transformed many African countries because it is more readily available than computers. Consider the following:
The truth is Africans are undoubtedly resourceful.
Some lack access to education and have few resources but breakthrough innovation and the capacity for creativity continue to abound.
Africa is a hotbed of brilliant ingenuity.
Consider the following African inventions as examples:
The middle class is ambitious and working toward bridging economic gaps.
In fact, 23 African countries are now middle-income level. Africa’s leading cities account for 80% of consumers with the disposable income to acquire assets such as cars, televisions, and appliances, according to research from Fraym.
Urban corridors and regions like Lagos (Nigeria), Johannesburg (South Africa), and Nairobi (Kenya) stand out for their financial-technology hubs, middle-class consumers, and connectivity.
Beyond the top three in sub-Saharan Africa are cities like Luanda in Angola, Khartoum in Sudan, Dar es Salaam in Tanzania; and Addis Ababa in Ethiopia.
There are many small, microfinance projects which help lower-income people get access to capital or learn skills to earn a better living.
African countries are also maintaining relationships with non-African countries, specifically China. Such relationships are helping many African countries execute large infrastructure projects such as roads and dams.
When we buy into these myths we create false stereotypes.
Remember that Africa is a vast, culturally diverse continent. There are likely folks who benefit from keeping you in the dark about the continent. But what’s worse, these myths and misconceptions are a disservice to humanity.
There are a lot of myths and misconceptions about where creativity comes from and how to nurture and grow it in a team. As a result, even well-meaning leaders can end up killing the creativity of a team when they need it most.
If your team is in the midst of solving a problem or generating a new product or project idea, you might be killing their creativity without even trying. Here are three of the most common things managers do that have deleterious effects:
There’s lots of documentation on benefits and drawbacks of brainstorming. However, one key thing good leaders recognize is that brainstorming is just one step in the large creative process, a step often referred to as divergent thinking. Researchers have developed a variety of different models of creativity, from the Osborn-Parnes creative problem-solving method to design thinking. Most of these methods share some common stages, of which brainstorming is only one.
Before divergent thinking can have any benefit, your team needs to have thoroughly researched the problem and be sure that their brainstorming answers the right question. Afterward, divergent thinking should be followed up with convergent thinking. Here ideas are combined and sorted out to find the few answers that might be the best fit so that they can be prototyped, tested, and refined. If your entire creative method is to get your team into a room and fill up a whiteboard, you are missing out.
When you’re leading a team, team building is a high priority. The long-standing Tuckman model of group development emphasizes that new teams go through three phases – forming, storming, and norming. It’s easy to look at models like that and think that cohesion and friendliness should be the ultimate goal. But surprisingly, when it comes to creativity, the best teams fight a little (or even a lot). Structured, task-oriented conflict can be a signal that new ideas are being submitted to the group and tested. If you team always agrees, that might suggest that people are self-censoring their ideas, or worse, not generating any new ideas at all.
Research suggests that teams that forgo traditional brainstorming rules and debate over ideas as they’re presented end up with more and better ideas. As a leader, it may seem like your job is to break up fights, but don’t be afraid to act as a referee instead — allowing the fight over ideas to unfold, while making sure it stays fair and doesn’t get personal.
In most organizations, once an individual or team has settled on their new idea for a product or project, they prepare to pitch it to whomever they need approval from. Whether the idea only needs your approval as the team leader, or whether it needs to be pitched through the entire hierarchy to win a green light, how new ideas are treated can dramatically and negatively affect creativity.
To begin, research shows that we aren’t really that great at judging new ideas. We tend to favor ideas that reinforce the status quo and managers often tend to reject the ideas customers say they want. Compounding the issue is that, once an individual or team presents the idea and is met with rejection, the likelihood of them continuing to “think outside the box” is diminished. The result is the safe, stale ideas our biases favor—the very ones we don’t need.
Instead of judging ideas first and then testing them in the marketplace, the best leaders find ways to test ideas first and defer judgment until they have early results. Focus on first getting real results to demonstrate proof-of-concept rather than the pitch. You can do this by giving people permission to prototype like Adobe’s Kickbox or by selling the product before it actually exists... These ideas may seem counter-intuitive at first, but you’ll get more worthwhile insight.
Accidental creativity killers seem positive on the surface. But there’s a growing body of research and case studies suggesting that underneath the surface, they’re causing more harm than good.
So try the inverse and see what affect it has on your team’s creativity.
All humans bleed red and smile in the same language.
We have many common elements in our shared humanity. However, as we think about doing business beyond our borders, there are many cultural cues to consider. I have had years of trial and error, working with global teams in London, Germany, Switzerland, South Korea, India, Ireland, Philippines, Pakistan, Kenya, etc. I’ve learned that a few small nuances can make potentially positive interactions go completely awry and vice versa.
It’s important to:
Based on the LITT framework, here are 4 key elements to keep in mind in order to prevent team dysfunction and connect in spite of the distance: language, identity, technique, and technology.
Corrections and additions are welcome! Contact me.
Good communication among coworkers drives effective knowledge sharing, decision making, coordination, and, ultimately, performance results. In global teams, varying levels of fluency with the chosen common language are inevitable.
There are also other variations to adjust to such as spelling differences in words like color versus colour or organisation versus organization and terms like lift versus elevator or trunk and boot. And there are differences like the MM/DD/YYYY date format in the USA compared to DD/MM/YYYY elsewhere in the world.
In the ideal world, strong speakers would dial down dominance by slowing down their speaking pace, and using fewer idioms, slang terms, and esoteric cultural references when addressing the group. They would actively seek confirmation that they’ve been understood, and practice active listening by rephrasing others’ statements for clarification or emphasis. This hardly happens.
Less fluent speakers are forced to extend themselves by monitoring the frequency of their responses in meetings to ensure that their contributions are heard. They also need to confirm that they have been understood, by routinely asking if others are following them. It can be tough for nonnative speakers to make this leap, yet doing so keeps them from being marginalized.
Many of us suffer from a cult of ignorance. While we think of ourselves as open-minded and objective, in fact our approach is often filtered and even obscured by pre-existing notions and ideas – by our upbringing, our values, our past experiences.
In the context of global teams, it’s important to see those filters for what they are—an all-pervasive influence that profoundly colors our relationships with people, circumstances, and even ourselves. An awareness of these filters also provides the ability to strike the limits that they impose, allows for a refreshing freedom.
With this recognition, how we approach people of different backgrounds, situations, and life in general can alter dramatically. Global teams work most smoothly when members “get” where their colleagues are coming from and take into account cultural cues.
For example, the way we communicate with our friends at an open-air concert is different from the way we communicate at the library. Imagine your friends’ reaction if you were whispering to them at a concert or shouting at them in a library. In the first case it’s unlikely you’ll be heard and in the second case, you’ll certainly catch some angry looks before being escorted out.
This illustrates the hidden contexts from which we live and cultural cues which are not often explicitly communicated. In his book “Beyond Culture,” Edward Hall identifies and describes how low-context and high-context cultures need to be approached differently for any form of communication. Low context cultures can be perceived as impatient or aggressive whereas high context cultures can be perceived dishonest, misleading or long-winded.
Here are some differences:
There are many considerations that factor into our technique for communicating and connecting with others in geographically dispersed teams: time of day, physical location, ambient noise, etc.
As leaders, there are 3 other factors that should inform our technique: the location where team members are based, the number of sites, and the number of employees who work at each site.
Any perceived power imbalance can set up a negative dynamic. Geographically dispersed team members often come to feel that there are in-groups and out-groups. This situation can be exacerbated when team members at one site feel like their needs or contributions are ignored. For example, people in the majority group may feel resentment toward the minority group, believing that the latter will try to get away with contributing less than its fair share. Meanwhile, those in the minority group may believe that the majority is usurping what little power and voice they have.
When adapting to a new cultural environment, a savvy leader will avoid making assumptions about what behaviors mean. Take a step back, watch, and listen. In America, someone who says, “Yes, I can do this” likely means she is willing and able to do what you asked. In India, however, the same statement may simply signal that she wants to try—not that she’s confident of success. Before drawing conclusions, therefore, ask a lot of questions.
The modes of communication used by global teams must be carefully considered. Videoconferencing, for instance, allows rich communication in which both context and emotion can be perceived. E‑mail offers greater ease and efficiency but lacks contextual cues. Other communication tools like WhatsApp, Slack, Teams and Chat fall somewhere in between.
In making decisions about which technology to use, a leader must ask the following:
Teleconferencing and videoconferencing enable real-time (instant) conversations. E‑mail and certain social media formats require users to wait for the other party to respond. Choosing between instant and delayed forms of communication can be especially challenging for global teams, particularly when a team spans multiple time zones.
Instant technologies are valuable when leaders need to persuade others to adopt their viewpoint. But if they simply want to share information, then delayed methods such as e‑mail are simpler, more efficient, and less disruptive to people’s lives.
Leaders must also consider the team’s interpersonal dynamics. If the team has a history of conflict, technology choices that limit the opportunities for real-time emotional exchanges may yield the best results.
Flexibility and appreciation for diversity are at the heart of a thriving global team. Leaders must expect problems and patterns to change or repeat themselves as teams shift, disband, and regroup. If leaders can mitigate difficulties caused by language differences and identity issues, while marshaling technology to improve communication among geographically dispersed colleagues, distance is sure to shrink, not expand.
When that happens, teams can become truly representative of the “global village”—not just because of their international makeup, but also because their members feel mutual trust and a sense of kinship.
As a leader, you’ve guided your organizations to the peak, transforming audacious visions into reality, overcoming the odds, and setting standards of success that reverberate across your industry. Today, let’s shift gears a little. Let’s focus not on your business, but on YOU, on building your executive brand.
Much like a corporate brand, your personal brand is the unique amalgamation of your skills, experiences, values, and vision. It’s a multi-faceted diamond that, when polished correctly, radiates an irresistible allure. But why, you may ask, should you invest in building your executive brand?
Firstly, a strong personal brand enhances your credibility within and outside your organization. It attracts talent, fosters trust, and opens doors to new partnerships and opportunities. It’s a differentiating factor in an ever-competitive marketplace. Secondly, in an age driven by digital and social media, your voice can reach further and more directly than ever. Leveraging this can position you as a thought leader in your industry, inspiring change, and innovation.
Your brand should reflect what you believe in and where you’re heading. Be clear about your values and long-term vision. Your values may include authenticity, sustainability, or relentless innovation. Your vision could be to revolutionize your industry, champion corporate social responsibility, or democratize access to essential services.
What sets you apart from other executives in your field? This is your Unique Selling Proposition. It could be your innovative mindset, your ability to foster harmony within diverse teams, or your knack for turning challenges into opportunities. Whatever it may be, identify it, own it, and communicate it consistently.
Consistency in your messaging and interactions fortifies your brand’s credibility. Leverage Social Media: Platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and industry-specific networks are powerful tools to amplify your voice. Be regular in your social media posts, the events you attend, the content you produce. Show your thought leadership: Write articles, blogs, and give speeches or interviews. Share personal experiences, and provide your unique insights. This showcases your expertise and positions you as a source of inspiration and knowledge. Share insightful articles, industry trends, and your perspectives on them. Engage with your followers, comment on relevant posts, and participate in meaningful discussions. You can use your social channels to connect with other industry leaders, influencers, and talent. Remember, your network is an extension of your brand. The more diverse it is, the richer your learning and influence will be.
These steps may seem challenging, but Rome wasn’t built in a day. Your brand is a living entity, growing and evolving with you.
Embrace the journey of self-discovery and the expression it offers. Begin with small steps – update your LinkedIn profile, write your first blog post, or schedule a networking event. Stay relevant by keeping abreast of new trends, technologies, and strategies.
Remember, your personal brand isn’t just about you – it’s about the influence you wield, the inspiration you offer, and the legacy you leave. So, let’s embark on this exciting journey of building your executive brand. The world is waiting to be inspired by your vision – in your unique voice – and engage with the extraordinary brand YOU.
Building your personal brand is important, but it’s not always easy. If you are wondering where to begin or how to find the time, we can help. Join our complimentary executive brand training. We’ll address these challenges and provide you with a roadmap to build your personal brand effectively.
Have you ever felt that somebody isn’t listening to you? Then you know how it can be incredibly frustrating.
Here are 5 key active listening skills to keep you from being that person. ? ? ?
Remember to keep your tone supportive and your own body language receptive.
Life is about relationships and great relationships come from clear communication.
What are your tips for better communication?