That moment when church is nuisance!

Not everyone who calls Him “Lord, Lord” will enter the kingdom of heaven, our saviour once admonished. Apparently, a few people heard this and thought: “Well, we must make sure we call loud enough, otherwise tutahata ride ya kuenda kwa sir God!!.”

The result….
Brutal noise: Noise that charges into your windows and grabs the sleep out of your head and flings it out into the darkness, noise that then proceeds to stamp on your head for all the hours until dawn.

Local pharmacies and bars register abnormal orders for Valium and Vodka every time they hear that the local church is having an “overnight prayer” aka “Kesha”, aka “Nuisance”.

Those Days: There was a time when we would hear our local churches from our homes and think: “Oh, how sweet the songs of praise I hear as the faithful offer up worship unto the Lord. I ought to go and join them, that I may meet the Lord, too.” 

But now? Now we say: “Lord, make it stop!” When people say they are mostly taking the Lord’s name in vain, but still, they genuinely wish the Lord would make those jerks actually stop praising Him, or at least stop praising Him so loudly.

Think of it: The service only needs to be loud enough for the person in the back to hear, right? Anything else is excess. Superfluous. One might even say greedy, selfish and inconsiderate.

So, what makes a person who only needs 50 metres of sound decide to instead buy, activate, fuel and power a kilometre of sound? Is it love, charity, kindness, compassion, thinking of your neighbour before yourself as the Lord prescribed?

Not at all. They have applied flagrant conceit, callous meanness, run-away vanity and have decided that their neighbour can go screw themselves because they want to have a loud party and do not care about anybody else.

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO NEMA AND THE NOISE POLLUTION LAW?

On any given night: You know that there are people in there who need to rest. People reading for exams, people who are ill... At the very least, there are babies.

If you walk into a room where a baby is asleep and shout “PRAISE GAD HALLELUJAH! CHIISAS LOVES YOU!” at the top of your voice, you will not be called pious and devout, you will be called a stupid, selfish jerk. And that is waking up one kid for a few seconds. Now, imagine waking up an entire neighbourhood of kids for a whole night? Damn! I need me a Vodka too!

So what do you suggest? I suggest we continue to suffer as victims of these Pharisees. I suggest we put up with it. Just allow. Swallow. Suffer locally. The Kenyan way. Kaa kijeshi!

Or: Or if you have the courage and are ready to be as much of an ass as they are, you could consider the exhortation from Luke 6:31: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Clearly, they want us to do unto them what they do unto us, so let us become as much of a nuisance to them as they are to us.

Perhaps begin by dumping our rubbish inside their church. That is a strategy I read about on the internet once. Worked in Nigeria. Though I would be more partial to going to the pastor’s house when he is taking his nap (to rest after his all-night service) and singing “…am dundaing” underneath his window albeit off-key… but still doing unto him as he does unto us!!

You don't have to rob a bank for Christmas!

The holiday spending frenzy is here! Pssst! Did you know that you don’t necessarily have to turn up broke in January? Here are tips on the how;

1.  Set limits for total holiday spending - be realistic about what you are willing to sacrifice by developing new-and-improved spending habits. 
2. Make your own "naughty" or "nice" lists - Santa has to buy presents for the whole world, but you don't 
3. Give your time - Mom and dad (or other far-away family and friends) might love nothing more than a visit from you. Give small gifts and large hugs. 
4. Give personalized gifts instead of expensive gifts 
5. Organize group volunteering instead of holiday parties - You'll get to spend quality time together – plus, you'll come out of the day feeling proud of your efforts rather than suffering from buyer's remorse, and anyone can benefit from volunteering

The Bottom Line

Don't let your debt become the Scrooge that robs the fun from your holiday season. Spend time with your friends and family, base your gift buying on sentiment rather than currency value, and avoid giving yourself a year-round debt headache. If you can follow these tips, when your holiday bank statements arrive in the New Year, you'll find yourself singing "Joy to the World" all over again.

UCHUMI: The walking dead.

The Kenyan Government always does a poor job at rescuing financially-distressed companies. Currently, on the deathbed is #Uchumi, a national brand that used to be a selling outlet for more than 80 per cent of locally manufactured goods.

A few years ago, we witnessed the mess that became of management of the insolvency that hit Webuye-based Pan African Paper Mills! You all remember the case of Nakumatt: The elephant on its knees?

In a period of hardly one year, the National Treasury has pumped a whopping Sh 1.2 billion into Uchumi in the name of supporting a turnaround plan. All indications are that the experiment is not working. The home of value is now a true case of the walking dead.

The much-touted turnaround plans have turned out to be exercises of closing branches and disposing of assets. All indications are that the billions of taxpayer shillings that the government has pumped into rescuing Uchumi Supermarkets will go down the drain.

The messy manner in which the Ministry of Trade and Industry and the National Treasury have handled the Uchumi Supermarkets came to light the other day when the State-owned Kenya National Trading Company (KNTC) closed the headquarters of Uchumi Supermarkets in Nairobi’s Industrial Area over rent arrears.

For a whole week, Uchumi was not able to operate because of the action by KNTC which it owes some Sh43 million in rent arrears.

A CASE OF GOVERNMENT HARRASSING ITSELF;

Yet as we all know, KNTC and Uchumi Supermarkets are both State-owned. And, they are both parastatals under the Ministry of Trade and Industry under the charge of Trade Cabinet Secretary Peter Munya and principal secretary Chris Kiptoo. It was a perfect example of the right hand not knowing- or even caring about- what the left hand is doing.

Are we still to believe that the administration of President Uhuru Kenyatta is committed to rescuing Uchumi Supermarkets? Is it still important for us to recover billions in shareholder loans that the government pumped into the company last year?

I found myself reflecting about the history of government investment in commercial undertakings especially in the wholesale and trading business in general, but more particularly in KNTC itself.

THE KNTC HISTORY;

There was a time in the history of this country when KNTC was king, the biggest importer and distributor of consumer goods, and owning a network of depots and godowns in most of the big towns in the republic.

These were the times when we were deep in the period of the ancient regime of price controls, powerful commodity marketing boards, import licensing controls, and an exchange control regime that required you to queue at a window at the Central Bank of Kenya for an allocation to allow you to purchase an air ticket.

The tiff at Uchumi over rent arrears made me come to terms with the fact that some of these old parastatals of the command –and- control regime did not die even after we transited to a liberalised economy. So, I read from KNTC’s website that it is still involved in the distribution of a variety of goods the most absurd of which include-, barbed wire, wheelbarrows(Is Bungoma listening), chicken wire, chain links and pipe fittings.

The corporation also leases godowns and canteens to the private sector. To which I ask: why should the government be involved in distributing wheelbarrows? KNTC should have been privatised and its assets sold to the private sector many years ago

The impending implosion of activities around Uchumi and its revival is bound to inflict widespread financial distress to many other companies especially within the SME sector.

THE SOLUTION;

If the government is, indeed, serious about saving Uchumi, it must go by the well-known playbook applied by other governments in a similar situation and that runs as follows:

First, kick in equity to allow you to acquire majority control. Throw out the management and board and bring in an international chain to run the firm under a management contract.

To ease liquidity for the company, do a bond that you can then on-lend to the supermarket chain and make it possible for the company to borrow at a risk-free rate.

The disaster in comfort!

There is stagnation in comfort!

We stopped developing ourselves the minute we got jobs. We naively assumed that life stopped for us as well. We did the expected, the accepted and remained on the tried and tested paths.

We conformed, fitted into the teams we joined and became bonafide members. In a nutshell, we remained aspired to and remained average. It means that we sailed smoothly... and that is wonderful on many fronts.

The issue is that we fitted in too well to disrupt the status quo, didn't ruffle any feathers or rock any boats by attempting to journey on roads less-travelled. It means we did nothing outstanding, however, high up the ladder we got.

The other people chose to engage in taxing, time-consuming, seemingly thankless and endless endeavours. Why would we put ourselves through what they did? They must have been looking to suck up to their managers.

We are the smart confident people who wouldn’t need to take on such arduous self-punishment when we could get by fulfilling the duties outlined in our job descriptions. At the end of our days, we met up with our friends and did the usual comfortable normal things that working people do.

THE STAGNATION;

Tick tock tick tock... three years later, those seemingly crazy emerge as leaders within or outside our organisations. They, unlike us, were prepared without necessarily being called upon to embrace the dynamic environment and showcase their strengths.

They understood early on in their careers that to fully appreciate and align themselves with an organisation's goals, they had to raise their own self-awareness and establish personal ideals and direction. They understood the value of personal discipline and raised their value in personal, professional and social interactions.

The power of their productive habits propelled the effective, consistent, relevant and timely execution of their aspirations. They take it upon themselves to raise the bar of organisational mindsets and overall culture by personifying desirable leadership traits. These people weren’t the best academic performers but their success is no wonder.

THE BIG QUESTION;

Why did we get passed by? We are brilliant people! How could this have happened? Well, unlike them, we secretly entertained what these people now have but we weren’t ready to roll up our sleeves to do the required work. We now seemingly suddenly find that we are stuck in the same place we were three years ago. We can no longer speak of careers. We just have jobs that progressively feel more of daily grinds.

There is no promise of advancement. We are 'demotivated' and our employers must surely be to blame for it. We struggle to manage ourselves. The teams we manage become more and more of burdens. We can hardly carry out projects without pulling our hair out. We grow older and more set in our ways. The companies we work for begin to feel less like the exciting opportunities we sought a while back and more like mazes of unending bureaucratic systems that serve more to handcuff our creativity than empower us to give our best output. How stifling can life be! We slide into frustration. Lethargy sets in and before we know it, we are no longer the star performers we once were. We are no longer the energetic, driven professionals that our employers signed the dotted line for.

Our employers, on the other hand, have their own goals. They are busy people with little or no time to babysit us, especially because there is no shortage of younger, cheaper, eager and energetic entrants into the workplace to pick from. Opportunities inevitably start to skip us more than we can bear. We dream of transitioning into new roles or take the plunge into entrepreneurship for years but do nothing. We convince ourselves that we are being realistic; we are tied up in loans, school fees and mortgages, you know. So we stay put feeding our minds on the unfortunate notion that it is better to be safe than sorry.

Most of those around us subscribe to the same school of thought. This is what life is, right? All the while, the clock’s hands tick away diligently. Soon, our employer restructures and we find ourselves out in the cold. The question is: are we willing to put in the work to make that happen before hitting the rock?

TRADITIONAL AUDIT APPROACH IS A SCREW-UP!

There is need to depart from the traditional audit philosophy that is reactive, detective and over relies on end year reviews and embrace tailored control concept that will enhance real time operational efficiency, proactive and one that will focus on prevention, detection and correction of errors and irregularities, embraces information technology and produces accurate, complete and actionable audit reports.

The system boasts of advanced medicine yet the populace is on their sick beds! Case of traditional audit therapy to changing auditee needs and technology! It is not surprising that still the so called "Big Four" still have these defects in their approach! especially when dealing with government entities.

KENYAN POSTMORTEM AUDITS!

The Public Audit Act 2007 of Kenya gives the Controller of Budget and the Auditor-General the mandate to audit all public entities and provide a professional opinion to Parliament at least once every financial calendar year on matters arising from their audit work. Lately, mainstream media has been awash with accounts of financial impropriety in a number of public entities running into millions of shillings as highlighted by the Auditor-General.

A number of inquests emanating from audit reports are ongoing in Parliament. However, the frequency by which embezzlement of public resources get reported across the governance structures leaves one wondering whether compliance audit approach is effective. To start with, revealed acts of fraud have over 50 percent chance of recurring thus revealing weaknesses and ineffectiveness of the postmortem audit approach in examining compliance to financial regulations and procedures in conduct of public affairs.

Incidentally, as a matter of procedure, much as financial audit is designed to uncover faults in the public expenditure trail, audit reports generated are expected to highlight weak points that abet compliance and advice on probable remedies. That being the case, it is high time relevant authorities reflects and evaluate on today’s audit trail, systems and procedures

THE SOLUTION;

Following the establishment of devolved units in 2013, financial audit became more complex, time consuming and taxing. For this reason, and without pre-emptying the importance of compliance audit to financial management, the country had better consider employing financial risk management framework instead. This approach, assesses risk exposures beforehand capture them for control and put in place necessary administrative control measures to avert shortfalls.

Again, the approach deliberately explores appropriateness of applied controls and systems effectiveness. Actually, risk management involves gaps identification, evaluation and prioritization followed by coordinated and economical resource application to monitor and control risk occurrence and or minimize its impact in case of an occurrence.

Under this approach, strong internal control systems are advanced in managing exposure to operational risks through prevention or and early detection and correction of errors and irregularities. Where established, control systems are critical in addressing loss of public resources, malpractices and corruption in public realm.

Additionally, they lay a foundation of discipline and structures made functional in conduct of public affairs thus safeguarding integrity, ethical behavior, competence, participation and responsiveness. Still, it is easier to monitor quality of formulated controls through regular performance tests and design interrogation.

BOTTOM-LINE;

Basically, automated audit trail unlike paper based one will reduce use of hard copy documents, records duplication and avoidance to laid down procedures and rather make financial operations more effective, financial reporting more reliable and complete thus guaranteeing compliance to established laws, rules, regulations and policies.

Only then, will governance objectives and processes be adhered to.

Why you should invest in Naivasha

When Uganda announced that it had dropped plans for an SGR (Standard Gauge Railway) and that they will rehabilitate the old narrow Metre Gauge Railway (MGR), it became evident that Kenya had to scale down its SGR ambitions, at least in the near term!

Kenya plans to complete its SGR from Mombasa to Naivasha by mid-2019, after which the focus should shift to maximizing value for the SGR.

How to increase and maintain Mombasa Port attractiveness to Uganda, Congo, South Sudan, Rwanda, Burundi etc, using a combination of SGR, MGR and road haulage, is now the immediate guiding questions for Kenya.

Developing a major ICD at Suswa (Naivasha) and linking it with the MGR (say at Longonot), will create an ideal and effective convergence of the three modes of transport at Naivasha.

If indeed Uganda will upgrade its MGR network, Kenya will likewise modernise its MGR section from Naivasha to Malaba. This will increase service assurance and safety. A redesigned road access from the Naivasha ICD to the main highway will also be necessary.

The final product will be a Naivasha logistics hub of choice handling transit imports and exports, and also exports/imports for western parts of Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, Congo, Uganda, South Sudan etc.

Travel distances by importers/exporters will be shortened, and specifically the Nairobi ICD clutter and city congestion will be avoided.

Next is Kisumu for the waterway connection with Tanzania and Uganda!

My Opinion: Go for it. Invest huge and capitalize on current low property prices in Naivasha. It’s the next big thing

Do you need a Coach or a Mentor?

Many people do not understand the difference between mentorship and coaching. While both are quite important, mentorship goes deep and the relationship lasts long while coaching is a formal relationship, which takes place for a specified period of time. Think of mentorship as a long-lasting friendship in which you get to gain a lot of advice, help, and guidance from your mentor. 
Coaching, on the other hand, is almost like attending classes to learn about a very specific subject and the relationship you have with your coach is based on what you gain from the coach and how long it takes. While these are the general rules that guide the relationship in mentorship and coaching, there are other more particular differences. Let us discuss what each entails.

WHAT IS MENTORSHIP?

A relationship between a mentor and a mentee is organic. This is to mean that the relationship is cultivated over a long time and the mentee learns a lot from the mentor. It starts from two people knowing each other closely having a common ground. A mentor will guide you in many aspects of your life not just in your career as the relationship is often informal. Most of the time, this is a person you have similar interests with and through their experiences, you can learn a lot.

A mentor is like a role model: A mentor is someone you look up to for one reason or another. This is someone you can have open conversations with; on different aspects of your life. This means that it cannot be a random person whom you just met and know little or nothing about. It is often a person who mirrors what you might be interested in and this person holds your hand as you grow along.

A mentor offers guidance and support: A mentor can work with you to find solutions to your problems. They may not have all the answers to your questions but are willing to work with you to find solutions to those problems that they may not understand. However, most of the time, your mentor will often have more experience in a certain field than you do and can, therefore, offer sound advice based on personal experience or from observation. Your mentor can also help you gain access to opportunities that are otherwise out of your reach.

A mentor offers advice on career and personal growth: A mentorship relationship goes beyond advice on how you can grow your career. Since your mentor has a good understanding of you, he or she is likely to offer sound advice on matters that go beyond your career, and this is based on your strengths and weaknesses. They are resourceful and are interested in helping you grow holistically. A mentor will also prepare you for future roles, not just in achieving immediate goals.

COACHING

Coaching is slightly different from mentorship and the relationship between the person being coached and the coach is inorganic and short-lived. It is mainly transactional and this makes it mechanical. A coach is someone who has experience and expertise in a particular field that you would like to gain knowledge in. Think of it as the relationship between you and your teacher. A coach offers advice only, unlike a mentor who may offer more value through their experiences. So, what are some of the defining characteristics of coaching?

The relationship is formal: The relationship between the person being coached and the coach is bound by social norms and rules of engagement. For example, while you can have an evening drink with your mentor to discuss arising issues in your life or career, this would be considered inappropriate when the person is a coach. You will often have to make an appointment to meet a coach at specific times and in specific areas; usually in their offices.

Coaching is based on particular issues of development: While mentorship may focus on many aspects of your life from career to finances, coaching is specific and focuses on a narrow area. Think of it as having swimming lessons, where your coach strictly focuses on your swimming skills and nothing else.

The relationship is short-lived: In the same line, coaching lasts for a short period of time that is very specific, after which the relationship is terminated. During the life of this relationship, you will also pay for the services of the coach. The relationship has a clear focus on helping you grow in certain areas and both you and the coach have to put in a lot of work. Moreover, the relationship is aimed at helping you achieve the set goals within a short time.

Coaching is structured and rigid: There are clear goals to be achieved and this means that the relationship is structured in such a way that there is a clear progress towards achieving the goals. There are clear lessons to be learned and there are clear expectations, which are to be met. Even the time when the coaching takes place is structured and does not change easily. The focus is on clear development agendas that are to be achieved at every defined point.

BOTTOM LINE;

Coaching and mentorship are two different aspects of career growth. While mentorship involves some kind of hand-holding, coaching involves an active process of imparting specific skills in you to help you achieve particular goals.

It is important to establish what exactly you want in a relationship as this will help you define whether it is mentorship or coaching.