I help managers transform strategy → operational excellence. | OKRs, 4DX & Lean Six Sigma | Trained 5K+ in 45+ countries.
Chief Excellence Officers® Kit
Joined February 2009
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Mukom retweeted
Oh, really? Was the French Revolution, which overthrew the monarchy, sent thousands to the guillotine, and laid the foundations of modern French republicanism, imported by people from the so-called Third World?
France has a long history of violent uprisings, born from profound inequalities and the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a privileged few.
The intellectual dishonesty of blaming immigrants for social unrest while ignoring the economic and political conditions that produce it is appalling.
History deserves better than this disgraceful political opportunism.
Western liberals imported the third world into France and other countries in the name of diversity and compassion. They ignored fundamental questions of assimilation and compatibility. They were told it would lead to this and they didn't listen.
I pray that France, a beautiful country of amazing people, will stop this madness before more of its landmarks burn.
And I hope Americans are paying attention. This is the future congressional Democrats seek for your country.
Community.
Until we crack the code to build communities that create more value than any one person can extract, we Africans won’t see the full potential of those individually brilliant individuals.
Until we crack it, the Indians, Chinese, etc., will keep running circles around us—even in Africa.
Building it is hard, and it must be built on trust and competence rather than prayers and vibes.
It’s why I follow Victor.
I once forgot my wallet and cash and traveled to three different African countries for work. (I only realized at takeoff.)
Guess what? The trip went smoothly.
Hotel bills were covered.
—
Cash showed up at airports as I landed.
—
None of this would have been possible without a community of people with whom we went through hard times together in pursuit of a mission we cared about (like trying to build an Internet exchange point in a country devastated by war).
I've been incredibly privileged to be inspired by someone that looks like me.
How do you get out of financial and economic doldrums?
I was reading this week about Uber CEO Dara's daily routine, and something hit me. He got Uber out of a slump by optimizing his lifestyle to do as much as possible to make this happen.
A lot of us would be in a financial slump, but instead of optimizing everything we have to get out of it, we either give excuses and distract ourselves or pray for miracles and helpers.
The first thing to ask yourself when you are in financial doldrums is whether you are healthy and functional. If you are healthy and functional, getting out becomes exponentially easier than you think. The worst place to be is broke and in poor health.
Once you have your health, check your relationships and friendships. Be brutally honest with those close to you about your situation and ask for advice on how to get out, rather than loans or handouts. The advice may also come with financial help to dig you out of the hole if you are lucky.
If you are unlucky, you will have a friend who stays at your house where you are broke and have no food, but goes out to buy a Pizza to eat, then comes back to you with one slice. This really happened to me. Avoid friends who arent useful.
The most important assets you have are your health, your sanity, and your skills. Don't start forcing yourself to learn new skills when you are desperate. Leverage your existing advantages first to achieve a basic level of stability before acquiring new ones.
I once was so broke that I started writing articles to make money to survive. A lot of clients owed me, and there were bills to pay from the little I had already made. I was left with nothing after the bills were settled. I decided to use what I had to get more, and nothing was too little. A hundred dollars a week when you are broke does wonders. The trick is not to get stuck in survival mode.
The biggest problem when coming out of financial doldrums is the comfort zone. People adapt too easily to survival mode, and they no longer lack the will to push further and beyond. You need motivation and reminders, something to look forward to.
I keep picturing my kids in expensive schools I paid for, and doing very well in life afterwards. It is not about my comfort but theirs; my early comfort today will deny them of theirs tomorrow.
Community is the most underrated wealth hack. A lot of people believe this trope of locking in and locking everyone out when the real thing you should do is to "Lock on" to your community. To get out of the doldrums, you need to lock on to a community that will get you out of it and even provide volunteer services to those who need it when necessary.
I have seen young people come to me with sob stories of how they are in despair, and I ask them what they can do for me, and they are lost. I have even given a few of them opportunities where they could not perform up to par. You also have to be honest with yourself about your capabilities and skills.
I was so annoyed by that young lady who was telling people to fake customers yesterday, because there are so many people available to help that you wouldn't need to fake anything. People pay me for consultation via @Calendly to help them today because I have volunteered and still volunteer to help a lot of people for free.
Doing that has helped me develop the skill of discernment and build a community I can leverage to help others. Most of the help I give people who book to speak with me is direction and connections with those who can help them further.
In summary, if you are well and alive, then get moving. Don't succumb to self-pity, and nothing is too small for you to make. Someone once paid me $50 at the right time, and it changed a lot of things for me. Optimize and grow from what you have and stop fantasizing about what you don't have yet, while still keeping a goal on the horizon.
Prayers work, but you also have to realize that good health and a sound mind is the answer to many prayers already.
Mukom retweeted
Today in 1490, the Kingdom of Benin (Nigeria) has completed its protective wall system. The wall is four times longer than the Great Wall of China and by volume is hundreds of times larger than Egypt’s Great Pyramid of Cheops. Dug by the Edo people, the wall took an estimated 150 million hours to dig and build.
Kagame 🇷🇼 vs Gayton 🇿🇦 was never going to be a fair fight.
- not on competence.
- not on PR.
- not on aura.
Oh fcuk.
Unless said CEO actually uses Jira day to day, this is just an ego trip that will destroy the organization.
I hope his board fires him.
I wish someone would do the same for these apps.
Minitab
→ statistical analysis
Articulate360
→ elearning design
I have Windows tablet just for these.
AI is now being used to recreate Adobe’s software, a developer has released seven free, open-source apps as clean-room alternatives to Adobe’s main tools:
- PhotoCraft → Photoshop
- VectorCraft → Illustrator
- FilmCraft → Premiere Pro
- LightCraft → Lightroom
- EffectCraft → After Effects
- DesignCraft → InDesign
- PrintCraft → Acrobat Pro
Built in Rust with help from Claude Opus 5.5, they run on Windows, Linux, and macOS under MIT/Apache licenses without using Adobe’s source code.
Enjoy your 30 pieces of silver.
Fcuking Iskariot.
If you build an airport, it must serve a purpose. Ultimately, something must draw lots of people to the country, and entry must be easy for them. As someone who has visited Angola twice, getting a visa is extremely difficult, especially for Africans. After watching videos of a Dutch woman riding a motorcycle through Africa, I’d love to visit many places in Angola, but not if the visa is that stressful.
🇦🇴 Angola built a $3.8 billion airport designed for 15 million passengers a year.
1) In 2025, it handled just 756,028: barely 5% of capacity.
2) 🇹🇷 Turkish Airlines has now dropped Luanda from its network.
Mukom retweeted
You sometimes see a table claiming that African countries, including Ghana, have the lowest IQs in the world. The most widely shared version is on Business Insider Africa.
Business Insider cites CEOWORLD magazine. CEOWORLD did not test anyone. Its figures match, to two decimal places, a 2019 dataset compiled by Richard Lynn and David Becker.
Now look at what is inside that dataset.
Sierra Leone's score of 45 rests on one study from 1966. Mali's rests on a single sample. South Sudan's comes from refugee children. Ghana's 58.16 appears to be the average of a small set of test samples and Ghana's TIMSS school assessment scores, rescaled and relabelled as IQ.
An IQ below 70 is the usual threshold for intellectual disability. A national average of 58 would mean most Ghanaians could not hold a job, run a business or raise a family. Anyone who has spent a day in Accra knows that is absurd.
The dataset's own author agrees there is a problem. Becker wrote in 2019 that differences between countries scoring below 60 are more likely measurement error than real differences in intelligence. He also wrote that the dataset is not suitable for comparing two individual countries.
The dataset was never peer reviewed, which Becker himself calls a weak point. Yet researchers used it in published papers for years, because reviewers check the analysis, not the data underneath. In 2024, academics called for several of those papers to be retracted.
That is how a zombie statistic is made. Lynn and Becker becomes "a study". The study becomes "CEOWORLD". CEOWORLD becomes "Business Insider". Each step adds a more respectable name and no new evidence. Then it turns up in social media arguments as settled fact.
Before you share a ranking, ask three questions. Who collected the data? How many people were measured, and when? Does the number survive a basic sanity check?
This is EXACTLY how to use power.
Ask the questions that others are afraid to ask.
If he hadn’t asked this question, the conference would have been the same polite pile of pointlessness.
Mukom retweeted
I grew up under military rule in Nigeria.
As a child, I watched more publicly aired firing squad executions than I could count. They were aired at 7 pm and 9 pm on NTA News, and earlier in the afternoon as they happened.
People used to go to Bar Beach with their children to watch live firing squad executions;
It begins with 4 or 5 stakes in the ground - with barrels behind them. Then the armed robbers, cocaine pushers, convicted coup plotters were marched out, from a "Black Maria".
Some were singing praises to God, others clutching rosaries etc. They were then tied at stake - with a priest/ pastor/ imam ministering their last rites.
When the ministers left, there were a tense several minutes - before the firing squad marched out, took their positions - and an officer issued commands. I watched people (on many occasions) die agonizing deaths.
At least then, people were intellectually honest - they rather enjoyed the macabre spectacle. Nobody brought out their Bibles to say - "we enjoy watching firing squads because we are good Christians".
I am amazed at how naive many American Christians are - and how they cannot see how they are digging an elephant trap, that will be used against them.
Mukom retweeted
Consulting firms like McKinsey, BCG, Accenture, EY, PwC, Deloitte and the lot, train their people to have insane presence.
Ever wonder how they do it?
Presence is really just the ability to shift a meeting's direction with a few perfectly timed words.
And you can build this same kind of gravitas without being the loudest person...
I'll give you a few suggestions.
1) WHAT YOU SAY
It all starts with exactly what you say.
Don't list 10 reasons for something. Pick the most important 2 and move on.
Build a single sentence that states what you want to do, why you should do it, and what the payoff is. Whenever you suggest a path, openly state what you are giving up to take it.
2) WHEN YOU SAY IT
You also *do not need* to talk the whole time to run the meeting.
Focus on the first 2 minutes when the goal is set, and the last 2 minutes when some choice is getting made.
Jump in during natural pauses to guide everyone back to the main decision. If people get off track, calmly remind them what you are all there to decide.
3) HOW YOU SAY IT
So many professionals weaken their own ideas with the language they use. Big mistake.
Drop filler words like "maybe" or "I just think". Stop that thing, buddy!
Base your points on hard data or customer feedback instead of your own ego.
State the risks openly and make your suggestion clearly.
4) WHERE YOU SAY IT
Your physical delivery is important, even on a screen! Take a breath before you speak: it slows your pace and makes you sound calmer.
Look right into the camera when you make your main point. Say what needs to be done, stay silent for a couple of beats, then let your words hang in the air before asking for thoughts. Perhaps it's cointerintuitive, but silence displays confidence.
The more volume of words you spit out, the less people will listen.
5) BASELINE YOURSELF
You need to know where you are starting from, so the first obvious move is to baseline yourself.
Consulting Edge scores your behaviours across six key capabilities, including Presence.
The tool benchmarks you against a set of global professionals, then tells you the capability holding your holistic performance back, and gives you a detailed action plan for improvement.
There's nothing quite like it out there.
Highly recommended (by many other consultants and professionals, not just by me 😅) if you are serious about your professional performance.
getconsultingedge . com
I had a girlfriend called Precious in university.
We went on school break and no one ever heard from her.
My friends used to mock me that I caught a mermaid and she’d gone back to the water.
(oh, she had a terrific voice. Whenever she was at mine and singing— neighbors would step out of their homes to listen.)
I & a male colleague have been picking each others’ daughters from school for a year.
If you can’t trust your friend to pick up your daughter from school, they’re not your friend.
