The PM of Kenya, honorable PM Odinga spoke this evening at Kellogg. What was interesting to me first of all was that the ABC (African Bus Club) @ K was expecting like a 20 student turnout, so they held the speech in RM 1246, which seats 30 people. Weren't they clearly corrected when over 200 people showed up, bitching at a chance, me included of course, to see/hear the PM talk. Needless to say, the speech was moved to Coonz :)
Onto the speech...The talk was interesting, short, and pretty much lacked clear direction. The purpose of the lecture series within which his talk was set was leadership in crises, and it is quite relevant to Kenya's current state, their consitution and election problems withstanding. Though the PM flowed between history of Kenya and African country independence from colonization and his personal anecdotes, what I gleaned from his talk was the immense difficulties these leaders face in making intangible decisions that have very real effects on the lives of thousands. For most of my career, the decisions I made were limited in scope to a budget of $250,000 of some pharma/biotech's Contracting budget, and at the end of the day, both the client and I the consultant went home to our beds and families (me to Hoboken and watching DVRed tv). However, the mere enormity of these leaders' actions, as Odinga contested, sometime paralyzes these guys to act; and at the end of the day, the worst action by a leader is no action, based out of fear.
What is crucial. and what I certainly learned from both my work experience and my fellowship at the NGO, is that opportune times and policy windows are the sine que non for successful changes, both in sight and in execution. A leader must not only know what to do, but when to do it. Odinga's redrafting of the constitution is a key example of his opportunism and his now interim successes.
At the end of the day, I was quite impressed with the talk. It's interesting to try and deduce the thought processes of these guys, who are in terrific positions of power to change for the better, understanding how they view problems, and more critically, how they engineer vehicles for change.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
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