of things need to be done -- the networking cables need to be mapped, new access points installed, and routers replaced. But before he can get workers to knuckle down and work with him to resolve these pressing issues, he has a lot to prove to those workers.

As it happens, several of his workers have expressed concern over all the overtime they've been putting in. One worker just got married, another has a 1-year-old at home, and a third is about to face the empty nest. She has just three more months with her son at home. While cutting overtime is the exact opposite of what would help Max get his checklist done before the C-suite starts snooping around, it's also the thing that will convince his workersTHE UN estimates that 12m people across the Horn of Africa may still be at risk of starvation. Over 30,000 old people and children may already have died. The Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya hosts 400,000 Somalis and could receive another 100,000 by the end of the year. In response the continent's overseeing body, the African Union (AU), recently held a pledging conference.

The idea was for African heads of state to come to the AU headquarters in Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa, and make a bold 21st-century statement of African brotherhood. After several postponements, the conference took place on August 25th—but only 20 representatives of the AU's 54 countries turned up, plus a handful of heads of state, notably those of Ethiopia, Somalia, Djibouti and Equatorial Guinea, whose president