Before answering, Donald Wangunyu pauses. His eyes shoot up to the left, searching the corners of his brain, looking for the right words. When he finds them, it’s an avalanche, a problem of abundance. But when the CEO of FourFront Management is not thinking, he is doing stuff. Having conversations with the dead, à la the philosopher Zeno of Citium. Or wearing bow ties, his dash of magic, or madness, depending on who you ask. He is a bit of a craftsman himself. “I am redesigning my wedding ring,” he says.
He is also a systems man. Even as we take a walk at his home in Nairobi’s Kitisuru, where he is supervising some construction projects, his movements seem practised, like those of someone who did everything according to the way it was set out in some book. “Whoever can make whatever is complex simple,” he says, “will be paid very good money.” That’s his superpower. He is less interested in the mechanics of decisions, of making the right decision, but instead, making the decision right. Simplicity, not simplism.
