While a huge bull stood grazing in the field, a tiny gnat buzzed about its ear and finally landed on one of his huge horns.

After a while, the little gnat said loudly, "Dear bull, pardon me if I have disturbed your peaceful afternoon with the weight of my body on your horns. I offer you one thousand apologies for I never meant to inconvenience you with my presence at all. I wouldn't want you to think I didn't care about your solitude and comfort."

The bull replied, "Little gnat, thank you for the grandiose apology you felt such great need to share. But you think too highly of yourself. I didn't even notice you were there!"

At the dire risk of displaying self aggrandisement tendencies, last week's column actually generated a lot of feedback from readers who questioned the capacity of their own leaders to communicate vision and strategy to their respective organisations.

I immediately drew an analogy between the bull, which represents the employees, and the gnat which represents the Chief Executive Officer of an organisation.

In many institutions, employees have never seen nor been within ten feet of the hallowed presence of their CEO. Take for example this email I received from Lusina who works for a large local financial institution:

"Can you please take your time and write specifically about CEOs who are only seen on TV despite the challenges their organisations are facing. This country leads in producing the most qualified CEOs for the screen. Their shareholders are TV stations.

Somehow if we scratched beneath the surface of Lusina's organisation we will find an employee base that is completely disconnected from what management views as the strategic direction of the company.

Why? The staff has simply never seen the CEO walk the shop floor and communicate his or her strategy. The Obama campaign that is largely touted as one of the most successful election campaigns in history, taught political and business leaders one thing.

Determine your campaign theme or business strategy early and stick to it, stating it again and again until your voice is hoarse and your eyes are ready to roll back into their sockets with abject boredom.

Residents of every city where Obama appeared heard him say the same thing that he said two cities before, yet they wanted to see and hear him say it, live and direct.

But this column is not about Obama.

It's about our Kenyan CEOs and whether they have it in them to inspire, motivate and involve staff. Whether they are able to descend the lofty perch of their executive offices and talk in mwananchi-speak.

Just as the Obama campaign leveraged heavily on basic technology, a Kenyan CEO has the same level of resources at his disposal in the form of the internet and mobile telephones.

How about the CEO smsing staff an update of what's happening in the organization and where he sees it going this quarter.

Or how about creating a Facebook page for status updates, seeing as so many of the younger employees are going to the site on a daily basis anyway?

One local institution I know had its IT department block access to Facebook due to the high number of visits staff made there.

Does this sound bizarre to you? Then maybe you're haven't moved into the 21st century.

Let's face it a CEO has to spend over 60 per cent of his time managing upwards, whether its board members, Head Office in the case of a multinational, regulators, Union officials... the list is endless.

The CEO's time is an extremely scarce resource even for himself and he therefore has to think out of the box on ways in which he can communicate most effectively within the shortest time frame while seated back left in the Mercedes Benz between meetings.

What does consistent communication do?

It embeds the vision of the organization in the hearts and minds of the staff.

It ensures that whether or not we are on the bus, we at least know where the bus is going.

It immediately dispels the layers of power that are created in an organization when a favoured few are the only ones who know what's on the CEO's mind. Recently, one CEO of a well respected institution shared his experience about communication with me.

When he joined the organization, he found a very insular management culture that he had to break.

Only the previous CEO's direct reports would attend strategic planning sessions and, amazingly, would not cascade the outcomes of those sessions to their own teams.

The reason for this was obvious: information is power and very little information is very little power.

The management team would therefore go about their business with the strategic plan locked firmly in their narrow minds, somehow believing that the institution would stumble into greatness through the extra sensory perception of their staff!

Herculean taskThe new CEO therefore had the herculean task of embedding an open communication culture as his first order of business.

CEOs have the inordinate capability to create the information "haves" and the "have-nots" and if you add to that an absentee CEO that is seen only on television then you have the makings of a very disengaged and disillusioned employee cadre.

On the flip-side , I once had a boss who was the epitome of information overload and would constantly forward all email communications from head office to his department.

The result, an extremely well informed group of individuals who had permanent invites to all office related parties inside and outside the building, in the unyielding hope that we would impart our pearls of knowledge to the rest of the staff!

So would you notice if your CEO walked into your department and stood by your desk? Would you even recognise him or her other than thinking this person has a vague resemblance to the guy you saw on TV last night?

Or would you be like the proverbial bull and not even notice that the CEO is there?