One of the beliefs that was ingrained into me as a child was that ‘the middle path is always the best path’. And it has served me really well. I think I’ve become a well balanced, head on the shoulders, practical person because of that. Wheneve...
The newspapers are rife with stories of rich, successful people who end up in jails. It doesn’t seem to make sense for anyone in their positions to put everything they’ve earned at risk. So why do they? Nobody wakes up one day and decides...
Often when we are trying to to roll out critical initiatives we come up against key stakeholders who exert an equal and opposite force that can bring us to a grinding halt. We assume that they are misinformed and give them the information that they n...
Games are fun because there are challenges to overcome. Without rules and difficulties that restrict the options available to us, a computer game would be as fun to play as an infinite blank excel sheet. The challenges aren’t distractions from ...
There are no great poems about office life. Nor are there movies or stories or paintings or comics or songs that celebrate the day to day challenges of work. Every other conceivable topic gets covered through these art forms – love, parenting, ...
It came as a bolt from nowhere. India, the World Champions and No 1. Test team in the world were whitewashed 4-0 by England and, if anything, the scoreline flatters us. Numerous reasons have been floated – poor planning by the BCCI, lack of des...
Over the last few weeks the most dominant news story has been the attempt by civil activist Anna Hazare and his team to pressure the government into implementing their version of the anti-corruption Lok Pal bill. It is beginning to look like, at the ...
What happens when you turn a key in a car door is very different from what happens when you turn the same key in the ignition. The external stimulus is the same in both cases but differences in internal structure of the two objects determine whether ...
On the brink of elimination in front of their demanding home fans, India fought back determinedly to win the 2011 cricket world cup by defeating all the other former world champions in back to back matches – the West Indies, Australia, Pakistan...
In his book ‘Outliers’, Malcolm Gladwell relates the case study of how Korean airlines turned around their safety record. Between 1988 and 1998 Korean airlines had a loss rate of 4.79 per million departures – 17 times higher than a ...
There is plenty of literature and training available on how to lead your team. However there is remarkably little on an equally key skill – how to lead your boss. Bosses are constantly told to listen to their subordinates and criticized when th...
There’s a space between where I am and where I want to be. A distance between who I am and the person I feel I ought to be. No matter how far I’ve traveled and no matter how far I’ll travel there’s a place I’m afraid I...