Lessons in Life and Leadership from the Game “Snakes and Ladders”

When I was young, we used to play this game of Snakes and ladders. It was one of the best pastimes I had. So, I look at it with a lot of fond memories. Yesterday, I stumbled onto this version of the game and it made me think a lot about how insightful the game was at multiple levels. The game offered insightful glimpses into life, risk and a lot more. As I have mentioned before, as humans, we are meaning making creatures. As leaders, we would all do really well to make our own meaning of this game and […]

Stories Provide Emotional Transport for Ideas!

Stories are powerful because they provide emotional transport to ideas. Emotions, specially strong one’s, have the ability to leave their imprints on our psyche. So, if we are in the business of spreading ideas or innovation, we need to get better at telling stories. If we are in the business of building influence, we need to get better at telling stories. If we are in the business of leading and want to share our visions, we need to get better at telling stories. If we are in the business of inspiring people, we need to get better at telling stories. […]

Leaders are Not Great, Leadership Could Be

I stumbled onto an interview with Simon Sinek where he shared his thoughts on what does it take to become a great leader. You can watch the video here. One of his core insight is that leadership requires courage, courage to do the right thing under pressure, courage to stand up to what we think is the right thing to do, courage to make the tough decisions with limited information, courage to set a direction and march forward (believing that it is the right direction), courage to give credit when things go well and take the heat when things don’t […]

Insanely Interesting People who Influenced Me #17 Joseph Campbell

For the rest of the year, I would like to take a moment and thank the people who have had a significant impact on me as an individual. The way they have lived their lives and their body of work has had an outsized impact on how I think about life in general and and work, in particular. Some of these are contemporary thinkers and some of them are just a memory. Some of them are famous in their own rights and some of them are yet to be found by others. Some of them are young and some of […]

Changing Beliefs Vs Replacing Beliefs

A couple of days ago, I took a flight from Mumbai to Delhi for work and when I was stepping out of the flight in Delhi, I saw the pilot for the next leg of the journey walk in. He then did something that was totally out of context but showed his culture and character. He bent down and touched the entrance of the aircraft and then with the same motion, touched his forehead. For all the Indians out there, you know exactly what this means.  He was praying to the aircraft. In Hindu tradition, you touch the feet of […]