A Framework for High Performance Leadership

Premise: I read a post by Michael McCune on Gartner’s blog about thought leadership and it resonated really well with me. In the post, he talks about the importance of original thought provoking content. Content that deepen’s someone’s understanding of their own challenges and how to solve them by sharing an insight that is either original or is non-obvious has significant impact. I agree with his analysis and also the kind of impact that he shares this can have on someone’s behaviour (Buying or otherwise). The challenge with this is that creating content that can have this kind of an […]

Of Clouds and Clocks

Sir. Karl Popper, in one of his lectures, elaborates about the presence of two types of systems – the clocks and the clouds. Clocks: At one end of the spectrum are Clocks. Clocks are those systems that can be taken apart to understand how they function and assembled back together and when done right, will continue to function the way they were designed. They are predictable. They can be simple or complex but with enough time and skill, we can understand each and every part of the system, their role in the system and how they interact with the other […]

3 Skills for all Leaders to Cultivate – Naming, Framing and Priming

Premise: One of the key responsibilities that we have as leaders is to make sense of what is happening in and around the teams that we lead and share this with our teams as and when required. The way we do this could be either through writing (emails, blogs, etc) or by speaking (in all-hands, at events, 1-1 calls, etc). In either case, we need to be careful about the language we use, as the way we use the language has a big impact on what others perceive or understand from our communication. So, today, let’s explore the importance of […]

Unintended Consequences

When we are leading a team in an environment that is complex and full of uncertainty, it is important to understand that every decision we make will always have unintended and unpredictable consequences. As leaders, we need to not only expect that but go looking for it to ensure that the unintended consequence is not something that can have a significant negative impact on what we set out to achieve. In the early years of the last century, Hanoi had a rat problem. The French colonial government wanted to solve this persistent problem. After trying to exterminate the rodent by […]

How to Win in the Age of Unreasonable Consumer

I recently stumbled onto a video of Adam Morgan (Co-founder of eatbigfish and the co-author of a brilliant book – A Beautiful Constraint) shares his perspectives on how we live in an age of unreasonable consumers and what do we need to think about in order to succeed in this world where we are surrounded by unreasonable consumers. You can watch the entire video here. The first question that comes to mind when I listen to Adam present is to question if we really have become unreasonable consumers? I believe the answer is absolutely. We now expect to have clean, […]