Category: Leadership

1000Entrepreneurs, Ideas, Leadership

Hiring Anyone Who Applies for a Job

As part of my reading list, I stumbled on to a post that talks about a bakery that gives a job to anyone who applies – no interview, no background checks, no drug tests, nothing. You enrol on a list and whenever an opening arises, the person at the top of the list is offered that job. Simple. They start as an apprentice for a 10 month period, post which they get an entry level job at the bakery. They practice Open Hiring.  This made me think. {I know ?}. I can already think of a 100 different reasons that […]

1000Entrepreneurs, Leadership

Succession Planning and The Peter Principle

At some point in our professional careers, we all have come across some managers and wondered – How on earth did this person become a manager. He seems to be so incompetent? Welcome to the world of Peter Principle. Peter Principle states that People in a hierarchy tend to rise to their “level of incompetence” – Laurence J. Peter In other words, people get promoted based on their past performances until they are no longer able to produce the same level of performance and they remain stuck there. The principle was proposed as a satire to the practices observed by Laurence Peter but seemed […]

1000Entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Strategy

How to be Happily Busy

Time is the most precious commodity that we have. Attention is the second most important. And we need to trade both of these (depleting, non-renewable) with other people and organisations. This is almost non-negotiable (of course, we can go to the Himalayas for a retreat or become a Buddhist monk, but I am sure people who read my blog have neither of those intentions). That being the case, we don’t have a choice if we want to trade our time and attention but the choice is what do we trade it with.  If you are like any of my average […]

Ideas, Leadership

Trade Wars and The Importance of Being Open to Persuasion!

We are living in a society where on every topic imaginable, every on-going debate, people are either for something or against something and at most times both at the same time. This is a condition which typically leads to more polarisation and alienation than consensus. We seem to have forgotten the art of debate.  We only communicate to influence or nudge others towards our point of view. Others do the same to us. And all of us get frustrated and angry when none of us is able to influence each other.  We seem to have forgotten the cardinal rule of […]

1000Entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurship, Leadership

Super Balls and Glass Balls

I am currently reading the book – Breakthrough: How to Harness the Aha! Moments That Spark Success by Scott Duffy and David Meltzer. So far the book has turned out to be an easy read and has some interesting stories to teach some very good (though not very surprising lessons).  One of the thing that the authors talk about in the book is about the ability to manage different priorities as an entrepreneur or an intrapreneur. In this context they share the metaphor of super balls and glass balls.  While juggling different balls, you can drop the super balls without […]