How to Help a Colleague Who Seems Off Their Game

When we think about productivity at work, we need to think beyond ourselves. As they say, as a team we are as strong or as productive as the weakest link on our team. This translates to the fact that if someone on our team is not doing their best work, we have a role to play in helping them back to being their productive best. This might not be an official part of our job but working with peers who are productive and doing good work has an impact on our work as well. Most of the times, it could […]

How To Make Good Decisions

One thing that follows us all day around is the need to make decisions. Right from the time we wake up to the time that we go to sleep, we keep making decisions, one after the other. Some of these decisions are simple and don’t impact our lives much, while some of these decisions could have an everlasting impact on not only our lives but also those that live with and around us. We also have learnt from research that There are a lot of biases that are inherent in our thinking and can creep up in our decisions affecting […]

Strategies for Avoiding Distraction and Increasing Your Productivity

I was talking to a friend of mine yesterday (you know who you are) and the conversation steered towards how difficult it has become for either one of us to be able to do distraction free, focused effort to think deeply. About anything. We are constantly distracted. We keep switching tasks. We are continually distracted by our environments, our devices and our primal need for novelty. Yes, you read it right. Our brain constantly searches for stimuli that can help it to fight, flight or freeze if necessary or something interesting, funny that can give us a dopamine hit which […]

Progress Doesn’t Always Follow a Straight Line

In an interesting blog post for Strategy+Business, Adam Kahane shares his perspective about solving tough problems. Tough problems or wicked problems are difficult to solve precisely because there is no one right answer and there are multiple root causes and motivations at play. It is wicked for the precise reason that there are seemingly contradicting interests at play, which makes it difficult to solve these problems permanently.  In the post, Adam talks about the fact that trying to solve a complex or a wicked problem as if it were a simple problem will always lead to making the problem even […]

Four Ways Projects Get Delivered

As part of my reading list, I always look forward to posts written by Mike Shipulski. He is very wise and has the ability to simplify complex things into easy to understand chunks that help us grasp the concept. He is an innovation expert and has more than 20 patents to his name.  So when I read this post by Mike Shipulski on the nature of projects, I really had to share it with all of you. If you are in the business of leading or managing projects, this is a mandatory read. You can find the post here. If you are […]