Leadership

Tendencies and Transitions

We live and work in some sort of a system. Our very body is a system. So, developing the ability to understand and work better with systems can be a super power – both as an individual and (even more so) as a leader. One of the most foundational aspects about systems that we need to understand is that all systems are living, breathing and constantly evolving. However, each one of them has a tendency to be in a specific state or can transition from one state to another. For example water can transition between solid, liquid and gas but […]

Inspiration, Quotes

Being Accepting of Defeat is Necessary To Be Accepting of Victory – Bruce Lee

I stumbled onto the scene in which Bruce Lee talks about winning and losing, about the art of dying. Before we go any further, take the time to watch the clip here. The wisdom shared is profound in its simplicity and simple in its profundity. Win or lose, Live or die, creative or boring – they are all two sides of the same coin. One can’t come without the other. If we don’t accept one, it’s too difficult to get the other as well. As he says, learning to die is to be liberated from it. What I take it […]

Innovation, Leadership

Breaking Norms to Breakthrough

I stumbled onto a TikTok video about a skating race and how one athlete out-thought her competitors to register a historic win. You can watch the video here. The athlete won the competition right at the start by breaking the norms of how you are supposed to race to win. The norm was that everyone start slow to preserve their energy and then as they come close to the final laps, put all your effort and energy and get away from the pack. The winner of this race did the exact opposite. She broke away from the pack when no […]

Creativity, Ideas, Innovation, Inspiration, Leadership

How to Move from Bad Ideas to Breakthrough Ideas

Premise: I came across this reel on Instagram and loved the story and wanted to share it with you all. You can watch the reel here. While the story itself is better told by Dr. Caroline Brookfield in the reel, I wanted to share other things that I learnt watching and listening to the story and wanted to share that with you. So, here we go: Lesson 1: The importance of Psychological Safety The person who shared the idea about poking people’s eye was able to share the idea (which eventually led to the breakthrough idea) because that person felt […]

Leadership

Work Remotely or Return to Office

Premise: Currently there is a big debate going on around the world with respect to where do we work from. There is a camp of people who think they are more productive and save time, money and attention by working remotely. There is another camp which believes that working remotely has a lot of limitations, specially around preserving the company culture, innovation or helping new hires integrate with the organisation. Both have their merits but not in the ways that we would think at first glance. It is easy to decide one camp in which we want to belong – […]