Rules to Live By

Premise: We live in a world that changes faster than we can make sense of to respond in any meaningful fashion. In such scenario, how we respond to the changes around us can have a significant impact on our lived experience. The best way that I have found to respond to such a scenario is to build for ourselves a set of guiding principles that determines our response to any given situation. I call them my rules to live by. Having thought about them and intentionally listed them down helps me make quick decisions (and sometimes even subconsciously) so that […]

Let Creative Ideas Surface

I was talking to someone earlier today about creativity and the need for creative ideas to drive innovation to enable us to solve difficult problems like climate change and achieving the SDG goals.. I was surprised when he said, that he was not the creative type and that he finds it really difficult to come up with creative ideas and so avoids participating in brainstorming sessions.. I strongly and fully believe that we are all born creative and “Deep inside us, creative ideas are already there! We just need to let them surface!” Mukesh Gupta This requires us to be […]

Leadership and Responsibility

In a recent article,  Pia Lauritzen shared her insights on how leaders can create a sense of responsibility across their organisation. The key insight is that they can do so by smart use of questions – questions that shift the responsibility from them “Me” (self) to “You” (individual) to “Us”. I think she is on to something here. Taking all the responsibility on ourselves makes us feel like a hero or a martyr but doesnt necessarily help us achieve what we set out to. Making our employees responsible for the results questions the role we play and how we contribute […]

Always be Recruiting

One of our primary responsibilities as leaders is to assemble the best team possible to achieve the results that we want to achieve as a team. This means that we are constantly looking to figure out what kind of person can elevate the performance of the team as a whole. Once we understand this, we can then be always on the lookout for the talent that we need. You will be surprised how you can find the right talent in all the potentially wrong places or places where we are not looking. The key here is that we are always […]