Entrepreneurship, Ideas, Leadership

Ten Rules for Building a Good Company

Today, I stumbled upon a book – “Tree-Ring Management” by Hiroshi Tsukakoshi. Hiroshi san is the Chairman of a kanten manufacturer far from the bustle of Tokyo , amid the natural beauty of Nagano prefecture in Japan. In the book, he argues that the primary purpose of a business is to make its employees happy. Their management philosophy also indicates that slow, controlled growth is better than rapid growth and in fact fast growth is the enemy. Their philosophy is so unique that there is an HBR case study for on this management model.  I did write about a model […]

Entrepreneurship, Recommendation

Mary Meeker’s 2018 internet trends report | Code 2018

Loved this video where Mary Meeker shares the internet trends that she shared in May. Though this is a bit dated (delivered in May 2018) but still highly relevant if you are planning to do anything on the internet.  I would recommend that you watch this and internalise the trends. You might have to watch it more than once, as she goes at an unbelievable pace and covers a lot of ground in 30 mins.  Mary is an American VC and a partner at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.   She focuses on Internet and new technologies.  Enjoy the video.

Ancient Wisdom, Entrepreneurship, Ideas

Lessons from The Story of a Wise Man and the Boys who Loved To Drum

I would like to tell you a short story. There was once an old wise man who after retiring from his work decided to buy a house in his old village and moved there to live his life in a peaceful setting. All was well until it wasn’t. Once the school started, there were a few boys who used to walk past his home on their way to school. They would drum on the metal garbage bins that were near the window of the wise man’s bedroom. He would find this noise to be too disturbing and wanted the boys […]

Entrepreneurship, Strategy

An Unconventional Approach to Manage Your Projects

Almost everyone project manager that I meet wants to find out a way to do two things: Deliver their projects on-budget and on-time Be innovative in their approach while doing so Yet, we know that most projects are neither on-budget nor on-time. The bigger and more critical the project, the more likely that it will over-run budgets and get delayed. So, why is it that most large projects fail? Is there anything that we can do to address this statistic? My belief is that most projects fail (over-budget or delayed) because of three primary reason: Adopting a Deliberate strategy Collaboration […]

Ideas

Designing for Wellbeing in the Workplace

We spend more and more time in our offices than in any other single space. So, it makes perfect sense to build our workspaces with little nudges all along the design of the physical space so that they help us go back home a little more happier and healthier than we came in the morning.  That I believe would be key in creating an organisation which has healthy, creative, engaged and highly productive employees. Of course, just getting the physical space right doesn’t mean that all other aspects of the culture will be taken care of. But that is a […]