Ideas, Leadership, Personal Growth

7 Lessons from an Old Indian Tale

Let me share a story with you… The story of three donkeys, their master and a wise man! Once upon a time, a long time ago, there was a young man who lived in a small village. He owned three donkeys and used them to carry loads for people. One fine day, he was walking along a river towards his destination. The sun was at its peak and it was extremely hot. The cool river water was tempting. He decided that he wanted to take a bath in the cool river water. So, he started tying up his donkey’s to […]

Ancient Wisdom, Leadership

#MeToo: Where There is One, There Ought to Be More..

I was reading a book by Max Bazerman “The Power of noticing”. He has a chapter in the book titled “Missing the obvious on a Slippery Slope”. This chapter is based on the results of a study done with Francesca Gino. The Frog, the Boiling Pot of Water & “#MeToo” This is very similar to the story of the frog in a pot of boiling water. If you put a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will jump out immediately. If we put the same frog in a pot of cold water and slowly increase the temperature, the […]

Ideas

Making Infinitely Better Decisions in Life and In Business

These past few days, I have been contemplating about time and how the thinking in different time horizons affects the decisions that we make in the moment. I have realised that we could make infinitely better and more intentional decisions if we were more intentional and thought about every decision in terms of different time horizons. This also led me to think about the cost of making decisions and how this impacts our everyday decisions. Generally speaking, when we are deciding in favor of short term, we tend to have benefits upfront and the costs piling up in our future […]

Ideas, Misc

How Different Human Societies Name Colours And the Not So Surprising Fact!

I recently saw this interesting video that shared some interesting facts on how names of colours evolve in different parts of the world independent of each other and how it still follows a similar pattern.  The thing that is surprising and what we can learn from it is that in some sense, all of the different cultures around the world evolved in a similar fashion.   Irrespective of which part of the world we grew up in, irrespective of what languages we speak, irrespective of what religion we follow or however different our culture might seem from the surface, deep down […]

Ideas, Innovation

Why Good Ideas Don’t Fly and What To Do About It?

Every leader talks about the importance of innovation to their business. In public, every leader talks about how they and their teams are at the fore front of innovation. In private, the very same leaders confess that they are nowhere near the level of innovation that they would like to be at.  On one hand, they confess that they are struggling to get the innovation process work as effectively as any of their other functions. On the other hand, there are good ideas that languish within their corporate boundaries with no support. This seems to be a dichotomy that needs […]