Personal Growth

Seizing the day with principles of Improv Comedy | Anil Abraham | TEDxSJMC

One of the things that I talk about in my book Thrive, is about the mindset of “Yes And”. This comes from the world of improvisation comedy. This mindset indicates that the best way forward in any situation in life, as in an improvisational comedy session, is to first agree and accept what has already happened and then build on it.  “Yes” part of the mindset is about acceptance of what has preceded or what has already happened. “And” part of the mindset is about building on top of what has already been accepted. You can’t change what has gone […]

Leadership

The Act of Leading Vs Being a Leader

Premise: I was talking to one of my friends about leadership and what it means to be a leader and is there a distinction between being a leader and the act of leading. What follows is my understanding of the difference. Would be a great to riff at this. Apart from the fact that one is a verb and the other is a noun, there are a few other important things that we need to understand. The Act of Leading: The act of leading implies two things It is an act (with a beginning, middle and an end) It is […]

Ideas, Innovation, Leadership

How To Choose The Best Idea Amongst All to Execute

Premise: I am sure that we all get into a situation where we are required to come up with a set of ideas that will solve a specific problem that we have run into. The question then is how one decides which ideas deserve to be picked from the bunch of ideas that we came up with. We need some sort of a framework that will allow us to decide the value of each of the idea so that we can pick one that is most valuable. EPIC framework: One such framework was suggested by Todd Henry in his latest […]

Innovation

You Can’t Innovate when

You don’t know what problem you are solving, and for whom You want the innovation project to go strictly according to plan You don’t have a team which is diverse and engaged You don’t use an innovation framework (any framework would do) The team is not given the tools, training, time and a teacher You’re afraid to make a mistake You’re responsible to innovate but never have the authority (budgets or access) needed to innovate There is no significant insight that is driving the project The team is afraid of calling out if and when “the emperor is naked” There […]

Ideas

The True Face of Fear and Reality

Premise: As creative professionals, we all face our demons and struggles with all kinds of fears. What we would all benefit from is to realise that most of the times, our anticipation of fear is a lot worse than it really is. I came across this short video about an angler fish and it immediately appealed to me and my understanding of fear and wanted to share this with all of you.  I will let you watch this 3.5 min video first.  Not sure if this was the intent of the team that put together this video, but I think […]