This is the Highest Leverage Activity for Leaders

Don’t think of an elephant!! Did you think of an elephant? Did you think of how an elephant looks like? Did you see an image of an elephant? Did you think of a large animal? Did you think of black or a trunk or a sound or anything else that we can relate to an elephant? If you are like the most of us, when asked not to think of an elephant, we automatically think of something that is relates to an elephant. This is instinctual. This is what is called framing. In this example we activated the frame of […]

How to Listen as a Leader?

I read this post by Kevin Roberts (founder of Red Rose Consulting; business leader and educator; author and speaker; adviser on marketing, creative thinking and leadership) where he shares his insight on the current state of affairs, which in summary is “Everyone is talking and no one’s listening”. In his post he also shares that there are 4 types of listeners – People oriented, Action or Task oriented, content focused and fast. You can read his entire post (really short one) here. I believe that as leaders, it is paramount that we listen and do it well. However, as a […]

Trusting Adults to Behave like Adults

I read a post on Nature.com which talks about lessons to be learned by governments about communications and trusting the public with hard truth. You can read the entire post titled “Covid Lessons: Trust the Public with hard Truths” here. I believe that the lessons are as much valid for business leaders as much for the governments and the public. Bureaucracy is usually a result of not trusting our employees to do the right thing in any given situation. Every time we see an employee make a mistake, the tendency is to create a policy around it so that, that […]

Starting a Digital Transformation Journey

Premise: It seems like there can’t be a day that goes by when I don’t hear the word transformation being tossed around, usually with the prefix – Digital. At a deep level, I think everyone knows and understands that transformation of any kind is not only difficult but in most cases has an extremely low probability of success. The term digital transformation is a misnomer which has quite a lot of people confused. It is first and foremost transformation, of course enabled by digital technologies but people confuse this with digital becoming the operating word instead of transformation. This is […]

#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 […]