Lessons we Can Learn From Catching A Rocket in Mid-Air

On 13th October 2024, SpaceX team did something remarkable. They launched their starship rocket and then allowed its booster to drop into the Earth’s atmosphere and caught it with their giant mechanical arms at the launch pad. This is something that has never been done (or even attempted before). There are a few lessons to be learnt for all of us as leaders from this exercise. Lesson 1: Challenging Assumptions and Beliefs When Elon Musk started SpaceX and decided to develop a re-usable rockets, it was never even considered by the teams before him. It was believed to be impossible, […]

Lessons in Leadership from the Award Winning TV Series – The Rookie

Earlier today, I finished watching 5 seasons of the TV Series – “The Rookie” on Netflix and learnt a lot about leadership from the series. For those of you, who have not heard about the series, here is how it is described on Wikipedia: The Rookie is an American police procedural television series created by Alexi Hawley for ABC. It follows John Nolan, a man in his forties, who becomes the oldest rookie at the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). It is based on real-life LAPD officer William Norcross, who moved to Los Angeles in 2015 and joined the department in his mid-40s. Lesson 1: You can do whatever […]

Lessons in Leadership from the movie “Raayan”

I recently watched the Tamil language movie – Raayan and really liked the movie. It is a typical commercial movie, following the life of three siblings with the eldest one trying to protect the younger one’s. Here is the plot according to Wikipedia: The film follows Kathavaraayan “Raayan”, a fast-food hotel owner in North Chennai, who begins to protect his family when they inadvertently get muddled in a war between two rival gangs. Here are a few lessons in leadership that I took away from the different characters in the movie: Patience Vs Definitive Action Patience is a great virtue until […]

What does Riding a Bicycle teach us about Leading in Uncertain Times

At first glance, there doesn’t seem to be much in common between knowing how to ride a bicycle and leading an organisation during uncertain times. However, watching a short video about how much we don’t really understand about how we ride a bicycle made me realise how much there is in common between this and leading an organisation in uncertain times. First things first, I would highly recommend that you watch this video and then we can continue this conversation. If you are anything like me, you’ve known how to ride a bicycle for years yet did not truly understand […]

The Art of Kintsugi and Lessons in Leadership

Kintsugi is an old Japanese art of repairing broken ceramic pottery with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold. Instead of hiding the fact that the ceramic was broken, the art accentuates and celebrates this by converting the ordinary piece of ceramic to a piece of art. You can find more information about this art and the philosophy behind the same in the video here. There are many some very important lessons in leadership that we can gleam from this art, if we so desire. Ceramic articles tend to break. That is in their nature. Same way, people make mistakes. We, […]