Explore

We all read and consume contents from various sources. In our reading pursuit, we often come across words that we find effortless to construe  and feel an eternal connect that's sometimes hard to explain and assign adjectives to. I recently had such experience when reading Austin Kleon's book- ' Steal like an artist '. I went through the book like a breeze and resonated sublimely with the core of who I am. Now, I don't claim to be anything like the publically renowned creative folks and cases referred to in the book but I can claim to have mind of own in this regard with my way of dealing with all things creative. And that's very much like in the spirit of creativity. I don't like writing book reviews and that's for a reason. If my years of working in management/leadership roles have taught me something, it is this- To be effective as a leader, one must learn to suspend judgement and inculcate the habit of looking at things as they are. Mastering this ...

Not so long ago, I was speaking with one of the talented engineers (lets call him John) who was involved in a high visibility project as a part of Innovation Program that i was leading. His team had done extremely well to be selected among 5 ideas out of 100+ submissions that came in from diverse set of employees. His had made impeccable, convincing pitch presentations about his idea during the evaluation rounds. The way this innovation program worked was that the selected employees usually get certain percentage of their time to work on the project. What i have experienced is, even with a strong management support, the selected teams has to spend far more time than what is allocated to realize the potential of their idea. While not really an ideal situation but that's how most corporate innovation programs function. One could call it a stretch for the participating employees but what good has ever been achieved by staying within the confines of one's comfort zone. So what John...

As few days back, i wrote about a 16 year old India shooter Saurabh Chaudhary's achievement at winning the world cup gold. Saurabh overcame daunting constraints to emerge victorious at the world stage. In every walk of life, we face constraints that seemingly come in the way of our success. How we think about these constraints eventually becomes a difference between success or half-success or failure. Recently reading the book- ' Disrupt Yourself ' , I came across this riveting story recently on how the product Intuit Fasal came to life. Intuit's VP of Product Development was given a mandate to change the life of 1.2 billion Indians. Unlike many other initiatives of such magnitude, this project didn't get laden with resources. Despite the open ended nature of the project driven by a grand vision, it had to start somewhere. Intuit got three engineers of the job and gave them the directive to 'figure something out'. As they started chatting with farmers, they...

I am currently reading the book- 'Disrupt Yourself' by Whitney Johnson. The book is based on the application of Clay Christensen's world renowned theory of disruptive innovation for managing individual careers. One specific aspect of disruption it talks about is playing to one's distinctive strengths. Marcus Buckingham's books and body of knowledge covers the notion of strength based thinking in-depth. Too be honest, earlier in my career, i didn't quite believe in the concept of playing to one's strengths, or not to overly focus on eliminating weaknesses. The main reason i argued with myself was that human beings are among the most malleable species around and they have infinite capacity to mold themselves. I see multiple examples of this playing around me. Recently, i was reading a book on Ripley's Believe it or not and some stories of the participants really amazed me. It was not just the act that was described. The common thread in many stories was th...

Saurabh Chaudhary is 16 year old, but he is quite unlike teenagers in his tender age group. He recently won a gold medal in 10m air pistol in the  shooting world cup held in Feb 2019.  Saurabh not just won in senior category (being a teenager!) but shattered world record by an unbelievable margin. His reaction post winning got everyone talking in awe. He simply remained calm sans any emotions, truly presenting a sight of a man possessed- someone who has his eyes set on something big in life. The point of my post is not only to celebrate incredible victory of his but also to drive home a point that occurred to me on seeing the side tweet. The picture in this tweet shows the shooting range at Saurabh's home. Apparently, it was a cowshed that was converted into a shooting range with almost minimalist equipment. I am not an expert at knowing all the nuances of the sport of shooting. But having read Abhinav Bindra's biography and through my association with OGQ and listening to sto...

One of the recent trends in twitter conversations that i am impressed about is that  influencers  on the platform starting meaningful threads and the followers sharing their perspectives and experiences. One such thread that i was fascinated about was the one started by Andrew Chen, a16z partner. Andrew asked a question on twitter:  What is your least popular but deeply held opinion on personal productivity? I found this thread relevant and hence sharing some of the responses to this thread that i found useful. Should i be organized all the time ? - Being super organized is a bad thing. Means there's no room for serendipity, deep thought, can make you overly passive on other peoples' use of your time, as opposed to being focused on outbound. (Sorry to all my super Type A friends) (Andrew Chen) Procrastinate or not ? - The ideas on which I make my most money were the result of procrastinating and being interrupted. (James Bach) Should i manage energy or time ? - The secret...

This week Novak Djokovic won the Laureus World Sports Award for Sportsman of the Year. He made a stunning comeback in 2018 by winning 3 out of 4 grand slam events. His 2017 rankings had plummeted to 12, which is not bad by any standards but below par for a man who has been ranked in top 3 in world tennis since 2007. He gave a remarkable speech after winning the award. His ~4:30 minute speech can be found here . I found the speech quite relatable, authentic and without any airs. Novak appeared completely vulnerable yet grace personified. In other words, Novak appeared entirely human almost distinct from his super-human image of a person who has a machine-like consistency and is almost unbeatable on tennis court. Reflection #1: Novak said, I live by philosophy: " Expect Nothing " Steven Covey shared these ageless lines 'Begin with the end in mind'. Most of us humans- in pursuit of something big, are always driven by an end-goal in mind. There is nothing wrong in having ...