Posts from the leadership category.
The Next MoveThere are people who seem to know where they are going.They have a plan for their career, a plan for their money, a plan for their children and, occasionally, a plan for what they will do after retirement.Then there are the rest of us.We make a plan.Something happens.We adjust.Something else happens.We adjust again.Years later, when someone asks how we got there, we tell the story bac...
I have been thinking about Tuesdays.Not Mondays.Not launch days.Not the day a company announces funding.Tuesdays.The ordinary days when nobody is particularly interested in what a business is doing.Someone places an order.Someone complains.Someone sends an invoice.Someone looks at the bank balance.Someone decides whether to spend money or wait.Someone notices that customers are not using the produ...
There is a strange privilege in modern civilisation.We can depend on something without ever seeing it.Turn on a tap and water appears.Open an app and information appears.Order food and a complex supply chain disappears behind a delivery notification.Walk into an office and we rarely think about the infrastructure that makes the building functional.The more sophisticated a system becomes, the easie...
There is a subtle shift happening in organisations.We are moving from using AI to do things towards using AI to tell us what to do.That second shift is much more consequential.A machine that drafts a report is one thing.A machine that identifies a project risk, recommends a resource allocation, forecasts an outcome or suggests a course of action is something else entirely.That is where Danilo Arba...
Why do intelligent people make simple problems complicated?Sometimes because the problem really is complicated.But sometimes because complexity makes us feel that we are doing serious thinking.That distinction stayed with me while reading Mukesh Sud’s Simple Thinking. The book begins with an idea that sounds almost obvious: when we are surrounded by information, opinions and noise, finding a simpl...
There are conversations we avoid because we don’t know what to say.And then there are conversations we avoid because we know exactly what we want to say.The second kind is often harder.We rehearse the words in our heads. We imagine how the other person might react. We worry about sounding rude, confrontational, insensitive, or simply being misunderstood.So we wait.Tomorrow becomes next week.Next w...
Why do organisations find it so easy to add something — and so difficult to remove it?A new process is introduced. A new layer of approval appears. Another product enters the portfolio. Another report is added to the calendar. A system that nobody particularly likes continues to exist because “this is how we have always done it.”And slowly, almost invisibly, complexity becomes normal.That was the ...
It was 2015, just after we had passed out of our MBA college, when we three friends decided we needed a different kind of break. No fancy resort, no new city to “check off” a list—just us, our backpacks, and the mountains. That’s how Har Ki Dun happened.We didn’t know then that this trek would stay with us long after our sore muscles had healed.Stepping Out of ComfortOur biggest concern before the...
There is something quietly revealing about the stories we choose to remember. History celebrates achievements, but the roads leading to those achievements are often far more meaningful than the destination itself. They are filled with rejection, loss, uncertainty, and moments when giving up would have been easier. She Rises: Unfinished Dreams by Hariharan Iyer chooses to tell those stories instead...
Most people hear the word strategy and immediately think of defeating someone else. Winning a battle. Outsmarting an opponent. Staying one step ahead of the competition.Miyamoto Musashi saw strategy differently.For him, victory began long before the sword was drawn. It began with discipline, clarity, patience, and an honest understanding of oneself. That is why The Book of Five Rings, written in 1...
