Two Months, Thirty-Four Countries. Thank You!

I am blessed to have a small and growing number of readers across thirty-four countries after only two months since starting this blog. Thank you to those who visit this site regularly. Jeannette says she reads my posts with a mug of coffee on hand! Why not try that with a friend? Thank you for getting […]

Do You Need Permission to be Free?

I am mission-oriented. Those who work (and live) with me attest to this. One wrote: “the ultimate can-do attitude”. Another said: “delivering the highest results under the most challenging circumstances”. And many agree: “never gives up”, “super-resilient”. But there is a downside to this. Once, someone had to tap me on the shoulder because I did not want to […]

The Gift of Time

Back to 2010 It was barely a few months after leaving my job. I helped with the divestitures of two major business units of a company that was once great. My process and systems knowledge and experience gleaned from years of business transformation programs was useful. But it was time to hand the reins over to another. […]

Life and Business Architecture — Any Connections?

Remember when the phone was just for making phone calls, when travel by air was a special event, when research meant poring through tomes in the library or viewing archived materials there. The iPhone was only born in 2007! Airplane travel for mass transportation only took off towards the end of the century. Though the Internet is […]

In Grief And Sorrow — Where Are The Great Leaders?

We now live in a highly connected world. Bad news, of wars, catastrophes, loss, come in mighty torrents, alongside remarkable achievements, breakthroughs, even trivia, the mundane and the plain trash. But the usual torrent became a tsunami for me in the past few weeks. It was too much, one after another. And when they were juxtaposed […]

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I Am Thankful For Closed Doors

My first taste of rejection happened shortly before I graduated with a degree in Chemical Engineering. As is the usual practice, the ‘big name’ companies came to the campus to interview candidates for their new graduate programs. I rushed to the Dean’s office to check my name against a scheduled list of students to be […]

How Do You Choose? How Do you Decide?

Knowing who I am and what I value help me make better decisions. One evening this past week, I was invited to speak at a senior school careers night. I shared with students, parents and friends what I learned in nearly 30 years of my career – from a Chemical Engineering graduate to a business […]

3 weeks old and 1,000 visits. Thank You!

Three weeks ago I released my blog to the big, wide world. I was nervous. I had only blogged before in the protected world of a company intranet. Yet, I chose to thread personal stories in my posts to illustrate the power of the idea — that it is not limited to work; it can […]

Managing Change: Up Close and Personal

In Leading Change: Up Close and Personal, my son asked: “Why do they need your help? Why go to the US?” That’s how conversations started in the family as we explored the answer to ‘Why’. The answer connected to each family member in a deep way. This built a strong foundation for us to weather the […]

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I Looked for the Meaning and Purpose of Life and This is What I Found

Is life just a cycle of eating, sleeping, studying, working, playing, fun interspersed with sorrows, some wins, a few losses, gathering trophies and accolades, medals, fame, fortune, then passing them on to others. Is that it? Is that all there is to life? When I was in university studying for a degree in Chemical Engineering, […]

What is the price of hope?

Today I was early for a lunch meeting with a friend in the digital media industry. We were meeting near Central Station. Central Station at noon was moderately crowded but I found an empty seat in the main concourse, close to the shops. I was browsing through the HBR blog on my iPad when I […]

When Failure is Good

A long, long time ago, I thought I was invincible. A typical teenager. Do you know someone like this? I was eighteen years old and on my third year as a chemical engineering student in a selective university. My grades were always better than most so I was relaxed about passing my exams. I was […]