When It’s Not In Your Control

This year, my friends and family in the US have one of the most difficult election choices to make. Where is certainty? Do they vote for the assurance of one party to legislate in ways that support their preferences and values? Do they close their eyes to the inconsistencies between words and actions? Is this […]

Go, Tell!

John George “Jack” Phillips sat in the “wireless” room of the Titanic, busily sending telegraphic messages from the ship’s passengers. Trying to claw back what might have seemed a mountain of backlog after the “wireless” equipment broke down the day before. Then at 9.30pm came an iceberg warning from the steamship Mesaba. He quickly scribbled […]

n x Failure = Success (Fail Fast, Recover Quickly, Learn Well)

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. After all […]

Soar Like The Eagle … It’s A Brand New Year!

“Our dream was to demonstrate that you could run a business in India without corruption and create wealth, legally and ethically.” ~ Narayana Murthy, co-founder of Infosys Technologies, as quoted by Bill George in ‘True North’ “One of our major customers conducted a comprehensive review of their purchasing activities, on the heels of allegations of fraud. After more […]

Fatal Flaws 2

I learned this lesson a long time ago. And I am learning more about it as I build and lead new teams. When forming a team, apart from hiring for talent, competencies and organisation fit, I bring people in who do not display the symptoms of these fatal flaws. But the work does not end […]

It’s Called Stealing

These past few days, we read about the hacking of the iCloud accounts of certain celebrities, that resulted in private items being egregiously passed around in the world of the internet. Along with the outcry, there are some occasional outbursts of “they should have known better” about putting these items in iCloud or about 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, […]