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This is my favourite bunch. Poetic, confident, incisive. We know them as “experts”. The problem crops up when you put them to the real-life test. Most of them underperform. Or better: they’re good theorists. Universities are producing a huge number of jargon-filled experts nowadays. So, how do you identify a potential expert from the rest? I use the following heuristic: Step-1: ...

You’re set for a disappointment if you seriously thought Steve Jobs conducted any team-building activity. So what he did? Made an offer that a handful of crazy ones couldn’t resist. The non-believers didn’t believe and he didn’t care. Have you listened to Sir Jonathan Ive’s interview? He is the former Chief Design Officer of Apple Inc. As you carefully ...

How tall can your child grow? On average, a healthy child grows at 2.5 inches per year. By this logic, the child would grow into a 10 feet tall adult. Isn’t that insane? We know it’s not true. Our body doesn’t work that way. But we forget that organizations are also like complex bodies. It is not only unreasonable ...

And the ideas that we don’t own. Will you hit the kill switch on your idea, if it doesn’t work? It is important to differentiate between which are ours and which are borrowed. There are multiple reasons why it is important to differentiate: To control our attachment to the idea and stay objective To get generous feedback on the idea ...

It is strange to think of ourselves as robbers. I mean most of my readers are intelligent, hardworking folks. Not robbers. I’m not talking about the robbing of attention. Your attention is a gift and I cherish it. I’m referring to the robbery of experience. Not deprivation. Robbery. When a teacher tells his students “the answer is on ...

According to www.deathclock.com, I have 60 more years to live. To breathe. To enjoy the human experience. You can check yours. But the deathclock is not going to show infinity. Neither it is going to show 200 years. We have a choice to make here. Either to live as if there is no tomorrow, or as if there is tomorrow. A ...

Have you heard of such a physician? Me neither. Because the physician knows the importance of analyzing the X-ray report and prescribing medicine. When it comes to data, most organizations suffer from two ailments: Lack of data Lack of dissemination of data due to data hoarding Data, like grains, is a commodity. Whoever controls the supply, controls the bargain. Unlike ...

Probably the ATM machines taught people the possibility of an unsupervised queue. All engineering projects affect a lasting change. On the society. Of course, most of them are unintentional. Sometimes it takes us decades to realize this. Few examples: Telecom projects: changed the society’s communication pattern Infrastructure projects: changed the society’s demographics Transportation projects: changed the society’s supply-chain Social media projects: changed ...

Did Pandit Ravishankar have a resume? What about Richard Branson or Carl Sagan or Steven Spielberg? Could they make a large impact because they didn’t have a resume? Or was it a conscious choice? We don’t know the answer.But we do know these great personalities produced a body of work over the years. So compelling that you ...

While some of us torment ourselves on the eve of world environment day, a little bit of fact-check is in order. As an individual, what should be our share of the blame for greenhouse gas emissions? : 100%, 80%, 60%, 40%, 20%, 5%? In 2020, when the world was at a standstill, the world contributed approximately 8% ...