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Embrace constraints
A McKinsey partner once told me about his niece who got a job offer as a management trainee from a world-leading healthcare company. This company had (and still has) a spectacular global brand, and is a market leader in many categories. And...
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Be your best
On the National Police Academy parade ground, our assistant drill instructor, head constable Ram Singh, would bark at us like he was General Patton....
Failure vs a life of regret
Five years into my first job with the Indian Police Service, I was unsure what to do next -- something had changed. In the beginning, everything was...
Hard or easy is in our mind
Panwali was going to be our Waterloo, we were warned. This was a part of the 9-day trek during our Civil Services training that included a...
Change tomorrow’s story
In a semiconductor course tutorial at IIT Kanpur, Prof. Aloke Dutta pointed at me and said, “Please come and explain the functioning of an NPN...
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Value your time and attention
In one of my McKinsey projects, every Friday, sharp at 5:30 pm, our engagement manager would pack up and vanish while the rest of us kept slogging till late in the night. And for the next 24 hrs, he was unreachable even if the world melted down....
Meaning of life
There are two people I knew, who tragically died of cancer -- one somewhat recently. One was a professor and another was doing some research study. And in both cases, they kept working nearly till the end. Why did they do that instead of taking it...
Age is not a barrier to learning
In 2008, while looking for a job, I met this big shot in Mumbai -- tall, handsome, and extremely articulate, this Ivy League graduate was a top leader at one of India’s biggest business conglomerates. At that time, I was urgently looking to move...
The journey of growth
When we started HabitStrong, our first month’s revenue was less than my one day’s salary when I was working. Every journey starts small. Don’t mistake the size of the seed for that of the tree. Keep compounding, keep growing -- be at it. One day,...