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Why We Remember Challenges More Than Comfort in Life
Whenever I ask people about the best time in their lives, they rarely reminisce about fun stuff (e.g., exotic vacations). More often, I find people reminiscing about the times when they immersed themselves into a hard challenge. For some, it might...
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Why Nobody Tells the Truth About Their Jobs
One of the culture shocks I got on joining the corporate world (on transitioning from government) was that nobody tells you the truth about their...
The Power of Youthful Ignorance: Why Naivety Sometimes Wins
Fresh out of college, in my very first job, I picked up a fight with a powerful figure in Kerala over a very small matter. Clearly, I had little...
Why Action Is the Only Way Forward
This may be unpopular but let me say it. If you have to climb a mountain, at some point, you need to start climbing. Yes, you can watch all the...
The Silent Shift Already Reshaping the Workforce
I am not hearing good things. From New York to Singapore, whoever you talk to, is talking about job losses. And the driving force is not economic...
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Prestige, Power, and the Hidden Costs
Yesterday, more than half a million people in India wrote the Civil Services exam, to compete for a few hundred jobs. From my firsthand experience, I can vouch that the kind of responsibilities these jobs give you while still in your twenties is...
How the “Urgent” Culture Is Killing Productivity
In my consulting days, we saved a client a few million dollars with a simple recommendation. This company was spending $10 million plus on postal mail, mostly on overnight/express delivery that cost 3 to 10 times more than normal (and slower)...
Can Generalists Thrive in a Specialized World?
Can generalists thrive in this new world order? To answer this, let me go back to the McKinsey I saw a decade and a half ago, which was full of generalists. Even specialists were hired as generalist consultants. For example, it was common to see...
Measuring Knowledge Work in Hours
Since the who's who of the corporate world is singing praises about hard work, I want to put on record that I agree with them 100%. But the problem is that we immediately translate 'hard work' into 84 hours, 96 hours, or 120 hours a week. So before...