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Are You a Slack Policeman or a Problem Solver?
Two decades ago, when I first saw traffic policemen at work, I did not realize that one day, entrepreneurs and business leaders would be behaving exactly like them. Here is how. A traffic policeman’s job entails the following: 1. He has to be...
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Time on Earth is limited
When I was learning meditation, I was utterly confused by all the contradictory information out there on blogs, YouTube, etc. So I tried reading the...
Cut Ruthlessly
One of the joys of working in government is the plethora of committees and meetings 🙂 But now even the private sector seems to be catching up on...
Life is full of opportunities
At McKinsey, when I was once in a really tight spot, a young woman at one of the Firm's specialist groups came to my rescue. Under an impossible...
Can losing a job be an opportunity?
Can losing a job be an opportunity? I don't want to sugarcoat or give a feel-good answer. But let me share a few experiences. When I was running my...
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Beyond Exam Charades
During the compulsory military training in Taiwan, recruits are seemingly trained with a singular objective – to pass the exams. When practicing the bayonet drill, you practice a chant for each movement, which is what they will test for in the...
Simplest hack to grow in life
When I was leaving my last job to do a startup, my family asked me to reconsider because ‘doing business is not in our genes.’ Do genes predispose us toward some professions? At first blush, this hypothesis seems fairly tenable. In the US, I saw...
Do the right thing
To put it politely – the startup world is messed up. Big time. And we need to fix it. In my last startup, when we were fundraising, we met a particularly aggressive (‘sharky’) investor. During our discussions, they constantly told us to follow the...
Mastery Demands Commitment
In 1998, we went for our first counter-insurgency patrol in Nagaland very excitedly. We were a bunch of IPS trainees attached to an army unit fighting militancy. Unlike in the Police Academy, the dangers here were very real. So we put on heavy...