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Why Throwing More People at a Problem Makes It Worse
During one of my consulting projects, we had a very influential and intimidating client. So to dazzle him, a lot of senior leaders were added to the team. And what was the end result? A top-heavy team, which resulted in the poorest work I have done...
Recent Posts
Stop Confusing Busyness With Real Work
You don't walk into an annual performance appraisal meeting and boast -- "I sent 20,000 emails last year." You don't flaunt the number of meetings...
Conviction and Delusion in Entrepreneurship
1 year ago, I met a VC who had told me that my first startup idea won't work. And you know what ultimately happened? He was right. Thankfully, when...
Why Open Offices Destroy Focus (And What Companies Must Fix)
When we were running the pilot batch for our Zen Productivity program, some participants said that it is practically impossible to focus while at...
Why Even Billionaires Go Broke
I know of billionaires who have gone broke. And here is why you should care about it. No billionaire has ever gone broke by consuming too much --...
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Choose Good People, Not Glamorous Projects
In my 4th year in college, we had to choose a professor to guide us for the BTech project. At that time, I had become very good friends with a young professor of electrical engineering, who was kind, generous, and brilliant. But his area of work...
Why Yoga Classes Won’t Fix Workplace Stress
When companies feel that their employees are stressed, they organize yoga and meditation classes. But does it address the REAL problem? Is it not yet another bandaid applied on the poor human soul, which is already heavily "bandaided?" People are...
Success Doesn’t Require Perfection—Just One Strong Spike
A decade ago, I met an entrepreneur in Goa who had built a giant medical devices company (probably worth a few hundred million dollars today). So when I went to meet him, I expected to see a swanky office. But his desk was covered side-to-side with...
Managers Should Lead, Not Do Their Team’s Job
In my policing days, a fellow senior officer was very fond of daily night-patrolling and catching criminals. Sounds cool, right? In fact, the media loved and glorified it. But here is the problem -- that was not his job. His job was to guide his...