Latest Post
Staying Calm Under Pressure
My best managers -- be it in the Indian Police Service or at McKinsey -- were not the charismatic ones with swagger or bravado. Instead their biggest quality was this: In a crisis, when things became rough, they remained calm -- no freaking out, no...
Recent Posts
For Once, Be Selfish: Learn to Listen to Criticism
About a decade ago, I was in Mussoorie (at Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration) during the training program for senior Civil...
Be Lazy With Messages. Be Serious About Your Life
You take a risk every time you sign bank documentation without reading it (e.g., when taking a bank loan). Yet, it makes sense because we have...
If You Don’t Want to Stop Working, You’ve Lived Well
Long ago, one of my IITK professors lost his life to cancer. His colleague told me that until the very end, he kept working -- he insisted that his...
Status Quo Is Just Furniture Waiting to Be Moved
When I first landed in Kerala as a Civil Services officer trainee, we were staying in a guest house managed by the police department. One evening,...
More Articles
Success and Niceness: Why Being Kind Still Matters
Recently, I saw a familiar face in the news -- this person was appointed as a leader of a major global corporation. And I remembered that I had interviewed him at McKinsey! Before this interview, my manager told me, "Be careful! He is not known to...
Effective Delegation: Letting Go Is the First Step to Leadership
When you delegate work, remind yourself that: 1. People won't approach problems the way you do. 2. People's slides or spreadsheets won't look exactly like yours. 3. People won't probably do anything your exact way. And that's ok. Because people are...
You Will Never Feel Ready – Take the Shot Anyway
All my life, for any big goal I set my eyes on, I always felt underprepared and under-confident -- be it an exam, a job, or a startup. I never felt ready to take the shot. Yet, over the years, here is what I found: If you wait to be fully ready,...
Why Articulation Matters More Than Performance
The last few days, my wife has been busy writing recommendation letters for her junior IAS officers applying for Fulbright and various other scholarships, for pursuing higher studies. And just like the MBA admissions at US B-Schools, here also,...