Years ago, when I was a civil servant, a young IPS officer was briefly posted under me for training. A sensitive guy, he was struggling with some mental health issues. Unfortunately, his anxiety got aggravated, resulting in a near breakdown. A few days later, I...

We often hear, 'Don't pick a job just for the salary.' But if not salary, then what? Typically, the answer is - role, company culture, growth opportunities, brand, etc. And admittedly, all these things have serious merit. However, in my opinion, here is the most...

I first read the book ‘Jonathan Livingston Seagull', more than a decade ago. Since my wife was raving about the book, I got curious about all the hullabaloo. When I read the book, I found it stunningly disappointing. No storyline, no hero or villain, no suspense -...

During a leadership training at McKinsey in Chicago, we were split into teams and given a task: From cardboard kits for building toy planes, we had to build the most number of planes in a given time. We thought it was a fun team-building exercise. The plane assembly...

Today, while talking to a friend at Juniper Networks, we got talking about the company's founder, an IIT Kanpur alumnus. His profile mentions that his dad wanted him to become an IAS officer. But instead, he went for higher studies and ended up building a...

Most small goals in life are like a football match -- you can win, but you can also lose. If you are looking to crack a job interview or clear a particular exam, success is not guaranteed. But fortunately, the really big goals in life are like a different kind of...

While I was running near the Rajbhavan in Trivandrum, the streetlights went off at 6 am. It was still dark but I kept running, daydreaming in my head. Then suddenly, I was abruptly brought to my senses. In the darkness, I tripped on the uneven roadside pavement and...

A few years ago, I had to visit a hospital because of a persistent chest infection. It so happened that the senior doctor was unavailable and hence a relatively junior doctor had to attend to me. During the consultation, this junior doctor seemed really apologetic...

When I was a kid, our family train travel was rarely in the AC compartment. Therefore, we kids were always sitting near the windows staring at the rivers, mountains, and everything else. India felt so amazing. But sadly, in the last few decades, even the very rare...

In movies, you see heroes spraying light weapons in automatic mode, killing dozens of 'bad guys.' In real life, you never do that. Here is why. An AK-47 will finish a full magazine of 30 bullets in 3 seconds, and they will almost all miss the target. It is so much...

I spent my 4 years at IIT mostly lazing around, wasting my time. But I had other classmates who slogged hard. In the final year, most hard-working guys had great career options lined up, including scholarships from some top US universities. I told myself that it...

In my very first engagement as a McKinsey consultant, we were trying to schedule a meeting with a senior leader at a pharma client. She literally threw up her hands, saying, "I am back to back with meetings the whole day." I was sorely tempted to ask her, 'When do you...

Here is a two-step process for hitting even the hardest possible goals: 1. Get started 2. Iterate until success Here is the two-step process for NEVER getting started: 1. Figure out everything 2. Then start Getting started seems daunting because we feel we need to...

Our obsession with 'billion' has made us lose touch with reality. If you are building a startup, it HAS to be a unicorn. If you are an entrepreneur, you have to be a billionaire. Gentle reminder: A billion dollars is more than Rs 7,000 crores. The benchmark for...

A leader who ONLY tells the crowd what they want to hear is not a leader -- he is just following the crowd from the front. Today, most political leaders across the globe are 'followers from the front.' Leadership takes the courage to be disliked. That is why real...