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My friend Vinod Thomas once told me a story of three bullets. When he was going through Indian Police Service training, his class was exposed to a lot of firearms training but many were still mediocre shooters. Then they were sent to Punjab Police Academy in Phillaur...
About a decade ago, I moved back to Trivandrum, where I once served in the police force. And off and on, I run into policemen who had served under me. Almost all the time, I find that the policemen remember their interactions with me very fondly, even when I don't...
When I was 35, I got assigned to a project at McKinsey where my manager was a 28-year-old. He did not have an MBA and had joined straight after undergrad (from Princeton). I was worried that he would be immature and we may have a difficult relationship. Instead, he...
Can you guess what terrifies Indian civil servants the most? Getting a posting with no work to do. And sadly, a lot of these positions do exist. But why would people want to work more for the same salary? Partly, it could be the sense of importance and 'power' that...
I was once talking to a public market investor who seemed very hesitant to reveal the stocks he had invested in, as if he was holding some trade secret or I could somehow derail his investments. On the other hand, Rakesh Jhunjhunwala used to reportedly ask people to...
You give a talk and the auditorium claps, but one guy boos you loudly. Or you write a LinkedIn post and get 99 positive comments, but one guy calls you scum. Will you feel 99% positive, and 1% negative? No. You will be 100% infuriated -- that one negative incident...
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 jobs -- especially in the US. During my MBA, whenever I asked anyone about their jobs or summer internships, they would...
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 idea about how the world worked. But at least I was fighting for a principle. And I escaped unscathed because they probably...
Early in my career, someone told me this cliched, oft-repeated story -- apologies, if you have heard it before. A guy was one day frantically running with his bicycle. Seeing his hurry, someone asked him, "Why don't you ride the bike instead?" He replied, "The bicycle...
When we were kids, our parents told us what to do. But once you are in a job, there are no 'parents' there -- you have to parent yourself. Imagine that in your current job, there is nobody to tell you which project to work on, what to learn, or which client to reach...
I once hired a smart and confident-looking sales head in one of my previous companies. But when I showed him some basic data analysis/tracking that he had to do using Excel, he seemed uncomfortable. So I asked him point blank, "Do you know how to use Excel?" He said,...
Two decades ago, I asked a UP Police constable, "What are your work hours?" He said, "We don't have work hours. I may get guard duty on a train for two days. When that is over, I get assigned to some other duty for the next day. And so on." A bit perplexed, I asked,...
Rajan shares insights from his own life journey to help you build better habits in yours.