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Critical Feedback vs Confidence Management
The most damaging thing you can do to an employee: Give them non-stop critical feedback for even the minutest of things. This claim may sound plain wrong. After all, without critical feedback, how would people improve? True. Honest feedback,...
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Conviction
In early 2009, I attended a townhall at McKinsey. This was just a few months after Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy, and the US was still in the midst of...
Conventional Wisdom
In the 2nd year of my MBA at Wharton, I asked a finance professor for advice on landing a job with a private equity fund. When he learned that I had...
Margin-free shop
Once, while driving in Trivandrum City, I saw a shop with a big banner: 'Margin-free shop’. Presumably, they don't keep any profit margin. On seeing...
Straightforward path
Yesterday, I picked up a small rock lying on the road, and it is now sitting on my table. How much will you pay for it? Probably nothing. But what...
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Opportunity for gaining experience
From the many 180 degree turns I have made in my career, the one big lesson I have learned is this: Life is to be experienced, not optimized. Life has no objective function to be maximized – it is not a calculus problem. It doesn’t have a...
Comparisons
You can’t lose a game you never played. Then why do we compare ourselves with others, whose lives we never lived? When we get caught up in the comparison game, we forget – everybody has different starting points, different life constraints, and...
High-happiness startup
I am NOT building a high-growth startup. Instead, I am building a “high-happiness” startup – more happiness for our team, as well as for our customers. Not having to chase ‘growth at any cost’ sets you free. We get away without doing any push...
Living in the present moment
Some days I feel optimistic and charged up. Other days, not so much. Does it matter? Not really. You do what has to be done. Some days, you do it with enthusiasm and flourish. Other days, it feels like drudgery, but you still do it. We can’t wait...