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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...
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Great Managers Don’t Create Clones
While working with McKinsey, I worked with two types of managers: Type 1: They wanted you to just solve the problem as best as you could. Type 2:...
Why 24 Hours Is Always Enough
If you feel you don't have enough time, ask yourself: If your day had four extra hours, would it be enough? Be honest. I think the answer is pretty...
There’s No Free Lunch in Life
I have had three pretty different careers, but every single time I realised one thing -- there is no free lunch. In my first job with the civil...
Earning Respect That Lasts a Lifetime
A few weeks ago, I called a former boss of mine (the then Director General of Police, Kerala) to wish him a happy new year -- he is nearing 80 and...
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Focus on the Problem, Not the Competition
In my startup journey, I learned more from one particular 5-minute video than from dozens of books and podcasts -- this video is that of Dropbox's founder Drew Houston. When Drew was fundraising for Dropbox, he met a VC, who asked, "There are...
Leadership Means Deciding Without Complete Data
A colleague of mine at McKinsey used to once work at Capital One, an extremely data-driven company. It was understandable that a fintech company would love data but even their senior management took decisions off spreadsheets. And sometimes, it led...
Confront Procrastination by Facing Resistance
One of the common procrastination tactics is to become busy doing something else – we want to do anything other than the task we are trying to avoid. Here is a tactic to handle such procrastination. First, assign some time to work on the task....
Stop Outsourcing Your Life Decisions
We often ask people for advice on what to do with our lives. But how would they know? You know who you are and what makes you tick. You know your fears and dreams. You know how hard you can push and what makes you give up. Figuring out your life...