Mid-career can be a dangerous place -- you might become too expensive for the roles you can perform, and unwilling to take the roles you can get. This happens because aging is mandatory, but upskilling is optional. As we become older ('senior'), in many organisations,...

Before we graduated from college, our electrical engineering professor (I think it was Dr SS Prabhu) told us, "As you graduate, it is not enough to be technically competent -- you also need a value system, without which, you are no better than a highly trained dog." I...

In my first startup, I outsourced my product development to a small IT services company. In the beginning, things seemed okay. But soon, I was struggling with product-market fit (aka, nobody wanted my product). Instead of staying laser-focused on solving that problem,...

One of my best friends in the Indian Police Service recently told me the story of his boss at a paramilitary organization, who used to tell his staff, "After 5 pm, I want all of you on the sports ground -- nobody should be seen in the office." So one day, an officer...

About a decade ago, I was in Mussoorie (at Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration) during the training program for senior Civil Servants. During one of the sessions, a guest speaker gave a talk that was critical of the bureaucracy and suggested some...

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 limited time and attention, and we can't be reading everything. But by responding to every email and WhatsApp with alacrity,...

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 files and other work be brought to him at the Visitors' Hostel. He only stopped working when he was physically no longer...

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, we all batchmates wanted to just sit and chat. So we started moving the furniture around so that we could all sit...

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 be very nice."...

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 not expected to...

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, you will wait for a...

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, success has little to...

There is a 99% chance that your struggles will never cease, no matter how successful you become. But this can't be true! What if one achieves superlative success? How many successful entrepreneurs have you seen who go into quiet retirement after a huge success? How...

An ex-colleague used to show up at work with a Tumi bag. When I learned how atrociously expensive these things were, I asked him, "Why did you buy this? Was it worth it?" This guy had bought it while working with a top-tier private equity fund, which paid insanely. He...

About half of the IAS/IPS officers who reach out to me ask me about career opportunities outside the Services. Of course, there is an obvious self-selection here (why else would they reach out to an ex-Civil Servant). Yet, the number of dissatisfied people in highly...