My best managers -- be it in the Indian Police Service or at McKinsey -- were not the charismatic ones with swagger or bravado. Instead their biggest quality was this: In a crisis, when things became rough, they remained calm -- no freaking out, no rude behavior, no...

It was very hard and painful to see the photo of a poor taxi driver crushed in the Delhi Airport canopy collapse. And without facts, I won't speculate on whose fault it was, and how far up the responsibility should go. But one thing I will tell you -- if a major VIP...

You cannot be 100% focused, 100% productive, all day long. In fact, don't even try -- it is a guarantee for self-inflicted agony. Life ebbs and flows. There are good days and bad days. Even within a day, our mood and energy go up and down. But here is the good news:...

Around 2006, Steve Ballmer, the then CEO of Microsoft, came to Wharton for a talk. After he finished his talk, a student asked why Microsoft was not as innovative as Apple (or something to that effect). Ballmer said that Microsoft was a 95% market share company and...

During my service in the police force, we once had a massive political riot after which, we arrested about 200 people. Now, before producing these people in a magistrate's court, we had to do a lot of paperwork. So I put a team of officers on the job. After sometime,...

In my first job, what used to really piss me off was that whenever I got a task from higher ups, almost always, it would be urgent. And sometimes, they would wonder, “Why is it taking you so long to get this done?” If that was the only task I had, they would be right....

To understand this late-night-work mania, let us analyze what happens when we do a 1-hour meeting. 1. Let us say the meeting involves 6 participants. So a total of 6 hours are lost. 2. Typically, before a meeting, if there is only a little time left, we tend to do...

A few months ago, a youngster (in mid-twenties) working in a tech role asked me how to get a job in a PE fund. When I asked him why he wanted to do that, he said, "To make a lot of money." Fair point -- these firms can pay quite well. Then I asked him if he had tried...

This may be unpopular but let me say it. If you have to climb a mountain, at some point, you need to start climbing. Yes, you can watch all the videos on how to climb -- ice climbing vs rock climbing, and this technique vs. that technique. You can seek motivation from...

I am not hearing good things. From New York to Singapore, whoever you talk to, is talking about job losses. And the driving force is not economic recession, but almost certainly AI. We were debating whether AI will take jobs away. That debate is outdated -- it is...

Yesterday, more than half a million people in India wrote the Civil Services exam, to compete for a few hundred jobs. From my firsthand experience, I can vouch that the kind of responsibilities these jobs give you while still in your twenties is unparalleled. But this...

In my consulting days, we saved a client a few million dollars with a simple recommendation. This company was spending $10 million plus on postal mail, mostly on overnight/express delivery that cost 3 to 10 times more than normal (and slower) postal mail. So, by...