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...

Can generalists thrive in this new world order? To answer this, let me go back to the McKinsey I saw a decade and a half ago, which was full of generalists. Even specialists were hired as generalist consultants. For example, it was common to see medical doctors on...

Since the who's who of the corporate world is singing praises about hard work, I want to put on record that I agree with them 100%. But the problem is that we immediately translate 'hard work' into 84 hours, 96 hours, or 120 hours a week. So before we do that, let us...

One of my IIT professors had a stellar academic reputation. But after he quit/retired, he abandoned academic rigour and started making random claims. He would inflate mediocre work using jargon and began behaving like a quack. And the reason was that he moved into...

During my MBA, a college friend visited us in Philadelphia. And during our conversation, I asked him about his career plans. But he had no 'plans' -- he was happy with his life, and I couldn't understand how that was possible! After an IIT degree and a master's from a...

I once met a mega business leader in his office in Mumbai. And on the office wall, there was a photo of the Indian PM with another head of state, behind whom he was standing quite deferentially. I am sure, when this business leader's direct reports stood in his...

I once knew a guy who had spent decades in investment banking and had climbed up the hierarchy but he was clueless about finance and deal-making. I often wondered how he got there. My guess is that in many organizations, if you don't antagonize the right people, a mix...

Why do we spend so much time in meetings, even when it's a horrendous waste of our time and talent? One might say, "What choice do I have?" Who wants to ruffle feathers by declining or pushing back on meeting invites? That's partly true. But there's also a hidden...

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,...