The next time someone is angry and you want to disarm them, just listen to them. They should know that you are genuinely listening, without being condescending. You are listening to understand, not to come up with a retort or a response. When people are angry, 50% of...

In the early days of India's e-commerce boom, in 2011, I was among 30-odd investors gathered around a renowned entrepreneur in Mumbai's Oberoi Hotel. With casual bravado, he said, "In the current market, if you are not growing 30% month-on-month, you are doing...

The best tonic for your mental health is having a kind boss. Even in the most high-profile assignments, when my bosses have been bad, I have hated the experience. And when I had good bosses, even mediocre work felt worthwhile. If you lead a team, being kind is one of...

A few years ago, I was at IISc Bangalore to give a talk. And I was raving about the beautiful, idyllic campus to my host, a retired civil servant who was teaching an undergraduate class. When my host told me that he had previously worked as the registrar at IISc, I...

I know quite a few wealthy and well-off people. But I don't know even one person who got somewhat wealthy doing "side hustles, generating multiple income streams." Not one person! And yet, on LinkedIn, you are made to believe that side hustles are the ticket to...

Whenever I take a flight, my mother becomes anxious and is on tenterhooks till the flight lands. For 20 years, I have been convincing her that flights are safe but to no avail. Her logic is that the survival rate of flights is negligible. Also, flying does intuitively...

If you follow the 'zero inbox' philosophy for email, I have some bad news for you. Zero inbox is great in theory but in practice, it fails. Here is why. When you go zero inbox, by replying to emails, you throw the ball back in someone else's court. So when you reply...

I was once recording a video talk for a TED-like online platform. When I was preparing the script, the organizer asked, "Can you insert some struggle in this part of the video? We want it to really motivate our audience!" I told him that I did not have any struggles...

During my policing career, when interacting with very poor people, I would often notice an attitude of helplessness and resignation. Life had probably battered them so much that they felt that nothing they did mattered. Martin Seligman, a renowned psychologist, called...

A partner at McKinsey once told me about a massive cost-cutting project at a company that used to operate very lavishly. For example, on every floor, this company had multiple large printers. Had you asked, the staff would have probably insisted that every printer was...

8 months after trying out another gym, I went back to my old gym recently. And I saw a familiar-looking guy, who used to be overweight and flabby. But now, he seemed quite fit -- most of his excess weight, including a prominent double chin, was totally gone! The...

When you first hold a rifle, shooting seems so easy -- just align the gun's foresight, backsight, and the target, and pull the trigger. But there is a challenge! Your eye is like a camera that can focus only at one distance at a time. So when you focus your eyes on...

A few years ago, I was at IIT Kanpur to give a talk. And the speaker before me was a brilliant entrepreneur, who had built a billion-dollar company from scratch, AFTER his retirement. And while this gentleman was talking, the students started clapping -- not because...

Anyone can walk on a one-foot-wide path. But if it was a beam jutting out from a building's 100th floor, you would collapse before taking even one step. Why? In some sense, the task is exactly the same. But our peripheral vision can see the steep fall awaiting us. So...

During my consulting days, whenever we felt unclear about what to do next, my panic would start rising. And my instinct would always be to push harder and churn out a few more slides. But thankfully, we would pause, go to the whiteboard, and do a problem-solving...